macskull

It hasn't happened because they're not willing to invest any more significant time in PvP other than token bug fixes and maybe "adjusting" a power or two. The major PvP changes that have happened since I13 (selectable arena maps, no heal decay option, and I'm not counting Swiss Draw since that's never worked right) happened because a programmer had some spare time, not because it was something he/she was actually assigned to do. They say they don't want to touch PvP because it will mean continuous balancing to make it work (which is how PvP development works in almost every other MMO), yet they were willing to go ahead with development changes which most active PvPers hated, only to abandon those changes in a half-baked state. It's why I don't PvP in this game anymore, except trolling broadcast in RV, because that's more entertaining than actually trying to play the game.

That's the biggest thing, but many attacks do far more damage in PvP now than they used to (before factoring in DR and resistance shields giving +res to everything), which means targets would probably die even faster.

He doesn't think it's a problem because it's not a problem. The methods to avoid it are numerous and simple. If your complaint with being droned is "the other team won't leave their base!" my retort is just as simple - back away from their base so they'll come out. If one side is droning the other side, it's probably a sign that the gameplay is so imbalanced that the side in their own base feels they have no other option. Better yet, if you're getting droned, switch sides and try to push them out of the base area. I have no issue with droning because it's a completely legitimate tactic that's incredibly easy to counter, yet it somehow manages to make people angry.

Bear with me here, because I'm going to tear this post apart.

Anyone who carried breakfrees or teamed with an Emp/Sonic/Therm could say it wasn't. Anyone who ran with a powerset that gave repel protection, carried breakfrees, or teamed with a Kin could say it wasn't. If you didn't have any of those things (really, breakfrees is what I'm getting at), you might say it was, but that's not an issue with the system being broken as much as it is an issue with that player's inability to adequately prepare themselves for a PvP environment. I enjoyed killing Mind/* Doms on my flying Kat/Regen Scrapper because two breakfrees would negate TK and they'd panic.

Players have not been able to be one-shot, procs and DoT notwithstanding, since a little after CoV came out. Unless the Stalker was really good, as long as you were moving constantly and using map geometry (buildings, etc) to your advantage an AS was almost a non-threat. The "fix" was - and still is - constantly moving, teaming with someone who could provide +perception, or baiting the Stalker with powers that removed or reduced stealth.

The stealth cap for non-Stalker/non-SoA ATs is very low, to the point where someone with just about any +perception will be able to see them. To give some numbers, the stealth cap for a Controller is about 571 feet, while the perception cap for any non-SoA AT is 1153 feet. I'm not sure where you're getting your information, but you're just plain wrong. Another simple solution to the "Emp keeps healing the whole team" problem? Kill the Emp first, then kill his teammates. Easy solution, but apparently it was too difficult for players to figure out.

Moment of Glory hasn't worked that way for quite a while, but when it did PvPers skipped it because it wasn't worth it and Regen was incredibly survivable even without it (and it still is). Current MoG is stupid good on top of a set that's already good.

The -range from taunt powers was a good addition, but the "melee vs. range" disparity isn't something unique to CoH - it happens in just about every MMO. That's why the best melee sets prior to I13 were sets that offered some ranged damage output. Melee characters have a better chance now that they're tougher to kill thanks to DR on buffs but by and large they're still just giant bags of HP for ranged characters that know what they're doing.

Why on earth would they do that when the previous balancing attempts at PvP showed that the developers want to make it so damage type isn't a factor?

Yeah, being unable to move when you're getting attacked by a group of players, being unable to heal your teammates and watching them die, having a large selection of powersets rendered mostly useless, and having your powers work entirely differently in a PvP environment is way less broken than it was before!

Range and damage bonuses are DR'd. I'm not sure about HP bonuses, though.

Webnades for -fly, taunt for -range, pick up some ranged attacks of your own... Kat/DA isn't really good for PvP anyways, but I suppose it'd be passable if you played it well.

