Laylyn

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Well, so, after many twists and turns, we come full circle.

Which is to say it seems we all agree.

The game needs both, and it sounds like everyone agreed on that from the beginning, we just didn't like the sources and sometimes we didn't like the tone.

The next question is still the big one, which is how to improve the crossover and make what are (in my mind, anyway) 2 different games come closer to being one game we can all enjoy in its full length and breadth. Well, not "all," that's overstating. There are 10% on either side of the PvE / PvP issue that will never enjoy the other. But we need to start playing to the 80% in the middle.

[/ QUOTE ]

Since we're coming on page 50, I wanted to recap this. I think Screaming mimi summerized everything here the best so far. so, I'll quote mimi again... =)

If no one has read the ideas for PVP, PVE and RP improvements to the Arena, you might want to take a look. The community came up with some win, win, win ideas for everyone.

There is a lot of number debate. However, all of the venom from that is long gone and those who want to go through it can get a clear picture of what most people's ideas are and where they get their ideas from.

Overall, people have made this thread overwhelmingly positive. It is almost shockingly so.

We're still trying to reach more clairty on some issues, many of you would see as bean counter. However, there are a lot of good ideas.

Many thanks to everyone who kept the thread positive so far. =) Please keep presenting what you would think would be positive to add to pvp, since as mimi said, we're focusing on the 80% in the middle. =)

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First off, this post is *NOT* a precursor of any particular impending change. The topic is strictly informative and for discussion.

I'd like to know about breakpoints for To Hit and Defense and how you, the players, think it should work. I'm not talking about mechanics -- I'm talking about the expectations you have in a fight.

1) You have the default To Hit value (ie no buffs), your target has no Defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?
2) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has no defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?
3) You have the default To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?
4) You have the maximum possible To Hit value, and your target has the maximum possible defense value. How often do you WANT to hit him? Conversely, as the defender, how often do you expect to be missed?

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1) No bonuses to hit or defense: Hit defender 75% of the time

2) Max to hit vs no defense: Hit defender 95% of the time.

3) No to hit vs max defense: Hit defender 5% of the time.

4) Max to hit vs Max defense: Hit defender 25% of the time.

At the extremes, it should be possible to reliably hit, otherwise battles could go on forever.

But that chance must be below 50%, or Defense means nothing at those levels (and conversely, it would take a huge amount of defense to get below the to hit cap).

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Agreed with all. Especially number 4 since it probably means the defender has hit their level 38th defense power. Does anyone really want to hit a level 38 defense power to be hit 50% of the time? =/ 25% with caps just seems more sane IMHO. =/ If it were any worse it would be anti immersive for the defense based set, they are taking full damage after all...

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I think bases are/were a step toward that Pandora's Box.

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I agree. I'm also willing to roll the dice to give players more control over what they'd like to see...

Open the box... =)

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Too many potential problems.

Mods work for FPS's and games like NN because the world of that mod exists only on that single, small server. The benefits, no matter how hard or easy to obtain, don't go elsewhere. (Well, not easily).

On an MMO, that can quickly cause trouble with overall game balance or population density. Do you allow player-created content to mix in the mainstream? How do you control "Monty Hall" type maps, or maps built explicitly for farming or power-leveling? If you restrict player-created content to a sandbox, how do you get characters there? Who runs/supports those servers (and the related back-end needs)?

Where I think player-content might work is Arena maps. That IS a true sandbox with already established rules about how it works. That would basically bring in from most FPS games the custom map feature. Now, controlling the quantity, quality and availability could get interesting, but should be someone easy to solve.

-- War

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I agree arena maps. On of the other posters sent me this idea earlier on email http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...c=#Post8101472


Alot of other people talk about the unlocked potential of Arena. It's something people could use for PVP, PVE and RP. Thus a win, win, win for more than just our community.

It's be cool if it's plausible. Screw that, it would rock... =)

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I think bases are/were a step toward that Pandora's Box.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree. I'm also willing to roll the dice to give players more control over what they'd like to see...

Open the box... =)

[ QUOTE ]
Well, so, after many twists and turns, we come full circle.

Which is to say it seems we all agree.

The game needs both, and it sounds like everyone agreed on that from the beginning, we just didn't like the sources and sometimes we didn't like the tone.

The next question is still the big one, which is how to improve the crossover and make what are (in my mind, anyway) 2 different games come closer to being one game we can all enjoy in its full length and breadth. Well, not "all," that's overstating. There are 10% on either side of the PvE / PvP issue that will never enjoy the other. But we need to start playing to the 80% in the middle.

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Word.

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Umm, no the debate is not that at all. Those who think COX should only to go PVE don't have a leg to stand on (and are a minority in all the threads I've seen, so i don't understand why you or anyone else is taking them so seriously) as any game that doesn't have both PVE and PVP is dead in the water in the current market. I can't think of one game that doesn't have both other than Fury. And as that is not really out yet, it remains to be seen how well it does.

The one thing that got me saying "huh", was the idea that a game could pull out pve and pvp alone could make the mmo survive. Of which I KNOW there is no data supporting that idea, as there is no SUCCESSFUL game that is only pvp. . . so far.

