Hello everyone.
I think it's time we talk about ganking in Albion Online.
I know this is a mechanic many players hate, because it involves losing their assets, being frustrated and so on. Ganking is seen as an unintentional feature in many MMORPG and many think that it shouldn't exist at all. But should it be the case in Albion Online ?
As you all know, Albion Online is focused on risk/reward gameplay. Winning a lot of silver must involve taking risks. For example, if you want to craft 1 billion worth of 8.3 mats in your Hideout and make 500 million silver of profit, you need to transport it and take the risk to lose it. I have transported myself many times and there is nothing more exciting/stressful of being chased by gankers. The joy of escaping them or the frustration of dying are both feelings i'm grateful to Albion for giving them to me.
Whether or not you think ganking should be part of the game, there is a reality, ganking is a really bad activity to take part in right now for various reason :
Gank in redzone :
- Many players are spending their playtime annoying gankers in redzone (they buy 4.1 set, fight gankers whenever they see one, die, repeat) and gankers have no way to defend agaisnt such players because they lose too much reputation if they keep killing them, and they cannot ignore them because they are VERY insistent.
- When you're doing session like AngryWolf is doing, but you're very dependant on how many players are going to come and bother you while you can't do much about it.
Ganking in Avalonian roads :
- Since Beyond the Veil, there is no more 2 man gates, which is a huge nerf to ganking. Now it is not possible to close a gate so the target can't cross it.
- Since Beyond the Veil, Blackzone maps aren't connected directly to royal maps. Since the update, I have seen only 3 times out of maybe 30-40 times a connection between inner circle and royal. The consequence is that we can't access the ava roads easily to gank them, and we need to find first a road through the right balckzone portal, then go into the road. Each session starts 1 hours after the road is found, and it is VERY annoying for us gankers.
- Ganking in ava roads has always been very hard, it is easy for a team to secure an ava road, thus making it impossible to gank. Most of the transporters are using scouts to see if there is gankers in the road, usuallly a scout 1 screen ahead of the transporter.
Black zone Ganking :
- Too many big groups are roaming the backzone, making ganking in a little group almost impossible. Now you need to be a whole 20 man party to be able to do something and that is pretty much ridiculous.
(It's not my main content at all please share your opinion on this in a reply to this post)
Ganking weapons :
- Claw was nerfed to the ground (no experienced gankers take a claw in his party unless we're 8 or more), morningstar is completely useless for gankers now, bear paws is very strong and used in any composition, forge hammers are good only in red/balck zones, any mobility weapon + graveguard is also good but not much in ava roads because of boosts. Before we had tools to deal with battlemounts, now it is almost impossible if the player think even a little. And we absolutely can't afford taking balista for regular battlemounts because it would be too risky in the red zone.
General nerfs :
- mount up time on greywolf nerf made escaping in redzone much harder
- Invisibility shrines, poison nerf, mount HP buff,...
Before the nerfs of morninstar and claws, ganking was skilled and about communication
Now we end up missing a lot of targets because it is almost impossible sometimes. The new jacket makes a transport invicible on a short distance, longer with miner boots. The buff to gigantism potion is very strong in ava raods because it's often enough to reach a gate and zone with being cced.
Overall, the feeling we have is that players get more and more ways to escape gankers, but on the other hand, gankers don't have more tools to catch transports, in fact, as i said about claws and morningstar, they have way less tools.
So us gankers want to know if SBI has something against ganking, and if not, we want to work with you guys to create new tools for us gankers, that will be fair for everyone and not stupid like morningstar was (yes i agree it was op, but the nerf was too much).
Please, if any mods from SBI come across this, don't ignore us, organize a round table for ganking with the big names and let's work togetgher to make ganking fair for everyone, transporters and gankers.
Anyway, as i want this post to be as helpful as possible, here is a few solutions I came up with :
1. Remove passive on grizzly and buff its movement speed. Right now the speed is the biggest issue when a little group is ganking a grizzly, sometimes we even stop catching them because it is too complicated. Especially in avalonian roads, with the boosts it's almost impossible to catch a grizzly whith less then 5/6 people.
2. Remove reputation loss for killing a blue player that attacked you first. This would help a lot fighting the 4.1 sets that players use to bother gankers and kill them sometimes.
3. Add a buff in avalonian roads that makes battlemounts vulnerable to graveguard and fear. It is way too hard right now to catch a battlemount in an avalonian road. Unless the player is VERY bad at taking decision under stress, there is no way a battlemount dies, even to balistas. This is not faire and make Hideout crafters way to safe in avalonian roads.
These suggestions are from my own experience to please add yours in the reply of this post !
