BurningChick

Just to throw something out there ...

The devs have seen spectacularly poor return on investment for the work they've done on PvP. I know the PvP community has developed an everybody hates us mentality over the years, but step back and look at what the devs have tried.

Arena: they devoted an entire issue to it. I4 brought relatively few changes or additions to the game other than the Arena. Everyone tried PvP at first, but by the end of beta, the Arena was largely empty except for dev-sponsored events. The trend continued once the issue went live; there were successful player-run events, but there wasn't whole lot of action in the arenas otherwise.

Yes, PvP was buggy. Yes, some maps were horrible. Yes, it was horribly unbalanced. Yes, there were no mini-games ... or anything to do other than try to punch faces. But it was implemented. But what seems to have happened is that the devs built it ... and few people came. At this point, the devs are in an awkward position: fix it under the vague hope people would come, or work on other, more important tasks (CoV).

But the devs were listening to feedback. The players said, "Punching people in the face is OK, but we want mini-games and open PvP where you can jump into the action without having to set things up and wait at the Arena terminals. Oh yeah, and we'd like to beat down villains."

And so CoV brought three PvP zones with mini-games, villains and heroes. The zones were popular, even on Pinnacle, for a little while. But slowly the zones emptied out. Meanwhile, the devs also delivered bases. Horribly broken bases. But base raiding and IoPs were supposed to be huge (no, seriously, NCSoft's press release for CoV specifically mentions them as Big Features). But bases, raids and IoPs were painfully, comically buggy. For a feature that States once said was the single, most expensive addition to the game, bases were a not-very-funny joke. But some people loved their raids, even though players had to have agreed-upon rules for how bases could be built to make raids remotely enjoyable.

Eventually, raids were cut from the game; they couldn't be fixed because the entire implementation of bases and raids was flawed from the ground up. It would, I'm guessing, be easier to start over than fix what's there, and at this point the devs were down to a skeleton crew and didn't have the resources to take a flyer on a potentially unpopular feature.

Bugs. Power imbalances. Griefing. Lack of lewt. No real option for advancement through PvP. People increasingly found reasons not to PvP.

The players said, "Those are the wrong games. We want to see our actions have an affect on the world. We want to use our highest-level toons. Give us something spectacular." And the devs coughed up RV, the most sophisticated zone they had ever built (although the re-vamped RWZ is close -- but it recycled much of the tech developed for RV). GV was popular for a while.

And then see two paragraphs up.

A lot of effort, time, and money has gone into CoX's PvP by this point, that's completely disproportional to how much time people spend PvPing compared to PvEing.

Meanwhile, Test is starting to heat up for cross-server PvP. It's not immensely popular, but it draws in a couple hundred people regularly, and a few hundred more sporadically. Ex Libris helps to foster this community. This particular brand of sped-up, hardcore PvP, however, still isn't broadly popular, but it's a base Ex thinks can grow. And she works at growing the community. And she gets the devs to fix a lot of Arena bugs, some of them long-standing bugs that should have been dealt with much earlier.

But, as the hardcore PvP grew and became more boisterous, it also became ... more assertive, I guess. Ex started to grow frustrated with the community. PvPers started demanding more dev attention. And things advanced into a swirling vortex of fail as the devs did little to improve the Arena crowd's PvP experience, and a subset of PvPers became increasingly obnoxious (note: I did not say all / most PvPers, I said "subset"). And, while a significant portion of people did some PvP, most players still spent far more time PvEing than PvPing.

And then ... someone looked at PvP. Well, definitely Castle and BaBs did. They looked at an amped-up Arena match and had trouble following it: it moved too fast. It had too few ATs and too few power sets represented.

And then I13.

I was never a huge fan of CoH's PvP, but I couldn't wrap my head around the changes even though the changes were geared towards players like me. In order to make PvP more inclusive, the devs fundamentally changed how powers work. Which, of course, raised an entirely new barrier to PvP, especially since there is in-game documentation for PvP. None. Nowhere is DR explained. Nowhere are mezzing mechanics explained. Nowhere is suppression explained. The PvP experience is so different it may as well be a different game.

And the changes still didn't bring in AT and power set parity.

And Lighthouse's impolitic comments about who the changes were for.

...

Some time after most of the Arena players left, BaBs commented that he wasn't able to discern any patterns in the subscription numbers; i.e., many accounts were closed, but the data didn't look any different than the usual subscriber churn numbers. Some people leave and come back. Some people leave for good. And sometimes new players join.

What it all amounts to, I guess, is that given the time and resources already sunk into PvP for relatively little RoI, why should the devs invest even more money, time and energy into PvP?

They've added PvP. They've added open PvP. They've added lewt. They've added mini-games.

Maybe ... PvP just isn't a good fit for this game, and money spent on PvE, emotes, costumes, new powers, and animations gives the devs more bang for the buck.

I think that Traps is helped immensely by proc abuse. Gas Trap can take 3 or 4 damage procs (two easily available, 1 not, 1 puprle). Caltrops can take a couple more (but it helps if you have something like Tentacles to immob mobs in the patch). Drones can take 1 or 2 damage procs + the hold proc. Ditto for Acid Mortar, with a -resistance proc for good measure.

