Infernus_Hades

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

The question that has to be asked is: Would the potential return from completely revamping how PvP in this game works be worth the time, money, and manpower that would need to be invested in it?

At this point, probably not. Revamping the PvP system would take a huge amount of resources, and it would really only benefit the few people that still PvP here. I kind of doubt the people that left when they changed it kept up on what's going on here nowadays. So, they would end up doing a huge amount of work for a very small subset of the population. Old PvP was just as broken as new PvP, only in different ways.

CoH might have had good PvP if the game had been designed with it in mind from the beginning. But it wasn't. It is nearly impossible to balance PvP in a game where the available character types are so vastly different from each other. What happens with it is a few character types, and sometimes even powersets of those character types end up being way better than others. And anyone NOT playing one of those characters is at a HUGE disadvantage in a fight.

Since CoH PvP was added as an afterthought, no consideration was given when character powers were designed as to how those powers would work when opposing each other.

When you pitted a Mind/Fire Dominator against a Claws/Regen scrapper the way it was before the i13 changes, the scrapper lived only as long as his breakfrees lasted. If he ran out or got caught without any, Telekinesis was basically an "I Win" button, since that Dominator could keep you permanently held as long as his endurance held out for. And that's just one example of the kinds of things you get when you shoehorn PvP into a combat system that wasn't designed with it in mind. There are plenty more powers that made a fight very one sided that I'm not thinking of right now.

Changing PvP again at this point would be very similar to painting a condemned house. Sure, the house might look better, but no one lives there anymore.

Originally Posted by Syntax42

Brutes will never completely replace Tankers on teams. Some people may take Brutes over Tankers, but most teams will want a Tanker as their main tank. The Brute is then an off-tank and DPS if they are teamed with a Tanker. I'm not saying a Brute can't be your main tank. Its just that Tankers do it better in most situations and teams like the increased chances of success that a Tanker provides when main tanking instead of a Brute.

Originally Posted by Grower

First, an introduction. I am not a PvPer. I am a veteran PvE player, started in 2005. My personal view is that the success of any build is 90% playstyle and only 10% gadgets, and I pride myself in being able to take on content that I really shouldn't be able to take on with a mismatched, undersized or nonexistant team. My main is a Controller. I have dabbled in PvP both before and after "The Change", and have found it generally undesireable in both cases. But I WANT to PvP - I want the PvP in the zone descriptions and literature where fighting is fun and challenging, and danger lurks around every corner. In short, I am the *potential PvPer* that everyone seems to be waiting to start PvPing.

Second, a disclaimer; this post is not written by someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the details of PvP. I don't play it much, so I might make mistakes in a few things I state. I know the PvP community values verbal combat as much as pixellated, and I am eager for constructive counterposts. What this is, is an explanation of what I expect out of the PvP I *want* to play, from the mindset of someone who never really enjoyed what we had, pre or post The Change.



There is an idea that seems to be popular, where every archetype should be able to fight every other archetype and stand a reasonable chance. The idea is that my controller should be able to go into a PvP zone or an arena match and fight on an even playing field with a brute, scrapper, mastermind or stalker. I used to think I liked this idea. But today I realised that this idea is what is wrong with PvP as designed. CoX was designed as a team based game, with limited solo options. Stupid stupid AI has allowed those solo options to grow, and now people expect them out of PvP as well. This is wrong.

If the PvE enemies were player controlled, my controller would not stand a bloody chance without a team. This is what PvP should be like. I do not expect my controller to go to RV and stand toe to toe with a brute and take him down in a reasonable amount of time. I expect to hold that brute for a really long time until his friends come and kill me, and maybe get him down to half health before that happens. He can't hurt me, or move. I can't kill him. Pointless for both of us without a team. If I had a blaster teammate, he loses. If he has a dominator teammate, I lose. The world spins on, and on and on.

*I do not expect to survive most PvP solo, with any character or build*

*I want any character or build I play to be able to do their job on a PvP team, and not be muzzled to enable half *****, artificial feeling solo play*

Besides intelligent tactics, the primary difference between what is possible in PvE and in PvP is the use of inspirations. If Malta had breakfrees, they would have already taken over the earth. Therefore, the way PvP should be balanced is not through making all the powers do different things for no reason, it is through changing inspirations and the way they work. I would like to see PvP specific inspiration functions, or inspirations be removed from PvP. If I can hold people and they can't just shrug it off over and over and over again, I don't need some wierd *** artificial damage and HP boost to be competitive - I just need a teammate to actually kill the people I hold before I get counterattacked.

*I want the people I hold who have no mez protection, to stay the $@$# held for more than two seconds*

*I do not expect a controller to stand a chance in PvP without the ability to lock down any more than I do in PvE, that's why she's a controller*

In short, you can't redesign a team based game into a one-on-one game and still retain any of the original design elements. So don't try. CoX is a team game. Play it that way. Build it that way.

This means that the controller vs blaster match in the arena is going to be a really boring 4 minute long fight where the blaster uses their first two attack powers over and over while the controller tries to slowly crush the blaster with rocks - very slowly. Yes, that is silly - so don't play controller vs blaster matches. Don't redesign the whole damned game and add a bunch of wierd stupid alternate power functions to make that match kind of fun after you read the PvP specific game manual. No one wants to read the manual. Just let us play the game!

I used to avoid PvP because I wanted to solo it and win every battle, and I couldn't. Now I avoid PvP because I can solo it, but my character plays like a broken copy of everyone else's character, and every power is either just a damage power with different graphics, or pointless. Let the archetypes do what they do. Stalkers gank, controllers mez, etc. This is the way of things.

Us PvEers need to stop trying to solo PvP for the badge and street cred, find a buddy and dive in.

I really hope that we are given a PvP worth diving into in the next couple of issues. And not one we have to relearn the game to play.

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle

With a modest amount of recharge, assuming most high performance blasters will focus largely on softcapping ranged defense, the average fire blaster ought to be chaining flares -> blast -> flares -> blaze. DS of 6.8 in 4.67 seconds.