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The purpose of this post is to try to enlighten some people as to why PvP gets so little love from Cryptic compared to other areas. Not to bash PvP.
Cryptic is in Business to make money. This is achieved by making the maximum number of people happy with the lowest expenditure of their limited resources. So lets examine some of the possible Expenditures.
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Very nice post. I am not a hardcore PvPer. I will casually PvP, but I tend to take team supported ATs (defenders, controllers, etc.) so I go to PvP very occasionally. I DO, however have 3 badge-hunting characters (2 heroes, 1 villain) Here are some of my thoughts...
Arena - Sadly, the arena is mostly empty, maybe because of bugs, maybe not, I couldn't even guess. However, I usually go there to do gladiator fights. The gladiator system is pretty fun, moreso if you're a badger, but still, when I log in to a terminal, there tends to be less than 20 people at most times. I usually go with friends, SG mates, and trusted players.
PvP Zones - Yes, I go for the badges, but more often than not, I end up doing some PvPing -- mostly, I'm ASed by stalkers, but hey... a villain's gotta live, right? Reputation is broken. Reputation should never deteriorate. It doesn't affect game mechanics at all, and if you happen to PvP when nobody else is there to, your rep decreases. Every battle is hard won for a squishy AT/powerset. seeing your 4 kills get wiped the next day is depressing (even if you died 35 times to get those 4...
).
Base Raids - Bases in and of themselves is what's truly broken... I have no theory as to why they're as bugged as they are, considering it was a selling point to buy City of Villains. I would LOVE to Base Raid, except for 3 little bumps:
--- Prestige is bloody hard to come by, in a medium-small SG. Every thousand of prestige is an uphill battle, which is escaleted by the fact that base items are ridiculously expensive. Add in that Base upkeep takes about 5-8% of your prestige every 2 weeks, and you have the setup for a rough situation. Our base isn't raid ready, simply because it costs so much to get a base up and functional, that making it raid ready is a largely distant second.
--- Losing destroyed items in a raid. Compounding on the previous bullet, you can lose prestige, and salvage in a base raid, both of which are hard to replace.
--- The highest level member of our SG is 43rd level, and the 2nd highest is 31. It goes down from there, but an SG with 10-12 50s online will summarily smear us off the map in seconds, since there's usually not more than 4 of us on at any given point in time. I haven't heard of any auto SK/exemp, but add this to the other 2 points, and it's pretty much a slam dunk.
I enjoy PvPing, but I don't consider myself a PvPer. I'd say casual PvPer, but there just doesn't seem to be a way to make PvP worth while, without opening the doors for exploit. As said, it's because in PvE, the E is always out for your utter destruction, with no ethics, and no morals. PvP is made of people, who can have ethics, and morals. Which means reason. You can't reason with a E, I'm open to reason with a P.
I do hope it gets a bit of attention. I understand why it doesn't, but broken is broken.
my $0.02
HS
That, and 1 minute to 36 hours is a bit much (How about 1 minute to 8 hours?). I got my first site construction running for presents in Kings Row, after EASILY stalking him for 60+ hours.