chucifer

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I was carried by Patient. That's all.

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And Loan. And Demon.

The Evo core PvP team was pretty tight. Cowboy, Ciro, Elated, Fatality, Sharpened Blade and Trotsky were pretty tough to beat early in the PvP scene. Watching them do 8v8's against other server's 'you make your top 8' teams were fun. Did Fats' eMistress ever have her kid?

Oh and lol at my mind/sonic getting a kill vs JAL in that screenshot. I think Patient was emping in the second match and when asked he wasnt healing his response was: "shh! trying to get a kill" Poor guy was trying to time an unslotted energy bolt before Lab stole it.

And before you guys go and reroll your psi/energy blasters, remember, if Galvatron (tribute) can own face with a Peacebringer, so can you.

Who's up for a COH PvP meet and greet? Krole's providing lunch.

That's an immense amount of information.

Perhaps getting a few of the old guys on Vent and doing some interviews/storytime? Might be easier to piece together the stories a bit better that way, unless youre looking to gloss over stuff and just provide some basic history.

If you just want anecdotes, I'll start:

Issue 4 on Test = dead bodies fighting.

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Whe need 'Capture the Flag' team fights.

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YES we need something more then kill the other guy all the time period.

Support ATS and melees are left with little reward in the current system.


Imho this is why things like House Rules and Fight Clubs exisit.

Not everyone wants to be ranked by thier Kills alone.


Such is not an acurate measure of true overall pvp skill in Cox.


Zen.

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Wait, who measures their pvp skill through the end scoreboard anyways?

Suppression and Enhancement Diversification were both great ideas. Believe it or not, fast movement and insta spiking people results in slower game pacing than a game where positioning and coordinated CC matters. When 90% of your game play is "Target is not in range", you don't have to make very many decisions.

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Why am I not on the roster?

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Because you're terribad?

Changes needed for PvP? You bet.

1) Prolong the fight, but dont prolong it through a binary means of 'you take damage, I heal you'. Enhancement diversification was a step in the right direction to ensure that kills required a mix of debuff and damage, however that wasn't enough as CoH PvP is missing a huge portion of its design concept through lessening the impact of crowd control. Stacking buffs such as Clear Mind and Clarity completely remove the aspect of crowd control (Hold, Snare, Fear, Disorient). Remove the stacking buffs and allow holds to actually work or rework these buffs to stack X number of times and work to decrease the cc duration by x%. Likely this will mean putting cc's on a longer recharge. If needed, make epic shields not drop while cc'd.

By correlation, redo Taunt's to function as a CC, and as the previous suggestion, increase recharge as necessary or even require the Tank/Scrapper to not switch targets away from the taunted for the taunts to last full duration.

These cc changes may require a reworking of cc's so they last a shorter period of time each time they are used before immunity, thus promoting a variety of cc's. Breakfree's would also likely need to be re-engineered to either a)decrease cc duration if popped premptively, b) protect against the next cc only or c) immediately break a cc but does not provide any further protection.

Remember this: Developers of other PvP games are seeking to extend the matches such that kills are garnered through coordination beyond simple damage spam. There's a reason for this: Forcing players to multitask beyond Buff/Debuff/Autofollow+spam ranged attacks provides depth to the game and allows for greater variety and longevity of the game.

2. Change the way Buffs/Debuffs work:
-Remove stacking debuffs
-Remove unresistable damage and debuffs
-Adjust 'unresistable' buffs.
-Introduce a means to remove buffs or reduce a buff's duration in PvP.

The whole nature of buffs in CoH is entirely fire and forget with the exception of Increase Density. As an example, the short duration of ID requires that the lone kinetic (on many teams) to be nothing short of amazing when required to keep both Speed Boost and ID on all of their teammates while trying to contribute with damage or cc. Often, ths is what separates a good kinetic from an amazing kinetic, because of the great deal of micromanagement going on. In fact, making some buffs be reactionary instead of proactive would vary the game play significantly. All buffs should function the same way such that each buffer should be presented with a choice on either refreshing expiring buffs or adding to another avenue of attack/defense. Having long duration stackable buffs reduces the decision points for those players.

By adding buff removal powers (long recharges please; dont make them spammable) buffers are forced to remain alert for removed buffs such as the ever important Speed Boost or Clear Mind. In conjunction with adding cc back into the game, this will further remove CoH from the formulaic approach to PvP with various buff classes. If you must, add these powers to archetypes that are rarely played or to powers that arent often taken.

When points 1 and 2 are taken together, and a coordinated burst or a target swap burst is executed properly, any character will be able to be dropped as they will not be getting chain healed on top of ever present powerboosted buffs. Furthermore, balanced game mechanics such as endurance recovery/drain will allow for a variety of teams to be considered. It's ludicrous that a couple of speed boosts will nullify any endurance drain in the game.

