A mixture of discussion and suggestions.
List of problems (in my view) with the current state of lockdown. What is best is if we can get people to collectively agree on what the problems are, and not point fingers:
- Not enough people queued, especially for T1 and T2. There isn't much attention directed towards lockdown even existing while you're working through missions in clockworks. Basically, not enough interest for the PVE players to bother with lockdown.
- Currently, playing lockdown in no way advances your character (either through heat, minuscule crown payout, and no material rewards) other than krogmo coins for collecting select recipes or enamorocks/mod calibrators.
- Requiring shouting in haven zones to get guilds to queue up for GVG lockdown because there is a lack of reward/desire/fun as a whole to play GVG for many players.
- GVG stacking or point boosting.
- Complaints regarding Polaris usage.
- Complaints regarding auto-target usage.
- Complaints regarding ASI VH usage, or just UVs as a whole (status immunity, etc.) Or feeling "outclassed."
- Complaints regarding Flourish/Barbarous Thorn Blade usage.
- Complaints regarding getting killed too quickly.
- Complaints about lag.
- Complaints about team not capping or too focused on dealing damage.
- Limited rewards/payout with playing lockdown.
Possible solutions/suggestions:
- Increase crown payout for lockdown, and include material rewards / low chance of rarity rewards (fire crystals, orbs of alchemy, sparks) for winning. This will make it so that playing lockdown is a semi-suitable option for spending time on the game instead of running clockworks. Obviously it won't generate nearly as many materials/crown compared to killing monsters, but some is better than none especially for those who prefer PVP over PVE. Go ahead and make these rewards bound if there is fear of ruining the market with these rewards, but honoring T3 games with 4 and 5 star mats would be a nice plus.
- Collect heat from killing players. (Entire team gets the heat, not just the player who killed an opponent.) Adds into the whole "being able to play lockdown as a substitution for clockworks" idea, rewarding you for putting time into PVP and still making progress with your character.
- Ability to buy rarities with Krogmo Coins (ie. 3 Elite Orbs of Alchemy for 250 Krogmo Coin). Again, applying Krogmo payout towards character advancement.
- Cap the number of points you can get from playing GVG against the same guild per week. Solves boosting, I hope.
- Arguable, but curb Polaris line shots to 2 shot clip instead of 3.
- Disable auto target completely--not because there is a problem with it, but because of the finger pointing and accusations that happen as a result of it being an option. They could have added a feature called "Cheat mode? Y/N" and everyone who got killed "really easily" would just accuse other people of playing with cheat mode on. It's toxic having it as an option, so it should be grayed out for lockdown, and either always enabled or disabled, not either or. Hopefully other changes will make it unnecessary to have it on.
- Remove Sword ASI Med buff on Striker class. Just unnecessary, since it allows ASI VH swords to hit max ASI. It gives no question to whether you should opt for damage bonus gear or ASI gear, especially if money is not an issue. Force players to pick between damage or speed.
- Slightly reduce boost speed of Striker dash. Doesn't affect any high end/high connection players, but will definitely help the low latency players since the general rubberbanding while boosting can get pretty crazy to follow, leading to near-unplayable gameplay.
- Increase base defense buff of all players to 150 instead of 100. This (and the last 3 suggestions) aims to slightly slow down the action in lockdown and increase the number of hits before death so it feels less unfair. This especially benefits people with lower latency who get rushed and DA/GF double swinged to death, even if they react in time and the game does not acknowledge it.
- Remove damage score at the end of the match. If they only show caps and defends, how will you know who did the most damage? Now nobody will care how much damage you did, because nobody knows.
These are only my thoughts regarding lockdown, and I am quite new to lockdown in general. Feel free to discuss, agree or disagree, and so forth. But I find lockdown to be quite fun to play, and is my only motivator to playing the game since the PVE experience feels too familiar unless I force myself to experiment with different weapons.
By directing them to Blast Network.
But in seriousness:
"Remove damage score at the end of the match. If they only show caps and defends, how will you know who did the most damage? Now nobody will care how much damage you did, because nobody knows."
Gimme.
Also, if I may add, make it so that the more Captures/Defends you have, the more Crowns you'll get. Capture/Defend none of them, & you get squat.