Lady_Sadako

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Lots of things to prioritize - perhaps the PvP community, and PvErs that dabble in PvP could help prioritize what gets done - 1-2 things might be better than zero.....

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Which is exactly why (IMO) we need a Consolidated Bugs / Issues thread, like some of the AT forums have.

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we'd prefer that dev resources went into another FEATURE, which given what resources are available, was basically what Lighthouse stated, and was jumped on.

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I'd like Dev resources to go into fixing what we've already got as well as adding more new content. To quote what Lighthouse actually said:

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Long and the short of it, while there are some small PvP thingies getting some attention (like _Castle_ posting about Brute Fury in PvP a few days ago) there are not any big PvP issues on the nearer term feature lists.

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Emphasis mine. How 'big' an issue are the Arena bugs? How about functional base raids? Or the issues with RV that mean nobody uses the zone for what it's meant for (fighting to win the zone)?

New PvP stuff would be nice, but the priority is to get what we already have to WORK. Are you honestly saying we have to forego badly needed fixes to established features in order to free up time for new stuff?

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From the notes of James Stark, for the upcoming documentary “Faultline Reborn,” produced for the Emmert News Corporation.

Two years after the Rikti invasion, the rebuilding of Paragon City had begun as a directive of Measure X. One of the principal locations targeted for the reconstruction effort was the area once called Overbrook, but known better today as Faultline.

The Overbrook rebuild had been underway for almost 6 months and the first neighborhood, New Overbrook, was close to completion. Under the combined protection of heroes and a small taskforce of the Paragon Police Department, the workers installed structural support-braces and started filling in major trenches in the area.

All seemed to be going well. It always does just before the storm hits.

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This bit wasn't on the Euro version! I was wondering what 'Measure X' was!

... hey, what IS 'Measure X'?

Also: 'Emmert News Corporation'. Heee!

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so double it, triple it, (which would be a far stretch on the two servers I play on...) it still represents a minority of what the player base is here for

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You're not getting it. Enough with the segregation of players into 'pvp' and 'not pvp'. It simply doesn't WORK like that.

Yes, there is a hard core of 'I will never ever PvP' people out there. But that says absolutely nothing about all the players who PvP casually, or dip into it, or PvP part time, or who otherwise evade that neat, silly, non-representative segregation.

PvP is a FEATURE, not a side that you take.

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What percentage of current players do you think are heavily into PvP, and how do you derive that data?

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I'm not even going to try to answer that one, because I don't think it's relevant. You don't have to be 'heavily' into PvP to make use of the feature.

You wouldn't ask me what percentage of the player base was heavily into bases or heavily into playing Dominators, and yet both of these features are flawed, and need fixing, and will most likely get it.

Judge how much a feature needs attention by how broken it is, not by how many people are using it.

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When you put money into something 5 times in a row, and fail all 5 times

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Fail?

The Arena isn't much used, true. But the Arena doesn't WORK right. It's bugged, and tournaments don't work, and you can't bet on matches, and IIRC the special Arena badges aren't even functioning.

As for the other zones 'failing' - they are being used, currently, DESPITE their flaws. That in itself suggests not that PvP is unsupported by the players, but that there are players still willing to PvP in CoX even though so much is wrong with it. Now, stop and consider how many more would participate if it worked as it should.

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None of those ways has managed to capture more then a handful of people.

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Did you see the test of RV when there was auto-levelling to 40? PvP still draws plenty of support, WHEN IT WORKS.

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Most people who might come to PvP couldn't care less about that.

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And many of the people who would otherwise be consistently PvPing DO care about it. What's the sense in alienating those of your playerbase who WANT to PvP, but find the feature too bugged to use?

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the only ones who will enjoy a fixed arena are 1-5% of the total game population.

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You're seriously wrong. You are basing your figures on a snapshot, and on your own inferences. You have no way of knowing how many people

- pvp a lot of the time
- pvp some of the time
- pvp very casually, but still appreciate the presence of pvp in COX
- would pvp a lot, but don't because of bugs
- want to try pvp but are scared off
- want to try pvp but don't know how to start

You're mistakenly assuming a static target market - a fixed percentage of the player base 'who PvP' - and not seeing PvP as what it is, which is an optional FEATURE of the game, and as deserving of attention as any other feature, be it task forces, Dominators, badges, or PvE content.