I would suggest you try to get the facts from the coh developers or ncsoft themselves, as they know their game best and have the REAL data, as to opposed to a third party. But I don't know how much information NCSOFT or Cryptic would be willing to give.

If you haven't guessed, I could care less about WoW or any other game on the market (okay maybe Fury, if it turns out to be good ) when discussing pvp versus pve issues FOR THIS GAME (and technically I don't think its a versus. I think anyone who prescribes to that versus notion is narrow minded--the pve and pvp sides cannot survive without the other) in this game. Nor do I consider FPS or RTS relevant to the discussion, FOR THIS GAME.

Bottom line is one cannot survive without the other. Shouldn't take posting stats to show that. I think its pretty obvious if one just like at the current market today and the games coming out. And even that I don't think is necessary, as the devs have already stated that pvp in this game is here to stay. Anyone who wishes for it to be removed, is [censored] outta luck.

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Thanks for the clairity. =) I misread you. =)

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also I want to point out I would be wary of anything posted by MMOrgchart.

As has been stated several times in this thread.

EDIT: Also I see MMOs and RTF and FPS as all different genres. You can't really lump all those statistics together because the reasons (and audience of) one plays an MMO pvp game is different than that of an FPS. I myself HATE FPS and RTFs with a passion. MMO pvp is what actually attracted me.

Also these links to statistics do nothing to show that the idea that "most find pvp as having more replability" as nothing more than opinion.

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I'll respect you don't like MMOrgchart. Do you have an alternate site that you do respect the research of?

So far the only refute to any of these arguements is questioning the material. There has been no posted counter material as of the past 44 pages, unless someone edits it in after this moment.

Those of us that choose to believe the posted information and that choose to believe what a dev has said on is thread about pvp increasing the surviablity of a game have presented our proofs.

We're still waiting for a counter proof other than how someone feels. We'd rather go with discourse and reason.

BTW the only statistical data as of June 2006 I have found on a PVE only MMORPG that has numbers over 100k is Toontown online by Disney, which is meant for pre teens. All the rest I have found quickly drop to populations of around 10,000 to 30,000 within two years or so. If COX went PVE only, as many have demanded, and the same trend held true, that would mean a net loss of 110,000 to 130,000 players from the numbers we have in COX, more than 4 out of 5. That data does come from the charts at MMOrgchart, which I will let you dispute.

Where would you suggest we get our facts from? What do you have as a counter?

The debate is still what would happen if COX were to go PVE only. The debate has never been about trying to go after the PVErs in any way, shape, or form. Nor has it been about forcing them to PVP if they don't want to.

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T_L would you mind posting the link to those statics again?

I can't seem to find them.

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I found what you were looking for by quoting you on page 27, it's now on 44. You need some caffine. =) Starbucks always does me wonders. =)

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Ok, since you want facts...here are some for ya.


1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.

3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Can you site the source of these 'facts'?

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Yes I can, and without the single quotes around the word facts as well.

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1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

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First of, take a look at this chart:

Distribution by MMO

Then consider that all of the Lineage 1 and 2 servers are open PvP and almost half of the WoW servers are.

WoW servers

The actual numbers are 106 (PvP & RPPvP) versus 115 (Normal & RP) however, its interesting to note that the PvP category has twice as many servers that have high populations as non-PvP servers (33 versus 16). The total numbers still work out to about 50 percent, since the non-PvP servers have 19 more medium (64 to 45) population servers. The most interesting statistic I found when doing some digging was that the server type with the highest percentage of high population servers was RPPvP, with 4 of the 6 servers labeled this way with high populations.

For more info on WoW break downs you can look at this chart:

WoW server population and type

Now, the stats on the MMOG Chart graph are from June 06 and since then WoW has grown quite a bit larger, but purely based on those stats we can see that L1, L2, and WoW PvP accounts for 48.85% alone. Add in UO (1.1%) DAOC (1.0%) and EVE (1.0%) and you get to 51.95%.


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2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.


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This one is even easier since all WoW servers allow PvP and they are such a large portion of the market. I don't _think_ there are any MMO's with a percentage share greater than 1% that don't allow PvP.

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3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Based on this data:
Chart here

We can see that there is something less than 14 million MMO players. Its a little harder to garner hard statistics on the number of FPS and RTS gamers online, since they aren't all connecting to same company run servers. However, we know that there are many many people running servers, in fact there is an entire business around building and hosting servers for gaming clans.
Google Search

And we know that significant portions of people who buy games like BF2 (9 million copies sold) bought it exclusively for multiplayer. All told about 14% of all games sold are FPS games and another 12% or so are RTS.

Sales by genre 2005

The data above doesn't separate other "strategy" type games *30.8%) from RTS's so the 12% number is estimated. Given that those number represent more people in one year than have ever played an MMO its pretty obvious where the market is. If you include console numbers in the mix its even more skewed because Xbox Live is heavily FPS (mostly Halo) dominated. All in all MMO's are actually a small part of the gaming, even purely PC gaming, numbers. In fact, in many gaming companies the idea of MMO's was losing favor until Blizzard hit it big with WoW.

