ICF_Zombra

[ QUOTE ]
Nice joke, but you guys need to try harder. You lost me at "but our research shows that a lot of people are building their own computers nowadays, and sometimes you forget to purchase speakers or headphones."

[/ QUOTE ]
They had me halfway I guess. Renaming Issue 12 was the "wait a minute ..." moment for me.

And add me to the list of people who actually want this feature. Along with a toggle to turn "floating numbers" on/off.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't say it required research. It's common knowledge Blue Steel beat the carp outta ol' CWK, and thats the reason he's reduced to a brain in a jar.

[/ QUOTE ]

I didn't know that. Must not be all that common.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I've been here since release, and I had to look it up. "Has always been on the books" isn't the same thing as "common knowledge".

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I gotta say, I never really liked animated avatars, I always found them too distracting. That's why I think mine's the best.

[/ QUOTE ]
I love animated avatars when they are well paced. I don't think mine is super distracting for example, because it's designed so that EVERY! FRAME! ISN'T! SOMETHING! INCREDIBLY! EYE-CATCHING! HAPPENING! Suichiro's avatar for example is well paced - it's interesting but doesn't demand attention. Toxic_Shia's own avatar is well paced too - it's frantic, but the action is smooth enough that you can look at it for a second, 'get it', and then your eyes can move on. The KICK! FLASH! KICK! FLASH! KICK! FLASH! of Shia's submission is definitely on the 'too distracting' side in my opinion.

Annnnd so I don't come across as a grinchy, nothing's-good-enough complaining type of person, I again want to plug gec72's submission. This ain't a democracy, but if it was, gec's cool blue shield would get my vote. It has that calm, reassuring strength that I associate with P. City's top cop.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I love the art style, but find it visually overstimulating, not to mention confusing. Why is he kicking a fruit salad jello all over the sidewalk? And why is the ghost of Marlon Brando yelling at him all the time? These are not questions I should be asking myself when I casually glance at somebody's avatar.


[/ QUOTE ]
L3rn to Blue Steel.

Clockwork soccer FTW.

[/ QUOTE ]
Believe it or don't, but I actually did my research before I posted and figured out that it was the King's head being kicked. (I still don't understand the ghost head though. Mental attacks?)

My point was that an avatar should not require research to understand.

[ QUOTE ]
I also submit! http://drunkfu.deviantart.com/art/Bl...vatar-80384453

[/ QUOTE ]
I love the art style, but find it visually overstimulating, not to mention confusing. Why is he kicking a fruit salad jello all over the sidewalk? And why is the ghost of Marlon Brando yelling at him all the time? These are not questions I should be asking myself when I casually glance at somebody's avatar.

[ QUOTE ]
Just a head's up for everyone, we're going to be buckling down to get Issue 12 done...so you may see a lull in redname activity on the forums for a bit...posts demanding immediate answers will undoubtedly go unanswered.

[/ QUOTE ]
So, after I12 is done, we can expect immediate answers whenever we demand them. Got it.

[ QUOTE ]
Another try.

[/ QUOTE ]
Wow, that is excellent. I liked your first one but LOVE this one. If Dr. Graviton doesn't redo a resized version of his (which is dog ugly shrunk down), this is the clear winner in my opinion. (If he does, I probably won't be able to choose )

[ QUOTE ]
Thought I would go for a more comic book feel with mine take a look here.

[/ QUOTE ]
Dr. G! I love yours and I want it to win! Problem: shrunk down to 80x80 it looks like crap and all the graphic effects are lost! Please do another one using the exact same image, but do the processing after making it forum-size! Good luck!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Also if pvp on its own is not good enough (read imablances all around) then no amount of LURING is going to save the system. The imbalances themselves need to be fixed

[/ QUOTE ]

The Great PvP Imbalance Fix:


You enter the zone.

Your opponent enters the zone.

Both of your power-trays gray completely out except for two powers: Brawl and Sprint.

You are now equal, guys. Parity achieved. Have at it.

[/ QUOTE ]
But Controllers get less HP than Tankers!

[/ QUOTE ]
PVP SUCKS NERF TANKER SPRINT

Simple is best! Closeups are good also.

