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they might've changed the motion values since when i last played, but spiked caestus is actually a drat fine weapon minus the range, since it's fast, got good bleed buildup, and has really high stance damage for its weight class. i did a run with blue dancer charm that was pretty fun, if a little harrowing at times
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Jan 17, 2024 02:28
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:I don't think there's a credible argument for Melina being anyone's child / offshoot but Marika's. It's important to remember that Ranni's body is a doll and, even more importantly, is not modeled on her actual appearance when she was alive -- it's designed to look like her mentor. By comparison you can actually go and find Ranni's corpse in-game and while you don't get a great look it bears more of a family resemblance to Rennala and Radagon's other children (e.g. super tall, red hair). I think it was Zullie the Witch or maybe Ziostorm that checked some early game files showing they were supposed to be connected to the merchants and the Frenzied Flame. Barring that, the theory is that they were a group that aided in the war against the Fire Giants that the Golden Order decided served their purpose.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:39
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Drain 001 posted:Dear Thread, You could try a caster. Sword of Night And Fire is a great backup weapon for that kinda playstyle, it can do both magic and fire damage.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:41
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Con: Fists have few AoW that work with them Pro: Flame Strike is one of them and it's awesome.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:42
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Vermain posted:as noah-gervais discovered doing his big retrospective, all the games already have an easy mode, but it's obfuscated behind game mechanics (builds, elemental weaknesses, etc.) rather than being a big button you press Figuring out the RPG system mechanics to become stronger and counter enemies isn't avoiding the game's difficulty, it's meeting the difficulty head on just the same way as someone learning the rotating trick for waterfowl dance is meeting the difficulty head on. It's doing it with strategy and tactics rather than dexterity and muscle memory, but either way it's an expression of skill. Like, you wouldn't say that learning how stats or weaknesses work in shin megami tensei or pokemon or whatever is playing on easy mode, it's just part of learning to play those games well. Fromsoft RPGs are no different. LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 02:42
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i would describe most of that as knowledge, not skill. there's nothing wrong with testing knowledge per se but it tends to be way more binary than tests of execution; you know the solution or you don't, and once you do, you're basically done, which isn't great for depth or the potential for personal growth where it gets a little fuzzy is where the correct answer is extremely dependent on novel circumstances -- not "use fire against the boss weak to fire" but, like, "do i get the best possible value from playing this removal card based on my best guess of what's in the opponent's deck, extrapolated from what i've seen so far", etc. there isn't really much like that in Elden Ring, though. most of the time complete information is just a click away Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 02:45
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The capacity to figure out and exploit game systems is itself a skill, though. Like, sure, you could be the guy who just looks up "elden ring overpowered best weapon all bosses" or whatever, but just because it's possible to read a guide telling you what to level and equip and where to go to get somber stones early and spoil yourself on as much of the game as possible doesn't mean that that should be taken for granted as opposed to actually doing it yourself, or that doing things like that won't give you a shallow understanding of the game anyhow. Most puzzle games can be "solved" by just looking up solutions too, doesn't change that solving systems is skillbased for anyone who actually does so.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:54
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okay, but what does the puzzle-solving look like in Elden Ring? it's basically "stumble onto one of the busted things" or "just use a spirit summon, any spirit summon"; at best it's "explore more of the game world", which is mostly just an expression of persistence given how half-assed some of the side dungeons are not exactly the stuff of Zachtronics
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Jan 17, 2024 02:54
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CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:You could try a caster. Sword of Night And Fire is a great backup weapon for that kinda playstyle, it can do both magic and fire damage. Backup, shmackup. It's the main draw to Int/Fth and your best damage source.
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Jan 17, 2024 02:56
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:okay, but what does the puzzle-solving look like in Elden Ring? I just find the idea that engaging with RPG mechanics to get an edge in an RPG is an "easy mode" to be ridiculous on the face of it frankly
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Jan 17, 2024 02:57
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I started fresh to get the Frenzied Flame ending without respeccing my Big Bonker and I just have to say that Bloodhound Fang feels so overrated for what it is. Doesn’t hold a candle to my NG+ powerstanced +25 Greatswords. 