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Well done, but be wary of anything from mmogchart. And that last line is classic. No matter what we think of WoW, Blizzard did in fact save MMOs from going the way of the dodo bird, or at least made it look MUCH better for a game publisher to try and develop an MMO.

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For DarqAura =)

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Edit:
I'm also really enjoying the discussion between Thor and Arcana in this thread. Good stuff!

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Wha'? No love for the rest o' us? Just 'cuz we're not posh game terro... uh, theorists? Bugrit!



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Nah, we love everyone here. =) Lots of positives coming out of this thread, from more than one community. =)

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Laylyn of HAUNT:
Please read my response on page ten. Also, please realize the orginal post was aimed at the pvp-needs-to-be-removed from-this-game crowd. There are a couple of others you missed on the past two pages.

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Whisky Tango Foxtrot?

Try going back and reading what I said without assuming I am attacking you....

...Poo Flingers...

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I wasn't attacking either. On a side note, I think you and Jack would make a perfect couple...

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Yeah, maybe we would. Neither one of us cuts up the quotes of another person to edit it so that it creates the appearance of making random insults.

Unlike yourself, I don't make up facts but refuse to give links to the data to back up my claims. I don't take my personal game experience and claim it is how everyone else experiences the game.

I give my opinion, I say what it is based on and claim only to represent myself and the people I know who have told me they feel the same.

You are very correct. Jack and I are two of a kind, we're not liars.

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Considering I posted information twice on the first page of this thread, yes, you are a liar and and practicer of disinformation.

For those that aren't familiar with the symptoms it's here:

http://www.whale.to/b/sweeney.html

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While I have great respect for your mathematical ability I doubt you've been looking at game theory as long as I have. I can promise you this, if you can figure out an effective method of creating (much less effectively testing) 1v1 balance in an MMO setting then it will be worth much more than yearly salary unless you're already in the Donald Trump salary range

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My first "official" class in games theory was in 1979, but I was pretty young at the time. I've been studying it as an actual mathematical discipline off and on for approximately twenty-two years. I know people who've studied it longer, but they're all mathematics or economics professors.

Not at the Donald salary range yet, though. But if I thought someone would pay me Donald money for a PvP combat system, no matter what its properties had to be, I'd quit my job tomorrow to write it.

But whatever its worth to publishers, game designers don't generally make that kind of money. Castle could hit his coworkers with lightning and actually *give* them superpowers, and I doubt it would take him higher than the high five figures. Lead programmers can make more, but lead programmers don't normally get rich unless the game you end up writing happens to have "Quake" in the name.

Honestly, if Cryptic asked me to fix the game mechanics, I'd probably do it for free because the improvement in the game I'm playing would be worth more to me than what they can afford to pay anyway. I'd take a badge, though.


If you are a game theorist, then here's the principles surrounding effective 1v1 PvP balance. You'd want to exploit three separate player decisions. First, you'd want to ensure that the act of making a build decision has population-based negative feedback. Each person that chooses to build in a particular way reduces the value of that build. That's possible: ensure that every build contains its own specific weakness (trivial examples, Focused Fighting offers a tohit buff: Unyielding buffs character with unresistable smashing damage). This means even if a particular build is "better" than all the others, that fact is only true so long as not too many other players take it. By definition, the strongest builds are not the most popular, they are the least popular, and that's impossible to circumvent.

Second, design proportional stacking rules, so that no game attributes exponentially increase, and so incremental improvements always have constant incremental value. This prevents single-point balancing from being upset by odd combinations of things, and allows for linear balancing metrics. This takes away the incentive to overstack, or accumulate lots of one thing, and allows players to make diversity decisions on an equal footing with stacked decisions.

Third, create a requirement to commit to combat to achieve maximum effectiveness, and force the decision to commit to occur prior to gaining complete information about the combatants. This eliminates the ability to arbitrarily decide to engage in only fights where you have mathematically demonstrable advantages. This closes the exploitable hole in the first principle above: players have to decide to fight with imperfect information, which means they cannot precalculate overpowering advantages and decide to fight on that basis.


Under such circumstances, even if the raw numbers are not precisely mathematically balanced, the balancing happens in the decision trees of the players: the game forces players to diversify their builds, because no build is good if too many people have it, and it forces players to work harder to defeat anyone, because if everyone is different, few people will actually have each other's precise weaknesses, and most of all they will have to decide to fight before they are 100% certain what the mathematics of the situation are to make the precisely informed decision.

There are ways to force players to commit to battle. One example (and I'm not saying its a good one to implement in CoH, its just offered as proof of concept): reduce blaster base damage, then grant them a special click power that boosts damage to equal or higher levels - but roots. Mobility equals low damage, lack of mobility equals higher damage. If blasters want to stay mobile, they can attack other squishies, but they won't have the same overwhelming damage against them. If they want to attack hard targets like scrappers and tankers, they will need more damage to overcome their defenses, but they can only get it if they lose their mobility and simultaneously make themselves vulnerable to melee attacks. Its probably too radical an idea for this game, but it would work in a from-scratch game engine.