One
Two
Three

Mynx, great to have you here too. Don't feel bad about being upstaged by Blue Steel. He's Blue Steel for crying out loud. But hey, let's face facts, you're sexy, and we all know it, so, welcome.

Blue Steel, you have always been my #1 favorite hero trainer. I was a fan of yours before you "caught on" ... honest. I knew you were cool before it was cool to know you were cool.

Welcome.

[ QUOTE ]
Anything can be made Flashback, but the "completed" star checks for A) Souvenir clue or B) the Badge. If we did missions that were not Story Arcs and not Badged, then they would never show complete.

That said, I have no problem doing this if you guys don't. Just let me know what missions you want on Ouroboros and I will do my best to get them there.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure this has been said already, but missions that can't be "filled in" need to be visually distinct from those that can.

I pick Ouroboros missions first and foremost based on which ones aren't checked off as "done". It would be maddening to be unable to fill everything in, and lead to a lot of wasted effort.

Edit. Looked back over the thread. I love Leech's idea. Post #10177013.

[ QUOTE ]
My question is, why do we need another form of flagging on top of that that would be less effective, allow for exploits and would only exacerbate existing issues?

[/ QUOTE ]
Simple. To make the zones more noob friendly and get some people in there.

H_B's flagging system may, as you say, cause more problems than it solves. Maybe so. I think it's pretty well thought out, but maybe that's just me. If it really would be a huge disaster, is there another system you can think up that wouldn't, and yet would still stimulate population growth? Co* PvP is in trouble without some kind of new ideas.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe a loss in PvP should still earn “merit-alikes”? Certainly not as many as winning, but perhaps what we need to reward is participation and not just victory.

[/ QUOTE ]
A small but tangible reward for getting my [censored] beat would be a HUGE incentive for me to try PvP more. And of course, once there, the bigger reward for success would naturally make me want to compete. This would be a great incentive for "normal" people to get in there.

[/ QUOTE ]

...by rolling a FOTM and getting a buddy to help you IO up by pitting you against a mule.

[/ QUOTE ]
GASP!!!! OH MY!!!! YOU MEAN PVP REWARDS COULD BE FARMABLE?!?!?

Uh, I know that already. That's why I suggested that the rewards be small. If the maximum amount you could farm in PvP was half as much as you could get through PvE in the same amount of time, would it still break the game? Perhaps you could only get x amount of rewards per day against a given global account. There are other ideas out there to discourage farming, or make the rewards for farming not worth the time, while still allowing for any rewards whatsoever to exist. The existence of exploiters is not big big news to me - the fact of farmers does not completely shut down the idea of attaching ANY kind of tangible incentive to PvP.

I've heard responses before to this line of reasoning, along the lines of, "If the rewards aren't huge, there's no reason to include them at all!" This is, in a word, untrue.

[ QUOTE ]
i just think it should stay the same, but get a few balancing fixes. that's it.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're entitled to that opinion, but my impression is that even the PvPers, generally, would disagree with you. Taking steps to increase population would benefit everybody.

[ QUOTE ]
trying to bribe people into a zone isn't the answer.

[/ QUOTE ]
Why not? "Bribing" people into missions with reduced debt and increased xp worked like a charm, yet I don't feel somehow dirty for accepting the bait. Missions are fun. If tangible rewards were attached to PvP, and PvP still sucked but I did it anyway to get the rewards, then I would agree that that was a bad solution. We're talking here about improving PvP, making it less exclusive and more fun, and incentivizing it so that more people will try it out. I don't see a problem with any of that.

If you think PvP is just dandy as is, great. Personally, I think it could be way better.

[ QUOTE ]
you dont get a reward for getting your butt "whupped" in PvE, why would you get a reward for doing the same in PvP?

[/ QUOTE ]
Because we are looking for ways to stimulate PvP population growth. "Come in, battle for hours, and leave with nothing" is not a great enticement. Shivans etc. ARE a pretty good enticement, but it is still MUCH easier to get such rewards by sneaking into the zone at 2AM when nobody is around. If you don't want a direct material incentive to PvP, fine - I'd love to hear your better ideas to stimulate growth. Because if there are no better ideas, PvP development is dead and buried.