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Jan 17, 2024 02:58
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LazyMaybe posted:who said it was? it's not like anyone's claiming the moment to moment combat is super technical either the moment to moment combat is super technical* * has a much greater potential for degrees of success dependent on the player's personal capabilities
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Jan 17, 2024 03:00
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like i'm tweaking your nose here a little bit because i agree with a version of this argument that's only very slightly modified -- namely that it isn't the player's job to draw this line and it's kind of ridiculous to expect someone to restrict themselves to some arbitrary challenge run standard into order to have a "purer" experience separately from that, though, i do think it's fair to criticize Elden Ring's design for the extent to which it emphasizes RPG elements, to the detriment of how well it functions as a character action game
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Jan 17, 2024 03:02
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I was thinking the other day about how fun the game would be if there was a randomized version. Turns out while watching YouTube videos today I discovered that there is! Haven't checked it out yet, but probably will soon seeing as how I'm almost finished with my second complete playthrough.
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Jan 17, 2024 03:13
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Drain 001 posted:Dear Thread, Pure faith, incants only or 99% incants (sword and shield is just the best when it comes to dogs and imps) Faith has lots of great stuff for co-op, more than every other build combined.
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Jan 17, 2024 04:36
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https://www.tiktok.com/embed/7323964652122148101
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Jan 17, 2024 07:22
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Drain 001 posted:Dear Thread, You haven’t truly played this game until you’ve done a STR run that revolves around using a giant great hammer to break enemy stances.
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Jan 17, 2024 08:17
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GreatGreen posted:The mod allows you to basically teleport to another player's world, and from there you play the game as if you were just playing normally on your own world. Death just means respawning at a bonfire and running back to where the other player still is. All players get the loot dropped by enemies. Your own character progress is saved in your local multi-player save game file which is separate from your main single player save file, while world progress is saved on the "server" player's save game so you can all pickup and play again later if you want. Thank you, this sounds like a fantastic upgrade to the main game. Invasion chat: My issue with invasions is playing first time through you're already up against it not knowing where you're going, how far you are from the next grace, when you're going to find a boss that'll kick your head in or even if the player actually understands everything going on in the game regarding mechanics. We all know the games still aren't incredible about explaining thing and a couple of pages ago someone mentioned rune arcs. I just though they boosted your health but apparently they interact with arcs dropped by certain bosses? I'm like 40 hours in and didn't know this. A lot of stuff you pick up, forget about because you've just done a suicide run to grab it, it disappears into your inventory among a thousand other things into a section you have to go search for. Basically what I'm saying is players on that first play through should be low priority for invasion when doing co-op. I sometimes click on red summons because at least then I can be prepared and know roughly what I'm getting into and I'm usually near a grace anyway. But having some lunatic appear into my brand new game where I'm co-oping with someone with equally little clue and they have an entire arsenal of status effects that I haven't even seen in my game yet feels particularly un-fun, especially if we've fought our way through an area and are low on everything already. I've mentioned it before but Sniper Elite 5 lets you play single or co-op with invasions on or off and it owns. I played through the first time with them on half the time because the game wasn't too difficult and it autosaved regularly. It really wasn't an issue because the invader only really may have map knowledge as an advantage because the weaponry is all similar and you'd lose literally 30 seconds of progress if you got your head exploded. Invasions can either be an absolute chore in games or a nice game of cat and mouse like in Sniper Elite. I think Elden's system is slightly sucky for new players and should have been tweaked a bit.
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Jan 17, 2024 08:18
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Ultimately, Elden Ring and the Souls games are single-player games with surprise pvp and very limited co-op. It's never going to stop being divisive. From have stuck to the formula for 16 years now and I doubt they'll ever change it. The mechanics have been tweaked slightly in every game, so they are clearly aware that it rubs some folks the wrong way but I doubt the pvp aspects can ever be fully reconciled with co-op/singleplayer in a way that makes everybody happy.Olympic Mathlete posted:My issue with invasions is playing first time through you're already up against it not knowing where you're going, how far you are from the next grace, when you're going to find a boss that'll kick your head in or even if the player actually understands everything going on in the game regarding mechanics. We all know the games still aren't incredible about explaining thing and a couple of pages ago someone mentioned rune arcs. I just though they boosted your health but apparently they interact with arcs dropped by certain bosses? I'm like 40 hours in and didn't know this. A lot of stuff you pick up, forget about because you've just done a suicide run to grab it, it disappears into your inventory among a thousand other things into a section you have to go search for. Well I've got good news for you  the buffs from Rune arcs only apply to the host, invaders lose the effect. It's intended to make things easier for folks just starting out (and communicated terribly).In any case, the knowledge gap is a feature in pretty much all pvp games. It's the same experience for me when I don't know all the unit counters in AoE4, or when my nephew uses a chess opening I'm not familiar with. Folks who really want to succeed in pvp put effort into learning those things as quickly as possible. Other folks want to win in pvp, but don't really want to put too much effort into it. Maybe they don't have the time, or they are primarily interested in co-op or enjoy learning things incidentally or any other reason. And that's perfectly OK. Like seriously, that's a totally legitimate desire, I don't want to come across as some git gud type. But those two worlds aren't really compatible. At least, not in From's weird niche genre. I'm actually surprised no-one's made a proper co-op soulslike, seems like it would be really popular. Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 09:29
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I've never played a From Soft game online. Maybe I should try it someday
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Jan 17, 2024 09:32
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Yeah, it's the folks who want to play as a co-op game that mostly have issues.