In short, you have the situation back to front. It's not that the PvPers are a small percentage of the population and so PvP doesn't warrant attention - it's about maintaining a feature that was introduced.

Don't try to divide up the player base into 'pvpers' and 'non-pvpers'. That's as arbitrary as dividing them into tankers and non-tankers, or base-builders and non-base-builders, or badge-positive and badge-indifferent. See the PvP features as FEATURES, which may or may not be used by players, and work from there. That gives a much clearer picture of what's happening and why.

Cryptic INSTIGATED PvP features in this game, and because of that, they have a responsibility to maintain them. It's not throwing good money after bad, it's patching up what was broken when you put it in.

Just look at RV, for heaven's sake. A lot about RV is magnificent, but consider how it actually plays out - you do the best by NOT winning, and putting off victory, until you have 1000 points! (And the temp power is mediocre, and it has only one use!) Where's the incentive to actually win? What's the point of introducing a PvP zone where the basic concept is so wonky that people don't play to win there?

Look at bases! Why are the rooms so big and airy? Because bases were designed primarily as a player-built PvP map. The Items of Power only existed to give people something to PvP over. And base raids are STILL borked.

Oh, and every time you get a salvage drop, think of PvP, because half the salvage recipes are for PvP items. Turrets, defences, widgets to rebuild broken stuff, defence screens. Now tell me that PvP is irrelevant.

It's all very well for Lighthouse to point out that this was developed as a PvE game, but you know, it wasn't US who put the PvP features in, it was the Devs, and since they opted to do that, we're well within our rights to ask them to make those features work.

Frankly, it doesn't matter how many people you or I might think PvP in this game. That's not important. What's important is that the Devs take care of what they introduced.

'Let's put chilli on the menu!'
'This chilli is way too hot.'
'Look, only a few people are eating our chilli.'
'Hey, manager, could you fix this chilli?'
'No, we have to prioritise all our other dishes. Only a few of you are eating the chilli.'
'But the chilli is really hot.'
'Sorry, this wasn't a chilli restaurant when it opened.'
'But I like chilli. Could you just make it a little less hot?'
'Hey, are the managers catering to those obnoxious chilli eaters again?'
'I hear they nerfed the pizza because of the chilli. I hate chilli eaters. I ate chilli once and it was horrible.'

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At 18:15 PST time Sunday there were 36 heroes listed in PvP zones and 1364 total Heroes listed in game. Thats 2.6% of the population.

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It's very common for people to /hide and avoid being listed when they're PvPing. Stalkers, for example, will often do that, so that you can't tell there's a stalker in the zone.

I've been in RV on several occasions when the actual population of the zone, based on who I could see running around and fighting, was some 300% of the listed population. Bear that in mind.

Add to that the number of people who PvP, but just didn't happen to be in a PvP zone or an Arena match at the time. You can't rate the popularity of taskforces, for example, by who happens to be on one at the time of your survey. But a bug in a taskforce affects anyone who might go on it.

PvP has been SERIOUSLY invested in over the last 3 issues, and fixing what's broke isn't 'throwing good money after bad', it's simply finishing what you started.

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Random blasting of people over and over again means the PvP is pointless.

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Yes, yes, and yes.

Here's a little idea, based on what we got up to in CoV Beta:

1. Use the Base Editor to make some well-designed base maps. Small, Medium and Large. Put some turrets in. And some other defences, like repulsors, force fields and so on.

2. Introduce those base maps as arena maps.

3. Let people do base raids in the Arena, using only those pre-set arena maps.

This immediately gives you:

- PvP with an objective

- A way for people to get base raid practice without having to schedule anything with another SG

- Hands-on experience of what the different base features (e.g. turrets) do, so you know what to put in your OWN base

- Something to make people excited about base maps THEY could create

- A different, partly destructible environment for PvP (turrets etc. can be destroyed)

- A way for people with no SG, or only a small SG, to PvP in a base environment

- Lots of raw data to mine, to help balance turrets etc. properly

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But to say the [censored] talking should just be accepted as part and parcel of PvP is ridiculous.

