Another_Fan
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Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
I have a story to tell about one of those FPS games I played, "Tribes". I had played that game for several years when a sequel came out, "Tribes 2". One day in the first week or so that T2 was out, I was playing in a pub game and was encroaching on the enemy's spawn area. I ran into a player on the other team. I defeated him, and he respawned and came back. This continued for a while, and after the 2nd time or so, I stopped advancing and just waited in the open where I was for him to come back after each time I beat him. We spent quite some time doing this, neither of us saying anything in game chat.
You see, while the Tribes 2 game was new, its fundamental gameplay was the same as its predecessor. As such, I was very familiar with the combat. The fellow I was fighting was clearly new to it with this game. He wasn't very mobile, and he didn't have a sense of how to time his attacks to maximize his odds of hitting me. But he kept coming back, over and over, never complaining, and I never once mocked him when defeating him.
After a while, he asked me how I was able to hit him so consistently. It was asked in a calm "tone of text". I explained to him that I had prior experience from the previous game. He was surprised by this, but then asked what he might do to improve his success. I gave him pointers, staying with him in an out-of-the-way area and showing him examples of what I was doing. He thanked me, and went on his way.
I understand that players who do what both that guy and I did are rare. A lot of people losing like that will pitch a fit, call the winner names, and maybe storm out of the game or server. Some winners don't help any, making fun of players who can't match their skills, or not providing any advice for a newbie. Neither is the right way to play, IMO.
Wonderful story except it isn't comparable and rather self justifying. If you want to put it in the current context, you would need a permanent tribes 2 server where because you played tribes you got to control the gear spawn points. -
Great places to get insps especially while on tfs
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Quote:Originally Posted by Werner
Completely agree.
Completely agree.
(EDIT: OK, maybe I'm getting some insight into where part of the disagreement is coming from.
Putting it overly simplistically, on one side, we have the people who think of PvP as a mini-game. From that standpoint, arguments like "Why should success in one mini-game like marketeering translate into an advantage in another mini-game like PvP? That isn't fair." actually make sense. Hey, you're right! If PvP is a separate mini-game, that kind of isn't fair. It is indeed like starting Monopoly owning a bunch of property because you won checkers last night, or whatever those analogies were.
On the other side, we have the people who think of PvP in the context of the whole game, just like PvE is in the context of the whole game. So the PvP game includes leveling up, figuring out a good build, doing whatever is necessary to afford that build, and putting it all together. It doesn't start when you enter the arena. From this perspective, there is no separate mini-game. Success in planning and purchasing a good build IS part of success in PvP, just as much as it is part of success in PvE.
I'm firmly on the second side. I don't break this MMO into a bunch of separate mini-games, and I certainly don't suggest that for things to be fair, these mini-games should not interact. It's just one big game, called City of Heroes/Villains. There isn't really even a PvP game and a PvE game. There are just ways you can fight other players, and ways you can fight computer-controlled enemies. You may build differently to fight other players, just like you build differently to farm efficiently, to handle general team play, to specialize in a particular task force, or to solo AVs with no temporary powers and inspirations. But in my mind, that doesn't make it a different game. It's all the same MMO. I might describe the market as a mini-game, but not in any deeper sense than I would describe working for a living as a mini-game. It still has obvious and inextricable consequences for the rest of the game / the rest of my life.)
Let me lay out the upshot of that and ubers position. What you are arguing for is allowing additional advantages to people who already have a skill and familiarity advantage with the game.It should come as no surprise to anyone who is thinking about how any game is played or even basic human psychology that people stayed away in droves.
You can say it makes sense all you want but what it amounts to is giving the big kids large bats and telling them go beat on the little ones.
I thought I had a dim view of the community before, but to have people seriously argue that they have a right to wail on people just because they have "Paid their dues". Well that is really just ugly. What kind of sense of accomplishment could anyone take away from that ? I don't even want to go into the great joy of a team of 8 beating on 1 guy in the zone.
