After playing (or is that actually testing?) the Olympiad over a few weeks of matches now, I can confirm the following serious issue:
Match-ups in the Olympiad are not properly randomized.
Either by design or bug, participants on a given day will often end up playing the same 2-3 players over and over again, sometimes getting the same single opponent repeatedly until you literally have to stop registering and not play because you are so annoyed having to get that same matchup again.
In three weeks of the Olympiad so far, I have only played 7 noblesse. The rest I haven't even seen in a match yet, even though we are registered over the 4 hours together.
Trying to stay unregistered for a long time in a 4 hour period just so you can try to get a different matchup rarely changes the matchups, in fact on occasion I have sat for 15 minutes then registered, ported to the coliseum... only to face the same opponent again.
Its a serious problem because it distorts the outcomes of the entire competition. For example, it took me three weeks to get a match versus a necro, and yesterday I finally got one... repeatedly. And of course I suffered the fate that most opponents of a necro do, I got owned. In fact, owned over and over again across a 2 hour period until I lost 3/4 of my points. Now I am actually okay with the points thing, I was just happy to get some matches versus a necro for once. But for other noblesse, they have played the same few unbeatable opponents so many times to date, that they literally ran out of points and can no longer play anymore. Even worse, for noblesse of a certain class competing against each other to get the most points, it is often coming down to who gets the best broken matchups i.e the ones that work in their favor.
If you luck out and get a couple of unbeatable opponents for your class on a given day, your almost better off not participating at all because as we all know in L2, PvP can be a rock/paper/scissors affair, and if your the scissors versus a bunch of rocks, it's not a lot of fun. The Olympiad concept requires variety of opponents to keep things fair and in balance.
This is not just something that I am seeing, most of the noblesse playing are starting to notice this problem and its implications, and grumble.
NCsoft - for the love of Eva, please review the code for the Olympiad and make sure there are no issues that we causing this poor randomisation. And if there isn't any flaws found, rework the design, because as it stands at the moment, its ridiculous and yet another poorly implemented feature that has so much potential to be great.
People register, and you get the same 2 people constantly fight over and over.......
Maybe the point of that is after numerous battles you can finaly unlock the weakness of that particular class so that if you need to use it again next time it would have a higher frequency to work?
Eg: Pair up a Bishop and a Destroyer(or a more likely scenario a Necro and a Dagger). Normaly a Destroyer will pwn the Bishop. But if the same Bishop and Destroyer pvp'ed several hundred times, maybe then the Bishop might find a certain element he can use to take out a Destroyer in the field..........or maybe not.......
Even though I am not able to compete in the Olympiad...yet....it's ******ed if when I do I'm consistently fighting the same opponent repeatedly. It's like a PvP grind, rather than the same mob over and over again it's the same opponent. And we all know grinding blows so yeah they should check it out if it's just putting up the same match time and time again instead of doing an actual randomization.
As you know bishops only get level 9 root, and without bsps it's probably not going to stick. Especially since most Olympaid fighters bring in a weapon or a set of armor (metal aegis of NM) to resist against specific classes. A storm screamer in our clan shows up to the fight with a multitude of armor and weapons depending on the situation.
And since most healers - out their STR for PVE purposes, if a melee gets just one hit in against them it will probably be enough damage to win. Also, melee will likely have a bow too, and use it better than any healer.
Destro has Lionheart, so good luck rooting without bsps ;)
Lionheart+NM set = no rooting/sleeping in olympiad, and then the healer is toast. And even if you did root the Destro, he has 3-4x your pattk with the bow most likely.
Its only happening because few people are signed, it needs at least i think 4 people to start a game, so basically you got a 1 in 3 chance of getting the same person ? When there are more noblesse signed up like 10-12 then it should get alot more 'random'
There are nights on Kain where people sign up and never get pulled into the comp the entire time because less than 5 have signed up. It might be a long time before there are 10 or so at a time.
Thats why the requirements should be changed or at least reviewed. I assume its not such a problem in the korean version because their population is far greater then ours, but as we are just an insignificqant few, i think the olympiad should be chaned to allow more people in, perhaps make it so if your lvl 78 with no sub you can enter, so it isnt exclusive to the noblesse.
Destro has Lionheart, so good luck rooting without bsps ;)
Lionheart+NM set = no rooting/sleeping in olympiad, and then the healer is toast. And even if you did root the Destro, he has 3-4x your pattk with the bow most likely.
Yes, because everyone can afford the outrageous costs of two or three complete A grade armor sets.
Thats why the requirements should be changed or at least reviewed. I assume its not such a problem in the korean version because their population is far greater then ours, but as we are just an insignificqant few, i think the olympiad should be chaned to allow more people in, perhaps make it so if your lvl 78 with no sub you can enter, so it isnt exclusive to the noblesse.
I have to agree. At present, we just don't have enough folks on the North American servers to really hold fair fights. And by this I mean, yes, Bishop vs. Destroyer.
I wouldn't mind seeing it changed in such a way as to allow all players of level 75+. Maybe limited to those who have completed their third class change? When C5 finally rolls around and players have had a taste of the glory, we can go back to the hero competition for noblesse only; but as stands, it's a bit useless.
And of course, I fully expect this to never happen.