Poll: Do You Like the PvP in Albion Online?

The game is brilliant until now. I liked the gathering, the crafting, the building, the leveling, hell even the farming. Resources are a little tedious though, having to start from tier 1 to tier 2 to tier 3 etc instead of just making tier 3 from the tier 3 resource. And farms take way to long to produce a crop.

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But I’ve now just realised that I’m forced to do PvP to progress higher than tier 6? What on earth was the thinking behind that? Or was the intention to have a PvP game where that’s all there is, and severely limit the target market of players.

I hate PvP and it isn’t fun (pvp in my opinion belongs in FPS and MOBA’s), especially when the PvP isn’t 1 on 1, it’s who has the biggest best equipped group usually wins which clearly is the intention with the red zones and higher.

So how am I supposed to progress to the max tier, including gathering so I’m excluding the AH, when I have no desire at all to even duel someone never mind PvP?

If I were to go try and gather in a red zone to get the materials needed to progress, I’d eventually die to a player and lose all my gear, oh what fun that would be.

This game would be sweet if PvP was just something you could do in limited zones so the people that actually like dying and losing all of their gear when that happens can go do PvP. And the people who have no interest at all in PvP can go gather, farm, and craft until their hearts are content.

Since this is a suggestion board; 2 servers, 1 with PvP as is and another server with PvP limited to a small number of zones.

The PvE server could be filled with dangerous monsters or something to replace the dangers of players and the higher tier resources wouldn’t be hidden behind a frustrating wall of forced PvP.

The people who wanted to do PvP on the server would also use the weapons/armor etc on the AH which would keep the market spinning.

Or if you’re dead set on having 1 server then make another continent completely cut off from the other continent for the PvE idea.

You could also limit tiers I guess for each zone, in order to attack a player you have to be wearing the tier that matches the zone, at least this would stop high level people ganking lower level people. It wouldn’t stop 10 people ganking the individual player though.
Now obviously there’s going to be a lot of people that enjoy it at is, and I’m sure the game is going to be pretty successful but there’s got to be more people that are like me and just love gathering, crafting and making money and don’t like PvP. So unless the people that are like me are catered for (for lack of a better word/phrase) then the player base isn’t going to be anywhere near what it could be. I don’t know what sort of percentage of people that would agree with me make up but it’s not going to be a insignificant number especially when you consider the total possible size of the player base.

Honestly, until this game changes (if it even does) I’m not recommending any of my friends (they’re the same as me) to play it (I’ll happily recommend them to play if it does). I know I’m just 1 person and my few friends don’t compare to the bulk of players but I can’t be alone in thinking this and many many others will be put off entirely just as I have.

And before anyone says it, I obviously have 2 options as is: Stay at tier 6 and pretend it’s endgame or stop playing entirely.

Albion Online Tips of Chicken Kiss Battles

Chicken Kiss have established a name for themselves during Closed Beta, standing as a firm stakeholder in the West. However, immediate sources from the guild confirm that sporadic battles have been taking place over the past few weeks. Kyljys, the War Master of Chicken Kiss, provided us with a first-hand glimpse of their most recent skirmishes against their rivals.

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“Our main rivals at the moment are certainly WarLegend and Money Guild. We have had a number of encounters in the open world, typically resulting in a large-scale battle. Overall, the fights have been really entertaining back-and-forth battles. Simply put, you win some, you lose some,”Kyljys explained.

Apparently, these large scale battles have been cultivated in attempts to sustain control over crucial real-estate in the world. Namely castles, which provide boons for any guild in the form of currency.

We asked him how exactly they would gain control of the situation and if they had any unspoken alliances that would support Chicken Kiss in the endeavor. His response was firm. “We haven’t been in an alliance for a while because we simply feel that we don’t really need one.”

Although they currently aren’t adopting any support in the form of an alliance, Chicken Kiss has been in numerous alliances in the past for a variety of reasons.

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“The most recent alliance we were in was the SSS alliance, which included Echo of Silence, The Covenant and Valhalla. The goal for the alliance was to control the black zones,  and push into Festerfoss. Overall, we succeeded pretty well; we pushed Money Guild into Festerfoss and meanwhile, our allies controlled the rest of the black zones in the West.”

