Sister_Twelve

I think our playing styles are probably pretty similar then. The reason I gravitated toward Alterac Valley when I decided to try PvP in WoW was because it was the only one of their battlegrounds that actually seemed more like a battle and less like a game. I never really engaged in duels or any of the other PvP nonsense that they had... just as I don't really do the arena here.

I guess I've been pretty lucky in that I've always tended to build AT's that are fairly well geared toward pvping, (or at least surviving for some length of time), because on the few occasions where rp/pvp has come into play with my SG's, I've done pretty well. That's not to say I can hold my own against the players that really do devote a lot of time and energy into building characters specifically designed to PvP, only that I do well enough against people at my level of skill in the activity that I don't embarass myself.

But to me, it will always come down to relevance... whether or not the activity has any relevance to the advancement of the ongoing narrative of whatever character I happen to be playing at a given time. And like I've said before, I think that is where this game fails and it may have something to do with the genre from which its drawn.

Comic books are essentially about 1v1 conflicts or in the case of team books small unit conflicts. Though there are examples of large unit conflicts in various comics over the years, usually those are 'events' rather than the norm. Unfortunately here, there is no nod to the rather personal nature of the superhero/supervillain conflict. There is no surrounding narrative to the conflict.

Ultimately, a superhero, unlike a member of the horde or alliance in WoW, is not usually part of a larger paranormal army. It's a genre that, almost more than any other, celebrates the indivual nature of personal heroism or villainy. And sans me stopping something that your character is actively trying to do, there's no particular reason for me to fight you except to engage in the same sort of gladiatorial nonsense that I dislike about dropping the flag or accepting a duel challenge in WoW.

Oh, sure, and there are folks in WoW who go into Alterac Valley and hang out at the entrance to do nothing other than to farm honor... and they are routinely villified by the other participants even though there's nothing they can really do about them.

The difference, I think, between the instanced battleground model and the open zone with objectives model is the implied assumption that the player has gone into the instanced battleground specifically TO pvp. When the ultimate reward for the player is something that essentially enhances the pve experience, rather than essentially enhances the pvp experience, you are always going to see people who go in to get the pve objective and then leave if they have to pvp to get it because they can always come back later when they won't have to do that.

If you go into Alterac Valley, there is no particular reason to be there other than to engage in the pvp experience. If you go into any of the CoH zones, there is definitely a reason to be there other than to do so.

I think by concentrating the people who want to engage in the pvp experience together rather than creating an environment where you mish-mash different playing styles together, you create a more enjoyable experience for everyone, no matter the playing style.

Not really. I think the end result would be that practically no one would have a Shivan unless they did something like 'work it out beforehand' with SG mates to come on with their characters on the other side or engage in some other similarly shady tactic to get one.

But as to it reducing the population of the zone further? I doubt it. The zones are already pretty much dead. You can reduce the population from 5 on a given day to 2 on a given day, but who'd notice?

Using the custom option, in my experience, results in the creation of enemies that give basically no reward at all.

Yes.

If they are devoted to the idea of 'wanting to encourage people to pvp,' putting desirable things into the open pvp zones where you can actively avoid conflict is probably not the way to go.

Not to toot WoW's horn too much, but if they perhaps did something along the lines of instanced battlegrounds that functioned cross-server to bump of the potential number of participants at any time... (on WoW I played in a server called Bladefist, but the pool of battleground participants was drawn from a larger list of servers, but I can't remember what that was called).

On that level, everyone engaging in the activity would be a) actively going there to PvP, so there wouldn't be the whole 'is it PvP or PvE clothed in PvP trappings' debate that seems to roar up over BB, SC, Warburg, and Rv from time to time like in this thread, b) at least willing to TRY the activity and since that's what they'd be going there to DO, they REALLY wouldn't have any room for complaint.

Right now, because of the difference in point of view, you will always have side the believes that the zones are essentially zones where PvP is ALLOWED versus the side that believes the zones are essentially zones where PVP is REQUIRED. That debate is never going to be resolved because the two sides are so entrenched in their opinions that it always devolves into 'because I said so.'

Now this suggestion does nothing really to make the other player's character relevant to me, so I doubt if I'd really participate in hypothetical CoH 'Battlegrounds,' but at the very least it would serve to concentrate participation in the activity to a small area, which would likely at least give the PvPers the perception that they aren't all so spread out.

That might make it more enjoyable to them and make it less likely that they take every opportunity they can to gank the nearest reluctant person because their opportunities are so limited.

Maybe, maybe not.

