Thorizdin_LotD

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Also, if you are going to have some kind of buff give you resistance to cage, like someone said ID giving like 25% resistance to it, are you also going to allow multiple cages on a target?

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I don't think so, since resistance will simply lower the duration of the cage there isn't any real benefit to allowing stacking. If you want to cage someone with $buff_that_gives_cage_resistance then you just have to reapply it more often. The balance point should be on the amount of duration, off hand something between 25% and 50% sounds right but I'd certainly like to test it from both sides before saying an absolute number.

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Why not make it a debuff that would say cut the cage time in half as long as the debuff is on the cager? For example you could use Sonic Siphon or something from a set that rarely gets used in PVP like /Dark or both. Or every set that has cage capability could also have the debuff that cuts the cage time in half.


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This could work if cage were turned into a toggle, but AFAIK there isn't a mechanic to allow a click effect to changed after its been applied to target. Now, you can apply a debuff that halves the duration of caging pro-actively and that might be interesting, depending on how it was implemented.

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removing blaster unresisted damage could possibly make them do even more damage than they do now. if you toss EF onto a target with zero fire resistsance, it'll definitely do more.

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Only if tied to a base damage increase, the 12.5% ranged damage increase that is being played with combined with removing irrestible damage is a net buff to Blaster damage up until the target gets to around 50% resistance. I'd like to see Defender unresisted debuffs removed as well, but that's going to take some additional rebalancing. The delta between how effective EF is for a Defender and a Controller right now is way too large.

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Perma-caging is the very definition of "unfun". Most of us here have experience with using it and having it used on us. Now think about the impact it has on someone who tries out arena PvP by joining a kickball match as a healer or just the most annoying character on one of the teams. We can say that good sportsmanship will keep people from perma-caging but if the game mechanic results in a competitive advantage that is often not true. I have a sonic, I don't want to see the power of the set seriously reduced but I also don't want to spend another 15 minutes of a 20 minute match caged.

There needs to be counters to cage, some sort suppression mechanic, or a combination of the two.

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KoC's suggestion is also intriguing. I'd also like to throw out the idea of ID (or other buff) offering 25%-50% resistance.

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Let me make a mild suggestion. One or two including the devs should spend a week playing Fury. Its all PvP all the time and they have some really good ideas, built onto a combat system very inferior to CoH/Cov.

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Very true. I wish CoX had a queuing system like Fury's for match making PvP fights. On the other hand I am entirely happy with the fact that CoX does not have artificers.

Some people would object because of build secrecy, but I wish this data were available to everyone. It doesn't benefit the health of PvP to have a stagnant meta-game.

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I just hope we get more polite pvpers then we do total idiots who think pvp is the bestest and that it gives them free rein to intentionally mess with roleplayers and pve players and make their online experience hell.

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People who want to RP should probably stay out of most of the channels, it doesn't take PvP'ers to screw up immersion. Nothing like someone begging for Influence/Infamy to make you feel all comic booky is there?

As for PvE, it can't be disturbed outside of the PvP zones and the arena and doesn't exist without PvP in them.

Storm heavy teams can be beaten by Villain teams, the trick is to spike the Stormie from range before you're debuffed and while the Empath(s) are busy. Its actually easy before APP's to do this with a team of ranged Stalkers. It becomes much harder in the 40+ game because everyone resists S/L damage with the APP shield. Having said all that, HvV balance is so screwed up in the 40+ game that it really doesn't matter. Until buffing can be brought to some sort of relative equality villain teams will always be at a huge disadvantage. Go look at what one Emp can do with Power Boost or PBU and then realize that the only villain AT with Power Boost or PBU is a /EN Dom....its pretty sad.

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-range debuff stacking from hurricanes to be removed.

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This I don't agree with, if that's taken from Stormies then they will be yet another build that's worthless. Stormies were already hit with a mac truck of a nerf, which was called for since it wasn't uncommon to log into to SC and see the entire bay around the villain base filled with 'em but IMO they actually a little weak rather than being over powered. Stormies can operate in the zones and in the arena, but it takes support now which I think is appropriate.

It really depends on what can be done easily. If they can cap toHitBuff's (and other forms of buffs) to a reasonable level then powers don't have to be touched, if they can't that's one of the easiest modifications since if you want to modify all of the powers that grant toHitBuffs it takes a lot more work. I'll be honest, I have been puzzled for a long time as to why most of the buffing issues haven't been taken care of via caps, but there may be a problem that prevents that from being used as a primary mechanic.