That isnt a game its just sick. Yes you can make the rules for a game however you like just don't be shocked when people don't play.
Edit: and if you want to take the real life work as a mini game most sports place strict limits on the equipment that can be used and what athletes can do to enhance performance. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
No, I feel that the people who are disadvantaged should get off their self-entitled ***** and make use of the multiple tools in this game that let them catch up with the Jonses. Your side in this makes it sound as if there's some barrier to that besides these people's own outlook, and that's just not true.
I am chuckling so hard over this. First I didn't know I had a side. Do we have meetings ?
By god this is a game, what kind of twisted place does that come from to make it into here. People play this for fun. Sportsmanship and fairplay should be the watchwords not strange theories of social darwinism.Quote:Second "I feel that the people who are disadvantaged should get off their self-entitled ***** " -
Quote:Asking the wrong question. The question is should someone be able to start the monopoly game with twice as much cash and the red properties because they won last nights game of parchesi.Originally Posted by UberGuy
The rules of this game includes gear you can gather and/or buy in-game. You are allowed to carry that gear into a PvP zone. You're saying that people have a sense of entitlement about using the resources available within the rules. Is it entitlement to buy all the boardwalk hotels in Monopoly? Is it entitlement to buy the better rifles in Counter Strike when your team has been winning? Those things are provided for within the rules. There's no sense of entitlement about using the resources available. The sense of entitlement is from the players who think the rules of the game should change to allow them to individually come out ahead even though they have no hotels or their team never wins.
You apparently feel that the answer is yes, and whats more the people who are at a disadvantage should love it. Then you are shocked that for some reason after you have won at parchesi nobody wants to play monopoly the next night and has left you alone at the board while they went out to the movies. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Not_Epsilon
Not to be rude, and to get this troll out of my system;
Do you have your own babelfish translator yet?
Look its pretty simple.
The market is a mini game, pvp is a mini game. Mac is saying that because he is good at the market mini game he should gain an advantage in the pvp minigame. I am saying thats like saying "I am good at chess so I should start with a king when playing checkers"
Here is an even simpler way to look at it. I play chess alot. In chess when there is a big difference in skill between the players, the more skilled player will take a handicap of a pawn to keep the game fun. In our pvp the unskilled player gets the handicap. Is it a giant fricking surprise people don't play ? -
Quote:Absolutely. If you are on servers where you can have teams in the zones that is 100% true. You just have to ask what kind of game is an N v 1 gank ?Originally Posted by Not_Epsilon
Actually, look outside the bolded, he said "zone" pvp, where teams and skill can make up a large amount of the holes that IOs leave, so, technically, people with amounts of zone pvp experience, will agree with mac. In zone, its team on team, and arguably, you having UBERL33T ios on your blaster/stalker/troller/corr/dom/emp/UBERTOON, is very minor when infact, most of the zones are won by overwhelming numbers.
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Quote:Originally Posted by macskull
Right, because it makes complete sense for someone who wants to put in neither the time nor the effort to have exactly the same stuff as someone who does. Now that is entitlement.
So my boss comes up to me and says "Hey, you've been getting almost three times as much done in the same amount of time as everyone else!" but instead of asking me how I did it, he tells me "We're cutting your hours down to 1/3 of what you're working now, so you're on an even output with everyone else." Sound stupid? It is - but that's exactly what you're saying.
Lets try this again with your own example.
You are getting three times as much done at work and your boss notices it and gives you a giant raise. Now you go out to a pub after work and everyone is playing darts. You want to spend your raise to play against your coworkers on a bigger dart board with better darts.
That is entitlement. -
Quote:Originally Posted by macskull
People build certain ways for PvP because those are the most effective ways, just like people build certain ways for farming or AV/GM soloing. You don't need IOs or accolades for zone PvP, though they're extremely helpful especially in team and solo arena matches. You don't need accolades or IOs for PvE, though they're helpful. Your goal is to make your build as good as you possibly can, and accolades and IOs are a helpful tool in reaching that goal.