Despite Chicken Kiss no longer being part of the alliance, they set out to show exactly what the guild was capable of and achieved their goal in that regard. They have not only managed to break into Festerfoss, but have also proven they can compete in the top Guilds vs. Guild battles.

In more recent news, Chicken Kiss and Money Guild have come to terms with one another, and have derived a stringent non-aggression pact in order to direct their goals elsewhere.

“Even though we fight Money Guild almost every day in the open world, we are currently in a non-aggression pact in regards to sending Guild vs. Guild attacks towards one another.”

Clearly busy with his duties as War Master, Kyljys was cut short on time for our dialogue. We asked him one final question before letting him get back into the action. What does the near future hold for Chicken Kiss?

Without much else to explain, Kyljys was adamant that Chicken Kiss has been, and will continue to conquer their objectives.

“The focal point of the guild for this beta has been to compete with the best GvG teams on the server. I think we have succeeded in that regard fairly well. At the very least, the French wing of Chicken Kiss has. Now, we just have to make the other wings of Chicken Kiss just as capable and we’ll be as strong as ever,”Kyljys concluded the interview.

Albion Online Guide on Making the Broadsword a Useful Weapon

Actually, I’m pretty upset about the current state of the weapon. While the Update Cador patch did help things a little, the broadsword, and .1 Warrior weapons in general, are still far too weak to be “viable”.

The current problems I face with the broadsword are that while the DPS is a bit better than the hammer, the hammer has much more control, much more +hp, and with the addition of heavy cleave, can now do much greater AE damage with it’s single target DPS not far behind the broadsword.

 

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I think there are several ways to go about improving the broadsword to a state where it at least can compete with other melee weapons in PvE and PvP, as I’m of the belief that every weapon should be useful in both PvE and PvP, in their own way. So I’ll throw out some ideas.

I’m not saying ALL of these should be done, even just picking a couple of these to implement would put the broadsword in a much better place than it is now. To be clear, I don’t expect the broadsword+shield in heavy plate to ever have the DPS and killing power of a lighter geared setup, I just would like to be a bit sturdier, and able to peel players from my teammates, or hold someone down for my DPS comrades to come in and take em out, maybe have a bit more damage to put pressure on people. Right now, none of those things are really possible.

Also keep in mind, these numbers are from my tier 6 broadsword and hammer. I’ll update this list once I’m able to use higher tiers, though it’s gonna be a while since almost nobody wants a broadsword user in their group.

  • Increase the amount of +health on the broadsword, right now it’s hundreds below the hammer and mace, and even though the battleaxe has about the same amount, with the self-heals on the axe its effective health is considerably greater.
  • Increase the damage all around, right now the hammer and mace are able to heavy cleave for several hundred on many opponents at once, while the broadsword can usually only hit for 300 on a low armor single target with a fully charged mighty blow.
  • Increase the movement speed bonus of Heroic Strike by about 3 or 4% per charge.
  • Add a stun effect to Mighty Blow that scales up with charges of Heroic Strike, perhaps 2-3 seconds with 1 charge, 5-6 seconds with 2 charges, and 8-9 seconds with 3 charges.
  • Add a silence effect to Interrupt.
  • Add a bleed effect to cleave, perhaps make the bleed damage do 100% of the initial damage over 2 seconds.
  • Increase the snare % and/or duration of Hamstring, perhaps add a short root followed by the snare.

I hope one day we can all use the weapon we want and be able to be effective.

Problems and Ideas of the Crafting in Albion Online

It’s painfully obvious that this game tries its hardest to force players to seek one route of expertise in the hopes that players will each have their own craft. There are a couple problems with this:

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1.Everyone needs to level up their combat. The game forces a player to grind “combat levels” in order to be a master prospector for example. It’s not the levelling that is bad, its the narrow “You must be a mage/warrior/ranger and kill things” logic in a world that is dead set on trying to push players into different areas. It just doesn’t quite fit in my opinion.