I disagree with this completely. There are plenty of pveers and rpers, me being one of them, who will happily play Counterstrike or Call of Duty or, probably more applicable in this case, the battlegrounds in World of Warcraft, who do not enjoy pvp in CoH.

And I think it goes back to the reasons I said yesterday. The way that pvp is designed in this game renders the other player's character irrelevant to the pveer or rper. There is no advancement of their character's personal story on any level in pvp. The two sides are segregated to the degree that, other than during that small moment of time, the enemy player's character will never be a part of my character's life.

In Counterstrike and Call of Duty, you are playing an avatar. There is no 'story' involved. You will die 30 times during the encounter and kill some people and instantly respawn to go kill someone again if you die. There is no character immersion. In World of Warcraft's battlegrounds, you are trying to accomplish specific objectives within the context of the larger Horde/Alliance conflict.

That is where CoH fails its pvp population.

Until the developers do SOMETHING to make the defeat of an opposing factions player relevant to my character's existence in the slightest, there is no point to me engaging them because my character a) doesn't know who they are, b) has more important things to do, and c) regards them as an annoyance more than anything else.

If they would do something similar to WoW's battlegrounds, where the defeat of the opposing player had some real and definite effect (taking a graveyard, protecting a tower), even if it was only temporary, on the success or failure of the given mission, they might be onto something.

Pveers and RPers are players first and foremost. It has nothing to do with them not wanting to engage in a win/lose proposition. However I think the difference is that they don't regard the fight itself as the win/lose proposition. The fight is only a microcosm of the larger conflict. I think you'd see a lot more participation if the pvp conflicts had some sort of meaning.

I really wanted to avoid this phenomenon, which probably sounds silly since I ended up giving your characters' so much dialogue... but I didn't want to hijack your backgrounds or make assumptions about your history. I think the problem that I'm running into here is a combination of the arc being rushed out because of the real life concerns I listed earlier, (not an excuse... once the competition is over, I intend to take the time to fix a lot of this), and being right up against the deadline and thus not having time to edit.

There are a few specific instances of dialogue where I imagine these critiques are coming from...

That the PC has a Secret Identity

- The 'look at page 33' line that he has right at the beginning probably makes the player audience assume that the arc is dictating a secre identity of the player. It was intended to be vague enough that the Nemesis could potentially not be talking about the character, but in the event that the pc did not have a secret id, some hero or heroine whose secret id the pc knows. Ie, "Does the name there seem familiar?"

Obviously, if both beta readers to this point are walking away under the assumption that Nemesis believes the pc has a secret ID, then that particular section needs a rework.

That the character has a family

- There are a few points in the dialogue where it implies the pc has a family. (There would be many more had I not kept shaking myself throughout the writing process and telling myself 'not everyone who plays this is going to have a character who has a family.') In fact, I jarred myself with the 'date last Tuesday' line because the way it reads at the moment, the arc either assumes that the character is a.) male or b.) a lesbian.

That section was not intended to imply anything specific about the character at all. It was intended to sort of illustrate the truly bleak future that lies ahead for all heroes as Nemesis sees it... that the player character is soon going to be consumed with fighting people he/she likes, loves, respects, admires, and spends a good amount of his/her life hanging around with.

That probably assumes a great deal as well... especially if the player is playing a loner type. But unfortunately right now, the entire paragraph comes across as though Nemesis spends a good portion of his time doing nothing other than tracking the movements of the character's life.

That particular section will also need a rework once the competition is over.

Blitz flew away from me too. In fact, he flew straight up, which made him difficult for Ariadne to deal with until she drew him back down. And I am not wild about this map... once I am able to, I will probably be taking a good long look at replacing this map with another one. The reason I initially chose this one is because even with the plethora of heroes in Paragon, I thought it would be a bit strange to find such a huge concentration of family members in such a condensed location, hence I chose a map area that was a bit wider.

It's pretty annoying to find Blitz though... even if that is all you are focusing on and you have a stealth power. If you have an ability set that aggroes everything, I could well see this mission being impossible. Spotting him from the air might be tough, even though I tried to make him look very distinct and gave him a lengthy dialogue intro.

Thank you. I had a brief conversation in my thread with another forumite about the different viewpoints that authors have brought to this contest. To me, the good doctor was always asking us to write an arc in which the evil action the character had to perform was inevitable and that the character had no real choice but to perform it. Even with that, I am not sure if I was entirely successful, because the 'evil act' in this case is futuristic, hazy, and indistinct.