Many Controllers are damn good duelers or team players, and with the post-I13 rules it's very difficult to beat a well-played Mastermind in a 1v1 even if they're not using a PvP build (I've had rather good results with my old PvE-built Thugs/Dark, both in duels and zone play).

Only if that other player didn't bring breakfrees, which everyone should have been carrying, or ran with a powerset that gave repel protection, or teamed with a Kin for Increase Density. I figured this out the hard way one day on my Regen Scrapper in Siren's Call way back in I9 or I10 or something like that, and from then until I13 hit I never went into a PvP zone on any character without a generous supply of breakfrees. In one of your earlier posts you also mentioned Stalkers as being unbalanced because they were able to one-shot enemies while remaining invisible, which is partly true - prior to IOs, a Stalker could not hit the stealth cap while solo unless they were running Invisibility, which meant they could not attack until they dropped it, and teaming with another character who could give the hero +perception or -stealth (Emp and Sonic have +perception, and there are a ton of sets that offer -stealth in various forms). Assassin's Strike is an interruptible melee attack (or at least it was when this discussion would have mattered) and can be broken by line of sight, so if you constantly moved around and used the environment to your advantage it was very difficult for anyone but the best Stalkers to AS you unless they had help.

Your analogy makes no sense, at least mine had a point.

Once again, any decent PvPer before I13 was perfectly capable of adapting and using the I13 changes to their benefit. The people who were the best at PvP before I13 dropped were, and still are, the best at PvP under the new ruleset. Just because someone is capable of adapting and adjusting doesn't mean they like doing it - if I'm used to driving a Ferrari and all of a sudden I'm given a Ford Focus, of course I can still drive it, it's just nowhere near as fun. People left after I13 not because they were incapable of adapting, but because they'd rather not continue playing a game that no longer provided the speed and variety they were looking for.

This is cute coming from you, Bud.

You will find few, if any, decent PvPers that will disagree with this statement. Pre-I13 PvP had its share of bugs and imbalances, but as a whole the experience was faster, more dynamic, and more friendly to someone who had no idea what was going on.

I am pretty sure Paragon was running the game when ET got nerfed (think it was I12?).

Since it's set to rotate on every refresh, that is not specific enough >.>

Never know when you're going to want to drop craptons of inf onto a crazy build, and that's when it's nice to have all the inf you need at the drop of a hat. Sometime between I12 and I13 I made an insane build for my triform Warshade and it cost me about 500 million (which at the time was a decent chunk of change). If I were to do the same build today with current market prices it would likely run more like 15-20 billion.

I'm a powergamer - I like to see how far I can push the system. Oftentimes that means investing as much as I can into a character to push their build to its limits, and having the inf to handle those builds is a must. That being said, I rarely play anymore so I haven't made a cent off enhancement converters (I don't think I've made a single market transaction in the last 6 months), but if I ever get back into things it's nice to know I have a large stockpile of inf waiting for me.

FPS PvP is not the same thing as MMO PvP. Not even close. It's very possible to have enjoyable PvP mechanics in an MMO (EVE does this, WoW does this, pre-I13 CoH did this, and to an extent post-I13 as well) without having everyone be the same. To illustrate an example, let's look at two of the major FPS games on the market right now - Battlefield and Call of Duty. Battlefield is, arguably, a much more team-centric game due to having character classes with different weapons, equipment, strengths, and weaknesses, with some degree of customizability. You might be able to lone-wolf in Battlefield, but there will always be some situations where you're at a disadvantage because you aren't the right class to handle a particular encounter (for example, a medic going up against a tank really only has one possible outcome). In Call of Duty, other than weapon and perk choices there aren't any character classes and every player is more or less capable of lone-wolfing the game. Communication and team play factor more heavily into the Battlefield experience simply because the game is designed around it.

