GavinRuneblade

There have been two working solutions to this with which I have direct experience:

#1: WoW's solution: Cross-server battlegroups to increase the number of people in the Queue at any one time combined with a mechanic where you sign up and run away to quest, etc. When enough people are signed up you are taken out of your current team and mission and teleported directly into the battleground.

#2: Runescape's solution: three sides: Law - Chaos - Balance. Balance signups are randomly split among Law and Chaos to even out the sides and ensure less wait times. In practice about half of all people just jump into balance and as a result there are almost immediate start times.

As to the comment about needing to organize a group: None of the games I've played required it. Sure it helps and that was the whole argument behind "premades have an unfair advantage over pugs" that tore through WoW for over a year. Some attempts were made to cancel it out, such as breaking up teams taht sign up together, etc. But in the end, premades are organized and therefore have an advantage, but a good chunk of the PvPers are casual players just looking to have fun and it works fine. You run around like an idiot and beat the snot out of other idiots. A small percentage of the people are professionals and they get most of the kills and on a team of 15 two of them are enough to win the game. The argument about organization and role specialties has never been an issue except in very organized competitions like strict arena ladders or the lineage castle sieges or Shadow Bane's big guild city assaults. In team mini-games, organization helps but is in no way required for fun and rewards.

The applicable verb that goes with gaming cured me of taking things too seriously long ago. You play games. Play. Not grind. Not obsess over. Not take seriously. Not work at. You play games. If they ever stop being fun, then you should take a break because you're doing it wrong. Play = fun. Play =/= serious.

Life got so much better after I really learned this.

Neeto, you are awesome. I just have to say that.

I have PvPd in many games. Mankind.net (the earliest MM-RTS that I know of), Shadowbane, Lineage I (in korean no less), Ultima online, Quake, Counterstrike, Dark Age of Camelot, WoW, Runescape, Age of Conan, and now CoH. I can say that freeform PvP has never really attracted a lot of followers. In WoW none of the PvP zones are ever crowded (I mean like the plaguelands, or Zangarmarsh not the battlegrounds). In Dark Age of Camelot and Conan groups ganking newbs was all the PvP I could find. In virtually every game, the PvP servers are the lowest population servers. I can go on and on. Some people love PvP. Most don't.

And yet, capture the flag is always popular in every setting. It's silly, and doesn't make a lot of sense, but I would love to have a capture the flag pvp game in CoX. Cross server, 15-man teams, no NPCs or very damn few of them, and just pound the snot out of each other over and over. I think I would never PvE again if City got something like this. And I don't think I'm alone.

Bind files definitely gets into user error territory. =) I tried once back when I was on a PC and I failed, but I'm pretty confident I did something wrong because on the PC binds worked in general. Currently I'm on a Mac and the only instructions for using bind files I've found refer to the PC directories. Not sure if they still apply in my case.

The main reason I am convinced that at least some of my problem is not user error is the macro issue. Just recently on another character I was helping some friends get teh Banished Pantheon Spirit badge. They were passing around a macro that created a button labeled "target" and if you click it it targets the next spirit. Worked for everyone but me. I got the button, it never targetted anything. click, click, nothing happens. Even when I can see two, it doesn't select either. For everyone else it worked. And I have a few characters with macros that worked on my PC that don't work now on my Mac which I haven't touched in terms of the code.

Normally that's a very good point. However, the OP has only 13 posts and while giving the benefit of the doubt is good, probably in this case it's best to assume they don't know better.

I agree in general. The issue is that pvp with broken mechanics can still be fun, but Zone PvP for a newb never will be no matter what mechanics are used.

For a new player I see no reason to play in the zones, they are frustrating and would remain so even if cross server and with a tutorial. Cross server will make more team ganking of loners. It will make it harder on new players, not more fun. A tutorial will not help this fact. New arena maps will not help either. "perfect" mechanics will not help either.

All of these are great, after the player is no longer a newb. None of them help the newb want to come back a second time.

I stand by my earlier comment:
Create a mechanic whereby a new player is put on a team through no activity of his/her own (such as in WoW's battlegrounds) and matched against a team of equal size with a clear start point, stop point, and goal. Let them bash each other to bits. This is fun for new players, this gets them to come back. Wander around the zone and getting ganked by people better than you in large groups convinces them to never come back.

If we put a pillar in the SG base then characters as low as 10 can run oro missions. The limit is only that all characters in the team meet the minimum level for the arc.

I think that in and of itself, that will only get the people who currently pvp to have an easier time without transferring to test. To bring new people into the pvp fold, you need to change the initial experience. In that sense the most realistic measure would be something that creates teams rather than leaves a loner who just wants to try it out at the mercy of teams.

Make something that is functionally like WoW's battlegrounds, Runescape's castle siege, etc. THAT is the way to get people to enjoy the experience on a first try.