Everyone in this game has access to the same set of tools - the game servers, the character creator, NPCs to defeat for XP, respecs. The difference is how you use the tools - refusal to use them doesn't mean they don't exist or that you don't have access to them. If you want to get good at something, you need to put the time and effort into it, and if you don't want to do that, you don't want it badly enough. Every PvPer worth their salt knows that beating up on inexperienced players isn't a measure of skill. It never was, and no serious (good) players think it is. The ones with the sense of entitlement are the ones who have almost no PvP experience and think they can bring their PvE builds into a PvP zone and do well against players who have invested time, money, and knowledge in getting better at PvP.
Missed this on my first pass. Its that word "NEED". Saying you don't need something in pve means you can win without it but with it you will win faster or more easily. In PvP it doesnt mean the same thing. In PvP saying you don't need it means not having it won't affect your win/loss ratio and that is pretty obviously false. -
Quote:Originally Posted by macskull
It is fair, though - just because you don't want to put the effort into getting the "good stuff" (which everyone has equal opportunity to do) doesn't mean it's unfair.
Yessssssss excellent that attitude is why DR was inevitable. I'll go out on a limb and say expect more of the same from the devs in their next attempt to fix pvp. -
Quote:Originally Posted by B_L_Angel
I don't know the figures you are talking about but I can be very certain I didn't have very much in spare inf till I started buying recipes and crafting them. I am also 110% certain you aren't making the point you think you are. If you want to tell me that its going to take me hundreds of hours to meet the buy in for pvp I will say heck no. If you want to say that I have a sense of entitlement well yeah I do.
If you want to talk about a sense of entitlement just why should having more inf entitle someone to an advantage in PVP ?
Don't go there. Not unless you want to descend down an abyss of recursive self justification with no termination in sight. You have just been pegged as a whiner with a sense of entitlement that doesn't understand the market, economics and probably a communist who wants a welfare state instituted. This is the MARKET FORUM being good at the market is entitlement to having the goodies in the game, and it should entitle you to win where your skill otherwise would not.
The funny thing is normally I am very critical of the developers but here I really empathize with the rock and a hard place they were in. It is something that just jumps out at you when you turn the arguments around. The pvpers insist that its a matter of skill, well then build access shouldn't matter, it is a matter of skill. The marketeers feel that the market should be the gateway to goods in the game, the devs look and see its not really working out right, we get merits tickets and who knows praetorian credits ? -
I was buying them for about 20k.
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Quote:There is a great example of how PVP 2.0 actually made things harder. Almost no one takes phase on pve characters, and hibernate is mostly taken by people trying to cap their S/L defense with frozen armor ( some who like the self heals in ice and the ICE theme)Originally Posted by ConFlict
So true. I think I had one toon total with phase or hiber that wasn't a stalker pre i13. Now every toon I have has one or the other.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Werner
Still, you're a Regeneration Scrapper. You have burst healing to deal with getting hit by a Stalker. Try to see the game from their perspective in this. Yeah, they get the first shot, and it's a really nice shot, but then you just heal and they have to run. They can't kill you, ever, as long as you're on your game. How frustrating is that? Probably more frustrating than having to click a heal occasionally. And if you get dropped by a team of Stalkers, well, you'd have been dropped by a team of archetypes X, Y and Z, so it doesn't really have anything to do with them being Stalkers.
Again, I don't PvP, so if I'm way off base on how this goes down in practice rather than in my head, my apologies.
Stalkers also get the joy of trying to assassinate people that are bouncing around like Mexican jumping beans.
You are just begging the question of how much a barrier should there be in getting into PVP. I used to beta MPBT 3025 it was very much a MMO even far too much a MMORPG, everybody had equal access to the gear that did absolutely nothing to impede the fun. Currently pvp really puts a premium on powerleveling up a character, and using the market to get a high end build quickly. Well that and having people who are willing to help you try and find the numbers for elusivity and DR ( Yet another barrier to entry).Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
Just because I don't participate in PvP doesn't mean I'm clueless what's going on there. Consider me like the guy who watches games on TV to know about football. I couldn't QB a game to save my life, but still know how the game is played, some of the players and what they're known for.