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You miss my point, I think. I'm not saying accept it, I'm saying don't let it put you off. If you PvP, you will encounter trash talk.

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No offense to the PvPers, but imo the devs have already invested way too much time in what is at best a minority interest.

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And until the bugs are fixed and the issues addressed, they won't have invested enough.

Please get a better picture of what's being asked for here. Are people clamouring for more PvP features? No. More PvP zones? No.

What they are asking for is for the PvP we already have to WORK DECENTLY, and for the Dev team to give PvP some more attention and support in terms of events, such as by hosting tournaments and the like.

It's not unreasonable to ask for things to work the way they're supposed to in the first place. That's not demanding more than your fair share. It's simply asking for the share that you have to be fixed.

Just to pull one tiny point out of the hat: the 'rolling tournaments' introduced in Issue FOUR don't work. (Issue FOUR! Remember that?) You also can't bet on the outcome of an Arena fight, which is something that NON PVP people could happily do (such as in Pocket D!) Both of these things were supposed to be in there. They aren't.

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As a PvE:er who is not *ahem* very fond of PvP, (I found this thread by following the Dev Digest ) I'd like to say that the powersets have absolutely nothing to do with people's reluctance to PvP, but everything to do with smack talk, pwning and elitism.

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With respect, that's a different issue. If people who PvE are put off trying PvP, that's one thing. But the power imbalances are putting active PvPers off PvPing, and that's what we're most concerned with here.

As for the smack talk: it goes hand in hand with PvP as a rule. It's easy enough to ignore it or just smack right back, IME.

Very /signed indeed. It's depressing that bugs from Issue 4 are still present.

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So, as you all know, City of Heroes was developed as a PvE game. As such, PvE changes affect everyone that plays CoH, unlike PvP which only comes to affect those who chose to engage in it.

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Let me give you an analogy:

Buffs to the Dominator AT only affect that small section of the player base that choose to play a Dom.

But that section is small BECAUSE Doms need buffing - they're a very troubled AT. If the Devs never fixed Doms because only a few people played them, then they'd stay broken indefinitely.

Plenty of people I know avoid PvP simply BECAUSE it's not properly balanced. There are issues that need attention, plain and simple. Consider the vicious circle at work here - PvP isn't given attention, fewer people PvP, the Devs see PvP as a minority taste, so PvP isn't given attention.

Personally, I feel that if something is out of balance, then it should be fixed for its own sake, not just because a crew of hardcore PvPers would like it seen to. Even if a feature of the game doesn't affect everyone, it still deserves to be addressed. The more confidence people have that the developers care about that feature, the more they will use it. It's about morale as much as anything.

Other forums, such as the Defender boards, have managed to assemble a list of Current Issues for the Devs to look at. Maybe we need a Current Issues thread for PvP in CoX.

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"You can use this power to create a solidified hologram of a Redcap Rascal. It will follow you around wherever you go. Great for parties!"

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Then he needs an H on his forehead!

(sorry, nerd reference)

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Personal items that are truly personalized, in a way that identifies to whom it belongs as well as tying into the character in a personal way.

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To build on earlier suggestions, how about:

Level 10: Unlocks 'Protector of Innocents' wall certificate, and Nameplate personal item (a Tech or Arcane style panel with your character name on it that you can place anywhere).

Level 20: Unlocks 'Keeper of Peace' wall certificate and Portrait personal item (head-and-shoulders image grabbed from your ID in Tech or Arcane frame, possibly with a choice of backgrounds).

Level 30: Unlocks 'Defender of Truth' wall certificate and Full Length Portrait special item (as above, only full-sized; grab it from the Costume selection screen)

Level 40: Unlocks 'Justice Incarnate' wall certificate and Statue special item (3D image of your character in stone or metal, possibly with a choice of poses).

Level 50: Unlocks 'Hero of the City' wall certificate and Image special item (larger than life transparent version of character, either Tech hologram or Arcane spectral projection)

Note - Villains substitute Wanted posters for certificates!

But if you could place these just by being part of a SG, then what's to stop a SG inviting you to join, you leaving a portrait with them, and then you leaving? Nothing at all - and thus we have a lovely possibility for trading pictures. I expect plenty of people would like a Feral Kat portrait in their base, wouldn't they, Manticore?

