REGION:EU
SUGGESTION: SEE BELOW
DETAILS: SEE BELOW

Hello,

First of all I just want to say I do not expect everyone to agree with me nor do I think all the suggestions I have offered are the solution, but I wrote this just to (hopefully) feel I am not alone and I wanted to address the current concerns I have in Nodewar and PvP in general, I know a few other people share similar views from the EU scene as I have been talking with diplos and shotcallers etc. Of course, I know I do not speak for everyone and this is entirely my opinion, therefore it is subjective, I do not expect you to agree I just want to make some noise that many people are unhappy.

I have recently came back after taking about an 8 month break from the game and I have been playing nodewars for about 3-4 years on and off, if I had to guess and as far as 'meta' goes I feel this is the most stale 'meta' we have had and I will try to explain why.

Rather than ranting about the game state I will try and list topics below in a consice manner so it is not a long rant but rather constructive, or at least as constructive I can be offering some solutions. 

Nodewars 

I am not really sure how to start so I will just jump straight in to Nodewars.

For as long as I can remember the Nodewar system has been forever changing. From the top of my head we have had 3 systems none of which have worked and it always seems to go back to the Construction system in one way or another.

I personally feel that occupation does not work and I will try to explain why. The occupation nodewar was Pearl Abyss' answer to diplomacy and trying to make Nodewars feel less stale, in a realistic world they just had to rotate caps and I think majority of people would have been happy. 

Moreover, the occupation nodewar created a massive divide in EU, the system is a complete RNG lottery based system that is based on last hitting ( I am aware they changed it if you hold it X amount of time) but realistically it still comes down to who hits the fort last wins the lottery, you are never in an ideal world going to get a base up as you will have 2-3 guilds permanently diving into your fort and cancelling upgrades, stopping your buildings etc thus creating a toxic and frustrating Nodewar system.

I will add though, this is not really a massive issue in EU anymore since Pearl Abyss impleneted the system where we can choose 'Construction or Occupation' if you hold Mediah castle. In all honesty I am  still quite unsure why we even have occupation at all. In my honest opinion if Pearl Abyss are absolutely adamant that they want this system in the game then perhaps make it a thing ONLY for T1 not a choice. Otherwise I think it creates an unhealthy environment and it is abundantly clear that this system has failed and did not catch on and to be honest drove a lot of the PvP community out.

At first I was open minded for a new system and even went on about how the system was not so bad, but after doing many nodewars on the system it became increasingly frustrating until the point I decided I had enough it has way to many RNG elements and stripped any strategic element from the game. I personally do not think you can fix this system nor do I have any idea how to fix the system and I believe construction mode should just be default. As I eluded to earlier this is not really a massive issue in EU as there is a coalition in the Mediah region which just creates an incredibly unhealthy siege scene but it does block the 2/3 alliances that want it. 

TL;DR; Occupation does not work, has never worked and will never work. 

This does lead me onto my next point which is rotating regions, I can still remember Unseen (the goat) doing posts about region rotating and how incredibly stale Nodewars become, although we now have an abundance of nodes and different days, node rotation I strongly believe needs to be on a season basis OR a monthly basis to keep the game feeling fresh and to stop the game becoming stale. When you PvP scene that is purely dictated by the community you need to keep the game feeling fresh of course we wont get new regions or nodes every month and I do not think anyone expects it but it cannot be hard to 'create' new nodewar zones and rotating the caps so it keeps the PvP scene entertaining. 

This is the same for castles, if Pearl Abyss are absolutely adamant on keeping the system of choice then please rotate the castles, it becomes incredibly boring fighting for Mediah every week, as I mentioned above, perhaps change which region is the capped one, currently is calpheon every season/month. Change which castle is capped, change which region can pick the nodewar system for the week, i.e currently it is Mediah perhaps make it Calpheon or Valencia, I do not want to repeat myself but I strongly believe this keeps the game feeling fresh.

Meta & current gear

1 hour nodewars are incredibly frustrating I know that they said 2 hour nodewars are on the horizion but could we please have an update? 1 hour nodewars are not enough time to do setups and clear snipes, 1hour works in the occupation system NOT the construction system. No need to have any feedback here I think it is common sense that this change just needs to be reverted. 

Moving onto my second point and forgive me for lack of a better subtitle but this is the subtopic that is becoming increasingly frustrating and NEEDS to be addressed sooner rather than later, currently the Nodewar / Siege / GvG and to be honest the PvP scene as a whole is becoming increasingly unfun and frustrating due to carpets.

It all stems from the gear change Pearl Abyss done last year, I personally thought that this was a welcome change since Evasion and DR gear was completely unbalanced, however after the rework we seem to be in a worse state. 

DP gear has always been cheap but it currently costs you around 6b to go FULL carpet and int on structures, you do not need any pen centaurs or pen river anymore and you can literally carpet onto any structure or in any GvG. I am not sure of a solution for this but perhaps make crystals lose more ap so that carpets are just existing and not killing you or your structures OR make it so that the defensive stats are lower, OR increase flat ap gains by adding buffing crystals etc, of course this may be unhealthy for PvE but at this point PvP is coming into a critical state where people are immortal. For a mere cost of 6b which is insane.