One Idea for this would be to implement a civilian type armour into the game which focuses on gathering certain materials, crafting. and maybe even traverse cliffs. This type of playstyle would have limited combat abilities and rely on bodyguards. The whole point is to not be combat driven. Technically you could just pretend you’re in civilian clothing and not level up. But there should be difference between civilian and paper mache.

2.Another problem is that each player given enough time can master multiple crafts. This only invalidates trading between players and overall turns everyone into eventual clones. This game tries to stop that by making it so grindy that it will take a long time to master everything, but the problem is still there, with enough time you can be a master of all craft.

An idea I saw from another game was quite unique in regard to crafting. The idea was that each player required a random set of ingredients for potions, meaning that all the ingredients were valuable either to trade or to brew (There was no X ingredient that trumped all). Take it a step further and you could have each player randomly (or they can choose) be proficient in a particular craft. So for example someone could have a unique ability to add an extra trait slot (or another ability to choose from) on all swords they craft. Another player could be proficient at stone gathering, allowing them to gather rare stone types which few else can gather. Perhaps certain buildings or other crafted works would require said rare materials (or be improved with them). You could go even further and give players penalties in other professions.
This could make every player a valuable asset to the economy indefinitely.

4 New Spells and Abilities Added into Albion Online Soon

The Albion Online team has sent word that several new spells will be added to the game client in the near future. While many are currently under development, four will definitely make the cut when the time for updating the game comes. Cador offered an abundance of new spells, but there are still plenty more to come! Today we’re taking a look at future spells and abilities that are currently in development.

In their most recent development update, the studio puts the spotlight on four new spells that will find their way into the sandbox-MMORPG:

Flame Orb, an area damage spell for the two-handed Fire Staff.

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Tackle, a rush skill for the two-handed Hammer
Charge, a skill to charge and disable for the Claymore

Charge
Tornado, a ranged option for for the Quarterstaff

 

Albion Online Maintenance Patch from Level Designers and Game Designers

This small maintenance patch below consists of smaller fixes resulting from level designers and game designers working through the backlog of reported issues.

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Changes

Holy Staffs

The Resurrection spell was too powerful in combination with the death mechanic changes.

Divine Staff

Resurrection revives targets at 30% health, reduced from 100%.

Fixes

  • Resource and Farm territories now correctly suffer a -10 defender bonus when trying to conquer home territories.
  • Fixed an issue where the Poison spell was ticking four times instead of the intended 5.
  • Changed the Empowering Beam spell’s tick frequency so that the actual effect time more closely matches the channeling time.
  • Ensured the Holy Beam spell can no longer be kept at maximum stacks by stacking CDR.
  • Fixed an issue where the Ambush spell was erroneously stacks up faster when more enemies were around.
  • Fixed an issue where the Enfeeble Aura spell was incorrectly removed by friendly Cleanse spells.
  • Fixed an issue where the Hail spell was potentially dealing damage more frequently than intended.
  • Mage Towers now prefer Mutton Sandwiches instead of (non-existent) T6 pies.
  • Invisible players will now always be visible to friendly players (even when using the Ambush spell).
  • Fixed unlock criteria for Expert’s Hunter Jacket.
  • Fixed certain passive abilities not scaling with ability power.
  • Fixed various typos in localization.
  • Fixed various reported level design bugs:

Filled holes in ground on several maps
Moved resources into harvestable positions
Fixed floating rocks
Removed rocks from roads
Repositioned railings to stop people from walking up walls
Removed invisible objects which were blocking player movement in some places
Fixed alignment of GvG elements in player cities

Albion Online Guide to Build Assassin

Equipment  
Let’s delve into our armor and weapon of choice.

  1.  Cloth Hood (Mage)
  2.  Leather Chest (Hunter)
  3.  Leather Shoes (Assassin)
  4.  One-handed Dagger and Torch

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A plethora of poison abilities, as well as various mobility skills provides this build with both the damage and nimbleness necessary to perform effectively. It is a strong case of a slippery playstyle and couldn’t be defined better than that of an assassin archetype.