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Jan 17, 2024 09:33
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Epic High Five posted:DLC boss #1: Spear of the Church The DLC will have 20 bosses and five of them will have the exact same model. Anyway I coopped every single Souls game start to finish with my wife and I had a great time. It ruled. You should try that
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Jan 17, 2024 09:41
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preferably with someone else, though, of course, if she agrees, I am not denying her agency
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Jan 17, 2024 09:41
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When everything fails, bonk is the solution
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Jan 17, 2024 10:08
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Fruits of the sea posted:Well I've got good news for you I obviously need to do more reading! And I will add the reading up on certain things is partially something I hate but also it kinda feels like gaming when I was a kid 30 years ago to find stuff out 
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Jan 17, 2024 11:03
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Elden rings pvp seems the worst out of all the souls, honestly. Seems to have really bad latency issues and latency correction so you can hit someone 4 times in a duel, they take no damage then somehow backstab you while you're pointed at them. The pvp itself is good when it works. But thats a big if. Also roll spamming is way too strong.
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Jan 17, 2024 11:19
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Drone_Fragger posted:they take no damage then somehow backstab you while you're pointed at them DarkSouls1.txt
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Jan 17, 2024 11:23
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you have to learn how to wield the broken, unplayable latency to your advantage in dark souls 1 so 90% of invaders will just come in and backstab the host to death no matter what they do. i've been able to play normally in elden ring way more often but maybe it's because of the larger population and lower percentage of people who know how to exploit that stuff
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Jan 17, 2024 11:27
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Netcode issues have always been bad, it's not any worse in Elden Ring. Dark Souls 1 has some pretty extreme balance issues and backstabs are overcentralizing, Dark Souls 2 is sluggish and doesn't have great gamefeel, and Dark Souls 3 has way more of a 'roll spam' issue than the others. Elden Ring gives you more stuff to apply pressure to people mashing their roll button in comparison. e: honorable mention to Demon Souls which is basically like ds1 except jankier and contains stuff like scraping spear
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Jan 17, 2024 11:29
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All the games after DS1 just have better backstab detection too
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Jan 17, 2024 11:30
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DS1 is all about playing around backstabs, which are confirmed on the attacker's side. Hence only the backstabber needs to see it on their screen to hit confirm. Every subsequent game's backstab requires a further confirmation defender side, which is much more fair. But this is the same deal with normal hits, that also require confirmation defender side to make sure the enemy is not in i-frames. Latency always helps the defender. Seeing yourself do nothing but phantom hits just means that whoever you're attacking is rolling those attacks trivially. If there wasn't latency they would do the exact same thing. And if you got backstabbed in this process, it means your attempts to attack them left yourself so badly exposed that they punished it while you were locked in recovery frames or stamina drain. Don't blame backstabs, they could have done the exact same thing with a normal spacing punish.
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Jan 17, 2024 11:35
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:Seeing yourself do nothing but phantom hits just means that whoever you're attacking is rolling those attacks trivially. If there wasn't latency they would do the exact same thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPd9zpoi6eA Skip to 3:00 to see the explanation on why this happens. I don't really know if the hit detection system is exactly the same in Elden Ring... but a lot of stuff is the same or very similar under the hood, so I wouldn't be shocked. And this is related to what you mentioned about requiring a check on both the attacker and defender sides, except for all attacks, not just backstabs.