3) Give people a reason to bring a variety of classes into the arena. Giving Tanks a sizeable -healing debuff a la Poison Masterminds to their long recharge attacks would instantly make this class desireable. Give a Peacebringer/Warshade a unique IO set that allows their long recharge flight form blast to remove buffs and youve got a long range buff stripper/damage dealer. Normalize scrapper damage with blaster damage.

By correlation, give people a reason to bring a variety of powersets to the arena. Balance out effects with animation+recharge times such that powers with long animations+recharges. CoH's strength is the variety of its powersets. Play to it. Archery has long animations+recharge? Well, give it the most damaging attacks. Fire Control has fast animation and recharge immobilizes? Make their snare duration a bit shorter. You have infinite ways to make each set unique. Give people a reason to bring something different to each fight.

4) Remove Auto Follow in the Arena. There's no reason anyone can just target anyone without knowing where their target is or is moving to and automatically turn towards that target. If the intent is to stick with ranged attackers being dominant in the arena, they should at least work towards getting into range instead of just tab+autofollow. If playing melee is too difficult without this function, then allow it as self buff for melee. Call it scrapperlock or something.

5) Own your product. (no really, own it) As a company, promote a variety of formats and team sizes. It's great that your 'sanctioned' matches are 8v8, but having other 'official' ladders or NCSoft supported contests will bring people to the game. Where there's incentive, there's competition (which means more subscribers to generate more revenue for additional development). In addition, both smaller and larger team formats will allow more casual people to get into PvP. If there was an organized and official 2's ladder with prizes, you would see people coming out of the woodwork. Making the prizes be special costume pieces or in game titles or badges would further the participation. It doesnt have to always be money. A monthly PvP challenge that alternates between Base Raids, 4v4, 8v8, or 12v12 would be interesting!

While you're at it, automate your ladder! Make a website that automatically tracks individual rankings and statistics based off of information submitted by Team captains. This was a huge talking point of one of the now defunct leagues It can't be that hard. Give it a ELO rating system and devise an intelligent point system (to prevent win-trading)

Lastly, get behind your community! Many of us PvPer's who left the game left because the company didnt do anything to improve the PvP environment. The environment hasnt changed much more than a few power changes here and there and a few individuals who have taken up responsibilities to organize a community; that which should have been your responsibility in the first place.

The latest TPVPL is somewhat of a joke (no offense to the organizers) as an outsider looking in. You have this huge league that has been /signed by over 200 people, yet it will take months of hard work of non-NCSoft employees to organize and execute, while trying to maintain a) enough motivated captains, b) the motivation of the people who signed up and won't get to play for months c) the expectations of all the attendees at the start of the process and through the duration of the league. Can they do it? Probably. Would it be easier for them if they had the resources of NCSoft to help them with something as small a real signup page (LOL forum sign ups with KoS' 'just for my convenience' posts)? Definitely. Will the player draft probably be some god awful Forum draft, too? We'll see.

Bottom line (or TL;DR): NCSoft, you have a great game engine, and a resurgence in PvP activity. Don't throw this opportunity away by ignoring your playerbase or not learning from established PvP game design concepts from arguably more successful PvP MMO's. Understanding what draws active PvPers towards a game and keeps them there will guarantee you a following on top of the already strong PvE fanbase.

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I think you mean 6v6v6v6

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Yes thank you, Rox. My asian math gene is broken.

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Can't wait for the 28th then. That's if I even get to play. B team ftw.

[/ QUOTE ]Old Freaks vs New Freaks?

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So, who's going to pick up
@Relativator
@Galvatron
@Banjal
@mwghost
@Jesperr
@Krole

???

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And the list grows. 23 people, internal 8v8s must be nice.

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WHO WILL BE NUMBER 24?! 2 SETS OF 8V8'S OR 6V6V6V6!

(i coulda had a V8)

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Mmmmm, maybe I should just take Hot Feet? I don't know. I am still testing this Fire dom. I do think Psonic's damage is so low at the moment.

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hehe you're just gonna make yourself mad again. Try ice, mind or plant, with fire, thorns or energy. Those combinations don't mature as late.

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disagree. fire is awesome as it gets flashfires early and char is one of the best holds in the game (fast activation). The problem is that most people relate doms to the cov version of a controller, however i dont believe that to be the case. Yes, they have the same primaries, but due to the dom's secondary and inherent and lack of containment (which promotes the use of immobs and sleeps) the closest corollary is really that of a blaster with some controls. this is evident in pvp as well as the quickest buildup of domination is only achievable by massive spamming of assault attacks.