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Reasonable caps for all buffs, self or team applied.

Remove the ability of Power Boost/PBU to add to toHitBuff

Reduce Geas and the equivalent villain accolade to 20% toHitBuff from its curretn 200%

Reduce KB/KU resistance of Acrobatics so that KB can have a role, something like 6-10 from the current amount of 100.

Lets just expand the program...we could have Double XP Week or Month. Alternatively, offer it on a predictable schedule or part of some sort of server wide reward program for various in game accomplishments.

That is very close to what Guild Wars does currently, and works quite well (now) for the most part. One item to learn from the GW PvP character experiment was the fact that when certain facets of the game evolved, mainly armor switching in the middle of a battle, it gave an advantage to PvE characters over PvP only ones because a PvP only character can only have one set of armor. This created a great deal of frustration in the PvP community for quite some time, because that one disadvantage forced many of them to level PvE characters that they didn't want to.

Keep mind that there is a large middle area between mobs in this game and PvP in this game. I very much believe that PvE would be vastly improved by more intelligent enemies, but they can't reach the level of a good PvP opponent.

For some/many players repetition is a negative over the long term. I don't believe that is a PvP versus PvE issue.

I don't want to sound disparaging, but how can you not consider the mobs in this game predictable and hence over time boring? I was talking to a RL friend yesterday who left for WoW because of the lack of variety and he doesn't PvP at all.

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PvP in this game is a joke. It was never designed to deal with the complex nature of PvP. You want to see a thoughtful game system designed from the bottom up with PvP in mind? Look at Guild Wars. Otherwise, you'll just continue forcing a half-[censored] product as an end result because you simply cannot change the basic functions of the game at this point.

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Simply untrue, I was in the closed testing for GW for a year before its release and I am very aware of the balancing mechanisms in GW. CoX does have some basic issues that GW dodged, ie no hard mezzes and no defense the way that we understand it here. In GW what they call defense is what we would call resistance here. Having said that there isn't anything structural that makes it impossible to achieve balance in this game.

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Again you are jumping to a conclusion.

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No, you're just trying to push one on me that I didn't make. I didn't say that PvP would be the salvation of this game, what I said was that no successful MMO exists today that hasn't implemented PvP and that includes this one. From that fact we can say that without a good PvP implementation the odds are this game won't last, especially given the fact that the niche its had to itself is about to become very competitive.

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This MMO was very successful without any form of PvP. That hasn't changed jst because people use a different number to judge success now that WoW has whatever Millions. More to the point PvP has been added to this MMO without making any difference to the numbers.

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I'm gonna be nice, because you seem like you're trying but you have to understand that from a success point of view this and every other MMO, until WoW, on the planet was a flop. MMO's were on the brink of dying a quiet death, not because they don't or didn't make money but because game developers could make more (much more) money doing other kinds of games. Why do you think EA bought Mythic? It sure as hell wasn't because DAoC had been a run away success it was because they saw how successful an MMO could be.

To quote Bruce Sterling,
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"The Age of Competition: May 2002 – October 2004

This was a tough period for the MMOG market. While the overall size of the market continued to grow in 2002 and 2003, the competitive picture grew worse. Many MMOGs in development were delayed or outright cancelled. Older games struggled to retain their subscribers, usually shrinking, recovering, and then slowly shrinking again. Most of the new MMOGs that did enter the market in this time period did not achieve their subscription goals, and a few had to shut down operations. While there were a few bright spots – Final Fantasy XI, RuneScape, Eve Online, and City of Heroes – between May 2002 and May 2003, the market grew by less than 8%, and between January 2004 and October 2004, the market grew by less than 2%. Towards the end of 2004, things were starting to look pretty bleak.

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In short, despite CoX being a success for an MMO it was part of a segment that many analysts, game publishers, and development shops were moving away from.

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If you can come up with suggestions to make PvP in this game more interesting then "Great" but I think any big developer effort would be better placed elsewhere.