Is gear going to make a difference in two equally skilled players? Of course it is. Percentage-wise, do you know how many "skilled" players there actually were running around in the zones, which is how most people who experience PvP actually experience it? Not very damn many.
Being a skilled player was, and still is, a lot more important than being IO'd out. Meetings of "equally skilled" players weren't very common unless you count an awful lot of "equally bad" players facing off in zone PvP, usually some sort of "fiteklub". A skilled player could go in the zones and win against on multiple such folk even with gear that looked pretty inferior on paper. Skill, teamwork, and AT/powerset were more dominant than good gear. They still are, with the possible exception of KB protection.
If IOs didn't do jack in zones, people who got discouraged and left probably still would have.
Does gear matter at all? Of course it does. You really want good gear to compete in arena contests against skilled players. Basically, if someone doesn't want gear to matter, they shouldn't PvP in an MMO.
I said this before I13 before the new pvp was on the horizon, but if the devs wanted to make PVP more popular, they should have just leveled out access to the gear, and written a decent guide and tutorial to actually take people through what they needed to do play. "This is a pvp zone do not enter unless you are willing to be attacked by other players", hardly constitutes a guide. I remember the first time I played on a team match on my server, My team mates advice "Keep Moving Try Not to die". Scary thing is that its 1000% better than what the devs provided. -
Quote:Originally Posted by macskull
I think Fulmens has a more accurate picture here - people are used to "just winning" in PvE and they are shocked when they go into a PvP zone and they discover everything they know about PvE and their build doesn't really apply anymore. People don't like to lose, and more often than not they'll just get frustrated and give up instead of taking the time to figure out why they're losing, and then taking steps to lessen the occurrence in the future.
It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that 1 vs 8 is no win. There were many many very nice people to pvp with pre I13, then there were the people that made you ashamed to share a species with. It also doesn't take a genius to say well he has 30% more HP than I do, a 40% across the board recharge bonus, his build is built around having plus perception, phase/hibernate powers, resistance rather defense bonuses yeah I am at a disadvantage.
My first 50 took me something like 400 hours to get to 50. For the sake of argument lets say it takes average person 100 hours. They go into PVP with their 50 no accolades, an SO build and get owned. They do a little thinking and realize wow, to do well in there I would have to respec out of my current build, make one that will not do as well in pve, and get involved with the market which may or may not be a game they care for to begin with or their other option is to make a new character spend the time to level it up, get the accolades, and spend the time dealing with the market and learning yet another mini game before they can even start dealing with pvp ? Whats more they are doing this so they can play with people that have likely been extremely rude and unsportsmanlike ?
Most would come to the conclusions that for PVP there are plenty of other viable options.
The problem is PVP 2.0 did nothing to help, it just changed things around. -
Quote:Originally Posted by UberGuy
I question the "enormous amount" claim. But more to the point, I fail to see the issue with a better build being a discriminator there. That's the point of having a better build. If a better build can't give you the advantage in an otherwise equal contest, then there's no such thing as a better build. Your character and the choices you make for it become irrelevant. In an FPS where you load up as indiscriminate fighter #6, that makes sense. In the context of an MMO where you have to level the character (probably to 50) and invest in their build, that's a problem.
In any case, it's worth noting that the I13 changes did not achieve this, though they lowered the ceiling. Build is still extremely important.
Every game has this issue. Yes, some have it more than others. However, making it so that skill and experience have little actual value is even worse than making builds irrelevant.
Once more, it's worth pointing out that the I13 changes didn't actually achieve this, and did little to make a new or poor PvPer more likely to win over an experienced or skilled one.