Every guild you fight in ANY PvP scenario you have you will see guilds running predominantly carpets, it is so stale and boring as there is literally 0 counterplay to any large carpet guild, in nodewars you have a team of 10-20 carpets just permanantly inting on your recov's until they die and once they die it is almost impossible to recover as your timers are long and recov's do not have enough hp to stay alive, it is incredibly frustrating to deal with. 

Mainball fights seem to last forever, it is just a case of fighting for 3/4 minutes until one guild eventually bleeds out, I thought we wanted to move away from the 1 shot meta which was fine but what we did not want is a meta where both guilds are immortal. The meta currently in Nodewar is ignore the mainraid fight and just permamantly die on recovs as it take to long to clear the carpets and they can permamantly chip down your recovs until you lose. The meta in GvG is take 5-6 carpets, why you may ask? because if you run damage the gauntlet's kill you before you as a DPS class can kill them and you are just inting. 

I know class balance is around the corner and it may adress some issues, but I do not believe class nerfs / buffs will solely be enough to change the meta of bodythrow or change the tankiness of certain classes, however, I unfortunatley cannot see into the future and I do not know what the class changes will do so I'd prefer to not go into class balance as it is just going to open another can of worms.

These are some changes that I believe would potentially help the game again I want to reiterate this is just my opinion and I just want a discussion to try and shine some light on what is becoming an increasingly stale and frustrating meta.  THESE ARE JUST SUGGESTIONS OF COURSE 

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about reducing carpets is by making them do 0 damage at all, its fine if they're CC bots but the fact they can sit in your base / out sustain people is unfun, we now have DR crystals and evasion crystals, on paper this seems like a bit of an easy fix but I can imagine in game due to the small build variety this might not be possible but perhaps we could make DR crystals decrease your AP even more OR make it so you need to be over a certain AP threshold to do damage to recovs. I do believe that this would not solve all problems and may be a bandaid fix.

The next thing that may help, is increasing AP brackets or at least giving us AP brackets that work, currently it feels like there is not enough AP in the game to blast tank classes like gauntlets (excluding awaegu, however I am not going into class discussion). Thus creating a very boring and stale meta where it is just whoever has more tanks wins as dps classes feel very subpar.

I do not want to keep banging on about it as I do not have the answers but I just wanted to put out a post to vent some frustration and share some things that could be done better. The issue within the PvP scene needs to be looked at holistically rather than just trying to fix certain parts, I appreciate if you got this far and I do hope I am not alone on this.

If you do not want to read the whole thing which is completely understandable I'll try and summarise it here;

SWAP nodewar/castle zones every season/monthly basis
reduce the amount of tanky gear/classes in the game as it is frustrating
maybe add more AP brackets?

The game is getting to an incredibly ridiculous point that PA needs to intervene and scale back some tank classes / gear options as the game is incredibly frustrating to play as people are almost immortal and tank meta in any game is just an anti fun mechanic. The entire Nodewar meta is a full tankcarpet comp who just bombs into your recovs with 0 counterplay, sure you can bubble recovs and try and slow it down but realistically there are not enough tools to counter it. 

GvG's have a similar issue, I unfortunately do not really do this content so I cannot just throw statements out into the abyss that may or may not be true however, discussing with people and many of my members there seems to be an inbalance of to many tanks not enough DPS to the point where it is more beneficial to run tanks to outtank people than DPS classes as you will never kill the carpet classes. Sounds familiar to Nodewar.

Lastly, I enjoy the game and I will continue to play, but I would love to see these issues adressed, as said I do not have all the answers nor the solutions I have tried to provide a consice argument rather than just complain. 

Thank you for reading. (PS shoutout to Stups for letting me rant about the game and also having similar ideas) 

And people wonder why we prefer to chill on T2, where damage is sensible (if a little high) and allows for all classes besides Shai to fully use their role.

Granted even here base-pressure is a thing, but the intsquads are very much killable, rewarding skill instead of slapping on 5 DR crystals to a stroker and saying GG as they heal to full off your barricades.

While yes, T2 is a thing and damage is a bit better (albeit a bit squish) I would rather PA address this issue than just leaving it forever, the game is so unfun in the state it is in

I agree with everything, however just want to add my opinion on build balance. Just adding AP will not fix the issue, as a blaster you are dying about as fast as you used to, its just the tank builds that somehow infinitely scale tankiness. They probably need to look at the way dr scales and nerf it, i also think evasion is only so strong because of the dr behind it, if you run 4 or 5 accuracy crystals u no longer have enough ap to deal with their dr. We literally scaled to 370 ap builds and can beyond 1300 acuracy, so it feels like maybe dr scaling is the problem. 

Oh, yeah I totally agree dw. Just poking fun at the uncapped superiority complex now n then. I also hope PA gets a grip on their gear/class balance nightmare trainwreck soon.

Yeah, I completely agree. These were just things I thought of off the top of my head to try and at least offer some solutions rather than just rant haha, but yeah. I agree it needs to change because atm tank building just is immortal and yeah perhaps scaling back DR would be a thing that helps the game a bit but realistically, they need to do something rather than later as the meta is incredibly boring, I miss 1 shot meta and I moaned about that too. But I would rather have that than this every PvP content in the game is abhorrent due to the tank meta sadly. I appreciate your comments tho