There are lots of untapped ideas for balancing capabilities in 1v1 combat, and all of them have the additional property that they make teamed PvP combat more interesting also: they are not specifically 1v1-targeted adjustments.

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If you can do it without upsetting the player base, you fix the pvp balance issues in this game and I'll give you better than a badge. I'll give you a medal.

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Laylyn of HAUNT:
Please read my response on page ten. Also, please realize the orginal post was aimed at the pvp-needs-to-be-removed from-this-game crowd. There are a couple of others you missed on the past two pages.

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Whisky Tango Foxtrot?

Try going back and reading what I said without assuming I am attacking you....

...Poo Flingers...

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I wasn't attacking either. On a side note, I think you and Jack would make a perfect couple...

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...On March 7, 2007, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft had reached a new milestone, with 8.5 million players worldwide there are more than 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million players in Europe, and 3.5 million players in China.


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Um... I'm not really in on this part of the argument, but I think you just made a point for the other side. You're saying that of 8.5 million players, only 3.5 are in North America and Europe.....

Don't get me wrong, that's still a nice market share of US subscribers, but by their own admission there are people who have accounts with both WOW and CoX (and others). Being in one stat doesn't exclude someone from being counted in another.

Either way, stick with the 2 Million number. You will probably still make the point you were trying to, but it won't look so much like hyperbole.

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One of the drawbacks of using real information is the fact that sometimes the facts don't support your case as much as you'd like. In this case, I was surprised by the fact that the number of Chinese accounts had actually exceeded the number of American and European. I wasn't intentionally spinning the numbers, they just turned out to be different from what I expected, and I think my earlier post on reflected this in tone if not content.

Having said all of that, I only have one contact who plays WoW on the Asian servers and he has told me that the mix of PvP and PvE servers is roughly equal, but I'd like confirmation of that. Anyone who has data, especially someone patient enough to actually count the servers, would be in my good karma book for a good long while.

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It might not matter Thor. You do realize even on the PVE and RP servers, they can still declare, go hot and pvp. The primary difference being the grind experience from levels 20-70 due to auto flagging.

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True, much of the organized PvP occurring today is actually in the Battlegrounds as is accessible by anyone on any server and allows automated cross server matches. That is something we here in CoX can only drool about....

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Word, that would be awesome. =)

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The SWG points made here seem a bit funny to me. Most of the people I've heard complain about SWG it was the lag and the constant combat mechanics changes that irritated them, rather than anything specificly tied to PvP or PvE.

I left because I couldn't even be in a zone by myself without rubber banding, and I had the recommended system at the time.

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You might get it a kick on this then. It was video that caught a guy who got banned for exploiting that factor by stream overload. For your rubberbanding memories, enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NSIjfDd4_Q

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...On March 7, 2007, Blizzard announced that the subscriber base for World of Warcraft had reached a new milestone, with 8.5 million players worldwide there are more than 2 million players in North America, 1.5 million players in Europe, and 3.5 million players in China.


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Um... I'm not really in on this part of the argument, but I think you just made a point for the other side. You're saying that of 8.5 million players, only 3.5 are in North America and Europe.....

Don't get me wrong, that's still a nice market share of US subscribers, but by their own admission there are people who have accounts with both WOW and CoX (and others). Being in one stat doesn't exclude someone from being counted in another.

Either way, stick with the 2 Million number. You will probably still make the point you were trying to, but it won't look so much like hyperbole.

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One of the drawbacks of using real information is the fact that sometimes the facts don't support your case as much as you'd like. In this case, I was surprised by the fact that the number of Chinese accounts had actually exceeded the number of American and European. I wasn't intentionally spinning the numbers, they just turned out to be different from what I expected, and I think my earlier post on reflected this in tone if not content.

Having said all of that, I only have one contact who plays WoW on the Asian servers and he has told me that the mix of PvP and PvE servers is roughly equal, but I'd like confirmation of that. Anyone who has data, especially someone patient enough to actually count the servers, would be in my good karma book for a good long while.

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It might not matter Thor. You do realize even on the PVE and RP servers, they can still declare, go hot and pvp. The primary difference being the grind experience from levels 20-70 due to auto flagging.

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The following is My Opinion Only. Your Mileage May Vary.

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Please read my response on page ten. Also, please realize the orginal post was aimed at the pvp-needs-to-be-removed from-this-game crowd. There are a couple of others you missed on the past two pages.

Also, I see the Jedi thing you mentioned as not a PVP thing. In the worst cases, it was a different animal that I've only seen again with the worst cases of WOW purple fever. It destroyed a lot of stuff in all three communities and affected all three communities.

Otherwise, I'll stay out of the SWG thing. Everyone from that time has a different Point of view, with the one noted common thread, that they are all very, very angry about their experience...

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Ok, since you want facts...here are some for ya.


1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.

3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Can you site the source of these 'facts'?