In short, by coming close to tearing down PvP and rebuilding it from scratch, they took an existing set of failings and deficiencies and replaced it with completely new ones. While doing so, they stripped out part of the feel which is such a core part of the enjoyment of CoH - rapid action and movement - which gave this game's PvP a unique flavor.
Look if you want to say sure you can pvp, all you need to do is first get the accolades for your characters and not just the 4 big ones but the painful other ones as well, then you need to raise enough inf to put in the no brainer vast improvement IOs (Miracle, regen tissue, numina). Also I have no idea how even someone that doesn't pvp cant say having a 20% hp advantage, 10% endurance advantage and amped regen and recovery advantages isnt going to produce a large difference in win rates. You toss in the further advantages from sets, even more hp, more recharge, resistances its a no brainer.
The skill differential is something you can't equalize out and you shouldn't even try but having N on 1 fights or fights where you had people with bazookas hunting others with water pistols, well that isn't going to be fun for anyone. Well anyone you could imagine actually wanting associate with, there are varieties of people that get off on torturing small animals that might enjoy something like that.
Any game needs a measure of balance to it. In chess it doesn't matter how long you have been playing the game, it doesn't matter how well you do outside of the game (There was some suspicion that politics were involved in karpov-kasparov but thats an exception). It should be the skill in the game that counts. What we have now hasn't helped with skill at all and it has kept the outside in and made it even worse. Before if you had a decent build, it wasn't entirely useless, now a decent pve build won't even do well against the NPCs in the zones. You have a capped SR scrapper/brute ? expect to be swatted around by the npcs. You have a capped defense blaster ? LOL. The big build problems (lack of a plus perception power), lack of a phase power in your build, Insufficient KB protection in your build are all still there.
I have no idea why you are responding to me with such a tangential and strange set of replies. They seem almost calculated to misconstrue what I said. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Fulmens
I'm pretty sure the deep entitlement is the reason most people, at the core, don't PVP.
Even if it's coinflip PVP, you're going to lose half the time. Which is obviously too much. Nerf "heads".
Ehhh ?
Wow and I thought I was down on the composition of the community. I think I am pretty safe saying that most people only care that they are playing with the same pieces and the same rules as everyone else. Its really hard to claim a sense of entitlement for a soloist in a zone, to not want to have to fight teams of eight that exhibit all the sportsmanship of rabid dogs. Its one thing to have two people play a game of chess its another to have a marksmanship contest where one person has a bent pipe, a hammer , ammo that was made during the civil war and the other guy has a Barret M-107. -
Gratz
And there is one item you know no one is going to flip for more or craft and markup on you. -
Quote:Originally Posted by je_saist
Just commenting on this, but I wouldn't really cite Tom's site as a reference on how processor's perform. THG has been busted multiple times in the past accepting vendor money to slant reviews.
Really ? Do you have anything linking to this ?? I ask because I use the website alot and have always found them to be accurate. Also I couldn't find anything on the web about this that may just be my search abilities. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
Recent join date: Check
Low post count: Check
'OMG! The game is dying!' doom post: Check
Conclusion:??
Is actually able to notice the naked emperor ? -
Quote:Originally Posted by macskull
Yeah, the changes were designed around making things more beginner-friendly, as well as trying to normalize everything. Unfortunately they went about it badly, and instead of trying to bring the low end up, they lopped it off at the top. Heck, it was admitted that some of the changes were implemented because experienced players were repeatedly beating new players, and experienced players had better reflexes, so everything got slowed down and simplified. I might just be being cynical here, but the I13 changes also managed to quiet things down on the PvP front - the players constantly asking for tweaks and fixes stopped asking, because they either stopped PvPing or quit the game. There's news floating around about further changes when Going Rogue comes out, but I'm afraid if the devs don't do a bang-up job of delivering what the players have been asking for, that'll be it for PvP. Of course, for those of us who still play and are trying to get changes made, we're walking a very fine line - last time the PvP community made a list of suggestions it was pretty much ignored and the players were handed a bunch of changes few people liked, and we're now wary of asking for changes because we're afraid the same thing will happen (I've already gone on the record as saying if it does happen again, I won't stick around).Quote:Originally Posted by Primal_Dark
So would a PvP "merit" system help more then (after DR gets dropped) to try and lure more people into zones? Say...get a merit for every non player killed in the zone and 50 merits for every player killed in the zone, with rewards being given by a PvP specific vendor?