Yes, i realize that people can be successful at playing a dom as a controller (focus on mob lockdown), but really in pve, anything can work, even a flurry/jumpkick empathy defender.

the fact is, doms dont need alot of power selections from their primary. a fire/psi dom only really needs char, flashfires, cinders and imps to be hugely successful as their secondary has some nice early single target attacks and some great aoe damage in the form of psi scream and shockwave later in the game, shockwave being one of the most devestating aoes in the game since it recharges decently and works well with drain psyche (being in the middle of the mobs). infact, a fire/psi dom and a fire/kin corruptor duo doesnt need anyone else on a team to run through 6 man team mobs ridiculously fast.

So shift your playstyle and stop comparing doms to controllers and start thinking of doms as blasters with some nice single target/aoe mezzes that can go ape-poop on mobs every few minutes.

The devs have said that the playstyles of each of these cov AT's are different from what many of us would percieve as their coh counterparts, and with doms, this is especially true.

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wasn't a team it was a duo. Other specifics already given. No exageration, and he's currently deeply involved with his own dominators.

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you wanna see something sick? watch a fire/fire or fire/psi dom and a fire/kin corruptor completely destroy missions

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My trouble with Dominators is that they are too dependent on Domination and too lacklustre without it. Adding Mez resistance to Domination only makes this worse (though it does make the class stronger).

What Dominators need is an always on damage increase. Having an entire secondary devoted to damage, but which in fact does insignificant damage, is a waste. If we pay for this by losing our damage bonus in Domination, thats fine by me.

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I think the emphasis on DOMINATION and the tweaking it receives is the dev's way of letting us know what the design and intent of the AT is. None of them can flat out tell us how theyexpect or want us to playthe Dominator, but by buffing certain aspects of the AT they shine a little light on what mentality a player should have while playing. A good way to look at it is not by thinking the secondary is devoted to damage, but numerous attacks. The more the better imo. Heh, the only AT in CoX that comes close to having as many damage deaing powers as doms are blasters I believe. These attacks are what lead to domination or "(as someone has phrased it) "Ultra Uber God-Mode"... and whether or not we like it, this "jeckyl and hyde" playstlye is built into the design of the dominator.

It's at this realization that leads me to think that the biggest problem people face when playing doms is not the dom itself, but the expectations some players place on them.

Every tweak to Doms (except the minor increase to melee attacks) has been centered around domination: reduced recharge, pvp booost to domination, the soon to be mez protection during domination...

One shouldn't be searching for more defense, or better damage, or longer mez durations, or shorter recharge and lower end costs... One shouldn't be looking to completely change what the AT is designed for. One should only be foucused and concerned with getting to DOMINATION asap. Once any dom player learns to actually get domination up consisitently 3-5 times a mission... like we should be and are fully capable of, then most, if not all other concerns will cease to exisit if ya ask me.

I personally don't think of doms as being "dependant" on domination. I think of them as being constantly driven and determined to reach it at all costs.

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in pve, this is really a moot issue as doms already kick booty. anyone who's played a squishy knows to bring a couple of breakfrees. yes, the end cost issue is still quite prevalent, but getting to domination quickly and using it isnt a problem in pve.

I can build domination in 10 seconds in pvp. i sure as hell cant kill anyone IN domination even with my 'boosted' blasts.

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Ok after I've calmed myself down a bit, I'm wondering...
Mez resistance or mez protection?

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Protection vs. Knockback, Knock Up, Repel, Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Confuse and Fear. Pretty much the whole suite.

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dominators are currently fine for pve. theyre great for teams, adding some damage and a good deal of aggro control when villain teams dont have primary aggro sponges like heroes do.

This change is an "i win -more-" as domination already made it so doms were pretty much an unstoppable force to begin with. nothing stands in the way of dominationed holds except AV's and those werent meant to be solo'ed anyways.

In fun/casual pvp in zones or with pick up arena teams, dominators are fine they way they are with a team as most players dont keep 20 breakfrees or have a pocket emp/thermal/sonic/poison on them at all times.

in competitive pvp, an abundance of mez protection renders even dominationed holds pretty much moot and the single target damage put out by a dominator is so sad compared to a corruptor's blasts. lets not even compare it to containment controller blasts or blaster blasts.

I'm glad that the devs are throwing doms a bone here, but please, devs, give people a reason to play a dom in all aspects of the game (pve, casual pvp and competitive pvp)

either give us a damage boost of some sort or holds that are impossible to get out of (ie: no amount of breakfrees after the 3rd hold). mez protection is the furthest buff id expect dominators to get.. Dr Jeckyll turns into Mr. Hyde.. not Dr. Jeckyll with the equivalent of 4 breakfrees + acrobatics.

yeah, known this for a while. its definitely a great perk!

thing is, while its hard to get 2 kins for your avg pvp or pve joe, its incredibly easy to find someone with a -recharge power in pvp... so in reality you need alot more than just 2 kins if youre facing up against anyone who is aware of your potential. of course.. that person is probably going to face about mag 36+ of holds in a ridiculously short amount of time... some of them possibly powerboosted.