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Yes I can, and without the single quotes around the word facts as well.

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1. Well over half of all MMO players worldwide are playing on a server with open non-consensual PvP.

[/ QUOTE ]

First of, take a look at this chart:

Distribution by MMO

Then consider that all of the Lineage 1 and 2 servers are open PvP and almost half of the WoW servers are.

WoW servers

The actual numbers are 106 (PvP & RPPvP) versus 115 (Normal & RP) however, its interesting to note that the PvP category has twice as many servers that have high populations as non-PvP servers (33 versus 16). The total numbers still work out to about 50 percent, since the non-PvP servers have 19 more medium (64 to 45) population servers. The most interesting statistic I found when doing some digging was that the server type with the highest percentage of high population servers was RPPvP, with 4 of the 6 servers labeled this way with high populations.

For more info on WoW break downs you can look at this chart:

WoW server population and type

Now, the stats on the MMOG Chart graph are from June 06 and since then WoW has grown quite a bit larger, but purely based on those stats we can see that L1, L2, and WoW PvP accounts for 48.85% alone. Add in UO (1.1%) DAOC (1.0%) and EVE (1.0%) and you get to 51.95%.


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2. Well over 90% of all MMO players are playing a game that allows PvP.


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This one is even easier since all WoW servers allow PvP and they are such a large portion of the market. I don't _think_ there are any MMO's with a percentage share greater than 1% that don't allow PvP.

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3. There are more players playing pure PvP games (including FPS and RTS games) than all MMO's combined.

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Based on this data:
Chart here

We can see that there is something less than 14 million MMO players. Its a little harder to garner hard statistics on the number of FPS and RTS gamers online, since they aren't all connecting to same company run servers. However, we know that there are many many people running servers, in fact there is an entire business around building and hosting servers for gaming clans.
Google Search

And we know that significant portions of people who buy games like BF2 (9 million copies sold) bought it exclusively for multiplayer. All told about 14% of all games sold are FPS games and another 12% or so are RTS.

Sales by genre 2005

The data above doesn't separate other "strategy" type games *30.8%) from RTS's so the 12% number is estimated. Given that those number represent more people in one year than have ever played an MMO its pretty obvious where the market is. If you include console numbers in the mix its even more skewed because Xbox Live is heavily FPS (mostly Halo) dominated. All in all MMO's are actually a small part of the gaming, even purely PC gaming, numbers. In fact, in many gaming companies the idea of MMO's was losing favor until Blizzard hit it big with WoW.

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Thank you very much for the back up Thor. You brought up numbers and proofs I was actually trying to avoid.

Being responsible for starting something that leads to a CU or NGE style update to this game is something that scares the crap out of me. I'm really just aiming for reasonable balancing and for the anti-pvp-it-must-be-removed-from-the-game crowd to back off some... =/

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I'm not disputing that PvP is popular. Some people like it, and that's great. I'd also dare say that some like PvE as well. I'm not suggesting that a game shouldn't feature PvP. I'm protesting the OPs opinion that PvP shouldn't be optional if a game wants to be successful. I disagree strongly with the notion that PvE players are somehow more fickle than PvP players. Why is it so wrong to have both? Why alienate half the potential playerbase?

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I'm actually very supportive of two other groups out there, PVErs and RPers. I even posted so on page ten. Please understand most pvpers are attacked daily on their own forums by people that want PVP completely removed from the game.

The only MMORPG game that I can find hard numbers for that is PVE only that has more than 100k players is Disney's toontown for kids, which is literally meant for pre teens and is part of the Disney advertising machine.

Most PVE only games have a sharp beginning followed by a hard fall, normally settling to be between 10,000 - 30,000 players. If that exact thing were to happen to COX, that would mean that more the listed base of 160,000 players (June 2006) would lose 130,000 - 150,000 players.

The smallest loss under that scenerio would be about 4 out of 5 players. That doesn't leave a lot of people to PVE with does it?

The arguement is that completely removing PVP would be bad for this game. I was not arguing that PVE should be removed. I was also not arguing that PVP shouldn't be optional.

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Oh Mieux I concur with your point but man am I chomping at the bit for the auctions...it's a whole mini-game where I can analzye, project, bid, overbid, underbid, coax and barter and lose myself for hours...and it lets me get some influence for my alts as an aside.

I have a buddy in Toronto...he's a day trader. Sometimes he gets a tip and can clear an extra $50,000 CDN in an afternoon. Sometimes he loses that $50,000 CDN.

But the most fun he has? When he gets that deal before one of his friends does; when he can zoom in on a hot item and profit.

I'm not "EvilGeko" (or is it Gordon Gekko )esque on the topic...but the Auction house will grab me and hold me long after my last pvp battle will have done so.

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I have to agree, I was a Bria billionare in SWG and played the AH in WOW. I think inventions will be a huge positive to teh game for the simpliest of reasons.

Many people see it as a negative because of purple fever from games such as WOW. However, Inventions are a bind on equip items, not bind on pick up. So you don't have to do long boring things that you don't want to.