I think the secondary effect to this type of system would be more PvP since a lot more people would be in the zone.
And yes, I agree. DR needs to go away. What's the point of IO's if they're simply rendered inconsequential upon entering the zone. If there needs to be an elite anywhere, it's PvP.
I really hate the new pvp but I see what the devs were trying to do and why. Under the old system given two equal players the better build won. Not by a little but by an enormous amount. You toss in the fact that the existing player base had an enormous skill advantage as well, that gave little chance for newbies to go through the learning curve.
You add in the fact that the only efficient way to IO out a character is the market and many people do not like the market to begin with, the devs were left with tough choices. Either they could increase high end IO drop rates to the point where they were trivial to obtain or they could wipe out their value in pvp. They failed at wiping out the value of a good build just changed what is a good build.
My own feeling was they should have used the multi build feature to have a pvp build that you could IO out however you wanted. It would only be available in pvp zones and would level the playing field. The difference would bring pvp into an indycar type of feel where the driver is the only difference -
Quote:LOL thats the entire computer business in a nutshell. Its hardly new with Nvidia. I doubt you can find a computer company that hasn't participated in the sport of fleecing the customerOriginally Posted by Human_Being
Don't count on it!
As a related note, I'd like to mention that Nvidia has just announced release of a G310 card. Do not buy this thing thinking it is part of a new high-performance line and will be better than a 2xx card! The G310 is a re-named G210 (which was a piece of junk) that Nvidia hopes will sound attractive because "300" is higher than "200". It's the same thing they did with the GTS 250 actually being a renamed 9800 GTX+; still using an older G92 chip rather than one of the newer G200s despite the name. The more I learn about Nvidia's business practices, the less I like the company. -
Quote:Originally Posted by Psyte
Ya know, I have to ask "What constitutes a decent processor these days?"
While I've no doubt about i5 and i7's, I was more curious about AMD's offerings these days. I'm debating upgrading my poor old C2D 6300 @ 1.8ghz, and the Athlon X4 620 is looking good.
I hate to get involved in religious wars but here is some objective information for cpu comparison
for general performance
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2...tage,1394.html
here we go for gaming related
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2....0.2,1396.html -
Quote:Originally Posted by Kayla Rae
Well, with what influence I have right now, I'm just going at my own pace with what I have. But yea, I wanna be a great farmer. But things are expensive so I gotta work with what I have till I can start slotting sets. Which brings up this question? What should I be using for a high recharge and attack build?
I wanna have my recharge rate at least over 170% and be able to do some serious damage. Any suggestions there?
You can get what you need to be a very good farmer with inexpensive sets.
Kinetic crash gives you KB protection and recharge enhancement very cheaply. 5 slotting adjusted targeting helps max out your accuracy and recharge. Coercive persuasion gets you 10% recharge buff for not that much cost.
The real trick is finding enemies you are good against. That isn't too hard though. (Pardon me if I don't post a list of potential nerfs) -
Quote:Originally Posted by Heraclea
Blueside, there is simply more content available to you. Accolades are easier to come by. You don't get stuck with level 30 Carnies, kinetic Tsoos, Succubi, and endless missions full of Longbow and Arachnos. Your bank missions don't generate ambushes keyed to a five-man team solo. I plan on rescuing most of my redside characters once Going Rogue goes live, and have put most of their levelling on hold in anticipation.
Not to derail the the thread but accolades are about equal difficulty on both sides. (Pretty damn easy). The one exception would be invader, which while not proof that the devs hate villains, it sure is an indication they hate power levelers.