I think it's time we talk about ganking in Albion Online.
I know this is a mechanic many players hate, because it involves losing their assets, being frustrated and so on. Ganking is seen as an unintentional feature in many MMORPG and many think that it shouldn't exist at all. But should it be the case in Albion Online ?
As you all know, Albion Online is focused on risk/reward gameplay. Winning a lot of silver must involve taking risks. For example, if you want to craft 1 billion worth of 8.3 mats in your Hideout and make 500 million silver of profit, you need to transport it and take the risk to lose it. I have transported myself many times and there is nothing more exciting/stressful of being chased by gankers. The joy of escaping them or the frustration of dying are both feelings i'm grateful to Albion for giving them to me.
Whether or not you think ganking should be part of the game, there is a reality, ganking is a really bad activity to take part in right now for various reason :
Gank in redzone :
- Many players are spending their playtime annoying gankers in redzone (they buy 4.1 set, fight gankers whenever they see one, die, repeat) and gankers have no way to defend agaisnt such players because they lose too much reputation if they keep killing them, and they cannot ignore them because they are VERY insistent.
- When you're doing session like AngryWolf is doing, but you're very dependant on how many players are going to come and bother you while you can't do much about it.
Ganking in Avalonian roads :
- Since Beyond the Veil, there is no more 2 man gates, which is a huge nerf to ganking. Now it is not possible to close a gate so the target can't cross it.
- Since Beyond the Veil, Blackzone maps aren't connected directly to royal maps. Since the update, I have seen only 3 times out of maybe 30-40 times a connection between inner circle and royal. The consequence is that we can't access the ava roads easily to gank them, and we need to find first a road through the right balckzone portal, then go into the road. Each session starts 1 hours after the road is found, and it is VERY annoying for us gankers.
- Ganking in ava roads has always been very hard, it is easy for a team to secure an ava road, thus making it impossible to gank. Most of the transporters are using scouts to see if there is gankers in the road, usuallly a scout 1 screen ahead of the transporter.
Black zone Ganking :
- Too many big groups are roaming the backzone, making ganking in a little group almost impossible. Now you need to be a whole 20 man party to be able to do something and that is pretty much ridiculous.
(It's not my main content at all please share your opinion on this in a reply to this post)
Ganking weapons :
- Claw was nerfed to the ground (no experienced gankers take a claw in his party unless we're 8 or more), morningstar is completely useless for gankers now, bear paws is very strong and used in any composition, forge hammers are good only in red/balck zones, any mobility weapon + graveguard is also good but not much in ava roads because of boosts. Before we had tools to deal with battlemounts, now it is almost impossible if the player think even a little. And we absolutely can't afford taking balista for regular battlemounts because it would be too risky in the red zone.
General nerfs :
- mount up time on greywolf nerf made escaping in redzone much harder
- Invisibility shrines, poison nerf, mount HP buff,...
Before the nerfs of morninstar and claws, ganking was skilled and about communication
Now we end up missing a lot of targets because it is almost impossible sometimes. The new jacket makes a transport invicible on a short distance, longer with miner boots. The buff to gigantism potion is very strong in ava raods because it's often enough to reach a gate and zone with being cced.
Overall, the feeling we have is that players get more and more ways to escape gankers, but on the other hand, gankers don't have more tools to catch transports, in fact, as i said about claws and morningstar, they have way less tools.
So us gankers want to know if SBI has something against ganking, and if not, we want to work with you guys to create new tools for us gankers, that will be fair for everyone and not stupid like morningstar was (yes i agree it was op, but the nerf was too much).
Please, if any mods from SBI come across this, don't ignore us, organize a round table for ganking with the big names and let's work togetgher to make ganking fair for everyone, transporters and gankers.
Anyway, as i want this post to be as helpful as possible, here is a few solutions I came up with :
1. Remove passive on grizzly and buff its movement speed. Right now the speed is the biggest issue when a little group is ganking a grizzly, sometimes we even stop catching them because it is too complicated. Especially in avalonian roads, with the boosts it's almost impossible to catch a grizzly whith less then 5/6 people.
2. Remove reputation loss for killing a blue player that attacked you first. This would help a lot fighting the 4.1 sets that players use to bother gankers and kill them sometimes.
3. Add a buff in avalonian roads that makes battlemounts vulnerable to graveguard and fear. It is way too hard right now to catch a battlemount in an avalonian road. Unless the player is VERY bad at taking decision under stress, there is no way a battlemount dies, even to balistas. This is not faire and make Hideout crafters way to safe in avalonian roads.
These suggestions are from my own experience to please add yours in the reply of this post !