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I can turn this around and ask the exact same thing of pure PvE development and add that the development staff have been focused on adding pure (or almost pure) PvE "things" to the game up until I8 and it hasn't done much. Now, any development effort will have to be part of a cost benefit analysis and the type of that content (PvE, PvP, or mixed) will only be part of that decision process. Having said that, we've done PvE for 7 issues, an expansion to both PvE and PvP once (CoV release), and only one (I4) that was mostly PvP. I'd say its probably time to try a few more things on the PvP side.

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At 3 years of age the only thing thats going to pull in new numbers is something "NEW" and "DIFFERENT"

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Really? (To use my TV analogy) What new thing are you going to add that will make people buy your TV's instead of offering HDTV sets? CoX has already got the hardest part of any PvP implementation done, the engine. It has the potential to be the best and fastest PvP experience on the planet. I don't know that the same is true on the PvE side.

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Having a good PvP implementation is integral to having a successful MMO in the current gaming market. This is a demonstrable fact.

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No. This is opinion.

The idea that because X has Y and X has massive numbers, we should add Y so we can have massive numbers is a mistake.

If Cryptic want to bring in the numbers they need to do the hard thing and add something DIFFERENT to the game to distinguish it from the rest not add the same features to make it a clone.

"Same" won't cut it!

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"Same" is a non sequitor here, CoX with PvP is _NOT_ the same as WoW with PvP, Guild Wars with PvP, Lineage 1&2 with PvP, etc, etc, etc.

CoX is (at present) the only hero/comic themed MMO on the market and having PvP will not in any, shape, or form make it the same as other games. Even fantasy themed games that include PvP have tremendous differences, L2 is vastly different from WoW and both are very different animals from GW.

Allow me to present it this way, no one has figured out a way to make a successful MMO that neglects PvP in the current market space. That doesn't mean that someone won't or can't, but PvP as a feature of a MMO, is one of the current requirements for success, just as a good PvE implementation is. Interestingly, we are actually seeing the market experiment in the other direction, to see if PvP only MMO's can succeed but this very speculative right now. We know that there are no succesful PvE only MMO's on the market, outside of a very small number of children focused games (Toontown etc) In addition, its also demonstrable that all of the most successful MMO's have devoted significant resources to PvP including development, dedicated servers/instances, and marketing.

Its not a matter of changing the flavor of a game, its a matter of having a required feature. Having a good PvP implementation is no more optional than a TV manufacturer choosing not produce HDTV sets because they think keeping to the SD format only, will keep them unique.

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Personally I feel that a balance of everything PvE and PvP is what's going to keep this game alive. I'm not going to sit here and marginalzie PvP simply because I don't enjoy it as much as you do.

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One of the most reasonable stances I've seen so far, bravo!

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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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-- so what? On that basis CoH should shut down because more people are playing WoW so obviously WoW is what people like and CoH isn't. Or you could conclude that CoH is not WoW or any other game and doesn't need to try to include their features.

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Or you could conclude that its generally a smart idea to incorporate the features that make sense in your product that your more successful rivals have in their's. Now, this doesn't mean a product should give up its unique features, but we aren't talking about adding Orc, Elves, and Shamans, we're talking about adding (actually having since its already been added) a kind of play that fits in perfectly to the milieu of this one. MMO's need to attract the widest possible slice of the demographic that they can attract to remain in business because they are tremendously expensive to develop, run, and maintain. Not adding a popular play style is risky, of course it needs to be done well. From the point of view of impacting the existing game PvP was added here with a minimum of disruption. All PvP occurs in either instanced Arena fights or clearly marked (and completely avoidable) PvP zones.

What you're suggesting is akin to a drug store deciding not to carry an item that some people feel uncomfortable about, say condoms or birth control pills. There are some customers who are (or were) very opposed to such things on moral grounds, but today there are very few drug stores that don't sell those items because they attract a different part of the demographic and if done properly doesn't irritate people who aren't comfortable with those items so badly they leave.

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

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-- Great, I bet 99% of all MMO players are playing a game that alows PvE. So pve wins. Thank you, tip your waiter.


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You know, this _might_ be a little more interesting if you bothered to actually debate on merit rather than try to come up one liners. You will never find a post of mine that recommends that this game get rid of PvE, that would be stupid. Just as not including PvP would have been stupid as well, since amazingly you can have _both_ in the same game.

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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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-- great, so there is no need for pvp in mmo's. The other games exist, do it better and have the audiences for them. Trying to recreate the wheel as an oval is pretty dumb.