MMOs are more like Battlefield than Call of Duty - there are character classes with their own strengths and weaknesses, and some classes won't be as well-equipped to deal with a situation as another class might be. Teaming solves those weaknesses in PvE as well as PvP. In a multiplayer, class-based game, it's nigh-impossible to have "perfect" PvP balance in 1 vs 1 encounters (or even small-team encounters) because everything has a counter. However, the picture of balance starts to become more clear once you factor in large-team PvP, which has, at least in CoH, generally been considered the pinnacle of organized PvP pretty much since PvP was introduced. A particular one of your characters might be at a disadvantage against another player's character, but odds are pretty good that you've got a character that would be at an advantage over that character, and so on. That's just the way class-based PvP works, whether it's in an MMO or an FPS. When you've got two full teams working together and communicating, you can make up for each others' deficiencies, allowing two roughly-balanced teams.

In short: everyone does not have to be equal for PvP balance to occur. Even if that were the case, the idea of balance you have would be impossible since it fails to take player skill into account, which is something you can't adjust for no matter how good you are at "balancing" - it's just too big a variable. Just as in the PvE game, Stalkers are good at doing lots of damage really fast to a single target, while Tankers are good at soaking up damage and managing aggro. What players fail to realize is that to an extent these roles carry over to the PvP side of the game (though to less of an extent than they did pre-I13), so they complain that X always beats Y so nerf X when really Z can beat X and A can beat Z and so on. Characters are designed to have weaknesses so they can't "do it all," nor should they be able to. To use the FPS example again, if I'm a medic going up against a sniper from hundreds of yards away, it doesn't mean the sniper should be nerfed, because that's the role a sniper excels at.

I expect the same thing, and I don't condone anyone who expects otherwise. Ideally, everyone would be civil all the time, but that's not the case in PvP, in PvE, or anywhere, really. It would be awesome if it were, but the reality is that it's probably not going to happen.

The issue here is that, despite the term being thrown around often, there isn't really a "PvP community." There's the players who PvP, and among those there are arena PvPers, zone PvPers, players who do both, and the list goes on. If you look at rules for organized tournaments going back to pretty much the beginning of PvP in this game, you'll find they usually have rules that prohibit trash talking and the like, and players who don't follow those rules find themselves no longer participating. However, when you're talking about less organized PvP such as almost all zone PvP, kickballs, random arena matches, etc., that isn't there. The only conduct that's really possible to enforce in those situations is the EULA and reporting players who don't follow it. It's not an ideal situation, but there's really nothing that can be done about it.

I think it's simply a disconnect on the way we think - some people find it crazy that I'd enjoy being competitive and defeating other players, and I find it crazy that there are players who won't PvP because it means another player has to lose and that makes them feel bad (in fact, until I started reading this thread, I had no idea that state of mind even existed).

Then your issue is with the lack of objectives in this game's PvP, and that's a common theme even with those who do PvP. It's been brought up for a long time and Castle at one point stated he was working on adding gametypes other than "get more kills than the other guys" but so far nothing's come of that. As I said above, it comes down to a different way of thinking about the game - I play the game to be competitive, because PvE in this game isn't challenging and I don't feel like reinvesting in a new game that would require such a large time investment, and you play the game to do superhero-y stuff. For you, the reward is saving that hostage, stopping those terrorists, stopping the drug runner, and so on. For me, the reward is knowing that the effort I've put into learning the game and building my character has paid off against someone else who is potentially as powerful as I am, as well as the chance for a reward for defeating that other player. Would more people PvP if there were meaningful objectives? I have no doubt, but I play because I enjoy being competitive - it is, after all, human nature.


I disagree with your assessment as to why this game has the community it does. It seems to me this game has its community not because it's a superhero game, but because it's a very easy game to get into. There's not much learning curve, it isn't "grind-y" (at least to the extent most other MMOs are), and gear isn't the end-all-be-all like it is in other games. You can have lots of fun with minimal time investment in this game simply because it's easy to pick up and it's not terribly challenging. If this game had been a sci-fi or fantasy MMO with its current mechanics I'm fairly certain it would have about the same community it does now for the reasons I stated above.

