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Its discouraging to be starting out and getting violated over and over again. Its discouraging and not fun. I can't speak for Aetolia much, I'm not active in the pk scene on any of my characters. But I know in other games its super frustrating. There's very little reward beyond saying "yah, I took a beating better than i did last time" or "Yah, I killed someone who was where I was a week ago."
Your argument sounds suspiciously like the casual epics arguments from WoW. I don't think anyone is saying they expect to beat top tier. I think people are wanting a middle ground so people don't get discouraged.
That is fair and will get more people involved. If I had to face an Edhain or a Haven or a Illidan every time I went out, I'd probably just say screw it and go back to spending time bashing or RP'ing and being insular.
Aet doesn't have handicap because of the smaller community. There's a lot of accountability because if you get a reputation for being a raging unicornhead, that's gonna stick with you. Especialy if its in public/web. And that's a good thing.
And I get that the process of learning is fun. But its hard to learn when you're trying to see around the boot crushing your face into the ground forever because no one else happens to be learning at the same time as you.
Edit: That said, I do agree with you. And I don't think there's an easy solution. Its just the nature of the beast.
Let me explain further what I mean, and what really irritates me about combat in Aetolia.
I have proven myself to be 'good' at combat in my own ways with an entirely different class on an entirely different IRE game. I basically reached the pinnacle during my time on said other game, I really enjoyed combat there, I had multiple routes to victory, and I had 2 artifacts total, the level 2 magic damage artifact and an artifact that increased your enemy list. In order to create this character, I spent a whole 600 dollars to get Tri-Trans, Survival, and Antidotes. The difference was on that game, there was a(at the time, very good) publicly available curing system. I spent a lot of time creating my offense after having this curing system, that offense and the knowledge of it was fun to get into and fun to create and it was a good feeling being able to do the things I wanted.
Now, that being said, the only reason I did as well as I did was the availability of a curing system. If everyone in this game had a good curing system, the tables would be even for the most part (Like your LoL reference). My beef is not necessarily the artifacts, those have been proven time and time again to only be bonuses. There's enough instant-death methods in this game to mitigate artifacts for the most part.
The biggest complaint I have is the fact that the Administration and Players on Aetolia keep pushing combat. You make it in Bloodloch something you have to do to advance, because god knows noone is getting cityfavors any other way, then you say 'You will never be good at this unless you spend 6 years and 1k dollars'. So what, you think people who can actually do the combat to get the cityfavors need the cityfavors, when the people in Bloodloch who have spent that much money/time are already city rank 6? The players are creating advancement systems in the game for something that the majority of you in this thread have stated takes you MULTIPLE REAL YEARS to be able to do effectively. Uh. Okay.
In the end, if I had a good curing system, I'd probably give combat in this game another shot. Right now though, it doesn't interest me enough to want to bother paying 400 cr/70 dollar to get, or spending the absurd amount of time it takes to make one. This is completely seperate from the fact that it is quite obvious some classes in this game ARE more powerful than others in combat, straight up.
I really think you all could continue to have things the way they are and they be just fine in combat as long as you don't expect people who can't/won't get into it to have to try to just to advance in the guild/house/city. You can't have it both ways. You can't have 'advancement' related to combat and also have this ridiculously high curve of entry into combat. Pick one.
* If you beat someone down over and over, don't go loarding it over them. Nothing good will ever come of that. Not even if the person you beat down thinks they should have won.
As far as 1v1 goes, my own interest it is somewhat diminished because of what it requires. If you aren't willing to lose->go fix system stuff->lose->go fix system stuff->win->go fix system stuff, then you're not going to get very far. On the one hand, I understand why it is the way it is, certainly. On the other, it's going to be a long time before I can bring myself to invest the amount of energy taken; that's entirely on me, though. I guess what I'm getting at is that there's a tremendous investment required to get good at PK, but no one does it all at once. You have to do things at a steady pace, and be willing to get roflstomped while you're learning. Otherwise, for folks like me, there's always group PK.
You have to practice at something to get better at it. You can't just traipse into Aetolia combat, or any of IRE's combat for that matter, and just instantly be good. People practice, learn what other classes can do and take the time to formulate strategies to best systems and other players. The same logic even applies to one of the examples you mentioned in League of Legends.
If you explained that, I missed it...how exactly do you feel like the Administration, specifically, is pushing combat...other than providing avenues for more -opportunities-, as opposed to making it a necessity like the Bloodloch people you mentioned?
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(The Front Line): Daskalos says, "<-- artifacts."
One of you guys with all this investment need to come down off the mountain and realize that not everyone starts at your level, and if you don't want things to get stale you have to make changes to the way things work. The only reason the Administration do any changes drastic, or not so drastic, is because the vocal minority of the 'elite combatants' say it's a good idea to. And hey, if you guys don't think it's a good idea to change the way things work, then don't complain about a lack of new blood in the system.
I started as a Sentinel, procured a system thanks to Lanira and Sibatti, and practiced, practiced, practiced at every opportunity that I could.