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There is a reason the PvP'ers are attracted to this game. It has the single best game engine for high speed PvP in the entire MMO marketplace. This is not a case of making an oval wheel, its a case of taking the square wheels off the Maserati. If somethings can be addressed this game could be the very best PvP game on the market, it has that much potential. I've been playing PvP games online since Diablo 1 and I've never seen another one that was close.

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thank you for pointing out that pve is more popular than pvp, that pvp is already provided in games for any who want to play it, and that CoH either needs to provide a different experience than WoW or simply close shop.

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PvE isn't more popular that PvP, I've provided the numbers that demonstrate quite well that among gamers (note that is not just MMO gamers) PvP is far more popular than PvE. Its also substantially popular among pure MMO gamers.

I guess the thing that puzzles me about your attitude on this is, where do you expect new CoX players to come from? A very (less than .3%) of new MMO players report that their first game was an MMO. That means that the potential base is the gamer demongraphic, in which PvP is very popular. We know from the numbers that CoX had prior to the release of CoV what the PvE only content expansions did for their numbers, ie not much. While the Arena was released back in I4, it was so limited (and is still significantly buggy) that its impact was slight.

People making claims without any facts or worse yet, twisting facts to suit their view point is irritating at best.

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But claiming that pvp is what makes games successful is just laughable. It is a big world of games out there. Pinball has been successful for decades with no pvp.

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No one claimed that PvP makes all games successful, the pinball reference is as blatant a non sequitur as I've seen recently. We're discussing MMO's and other on line games specifically.

Here are some facts, since people seem to be good at ignoring them:

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.

Having a good PvP implementation is integral to having a successful MMO in the current gaming market. This is a demonstrable fact. The 3 largest on line RPG's are all heavily invested in PvP for this reason (WoW, Lineage 2, and Guild Wars). Note, this is very different from saying that a good PvP implementation is all that is needed, PvE is also a critical element. We are only just now seeing MMO's that are purely PvP (Fury) and whether or not they will succeed is still up in the air.

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Counterstrike = great pvp
CoH = bad pvp


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I'll agree on CS, but I still like UT better..personal preference. CoX PvP has some issues, but that's not because of the genre its because of some of the shortcuts taken by the development team that's made balancing harder to achieve. Having said that, CS was hardly the game it is today when it was released, in fact it was just a mod when I started playing it.

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MMORPGs are a terrible platform for pvp. Design and develop your character is terrible for pvp.

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This is the part I take the most issue with, in part because it has a grain of truth. Games that allow the end user to design their build have implicit balance issues compared with games with fixed designs. The more build variation there is, the greater (in every case seen thus far) the disparity is between a good build and a bad one. To make matters worse many powers that work well against mobs don't work against players. Now, this one of the biggest issues I'd like to see addressed, if each CoX character had access to 2 builds we could mitigate this problem to a great degree. It still wouldn't be perfect because the casual crowd seldom invests the time the min - maxers will.

Having said all of that, there is a tremendous attraction to having build flexibility because it allows for a broader range of tactics. In Guild Wars, which by your definition would be a good PvP game, the meta-game is a constant source of discussion, planning, and out of game strategizing. I'm not sure how anyone could consider people talking about the game they extensively as a bad thing....


As an aside, if there isn't PvP in pinball why do I enjoy kicking my co-workers [censored] at it?

Its amazing to me that people will post a book of nothing but opinions in a thread like this. I mean, expressing your opinion is all well and good, but if there was anything in there besides (paraphrasing) "I don't like PvP, never will, and don't agree with the direction of the game." I didn't see it despite reading the whole thread. The whole section on who participates in PvP has nothing to support it. If any part of PvP is suffering, its actually the high end groups and not the more casual (usually zone) PvP scene.

I'm not trying to pile on you, but if you're gonna necro a thread its better to bring something new to the discussion.

They are saying Q4 of this year, but who knows how realistic that is or isn't.

http://www.unleashthefury.com/general_faq.php

You know, I have to laugh at this (and the rest) of your posts. _If_ the devs did invent an intelligent and challenging enemy that didn't "cheat" or present a challenge by having powers and abilities that far exceeded what a PC could do then people, perhaps you and perhaps not, would be posting very similar complaints.

Umm...wth are you talking about?

I'd suggest you re-read and repost you're suggestion because it really doesn't make sense.