Hey All!
I’d like to gather feedback on the PvP in Age of Conan. Primarily, the goal of this post is to gather data on what the strengths and weaknesses of the combat system for AOC, what people find fun, not fun, frustrating, rewarding, etc.
If anything comes to your mind regarding AOC’s PvP, please share it!
EDIT: let’s try to remain focused on the actual combat systems, and assume that gear is balanced and fair, and everyone is on a level playing field.
pvp upside: dynamic and visceral
pvp downside: even you know… 
gonna stick strictly to the gameplay aspect dont want to derail. 
I could go on about the bad for days and wouldn’t even know what frustrates me the most. I’ll post my frustrations and not put any #s or A to Z next to them. They just all frustrate me. This is just from a mini game point of view.
Not getting to sign with friends
Unbalanced teams all 10s on one side or the other
General lack of knowledge of surroundings/play your character & use CCs
The following is the biggest…
HACKERS/CHEATS/AFKERS that go unpunished
The fact that people can grind pve gear , abilities , runes etc to get an advantage in PvP is the deal breaker .
PVP should ban any PVE gear past T3, blessings, runes, and potions.
I think you can assume that grinding for power will not exist as everyone will be at an even play field from day 1 onward.
It’s a nice thought, the reality is PvP is wildly unbalanced, a person new to 80 has no chance in minis against high level 8 to 10s. We need brackets. The trolls, the ones that poke fun at people in Crom when they are there themselves- we could call it the 21cm club. Cheaters,pad campers, ghost sieges all drive people away from pvp, so yeah…frustrating. The strength, PvP is hella fun when it’s reasonably balanced (SoB to the first level cap), and players fight hard, respecting even new players and so on.
Do you work for funcom? If not then this thread is pointless. If so it’s probably still pointless…
Unless they open source the code and you know how to program
There are no good solutions at this point due to the low population.
Introducing PVP brackets by PVP levels will split the playerbase even further. At the moment, we have 1 mini going on Crom in the evenings, sometimes 2.
However, maybe this could be done as a short-term experiment just to see how it goes, maybe more new players will sign.
Signing with friends does not sound like a fair idea to me. The result is a balanced party with players cooperating on discord versus a pug which might lack a tank, a healer, have afkers or under-geared lowbies on the team.
I remember the times on Fury when this was allowed. People just didn’t sign minis when they saw 6/12, knowing that there is a group waiting. It almost always meant a roflstomp farm-fest.
Fun for people playing with friends, terrible experience for all others.
Tournament mode solves this problem. If you are able to start a 6-man pvp group, you should be able to find competitors.
The only feature that we could realistically get is a votekick system, IMO.
I do not think a lot of abuse would take place. At this point, everybody knows each other, and I doubt that people would randomly kick someone.
AFKers are a real problem. Especially when you are trying to complete Path of the Vanquisher quest. Insurance from the shop is usually wasted when you have an AFKer as well.
Just want to say the most people requesting a signup with friends only want the possibility to sign with one or two friends, not a full 6-man, as I agree it would be overkill at this point, but a buddy signup with duos or trios in the pug queue would do wonders for the quality of minis IMO.
but also, not everyone felt that signing up vs. the guild-stacks was a terrible experience. I remember solo-players having to team up with like-minded solo-players to take down the stacks, which was a great satisfaction. (also that era was tainted by stacked battlekeep mitigations)
Tournament mode isn’t a solution, because a lot of players just want to pop in fast and do some games, not spend their entire evening organizing it.