[ QUOTE ]
Bloody Bay
If a PVE mode character should attempt to grief a PVPer making the run, the more dangerous spawn they generate will initially be aggroed on them, giving the PVEer (and possibly friends) time to get their samples before having to face a larger threat.

[/ QUOTE ]
Right there, that addresses my concern with your plan for BB. I would add the caveat that maybe the tougher spawn would in fact be "taunted" onto the player that made them spawn, at least for a few seconds, to make this solution feasible. Otherwise, since the defending Shivans can't chase after a griefer doing, say, a Super Speed "drive-by", they would immediately shift their attention to those still hanging out at the meteor.

[ QUOTE ]
Siren's Call

The "hotspots" would still appear on the map and be active, but "control" of the hotspots would not gate access to the zone temp powers. The temps are accessed with merit-alikes and the hotspots merely serve to let all open-zone free-form PVPers know "where the fight is". Players of appropriate faction in either PVE or PVP mode could buff npcs of their own faction, but the npcs are so weak it really would be pointless and if they did, PVPers could just shift their fight 50 ft so they're out of aggro range to ignore the attempted "griefing".
All the play types that are currently in the PVP zones would still be available.

[/ QUOTE ]
With respect, that still ends up marginalizing the SC play type that I enjoyed - Villain PCs and Arachnos vs. Hero PCs and Longbow. So not quite "all" of the current play types would still be there. I think you're writing off the NPCs a little too lightly. Back when I was winning the zone for villainy, I didn't just fly in and laugh off a Warden, 2 Officers, and 5 Nullifiers, with assorted minions to the tune of 8-12. I had to use Arachnos as a shield. And when a hero or heroes showed up, things really got interesting. Some flag-off Defender strolling in with his AE heals and buffs would completely destroy that scenario, and the only balancing factor (the Defender's personal vulnerability) would be off limits.

Don't get me wrong! Again, your system would add a lot more than it would take away! I just think you're going a bit far saying that absolutely nothing would be lost.

[ QUOTE ]
merit-alikes (can someone please come up with a better name for these things?)

[/ QUOTE ]
"PvP Merits" sounds good to me. You could even call them PPMs for short.

I saw something awesome while skimming:
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe a loss in PvP should still earn “merit-alikes”? Certainly not as many as winning, but perhaps what we need to reward is participation and not just victory.

[/ QUOTE ]
I won't get too deeply into my various aversions for PvP, but the feeling of going in, getting whupped, and having nothing to show for it but a sense of failure is one reason I don't get especially excited to go PvP. A small but tangible reward for getting my [censored] beat would be a HUGE incentive for me to try PvP more. And of course, once there, the bigger reward for success would naturally make me want to compete. This would be a great incentive for "normal" people to get in there.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think you missed the entire point of the OPs post. This isn't about making improvements to PvP for PvPers, but making it more accessible to those that may not nessesarily have considered PvP for whatever reasons.

[/ QUOTE ]

by further breaking pvp for pvp-ers?

[/ QUOTE ]
If your idea for improving PvP is to leave things as they are, you're in for a big disappointment. Ex's post, boiled down, says that PvP is going to be abandoned by the devs unless changes can be made to make the community more robust. What is in place now is not cutting it.

If they can make PvP appealing to the current PvE crowd (lots and lots of people) at the expense of alienating the current stagnant PvP crowd (a small, small minority that's not getting any bigger), rest assured they will do it in a heartbeat if their alternative is leaving things as they are.

So, boiled down, the answer to your question is a resounding "yes".

Looking forward to your thread of ideas on how to make the PvP community more robust.

[ QUOTE ]
Cross-server PvP should be one of the main focus areas, IMO.

[/ QUOTE ]
A very good point. There was some dev talk some time ago about the possibility of removing the "server barrier" and allowing people to form inter-server teams, for instances at least. Maybe it would be something like the Guild Wars layout, where there are simply 12 Atlas Parks (generated dynamically like they do now), and you can pick which one to go to. If something like that happened in Co*, there might only end up being 3 or 4 Bloody Bays, but they would all be active. That might fix a lot of the problems right there, for example the fact that Shivans are trivial for PvEers to get on most servers.