I have not successfully managed to get access to the place where the Mac version hides screenshots. I have twice tried to setup virtualized Windows scenarios but failed. I am not a techie (and for the record, I hate macs only have this one for my girlfriend who insisted) I am not normally a Mac user, and I have no idea how to use one. So, not really an option. I use the suckerpunch online tool and I use paper notebooks and that works for me. Going the complicated route = read the second quote in my signature file. =)

I've found that leveling with miscellaneous low-level sets, then using my second build to make a level 50,, "final" spec works great. I can also tweak the primary "levelling build" to use middle-of the road sets and it works when exemplared down low, whereas the one with all level 50-sets would not. Plus, it is a lot less work.


During the demo week, the one in the store said something about not stacking. Will have to see about the final version but I suspect that it won't stack. Also, it costs 500 canes and you can only get one per character.

I mentioned I used right just because the left was working and I didn't want it to stop working if something went wrong.

But the button vs click is worth testing.

Also might it have something to do with them selling all origins? If the code is there for buying price based on origin the fact that they sell all origins probably kicks them into high price.

Very solid point. That's why on the one of my ideas that included technology, I mentioned only something that already exists. Application and story use would be a consideration, but the tech is there. Also, they did at least do some work on a detective system. I'd be very curious to know what that was all about. But there are inspirations for it.

But at the same time people complain about "everything is the same, kill all, click glowie". I think a lot of the appeal of the ITF were the unique new enemies and maps combined with exciting combat. The Cimeroan's -def abilities and high damage means you kill 'em fast or get chewed up. That's exciting. Still, it is a good point, the community (and me) do like a good fight. That's one of the areas I've often felt let down, in teh climactic battles. Most games those fights go in stages with the boss using different tactics and powers at each stage. CoH epic battles trigger ambushes and the occasional Tier 9 "not dead yet" power, but that's about it. However, as much as I don't like it, it does favor the casual player who doesn't need to master 2-4 different strategies for each TF and can just tank and spank every time.

Very true. Again, agree completely. Thanks for your insight.

Sure you can. Add some code that says "anything more than 1 standard deviation away from the norm is discarded". There are other less blunt more effective ways also.

I'll disagree on "the only way" while agreeing with the rest. "Best" and "Easiest" perhaps (though I am not sure on either). And by best I in no way mean to imply "Good" or "Desirable" but more along the lines of least bad. At least three other methods immediately spring to mind and I imagine people can come up with more given the opportunity:

1. Mechanics that reward player skill over character build. Think First-person shooters. All characters have the exact same capabilities. The only thing that differentiates the winner from the loser is the player abilities, not the character abilities. Existing timed missions fall into this category but the timers are so short as to make it not matter. Some aspects of PvP fall into this category. It is possible to make twitch-reflex-based mechanics give enough of an advantage as to reward people who have crappy builds. Now, a second problem is what is the comparable percentage of casual gamers with great reflexes vs wealthy speed runners? Probably not where it needs to be for this to be an effective solution. Enter #2:

2. Non-combat oriented obstacles. The devs created inspirations for a detective system. Doesn't currently exist. Might not be combat related. Might be able to force a slow-down in speed running. Might be something more rewarding for casual gamers. Runescape has a repeatable quest with an amazing reward and the primary obstacle is solving a sodoku with a limited number of attempted moves. I'm not sure many speeders are good at sodoku, but I bet a fair number of casual gamers are. If you can beat down the big bad villain and I can crack the vault and get access to his secret weakness and defeat him without having to fight, we might both finish at the same time. Or at least, a lot closer to each other's times. And there are lots of ways to vary this. For example, dangerous hazards. Croatoa has a mission (Gordon's arc, first mission with ghosts) with a smoky debuff field as a static hazard on the map, not created by any enemy. The hero respec trial has the radiation room, the Shadow Shard has the super jump geysers. Clearly the technology exists to give areas hazardous/helpful effects. Dunno the limits but if this can be applied to different powers and effects this is something that doesn't need to be created it already exists and could be written into missions to give an interesting challenge.

3. Fiddle with the speed techniques. Stealth and teleport are biggies for speeding missions. Make better use of enemies who over come or limit stealth. Knives of Artemis, Rikti Drones, Snipers, etc. Proximity bombs. Timed defend missions like the Croatoa finale in town, or the hero respec. If you and I are forced to do the most critical portion of a mission for the same length of time, it can't be speeded. The rest could, but this could alter averages some.

Again, I'm not saying any of these are better than rebalancing or that any of them are a good idea. Just that there are other options and I bet people can come up with options that are better than anything I can think of.


Average time to complete portions of a mission only tracking logged-in time and dropping anyone who is AFK from the numbers. Base the reward on actual time taken not average time taken. Speed it for lower results. Go really slow and frustrate the hell out of yourself. Sit around in a mission not defeating anyone to try and game the system and still get bad rewards.

Use a variation of patrol exp to generate patrol merits. Someone who only does 1 TF per month would get more per TF than someone who runs lots. Can't jump from TF to TF to avoid diminishing returns if they are consumed. But speeders could just use multiple characters which is already a solution in use to defeat diminishing returns.

I dunno, no actual good ideas but I'm sure someone can think of one eventually.

No worries, been using forums long enough to know that after a thread is two pages long it is best to assume no one, even the OP remembers the original topic.