Armor

Let’s go over the skill choices that we will forge onto our armor.

Mage Cloth Hood Skill: Poison

The main skill that we will want to forge onto our Cloth Hood would be Poison. The skill itself is quite self-explanatory. It coats your weapon with poison, causing your next auto attack to poison your enemy with damage over time, lasting 5 seconds.

Poison synergizes well with the other form of poison you will want to pick up (detailed later in the build) which will essentially stack together for massive damage.

Mage Cloth Hood Passive: Aggression

Without a doubt, the right passive for our hood would be Aggression – increasing our damage by 3.5% which simply helps eliminate our enemies a bit faster. Considering that we are not using a cloth chest in this build, it is also important to take note that we won’t have the major boost in damage that Aggression on Cloth Chests provide. Nonetheless, every bit of damage boost helps.

Hunter Leather Chest Skill: Haste

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Although Fury may seem as an enticing skill option for your chest for that additional damage-boost, the better of the two options in this build would be Haste. Haste increasing your movement speed by 50%, as well as your attack speed by 60%, for a whopping 8 seconds. This is a quintessential skill to have as it covers a large percentage of both your damage amplification, as well as your mobility.

Hunter Leather Chest Passive: Increased Movement Speed

An optimal choice of passive for your chest would be Increased Move Speed, which increases your base movement speed by 5%. The more mobility, the better.

Assassin Leather Shoes Skill: Dodge Roll/Refreshing Sprint

Our choice of skill on our Leather Shoes is debatable, with Dodge Roll being an excellent skill in itself. However, Vezin’s personal preference of skill here is Refreshing Sprint – increasing your movement speed by 96% for 3 seconds, as well as slightly reducing the duration of all of your cooldowns, including the sprint itself.

Refreshing Sprint naturally provides for more damage, as your poisons are on shorter cooldown, as well as more mobility considering that skills such as Haste and Dash (detailed later) used in this build receive reduced cooldowns. Not to forget that the sprint itself is a form of mobility as well. Simply put, it’s hard to pass up on!

Assassin Leather Shoes Passive: Increased Movement Speed

Just like our Leather Chest, the passive we will want to take on our shoes is Increased Move Speed. In this case, the passive will provide you with a slight 2.5% increase in movement speed, rather than the 5% that the chest provides. However, it is just as important as it is another form of mobility to get you in and out of the enemy flanks as quickly as possible.

Weapons: One-handed Dagger and Torch

Now, let’s cover our choice of weapons.

Playstyle and Combos

As mentioned above, the playstyle that this build provides is very niche and really centers upon good positioning and good timing. Vezin details the ins and outs of performing well with the build, as well as the important synergies to consider when utilizing it.

Making use of every skill in this build is important in both maximizing your damage output, as well as your mobility. Essentially, every skill synergizes nearly perfectly with one another.

Pros and Cons

The pros of the build are very clear. You have high mobility and high burst damage. With access to dash on such a short cooldown (reduced even further by Refreshing Sprint), it’s a build that is very hard to be locked down unless chain stunned or anything alike.

A few notable cons of the build are that it provides no AoE (area of effect) damage, and is strictly a single target burst build. This naturally has its shortcomings in large scale battle, however it is still capable of picking off some stragglers.

New PvP modes Needed for Solo/Casual Players

I really like this game but I want to play with some more options. Something like battlegrounds or arena or something – for solo play in a pvp sense (or maybe small group).

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Right now it doesn’t seem like the game makes that possible. It seems like the model is right now to put in a thousand hours or so, and then try to join a pvp/guild zerg. I know I won’t stick around if that is all there is, and there are many more people like me I’d guess. Yes, I know there are people who can and will commit on average 4+ hours a day, but its just not possible for all of us. I hesitate to say anything because of the flaming I may get in response, but some of us can’t commit to the game in terms of a part time job – we have shit to do in our own lives.

Albion seems great with crafting, and does a good job of making a grind not seem too terrible. But to be viable in pvp there is simply too much of a time requirement, and it seems to be too zerg like once you hit that level. Some of us like to solo, like pvp, and don’t have massive amounts of time. I know, the response is probably going to be’this game isn’t for you then.