One other thought I want to throw out that has nothing to do with the OP, but which I've always always always wanted changed: the 30 second timer was never a good idea. Your PvP flag should be off whenever you are in your side's base, and on whenever you leave it. OK, don't mean to derail, just had to say it.

Some great ideas here, H_B. Read the whole first post, read the BB and SC suggestions, skimmed the WB & RV suggestions since I never go to those zones and my eyes were getting tired.

Thoughts:

Flagging. I both like and dislike the idea.
CON: You can have your enemies walk right up to you and go nyah nyah nyah, and there's nothing you can do about it. In that sense, it is a severe, severe immersion killer.
PRO: But in a way, it helps support good RP, especially in combination with your "challenge" system. I've always been deeply disappointed by the fact that you can't have good super-soliloquys with other players, because by the time you get close enough to talk to them, you better be mashing buttons to try to beat them, or they'll certainly take advantage. Under your system, you could approach your enemies (with PvP off), make your grandiose taunts, threaten the water supply, demand justice, whatever, then activate the challenge mode and start the battle. That would be great.

So basically, from an immersion point of view, if people used it the right way, it would be awesome. But if people acted like jerks, it would kill immersion completely. And since we know how much we can rely on people not being jerks ... well, you see where I am going with this sentence.

My immediate thought about your Bloody Bay plan was that it is utterly and completely griefable. I like the theory, but again, it relies on players not exploiting. Here is what I mean. Say there are 5 villains and 5 heroes in the zone. The villains are alerted that a hero (or group of heroes) is going for the PvP version of meteor collection. What will happen? 4 villains will flag PvP on and go after them. The 5th villain will leave PvP off and begin the horribly punishing PvE version of meteor hunting, then go find the heroes and follow them around. When a meteor is approached, the EBs etc. will spawn, making it impossible for the heroes to get the meteors while also under villain attack.

Really, the only way I see having different spawns for PvP and PvE work would be to have two different versions of the zone. Which I would be fine with - I'd like to see more challenge in getting a Shivan Shard - but this would do nothing to address PvP's popularity, which is what this whole thread is about.

Looks like you have a similar plan for Warburg, which suffers from the same problems.

And actually, you say a few times that getting a nuke or Shivan should always require a big team and be a huge undertaking. I agree that rich rewards should only go with big risks, but I am a BIG opponent of "forced teaming". If it were up to me, nukes and Shivans would be nerfed instead. I'd vastly prefer that to adding more "team-only" content.

Siren's Call. SC is the only PvP zone that I have so far actually enjoyed PvPing in. During the latest Winter Event, I wanted to get all the skiing badges for my 50 villain, who has no jumping powers and no pocket kin. Instead of respeccing in and out of SJ, I decided that I would singlehandedly take back SC from the heroes and buy the jump temp power. To be sure, I spent most of my time in the zone during off hours, helping the NPCs win, but since I had to win some 100 battles to beat the zone, I spent a LOT of time in there and some actual fun PvP happened, teamed with strangers, 1 on 1, every which way.

Now that you have my background, you may be able to see how your suggestions would throw a wrench into the only real PvP environment I've enjoyed in the game. Helping Arachnos fight Longbow was fun, and having a big wall of NPCs around made it a lot tougher for some hero to zip in, gank me, zip out. It made the battles real BATTLES. The NPCs were strategic obstacles, used by both sides. Under your flagging system, though, people who have PvP off can still indirectly PvP ... by killing NPC enemies and buffing NPC friends. A PvP-off Defender for example would be able to help Longbow take over the neighborhoods much more easily if the villains couldn't directly retaliate. You see where I'm going with this.

I'm not saying that your system wouldn't be better overall for the PvP world - I like your system a lot and I bet it would be much healthier for the game. But I would be sad to see the death of the one PvP gameplay style I actually really liked - essentially being an Arachnos general leading my little army against the good guys.

These thoughts are incomplete, and again, I haven't read the whole thread, but there's only so much time & energy I can invest at once. Subscribing, and I'll be back to look things over, read any replies to me, and add more thoughts.

Best of luck with the project - I too would love to see PvP revamped to make it actually fun for a majority.

QR

Great guide. Thanks so much Plasma.

I always loved your work, Arctic_Sun. Luck.