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There is already an option to do this (sort of), with the leader teammate permission. Unfortunately, this feature has been broken for months.

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Accent heavily on the 'sort of'. What's needed is a way for anyone in the game to just walk on in on their own initiative, if that's what the base owners want.

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I LOVE the idea of a portrait of my character as a decorative base item.

Statues of the high-ranked or high-level members is another great idea.

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Okay. Let's look at what makes a 'personal item' truly personal, and how it integrates with the rest of the base design/editing process.

- Personal items have to be items that only one person CAN place. Currently, crafted items can be placed by anyone who happens to have enough Salvage. They aren't personal at all; quite the reverse, in fact. So, we need the kind of item that Captain Blammo or Goldfinch Girl can look at and say 'That's there because of me. Nobody else could have put that in the base.'

- A personal item has to tie into the character somehow. There are multiple ways of doing this; it's just a question of which are more technically feasible.

- - Character portraits could be done by grabbing the graphic off the character's Hero ID, putting it in a frame (Tech or Arcane style, naturally) and bingo, you have a new wall mounted item.

- - Text plaques could be placed and written on by individual players, thus contributing to the overall base flavour. See my other posts, ad nauseam...

- - Statues of your character, as mentioned before, are very personal.

- - If statues are too old-fashioned, then what about a high-tech hologram of your character?

- - Name plates, which grab your character's name and put it on a decal, could potentially work. These could be used to designate rooms, or chairs (this big chair is for General Nastydeath!) or lockers, or office cubicles...

- - Certain badges could unlock base items. These wouldn't necessarily be totally unique to the player, but they would be personalised. For example, how about certificates, presented when you get your 10-level badge, getting more elaborate each time? What if hitting 50 got you a big wall-mounted fancy certificate, which you could click on and bring up a graphic: 'PRESENTED TO CAPTAIN TUNAFISH ON HIS RECEIPT OF "HERO OF THE CITY" MEDAL, WITH THE THANKS OF A GRATEFUL CITY' and a big wiggly Statesman signature underneath? That's the kind of thing that a SG full of heroes might want to display in the entry room.

- - In fact, certificates could be the new badges! What if completing a Task Force granted the leader a certificate, signed and sealed by the appropriate signature hero, for you to frame and put on your base wall? What if you could unlock special certificates by taking down giant monsters or earning accolades?

I'm going to go off on another burble about text plaques (and other player inputted text items such as scrolls, video screens and open books), so please bear with me, there IS a point to it.

People don't value the costume creator just because it makes costumes, they value it because they can use it to realise concepts. My point is that the TEXT - the name, most importantly of all - is just as crucial to 'concept' as the look is.

Let me give you some examples of people I've teamed with or met, or just heard of.

- Crazy Neighbor. He had grey comb-over hair and was a Robot mastermind. His bio explained how he was building these machines in his basement because of those pesky kids.

- Battle Bovine. He was horned like a cow, and apparently descended from Talos.

- Mechannie (a NPC). As her info explained, she was a robot cowgirl.

Now, consider how much of these concepts would have gotten across if there had been no text at all - if Crazy Neighbor had just been a dude with grey hair and robots, if Battle Bovine had just been a dude with horns, if Mechannie had just been a robot with a hat.

You need text as well as image. Text tells you what the image is meant to BE.

To translate this to bases for a moment:

Let's say I play a villain based on the concept of soul thievery. I have a room filled with crystals in which I store the souls of my victims.

If I build a base room and put crystals in it, then it is nothing but a base room with crystals in it.

However, if each crystal has a pedestal next to it with a book on, which visitors can click, and each one opens up a panel of text explaining whose soul is in the crystal, then the CONCEPT immediately comes across.

CoX has allowed us to create concept characters in abundance. The costume creator is a huge part of this, but we couldn't have made the use we have of it without the ability to give names and backgrounds to those characters. Similarly, while a base is still just 'your base' and the objects in it are just mute, indistinguishable objects, there's no real way to make a concept come across. The objects have to speak for themselves; and I think I've shown that if a costume had to speak for itself, it wouldn't carry the concept.

So, we need plaques, scrolls, book pedestals, video screens, terminals... in short, player-provided text!

