Tokyo

Originally Posted by Grower

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally Posted by __Divine__

I took a much needed break. I'm just back to check out the new animations and alpha slot stuff.

Originally Posted by Dahjee

I warned you all of this a year ago or so...

Do you all wish to blame the devs for the decay of this particular forum too?

It is a shame, I agree. This place has the potential for countless debates and discussions regarding lol Zone and lol Arena PvP. Each has a several styles and ways of play. However since you all decided years ago amongst yourselves that there's only one way of doing things... well...

GG I guess. Being stuck inside a box for so long... I'm surprised to see some of you here at all these days.

Originally Posted by __Divine__

So i take it this game is still completely dead?

Originally Posted by Psyrene

It is a sad, sad thing. Need to get some **** rolling on test again.

Copy tool was fixed. They need to fix the server limit so more than like 4 people can be on at once though.......

Originally Posted by Dark_Respite

I'd love weather, just because of the filming possibilities. Even if we could just get varying skies (if not rain, sleet, snow, etc) for some variety, it'd be really nice. I don't know if, for example, there's a way to randomize the SKYFILE settings so you go from RANDOMDAY --> RANDOMNIGHT.

And weather the way it appears in AION would be neat... you're standing around, then boom, it's raining or snowing, your character briefly looks up and goes, "oh well" and keeps going. Doesn't affect gameplay at all, just looks nice.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Originally Posted by SwellGuy

It took them a while to tweak the reward merits' prices of some recipes so I would expect eventually they will lower the cost of the less desirable purples and PvP recipes in the future.

Originally Posted by macskull

I find it amusing that this thread's 11 pages long, yet 10 of those 11 pages were posted in the eight months between the OP and I13 dropping and there've been barely a dozen posts over the following two years.

Originally Posted by Azure Lightstar

Being new to PVP, are there any PVP/Arena groups on Guardian that I should look for? I suppose I can keep reading the forum and get my advice from here, but I'm really hoping to have the same fun at learning PVP as I did with PVE.

I was lucky in that when I started on City of Heroes, I had a group of friends that were already familiar with the game. Because of this, picking up on how to play PVE was easy. My friends were able to offer advice on tough missions. They would also be there to exchange new ideas on character builds and thoughts on how to slot out those characters. And if we wanted to start something like a taskforce or a strikeforce, we just teamed up and (if needed) looked for two, maybe three, extra people before we got going. Granted, it was ultimately up to me to learn what worked best for my playing style, but it was nice to have friends there. Unfortunately, most of my friends do not PVP, so they are not able to assist me as much now that I'm interested in trying out PVP.

I'm not looking to replace my PVE experience with PVP. I'm looking to expand my overall CoH experience though. In the process, I hope to learn some things that will help my character-building skills as well as learn some new tricks and tactics that I could use in PVE. It would also be nice to pick up a few new friends and globals that I could team with too (both for PVP and PVE events).

I'm also interested in trying arena league stuff, having played around with the Arena a bit. I think I missed the latest sign-up and I hope to catch any new sign-ups for the Guardian server (being my "home base"). After I get really comfortable playing in a few tournaments, I would even be willing to assist in running them.

Originally Posted by Ghostman_EU

THAT is when i should have left... not years later ffs.

As for now.. its not gona change.. I dont know you pal but honestly if I were you I'd stay as far away from this f**king joke as possible.

As for me.. since i13 ive wasted countless time trying to enjoy PvE because its such a f**king challenge ofc.
(sarcasm.. if you didn't guess).

I'm off to play something that retains some fun and hasnt been "developed" into a steaming pile of dog s**t.

Ta Ta..

Ghosty xxxx

Originally Posted by Psyrene

There is a league going on champion and that is about it for team arena matches.

Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master

ah, they always sounded the same to me, i usually avoid pvp zones as much as possible, especially since the i13 pvp changes

Originally Posted by KnG

F2P will happen its just a matter of time hopefully not till CoH2. If they do I hope they give them different servers.

Originally Posted by Reiraku

Correction, I never said you could learn other AT's by playing a blaster. .

Originally Posted by Psyrene

Earth/Nrg doms, mind/nrg doms, i have seen multiple doms or sonic blasters or rad/sonic defenders it really just depends on the team. We did it a couple of times on test when Vex wanted to play his stalker. Him and FD or Rice would run their stalkers and we would have a dom or mage on his Rad/Sonic.