I was a Level 86 muscular Sentinel when I started PvP'ing. While I had a lot of experience in PvP in other areas of IRE, I wanted to ignore it in Aetolia initially because I had come for the roleplay and initially only planned on staying as an alt when I needed a break from Lusternia. Dhuriv had recently been released and I loved the idea of double-bladed spears. However, I quickly changed my tune when I was getting bullied by people like Clouser and Ellenia because I was bashing the Lich Gardens and they (incorrectly) said that it was an act against the Infernals guild. Completely ignoring the fact that neither of them are in the Infernals but pretty much, they were looking for a reason to attack me and bully me. To a lesser extent, I dealt with some petty harassment from Exzuryx and Xiuhcoatl so I had pretty big motivation to get better at least defending myself.
I never adopted a defeatist attitude when I was learning. People warned me to not try to go after Mazzion because he was artied to the teeth and a "big bad". I never cared about artied mages in other games so I went after him anyway because I looked at it as a chance to learn, develop new strategies, and a chance to prove Seir's worth to Enorian at the time. The point that I'm trying to make is that since the community is smaller, there really is no avenue for tiers. Everyone, and I mean everyone, starts at the same place when it comes to learning about combat. I have never once discouraged someone from learning combat and have helped quite a few people develop their abilities by sparring or answering any questions that they've had. What does bother me is when people adopt a defeatist attitude like you're currently doing and start blaming the system and the state of PvP instead of proactively attempting to better themselves before casting judgment. Have you acquired a system? Have you exhausted the means of obtaining abilities in the game? I'll point out that many people have obtained credits without purchasing any. Mortal building, newbie guides, liaisons, artisanals and bardics, organization sales. There are so many means of obtaining credits for lessons which is the only real, required entry cost to get into combat besides endgame. Artifacts, by no means, are a requirement for combat. I am not trying to gloat, but I am proof of this.
It isnt Aetolian combat that I, and I think others, were focusing on in their original posts. My main point was the PK in Aetolia and the avenues in it. Like my first post said, out of the IRE I feel Aetolia has the most fragile setup here that seems to instantly lead a player to the idea that Aetolia is "troll-central". This is what I want focused, the PK system, not just the combat system.
On the combat system, I actually like it. Aetolia isnt as heavily focused in Arties and certain items and skills like other games. Per example (and yes I know it is taboo to mention the others, but I need to in order to make a point), Lusternia has an -extremely- annoying and complex Combat system that makes you want to tear your hair out, and ti seems to just keep on getting more complicated with each month. Or take Achaea, it seems if you want to be a combatant, you have to have the latest system and tier 3 artifacts, if you dont, you cant compete, period.
I thing I detest in the creation of skills is the gimick of "until trans, you wont be good". Per example, skills that suddenly get a massive advantage added to them upon reaching trans, such as Numerology (upon gaining the Spheres ability you can then utilize all numerological abilities simultaneously). For future skills, I would very much enjoy to simply see the idea of perhaps stronger or simply added abilities to an already skill as one learns, rather than "get trans or bust".
Edit: Oh also another issue with combat is how 'smaller' or new players (or even non-combants) cant compete or defend themselves against the average PKer. This is perhaps the main reason behind my first point of "fragile PK system". Players find themselves helpless and with no avenues to go in order to seek their rights, feeling themselves in an environment that is uncaring if not unfair. In the past one could 'hire' someone to take someone out for them, but that was later disallowed, so now where does that leave us? Simply players getting fed up and leaving.
IRE in general has a high learning curve (it can be exceptionally daunting, and comes down to teaching code, or teaching concept, and you need both unless you're buying an offense and just need to know what buttons to push),the lack of balance or representation in populated tiers as @haven has pointed out. For an example: I have mostly utility arties, and survivability, I can produce fairly high damage, but I have nfi what I'm doing outside of spamming my bashing macro. This puts me between tiers (combat knowledge low, credit investment high). wooooo dsw dsw dsw sacrifice everywheeere.
I know I personally get super overwhelmed with combat speed and trying to juggle the learning curve, the puzzles that are classes and coding, and so on. I also have not invested the time to practice and figure those out beyond the basic knowledge I have, so I do not expect to compete with Daskalos or Illidan.
There's a purpose to having better skills higher up - but this doesn't mean that you can't do anything without being tritrans/omnitrans. You just have to compete within certain spheres (and the lack of those again, is what makes it more of a contrast). This was something I'd brought up a while ago, the one of the largest issues being the 'win' mentality. There's been cases when fairly non-coms (especially at the time, despite their levels - level != combat ability), and opposing sides will send out larger forces or heavier-hitters to win the objective. An example: Clearwater, Aisling and I were in Iernan Fracture, and Tyrak and Mazzion came and pretty much curbstomped us. Yes, it was 2v3, but that doesn't mean it was a balanced fight for a 2v3.
I lost track of my thoughts. Back to doodling.
The rest was earning ingame or with art or other things!
Not entirely relevant because I don't PK, but if I did you can bet I'd hit like a truck.