If you're soloing 8-person spawns, this all amounts to doing lots of bonus damage, with mobs being randomly stun and held with a side of extra -resistance.

Further, Traps is /very/ light on Endurance use with some skippable powers, so it's easy enough to run Assault, Maneuvers, and Tactics.

Throw in some +recharge and / or defense bonuses, and you're pretty much good to go with any secondary.

Look into getting a SSD for your system drive.

They're freaking terrific -- we have a netbook that boots into Windows 7 in ~ 10 seconds ... and its battery is good for 8+ hours. I /know/ it doesn't have the same juice as a modern desktop, but the netbook is more responsive than almost any desktop I've ever touched. Unless ... it also has a SSD.

Generally speaking, the 160 gig drives have enough space for Windows and apps, but you need to keep data (like movies 'n' music) off on a second drive. Which, for you, might be perfect, anyway.

I've been playing a Traps / Dark the last little while; I like it a lot.

With traps, you can do silly things with procs, and you can nail mobs in place using Tentacles to make sure the mobs keep on getting nailed by said procs.

Life's gotta suck if you're standing on Caltrops (two damage procs), getting nailed by Acid Mortar (-resistance, and hold procs), being gased out (two damage procs, can't afford the third, waiting for 50 on the fourth), and you're being hentaied by Tentacles.

Oh wait ... I misread that. You're both going to be playing FF? I think I had trouble wrapping my head around thought of two bubblers in one team. Either that or I posted before coffee.

FWIW, with that much potential mitigation, I wouldn't bother with Force Bubble. Repulsion Field would probably be a better choice since you can KB stragglers into the pack for massed AoEs. 50' of distance isn't all that useful most of the time.

You know ...

If you're always teaming with a sonic, the chances that you will want the mobs spread out or detained are pretty slim.

Just something to consider: if you're duoing, his -resistance toggle won't affect anything if you have Force Bubble on.

You two are going to be /awfully/ tough; detaining a mob will probably be counterproductive since that'll remove said mob from AoE damage ... and you'll have to take him out later.

If you stick with Force Bubble, one end redux is enough; the power uses virtually no end as it is. And take that slot and stick it in Stamina for the Performance Shifter (?) proc that has a chance to return endurance.

Honestly? I'd say you should each take Aid Other.

/looks up/

Jebus, I suck at proof-reading my own stuff.

Anyway ... that particular bug with the Guardian (maybe all PPP pets?) is probably obscure enough that ones of people have ever reported it, so it's most likely very, very low priority.

One of the things that makes me happy on my fire / fire is having enough recharge to make the Mu Guardian perma.

Although ... there's a bug that hasn't been fixed with ages: if you the power recharges before your Guaurdian goos *poof* and you activate it, the first Guardian gooes *poof*, and your second one goes *poof* on the first one's timer.

Bwahaha -- I changed my search field to "1 R n0+ H3410r", and, all of a sudden, no more tells looking for healers.

Or confusion in teams such as, "Yay, got a healer! ... Oh, wait, I didn't. Team LF healer."

But I haven't had any real howlers like the time I was on a team with a scrapper. Who berated my bubbler (Big 3 + Maneuvers!) over not taking a rez. I told him to post his build to the scrapper forum. Since he was obviously mentally deficient with a spectacurlarly bad build.

I have a 50 Thugs / Traps MM and a baby Traps / Dark defender.

And it got me wondering.

Why do Caltrops and Acid Mortar take different enhancements, depending on AT? Defenders get ranged damage, while MMs get targetted AoE.

When did MM trappers lose the ability to slot PBAoE enhancements in Caltrops? My MM has /4/ damage procs in Proctrops ... and I can see why that's a teeniest smidge nutty, but I don't remember that change.

I figure that, by giving my trapper a name that would notsosubtly allude to her primary, I could avoid all the "healer?" tells.

But no.

Although one guy /spammered me after I teased him over the healer thing. And I wasn't even LFT.

But I didn't have the heart to tell him that the only toon I've ever soloed an AV with is a (mostly) setless traps / thugs. My my most horrendously min/maxed toons with multi-billion inf builds can't.

Just had to vent

If you were to send a tell to a defender named "Trappity", would you assume that she is a "healer"?

Discuss.

One of FF's lesser powers should've been a conserve power-ish, errrr, power. Thematic and always useful.

Force Bubble should've been a PBAoE -movement, -damage power. Like mobs are moving through Jell-O. Same overall effect as the current Force Bubble (keep mobs away from me, reduce incoming damage), but without the annoying bits like removing melee from Dispersion Bubble and fugging up AoEs.

At which point, discussions about def debuff and FF would disappear. Much as they never show up for other (de)buff sets that also have +def ... and more versatility.

Me on my traps / dark defender (named ... Trappity), about to log out.

I get a tell, "are you a healer?"

"are you a waste of space scrapper?"

That was pretty much it.

Not sure if it's even relevant to this thread.

But it was, perhaps, more relevant than my previous post.

IMO, I look forward to seeing empaths with two rezzes.