If you are thinking that a rad/pain corr would be the one to do this, there again you show that you have never really competitively pvp'd in this game in an 8v8 environment because if the other team is competent at all and you are running a pain and an emp or 2 pains or whatever, that pain will be doing his job which will be buffing the team and healing the other teams target and will not have time to get locked on target, stun the target and heal the target the other team is attacking. Now if your team was just rolling the opposing team then yeah you could easily do that since your healing/buffing duty would really not be needed. The dom or whatever is like in baseball, the setup man and that is his prime duty, and disrupt other toons between spikes by spamming other holds on random targets.


and you did say this:

Which is entirely untrue. If they learn to play a blaster then hey there ya go they play a blaster. There is more to it than what you say with counting to 3. Gotta be able to lock fast, not give away the target by following to soon or pre-firing. Have to learn how to evade and how to get back on target etc. Much more than counting to 3 and you see this when someone gets on your team and a target is called and they never get a lock on the target or just get repeatedly farmed.

Totally agree that playing a blaster and playing a support toon is a different skill set. One of the most difficult toons to play use to be a sonic/sonic. You were there as a buffer for shields, a cager for disruption, and had to be on target for debuffing with sonic siphon and then back to finding the cage target and rinse and repeat.

I am not going to argue it with you, you have said many times over you do not competitively PvP in this game and never have so there are somethings you just don't understand about it...and kb's on Freedom is not competitive PvP.

Originally Posted by PowerFlame

yikes!

Originally Posted by Psyrene

umm....no that is why we usually ran 6 Psi/Em's and 2 emps or 5 Psi/Em's a rad defender and 2 emps....

It also depends on the skills of the emps. If they are not good then they will either be farmed or your teammates will be farmed. Same for the blasters, if they can not lock quickly and take down targets and evade then yeah they will get wrecked but on a team with skilled emps and blasters, nothing can really stand up to them.
The only time to run a dom is if you are running a 2 stalker 3 blaster, dom and 2 emp lineup, the dom is there to set up the stalkers.

You can also run a 4 or 5 blasters a dom and a Rad or just a Dom and 2 emps.

In actual competitive PvP we wouldn't run a 2 dom lineup, that would be stupid because of mez suppression. You only need one toon to be stunning/holding a target. (which is why a lot of those people that think their Psi Blasters are great even in a KB environment and they are not. It is because they all have the Placate Proc, Explosive Strike Proc, probably have kinetic crashes 6 slotted in Power Thurst etc and on a real Team build you would not have any of those.)


Again I don't get it. I have never seen a "competitive" Team not run any blasters. Unless you are talking about the Villian Test Ladder way back when there was one and I would be that if there were a "villian" ladder still going then the teams would run villian Psi Blasters.

You should maybe competitively PvP in this game before you tell people what not to play for competitive PvP. Just sayin...

Originally Posted by _Syn_

And blasters giving a "false sense of skill"???? Wow. I think scrappers will do that worse than any other AT.

*edit*
And hi Rei

Originally Posted by Reiraku

Don't worry about the beatings you take. Those come regardless. Instead, focus more on what you can learn from those beatings and what works. A good character to start with would be a blaster. Psi/EM and Fire/EM are both solid builds that can teach a lot of the basics of PvP through use.

If you can get good on a blaster, you can learn other characters such as Doms and Corrs without too many problems.

Originally Posted by Mercury_Down

Stay away from crack.

Originally Posted by Feycat

Only if you'd also be okay with, upon completion of that arc, becoming attackable by all other player characters. After all, "canon" members of the Carnies can be beaten up and sent to to the Zig for doing nothing more than standing on the sidewalk with their arms crossed, doing nothing :P

Not everyone wants a Carnie sash in order to be a carnie. Lots of people want a Carnie-style sash to be a gypsy, or a pirate, or a Kheldian, or...

Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha

And thats just so much bull crap its unbelievable.
It just...seriously? Do I have to even explain this? No. Just no.

Originally Posted by Vexington

One particular figure is a narcissistic, pathological liar with anger issues that seem to have exposed intense gay fantasies occasionally on Vent.

Originally Posted by Borderline Boss

I'm pretty sure this thread was designed to welcome me back, please stay on topic.