I think if nothing else, we ended up having a lot of new arcs that were fun to play and it gave us some pretty cool insight into the process of our fellow players and how they approach writing material with specific guidelines in minds.

I've never really had issues with Weskelan. For me, Bloody Vicious is the most annoying of the lot because he doesn't have to make it to the exterior door. If he makes it to the elevator, you're done. And BV, for some reason, has that 'Crimson' thing going for him when he runs. When he runs, he is motivated about it and he's gotten away from me more than once with both my Widow and my Brute. I haven't tried this arc with my Rad/Rad corruptor yet and usually Bianca is my benchmark character for whether or not I've gone too far.

Needless to say, once I have the opportunity, all of these characters and probably the mission designs themselves, (although I'm not terribly upset about the linearity of these missions - but if enough players say they are dull, I will take a look), will get a workover.

I will probably keep this arc published for awhile. Once I buy in to the extra slots, I will have room for awhile, so even though the narrative was written with the competition in mind, there's no reason to take it down if I don't have anything to immediately put in its place.

Thank you both for playing. I appreciate you taking the time to do so and I'm glad you had some fun with it.

- S12

But... -sigh-... when they put a bunch of pve content into the rp zone, the rp zone became all farms, so they took it back out and all the pve'ers left.

I want equality.

If they are going to coerce pvp, they need to coerce rp equally. ;p

If I remember right, (and it's been a long time since I actually went through the phase where I was building most of my characters' IO sets), because of the way that the purple sets were constructed, you would actually get a bigger bang for your buck in terms of power performance from a combination of uncommon sets and rares for most power sets.

Now as far as set bonuses are concerned, again from what I remember, there was a pretty significant upgrade for the purple sets.

But I guess the question I'd really ask myself is... is worth it to pay 2.8 billion or so for what is essentially, say, a +2% bonus in regeneration, and so forth?

No, I was not responding to the ACTION of attacking me. I'm responding to the QUESTION that the original poster asked and doing it in an rp form.

As far as the ACTION goes?

1.) Criminals, by and large, try to avoid contact with heroes because they have goals. Going out of your way to draw the attention of individuals devoted to stopping you is one way to ensure you will never attain your goals. Now, yes, there are times when attacking the hero out of the blue is done to accomplish some goal, but by and large that is not what happens here.

The fight itself IS the goal, which is idiotic on any rational, narrative level.

2.) The original poster wanted a roleplayer's answer to why they don't drop everything they are doing to engage him in a meaningless fight. I provided one.

Once again, the issue is not with pvp in general. It's with the meaningless, petty way that it happens in this game. Until the meaninglessness and the pettiness are resolved, the activity holds no interest for me.

I'm not exactly sure how that is supposed to be a response to what I posted. I don't have anything against pvp in general. In fact in other games, I've successfully climbed several pvp ladders. I don't have any conceptual beef with fighting against other players. I've played my share of CoD and fighter games.

I have a problem with pvp in this game because it doesn't make any conceptual sense to engage in the activity if you believe in immersive roleplay at all.

Why would any of my characters waste their time fighting Lord Hodge Podge07 if they are in the midst of stopping a plot by Nemesis or by Recluse? Once again, just as a reminder:

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what your crimes are. I don't even know if you really committed crimes."

Until this game figures out a way to mechanically reconcile those things and make me understand why you are a threat and not just a wanna-be who is trying to build a rep by attacking me out of the blue, I have no interest in fighting you.

I don't know where you heard that, but if you're playing a brute, you'll soon discover that it's probably the easiest AT to solo with in the game, other than perhaps a VEAT.

I've never had that happen. He hits more often than others do when I chow down on purple and his attacks, when he does hit, are extremely strong. When I've lost to him, it's usually been when he's either 1-shot or 2-shot me.

But for the most part, my usual EB-downing tactics work on him. I tend to play with ATs that are EB-downing friendly though.

Yes, it is.

Says the person who had to rewrite an end of mission souvenir three times last night due to managing to delete all the text in it while trying to color format it.

Well, these things are really not so different from the plethora of dev designed radio missions that have defeating 1 boss as the goal or clicking on glowie as the lone goal, running through with a Stalker and ending the mission in about 10 seconds.

I don't know if those types of missions have been addressed, but people that wanted me to sit at the door when I was coming up in CoV tended to approach PLing that way. It was mostly to grab the end of mission reward quickl.

I do think, as an author, that I'd like to see some things equalized for purely selfish reasons. If the rewards were equalized, I think more people would be likely to experience my story... (even if that's not necessarily primarily what they are using MA for).