The funny thing about this is you may have teamed with me, or someone with a mentality similar to my own, and not even known it. You assume that just because I am competitive and have a different view of my goals in the game that I must go out of my way to make other players' experience unenjoyable, when in reality that's quite simply untrue. The only way you'd likely be able to tell I'm a PvPer if you were to see me in normal PvE content is by how much I move around, and if you weren't familiar with PvP you'd probably not even notice that in the first place.

I think Uber's list and my list are pretty similar since we tend to team with the same groups of people. I could start listing names but even the players just from Justice would take a bit. I remember playing in a pentad plus tournament just before I13 which was a ton of fun but imploded as soon as I13 launched because 1) the I13 arena ruleset left PvP unplayable and 2) the players that didn't leave gave up on the tournament. There was a big 2v2 tournament shortly before I13 went into beta that had people paying for server transfers for a shot at a 500 million inf prize (remember that was a big deal back then). Very few of the players who participated in that tournament still play.


TS/HD/DR are the I13 changes, in a nutshell. Sure, there are other bits and pieces not there, but those are the three mechanics PvPers almost universally seem to dislike. I don't think any PvPer worth their salt pre-I13 would disagree with your assertion that the old system wasn't perfect. Everyone knew the system had its flaws and the community even had a nice list of things that needed fixing and how they could be fixed, and they were essentially ignored.

Err... heroes fighting villains is the entire point of the superhero/supervillain genre. Whether the player at the keyboard reflects your mentality of what a "superhero" or "supervillain" should be is completely irrelevant. When I'm at my computer PvPing, I'm not some poor kid who watched his kids get shot and now uses his technological gadgets to fight evil, I'm someone controlling pixels on a screen trying to defeat other pixels on a screen. In short, I don't care about whether it "fits" the concept of the game, only that the mechanics are good enough to make the experience enjoyable (and more often than not lately they aren't). At its core, PvP is simply heroes fighting against villains (or variations thereof, but that's not the point). If I want backstory, concept, or anything of that sort I'll go RP on Virtue or PvE. I PvP because it's more challenging than "run into mob -> fire off AoEs -> run to next mob -> fire off AoEs -> repeat."

Well, you know, except in the nearly seven years this game has had PvP that's never happened. It's certainly not going to now that the PvP population is a shadow of its former self. As I've said before, the PvPers I know and play with are some of the most knowledgeable and helpful players I know - just because you have occasional interactions with the vocal minority does not give you the right to judge an entire community based on their actions.

I think you're confusing the definition of "one person" with the definition of "community." I've had awful Tankers on PuGs before, Kins that didn't buff at all, MMs who couldn't control their pets, or any number of things like that, but I don't go around saying "all Tankers are worthless" or "Kins suck" or "MMs are a danger to a team" because I know that a few bad players here and there aren't representative of the playerbase as a whole. I know better than that, and honestly, so should everyone else.

Killing someone (who is out of their base with the PvP timer off) repeatedly in a PvP zone isn't griefing. Killing someone who is capturing a pillbox isn't griefing. Killing someone who is killing one of the AVs in RV isn't griefing. "Griefing" is TPing someone into a crate or other funky map geometry so they're unable to get out, or getting below the map and killing people as they spawn into the hospital. You're in a PvP zone and you should assume hostilities because, after all, it is player versus player. I realize this doesn't make sense to some people, but it's been said before that PvP zones are more or less "anything goes" so long as players aren't abusing glitches or exploits.

Regarding the PvP community, that's a classic case of people listening to a small minority and judging the entire community based on that minority. In reality, even those PvPers who occasionally troll /ac or broadcast are some of the best, most helpful players I know. After I13 when a vast majority of the experienced PvPers up and left, the game lost a huge amount of knowledge.