Half the fun of the game of this game is figured out the little niches to the game. Like how to avoid zergs. How to track people in game, Mechanics of combat. How to counter certain builds. How to safely farm any area. The list for this goes on and on. The only way to learn these things is by doing them. Which everytime i see someone like you complaining about it being a zergfest, or always dieing clearly don’t think about any of this and its seems like you just want a boring click button grindfest. Which is why you guys get the go back to WOW scrub comments all the time. Because the things i just mention’d really don’t take much to figure out. Once you get those basic How to’s down you can roam around solo or in small groups 2-4 people and have all sorts of fun.

Albion Online Solo PvP Video

There is a Albion Online Solo PVP video, I hope you enjoy it.

 

Albion seems great with crafting, and does a good job of making a grind not seem too terrible. But to be viable in pvp there is simply too much of a time requirement, and it seems to be too zerg like once you hit that level. Some of us like to solo, like pvp, and don’t have massive amounts of time.

 

 

Comparison of the Q Ability and W Ability in Albion Online

I want to love the quarterstaff, but the Iron-Clad outclasses it in every way. Unlike most other .1 weapons, the Quarterstaff does not get the offhand slot to help compensate  for the lesser damage of like skills among its tree. I will list the comparison of the two weapons. All of these will be of the T4 type.

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Q Ability: Concussive Blow
The Quarterstaff (QS) does 178 damage whereas the Iron-Clad (IC) does 198 damage. The Iron-Clad is a straight up upgrade here.
W Ability: Stun Run

  • The Quarterstaff and iron-clad both boost movement speed for the same amount and duration, but the iron-clad has over a half second longer stun(QS 4.85sec vs IC 5.37sec). As a weapon whose primary reason in PvP is CC, the IC wins here.

W Ability: Empowered Slam

  • The QS does 322 damage whereas the IC does 357 damage. This is a small difference, however as stated before, the primary reason for the QS line is stunning. Most people will take Stun Run over Empowered Slam when it comes to PvP.

W Ability: Heavy Cleave (Iron-Clad only and double-bladed staff only)

  • This attack does 761 damage, same 15 sec cool down as Empowered Slam, but has a 1 second casting time. Both this and Empowering slam are nice if you already have a pure stunner, but again is mostly ignored due to Stun Run.

E Ability: Forceful Swing (Quarterstaff only)

  • This is an instant cast push back attack that pushes back enemies in 360 degrees around the caster. It also does a fair 134 damage. It has a great 10 second cool down timer,  but also costs 37 mana to use.

E Ability: Hurricane (Iron-Clad)

  • This is just like Forceful Swing as a push back ability. The difference that makes this ability so much more powerful is it spins, pushes back, and damages all targets for 4  solid seconds (and the duration scales). The ability not only does 62 damages every time it hits a target (which will tick every second for 4 seconds), but you can also move  while this ability is being used for its duration. To top it off, it only cost 1 mana more than Forceful Swing. The one and only downfall is it’s a 20 second cool down but is  lessened by the fact that the cool down starts upon activation.

Other than the fact that the Q and W abilities does straight up more damage on the iron-clad, the E ability is where it steps far ahead. It does more damage over time  (especially if you can keep pushing them into a wall), has more chances to interrupt the enemy (which is the main reason to use any weapon in the quarterstaff line), and won’t drain your mana nearly as much as the quarterstaff. I suggest improving the quarterstaff by:

  • Double Forceful Swing’s damage. This gives the QS a more damage role than the IC. It doesn’t make it as strong of CC as the IC, but it will give the QS the ability to do damage
    as well.
  • Reduce Forceful Swing’s mana. The QS runs out of mana really quickly if you’re trying to interrupt. The IC doesn’t as quickly because of Hurricane’s cool down, but Hurricane
    also will interrupt 4 or more times as much as Forceful Swing.
  • Make Forceful Swing stun or slow as well. This may make QS OP by interrupting and stun/slow, but there’s also a reason it’s never used over the iron-clad.