I'm actually hoping the new system revitalizes the PVE players. It gives them something to do and a vital purpose if it is done right.

BTW, though this has nothing to do with this poster, I hope everyone that is trying to accuse me of wanting to remove PVE from the game will actually read my responses on pages 10 and 17.

I don't think that the PVE game needs to be removed, I was trying to point out that PVE only MMORPGs don't do well. COX is a pvp optional game. It should remain so. It shouldn't ignore the rest of it's players. Though it shouldn't ignore the pvp community either.

I think the new auctions and inventions are a good way of revitalizing the PVE community. I think the new Hamis should do the same.

I'm hoping the next few publishes continue to improve things for everyone. =)

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I'm simply looking for the existing rules to actually be enforced... which they aren't at this time, as you yourself have pointed out in the past.

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I am all for vigorous enforcement of the in game rules.

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Word. Welcome back Thor. =)

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On the other hand, PvE environments are generally static, and not because they have to be, but because game designers claim they *must* be: that an evolving PvE environment creates all sorts of problems that would upset or unbalance the game. Can't have PvE players alterning the environment, because a constantly shifting backdrop to PvE would wreck PvE.

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I don't really know any developers who believe that. We look at games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, God of War or Shadow of the Colossus and the innovative use of terrain involved there and think "How can we get things such as that into our game?"

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On paper, I think everyone from players to developers thinks the idea of an evolving PvE environment - of which modifiable terrain is a very small part - is a good idea. But *specific* ideas about player actions fundamentally altering the game environment tend to be shot down as either impractical, or too subject to abuse.

In fact, the whole concept of instancing is antithetical to players having control of the environment. And its not just a compromise solution, because very little developer time seems to be put into non-instanced content. We have a bunch of wandering monsters, burning buildings (which don't even have the decency to actually fall down when they explode), and Hamidon (and even Hamidon is pseudo-instanced now). Players cannot save the warwalls, because they really can't *fail* to save the warwalls.

Its not *technologically* impossible to do these things in CoH, but I'll bet its not seen as either practical, sufficiently interesting, manageable, or casual-friendly (can't have the mutant store closed on thursday because insufficient numbers of players stopped the trolls from sacking it, because it will piss off the casual players who play on thursday).


You take a risk in PvP: the risk is that the players will fix it, whatever "it" is, and temporary problems will be seen by the players as something *they* have to fix, because the developers themselves are really not very important except essentially as weapon's dealers. But that risk doesn't seem to be calculated as worth it in PvE environments (at least the ones I've seen) because the PvE environment is either seen as just a stepping stone to PvP (and therefore simple and stable is what everyone actually wants) or its seen as critical to the core playerbase (and therefore too risky to tamper with in unpredictable ways, and players can be very unpredictable).

In PvP you don't complain if the enemy destroys your forward base of operations, because its an article of faith that the purpose of the other side is to make life difficult for you. But in PvE, I don't think I see the same desire to take the risk that what the players were counting on yesterday might not be here tomorrow because of playerbase activity, because the developers do not want to be perceived as the "enemy" that took something way.


But I would love to be proven wrong. No one would be happier than me to see player-influenced environment (not synonymous with terrain: "environment" includes any alteration in physical environment and the NPC critters within it: spawning larger groups when a larger team walks by is an example of a very tiny non-permanent environmental influence) happen in I10, I11, or I12, and have to eat my words.

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I think the base idea creates possiblities for this. That's for PVPers, PVers and RPers. It's Sandbox and yet separate enough that it doesn't upset the people doing a set grinding thing.

In many games, those abilities do exist, but there is a cost. For example, SWG had player cities and houses, but this caused wierd generation issues so that you could be flying through what seemed to be empty unmarketed forest and boom you were in someone's living room. You couldn't see the player created content for more than a few hundred feet at best and sometimes you had to wait 1-2 minutes for it to load, thus the bike example above. There were at least 5-6 exploits people used in pvp that took advantage of that grid system. I'll place a video of one form used in pvp and caught in a video as an example (the exploiter was a player with the handle Neoc): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NSIjfDd4_Q

COX has a completely solid world. If you take this for granted, you'll have no idea how shocking it was for me and my crew, 15 months ago, to see things like Mercy island and look at things over a mile away. It was breathtaking and awe inspiring.

The depth of the common areas in this game are incredible. I'd like to see people be able to enter more of the buildings. I'd love to see more done with the arena and the bases to make it more player sandbox material. But, the areas from the flying ceiling on, are incredible.

Bases, don't involve the common area though. So to a certain extent, the bases are a cure for this on a permanent level, though many would desire more. Like the ability to sit easily from a radial like in wow or swg. Little things, I guess from the view of the player, but understandably big things on the math side the developers are working with.

Also, other instances in the mode, such as alternate dimensions and the moon base also opens up the possiblity of having that include hostile pve and pvp components for those that choose either or both. With luck on of the people on my server will comment on it, he has a lot of good ideas for the arena and such so that the player level of creativity can be increased, without the negatives that you pointed out.

I understand your point of view. So, I hope by pointing this out you might see a positive possiblity you hadn't considered.