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There’s no such personal property in the base. We thought (on paper) that the “personal items” would do the trick, but it isn’t really the same thing, is it?

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No, and I guess it's clear why not - personally crafted items have too much weight attached. Because they are tied in directly to critical issues like power, control, salvage expenditure and (of course) Prestige spending, any player who tried to place one on their own initiative would be throwing the whole plan out of whack. Besides, there's nothing personally distinctive about a crafted item.

Now, what if a 'personal item' was a portrait of the character, crafted using a minimal amount of Salvage, and cost 50 Prestige? Or possibly a badge-unlocked sculpture or something equally frivolous? Or even a statue of oneself? If Generic SG Member Man gets to add something to the base that doesn't take anything away from it (as crafted items do now) then that's a genuinely personal contribution.

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Interesting point! Some people can see your base, but it’s so much easier for people to see your costume.

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Thanks.

Please give us the wherewithal to make our bases open to all comers, States. Every base that someone can just happen across is a surprise for them, and potentially fun for us, too.

Today, I built a nuclear reactor. I took a 3x3 Oversight Center, sunk the flooring in the centre and raised it elsewhere, put Tech Pillars around it, put four Quantum Stabilisers in the middle, added four Tech Lights in a deep recess above, turned all the lighting down to nearly zero but for a bit of blue 'Cherenkov Effect', then added the combo power/control station near the doorway as the control terminal for the whole thing. It looked superb, and I was proud of it. I would love for someone to just stumble across it and go 'Wow, that's cool, I didn't think of making one of those!'

Here's another point about adding text plaques so we can put bits of text in our bases: when people see us from afar, they can read our bios, our titles, our badges and our names. That identity speaks for us without us having to do anything. Being able to contextualise our costumes gives those costume pieces meaning. (For example, if I cover myself in the Plant costume options but have blue skin and call myself Marine Maiden, then that 'plant' texture is instantly understood as seaweed, rather than ivy or some such, and people understand the effect.) Bases have no equivalent. Someone wandering through my base can't see how I think of it, or why the layout is the way it is, or what the different bits are supposed to be. Give us the ability to add text, and we add context. That enriches the whole base-building process massively.

So, open-to-all bases and text input are the two things I think we need most, and I'm hoping they wouldn't be too hard to add.

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We are NOT working on a Greek mythology game. Or an ancient history game. Just want to kill that rumour!

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Hehe, he's had to post this so many times, well at least 3 I think.

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That's because every time he cuts its head off, it grows two new ones...

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I don't know what a good solution to these is. :/

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1. Enable 'open to all' bases. The more people can wander through, the more fun they become. You never know who you'll meet, and the playerbase effectively gets to expand the game world.

2. Introduce plaques with player-provided text. Seriously. This is of MAJOR importance. (Imagine if you couldn't write a bio for your character!) The player-provided text allows us to personalise the whole base in a way regular items don't, because the text is unique to us and to our SG. I can even envision people setting up treasure hunts, dungeon runs and 'mazes of doom' with the help of such items. Most importantly, if a player who isn't the base architect wants something put on a plaque, they can get it inscribed word for word, and thus add something of themselves and their individuality to the base, which they can't do now.

I want to be able to put a plaque down that says 'General Blue hauled this crystal out of Oranbega himself as a trophy, following the Cold Front expedition to defeat the Envoy of Shadows' or 'This voltaic station has been known to cause adverse reactions in Technology-based characters. STAND WELL BACK!' You know, flavour text.

And I honestly can't imagine it would be that hard to do. I may not be a coder, but really, an object that you click on to read, or click on to input text in base edit mode?

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Get the point?

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Boo, I thought you were heading towards Feudalism.

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You should see us War Gods in our dress uniforms. Talk about SNAPPY!

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Cold Front Dress Blues are pretty neat, too.

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Supergroups could then grant access rights (but not container access) to supergroup members, coalition memebers or all.

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Similarly, we could allow anyone who wanted to to come in, but not to use the teleporters. Which would deal with the obvious problem of an open player base becoming Shortcut Central.

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I have no idea how they'd implement a permissions box.

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The irony is that there already is one. It's on the SG window. You can choose who to allow into your base. There is currently no 'Everyone' option.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder why.