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Jan 17, 2024 12:03
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Paracelsus posted:Backup, shmackup. It's the main draw to Int/Fth and your best damage source. That's not really playing a caster, though. Im talking about throwing glintstone with some other situational stuff... but to be fair I didn't explicitly say that.
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Jan 17, 2024 14:43
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ghostflame explosion and ancient call of rancor are quite good and also good reasons to play int/fth. as is being able to cast basically anything with your staff and seal. scaling on them is such that going deep into/fth will have you wrecking house.
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Jan 17, 2024 16:32
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We decided to try Radahn again at the end of our session last night after doing some grinding throughout the night, first try we wiped but got farther in than ever. Second try I get knocked off my horse immediately, stun locked, and smashed into the ground before I can even hit him once. Both my friends end up kicking his rear end on their own. I like to think my death really encouraged them to do the deal. But seriously it is good to be past him finally and it was another fun moment of my one friend who has sorta been hanging on but not really doing the same off-session grinding that my friend and I have been doing ending last night like 100% back in and ready to play more. It's just funny seeing him in particular wax and wane between sessions of "I'm not sure if he wants to keep playing" and him screaming "I LOVE THIS FUCKIN GAME" after a hard fought victory over Radahn.
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Jan 17, 2024 16:38
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No Dignity posted:But in principle the system rules, if you don't like it don't come to like the one series in gaming where it's a mechanic? Can we stop using this argument please? It comes up constantly and it is possibly the single least thought-through idea in video games discussion, maybe next to "realism always equals more fun." "Oh this game is only 99.9% exactly what you want, where no other game remotely comes close to doing what this game does best? Well if this is the game perfect for you in every way but one extremely specific thing you might not like about it... maybe you should just abandon it entirely and find 'another game' to fill this niche, which you and I both know good and well doesn't exist and never will?" Games these days can be absurdly complex and expansive, with many different parts and systems constantly phasing in and out of the player's attention and engagement. It is absurd to think that if someone thinks a vanishingly small subset of these systems are undesirable, then the proper response to that critique should be "well if you don't LIKE IT you can LEAVE IT! If you can't HANDLE me at my WORST then you don't DESERVE me at my BEST." GreatGreen fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 16:56
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The developer has made 6 games with that specific mechanic over almost 2 decades so in exactly this context, I would not take it personally They have been mixing it up with Sekiro and Armored Core though, so its possible they might make another Souls-adjacent game in the near future Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 17:07
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There's plenty of other Souls-likes with no invasions out there if that's your thing, From are the only devs in the genre who've implemented a decent invasion system so I'd rather the mechanic didn't completely disappear from gaming.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:09
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explosivo posted:We decided to try Radahn again at the end of our session last night after doing some grinding throughout the night, first try we wiped but got farther in than ever. Second try I get knocked off my horse immediately, stun locked, and smashed into the ground before I can even hit him once. Both my friends end up kicking his rear end on their own. I like to think my death really encouraged them to do the deal. But seriously it is good to be past him finally and it was another fun moment of my one friend who has sorta been hanging on but not really doing the same off-session grinding that my friend and I have been doing ending last night like 100% back in and ready to play more. It's just funny seeing him in particular wax and wane between sessions of "I'm not sure if he wants to keep playing" and him screaming "I LOVE THIS FUCKIN GAME" after a hard fought victory over Radahn. gently caress yeah, there are no wrong ways to win
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Jan 17, 2024 17:16
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No Dignity posted:There's plenty of other Souls-likes with no invasions out there if that's your thing, From are the only devs in the genre who've implemented a decent invasion system so I'd rather the mechanic didn't completely disappear from gaming. I don't fundamentally disagree, but a lot of those souls-likes are either just not good, or lack co-op. It's nearly like saying "well there's fighting games and other pvp-only if souls pvp is your thing" (It clearly misses that there is some specific draw and unique aspects to these games in particular) Invasions are just such a curious mechanic because I think they are interesting, but they're very hard to "get right" - or at least I think to other games where bad matchmaking can turn unskilled players into fodder for skilled pvpers to have their fun at the expensive of the less skilled players. Invasions nearly make that an intentional design aspect - it's kind of fascinating, but it's incredibly delicate because it almost feels like part of the fun hinges on shoving uninterested players into it? Or certainly, you need other reasons for players to be around, other then the pvp aspect.
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