There are ideas out their from the players that the devs might consider such as openning the rogue islands and Paragon city up to each other. Most of these ideas included things like the wow pvp realm system that allows the proper realm defenders to attack invaders if they choose, with the invader only able to defend hmself if attacked. The idea might sound wierd, but it could add a whole new element to the game in 3 areas: PVP, PVE and RP, with what we hope would be a minimum of development from the dev team. It might even be a holy grail for the badge hunters, though it would be risky for invaders. Dueling options might delight pvpers, the ability to marry toons might delight RPers, badges and loot based items (invention components) might delight PVErs.

Bignord's ideas on the Nemsis list could have functions for PVPERs, but it could also be used by creative RPers and wily badge hunting PVErs to accomplish their own goals as well ( http://boards.cityofvillains.com/showfla...e=2&fpart=1 ). This gives all three controls since his idea even included the safeties and gave unique options to show up in hero and villain missions.

The possiblties are endless. However, we must also acknowledge we are a group of infinite dreams. We are presenting them to a group that has a finite ability to execute these wishes based on real time and money constrants.

With luck, the brightest and the best of those ideas for the community as a whole will be possbile and acted on. For that we can hope.

And I am off to bed, sorry if I messed this message up, but I'm beat... =/

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Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content

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yeah I don't see how that's pvp either.

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The whole sentence he said, "Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content that is typically embraced by PvE players." PvP = Player vs Player competition. So, I think he means that players will be directly competing against each other in the consignment houses. Just like if they added an implementation of 2 player pong. It would technically be PvP, but not exactly what everyone expects as PvP. It's a somewhat pedantic point.

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Yeah, I specifically went for an example that most people wouldn't think of as PvP. "Pedantic" is, I suppose, deserved.

As for how it is PvP, say you are selling "Progenitor Goo Mk XII" for 800 Quatlu's and I have one I want to sell. I am going to price my item based off not only what the 'market' says it should go for, but also based off of what others are selling for AT THIS MOMENT. So, if I think you're selling too low, I could buy yours, then try to sell both at a higher price. Or, if I think you're selling too high, I can undercut you, reducing your chance of selling. Either way, my actions will effect you, and your actions will effect me. Thus, "PvP."

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Word. Business is war. I'm waiting to see the first influence and infamy Bill Gates style people in the game.

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To appeal to the largest possible audience, a game should appeal to both PvP and PvE segments of the marketplace.

A PvP only game has difficulty generating sufficient populace willing to pay a monthly fee -- why pay a subscription when I can play Battlefield 2 for a single upfront payment? Especially when there is an extensive mod community which can churn out new maps/content?

A PvE only game runs the risk of growing stale. Players will always be able to burn through content at a rate many times faster than a development team can create, and this creates situations of player burnout and constant cries for 'new content!' A great example: A WoW developer said at one point that it would take players as long to go from level 60 to level 70 as it took to get from level 1 to 60. And yet, within 48 hours of the expansion going live, there was already a level 70 player. While it is certain that he did not experience all of the content of that expansion pack in that time, it should be apparent that the rate of consumption is far greater than can be met by a development team working with realistic resources and budgets.

By taking both elements (and both are extremely wide categories) upcoming MMO's are hoping to appeal to a broader range of customer, which is the only real way to recoup the incredible development costs involved in projects of this size. The challenge is, therefore, how to incorporate PvP elements so that they do not repel predominately PvE players?

Player Auction houses are a great example of PvP content that is typically embraced by PvE players. They are not strictly competitive; they can be viewed as cooperative, they help you progress your character in direct ways (new armor, weapons, enhancements, Implants, etc) as well as indirect ways (name recognition, money.) As an aside, this is tangentially related to my abhorrence for the third party 'gold/item/PLing' market -- using out of game resources to bolster your in game efforts is cheating, regardless of the excuse used. I own a second chess set, mind if I set up an extra bishop or two for our game?

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

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I'll agree with all your points and add to it. I think there is a third element often missing from games which is the RP groups.

As much as some people might hate them, I think I'll always be rather fond of them. My first MMORPG was Star Wars Galaxies and I played on their beta server Bria. It's early days were living NPCs cities and bars (cantinas) as crowded as what you saw in the movies, the hospitals had doctors and the cities were the center of all activity in the game.

There was a genius to the early player development of player content there, from the players and the devs. The addition of complex RP and PVE style classes like Master Dancers, Image designers, Crafters, and Musicians had a life of their own. The game had an economy and everyone had a purpose. Further, as a side bonus, it kept the average spouse out of the weeds because if one was a pvp-aholic the other could do something completely separate in the living cities, just Creating, Healing, PVEing or RPing.

I actually think games are at their best when all three can peacefully co-exist, with most of each group respecting one another. No, more than that, when they actually help and augment one another.

There were some design decisions in that first game. The results led to the death of the cities. The cantinas are just graphics, the hospitals are empty and the npc cities are used for bizarre trade & starports. They don't really live anymore.

The pvp is up and is fun, but much of the life is gone. There are large holes where giants of all three communities once walked and nothing will ever fill those holes again.

Not being SOE, the next time you all make something from the ground up, as what I see as a wiser company, please help those crazy RPers sandbox some more stuff up. The goofy stuff they do from acting, making music, dancing to anything is what makes the game live and breathe.

Help those PVErs, whom, like you said are probably going to get a big kick out of trade and inventions. It has a good chance of making them something much more in this game by making them the driving force behind a lot of what will be the trade of the game.

And help my fellow pvpers, we'd love a balanced game, where every toon is fun to play regardless of the initial build decisions on the players part. Every class should have it's foil, but no one should feel useless against everything else.

Before any of that sounds negative, I really love the game Cryptic has designed. There are elements here that blow every other game away, just the joy of the travel powers alone are worth most of the issues.


But, if I get a chance to respond to a dev on my own thread, why not ask for the moon... =)

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What blows my mind is that Co* is a game about Superheroes and Supervillains pitted against each other, and there seems to be some contention that it should be only Player superheroes vs. Non-Player villains and vice versa.

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This is a very well stated, but its a complete and total misrepresentation of the most common complaint about PvP, and you very well know it.

PvE players have nothing against PvP per se. What they have is the urge to avoid unpleasant dinks who exist only to cause other people as much aggravation as they can for their own amusement.

That's not PvP, that's sadism. And its also commonly defended here in the PvP zones. As you also well know.

So don't pretend that PvE'ers are a bunch of wusses who are over-sensitive. On the contrary, its us... the PvPers... who need to clean up our collective acts and start acting like human beings instead of a pack of rabid chimpanzees.

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I think you mean well Jack, but please allow me to point something out. Please read through the last 15 months of posts on these forums from this eye, which is that of someone who likes to pvp.

From that perspective, please watch the vast numbers of anti pvpers who troll and post here endlessly. Specifically, look for those whose goal is to remove pvp from this game.

You'll notice the metaphor that the number of posts is like grains of sand on a beach is no exaggeration. Notice that an equal number of trolling isn't going on and isn't being tolerated by the mods in a section of players such as Roleplayers. Then, literally go there and count the number of anti roleplayer activity that's been going over there in the past 15 months, literally as a mathematical comparsion.


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"PvE players have nothing against PvP per se. What they have is the urge to avoid unpleasant dinks who exist only to cause other people as much aggravation as they can for their own amusement.

That's not PvP, that's sadism. And its also commonly defended here in the PvP zones. As you also well know.

So don't pretend that PvE'ers are a bunch of wusses who are over-sensitive. On the contrary, its us... the PvPers... who need to clean up our collective acts and start acting like human beings instead of a pack of rabid chimpanzees.

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Just once, please switch the words PVP and PVE, in your own point of view. Rather than perpetuating something that went completely irrational long ago, I'll humbly ask you not to feed the trolls.

This is becoming some form of endless generational conflict, in part because mods aren't smacking these forums enough and in part because no matter how tolerate or moderate someone is, they have a limit to how much irrational hate will be thrown at them.

That's true of both sides. However, the forums here are specifically designed for the PVP community. If you were to compare posts, what occurs here is as fair as the Roleplaying community being swamped by a number of posts being from people who hate Roleplaying. Then do it to any other community section, from the different servers, to discussions, to badges to anything else that the same people who come here, on the PVP forums, daily and throw venom. How would any other section feel if they were subjected to the same exact behavior, for 15 long months, with their own favorite sub section?

Psychology tells us everyone is crazy and 25% are cerifiable. There are dinks in every subsection of any group in the game or in real life. No large group has exceptions, not one.

There are plenty of PVPers that spend a large amount of time trying to community build. What you said is completely unfair to them, especially as they are already forced to endure a tremedous amount of crap from people whose behavior wouldn't be tolerated in such numbers on any other boards in this game. In real life, the same behavior in most industrial societies is normally defined as an -ism and normally is only tolerated so long before the law or something worse than the law corrects the malfunction. People subjected to such behavior become bitter and angry.

Keep in mind, before anyone says anything, this is the pvp forums. Once again, keep in mind, the anti-whatever behavior here that has been tolerated here for 15 months would not have been tolerated anywhere else. It literally breeds worse behavior on everybody's part.

This is becoming a chicken and the egg thing. It will only grow as long as people massively continue keep up the false perspective that they are the only victims here, even when they are obviously equally to blame.

There is nothing that forces anyone in this game to pvp. There is no real consequence to pvp in this game. If you compare this to something like Eve Online, where in a single moment from a single navigational error, a non pvper could lose 7 years of skills and everything on his ship in a split second from pvp, any of the complaints here comparititively are an absolute joke.

Should the anti pvp community ever win, you could expect the same thing here to happen that does with most pve games. The majority will leave, either because of pvp or because the majority of their friends left. The pve zones will be ghosttowns. High numbers pve content will be unplayable in 1-2 years. It's a killing the goose that laid the golden egg thing.

I doubt destroying the game is your goal Jack. Please stop feeding the trolls.