The arena after 5 days of playing
By
Adamant_Soul,
Posted on: 2005-04-04 24:23 in Badges and Gladiators
EDIT: Darn, my ASCII drawing didn't turn out right.
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Things like capture the flag, some sort of race, paintball/laser tag, or something. Some sort of activity where you can compete with others without it being a test of how much damage you do.
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Didn't states or Pos metion something about CTF a while back?
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And what happens in 1 on 1 matches? Under this system certain sets are doomed to lose.
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I believe a dev has come out and said that they will not spend much time balancing PvP for 1-on-1 matches.
For devs that are accused of meddling too much (I disagree), balancing PvP for 1-on-1 is something even they don't want to deal with. There will always be certain 1-on-1 match-ups that lopsided without rewriting the game wholesale.
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The biggest gripe I have about the arena is the "triple damage while held" thing. Especially with sings. The sings just spam holds and that effectively chain mezzes you: even with the immunity. The triple damage makes it worse in that they can kill you in 5 seconds flat....and regen scrappers are still overpowered. Other than that, I don't have any complaints as I know they are bugs that will be fixed. 
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Problem is, I believe the 15 sec window grants immunity from being spammed the same hold or stun from a specific source.
Meaning, if the same hold is coming from different sources (sings, frosts, etc) you may get chain held.
As for the triple damage, I have yet to see my damage output increase. I don't believe it is actice.
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Oh, no. It's active. When I play my mind controller, once I get a hold on someone they are done. Experiment with a friend if you can. The first hold does your base damage, then hold them again, and see two numbers float above their head, the extra number is your extra damage.
"Looks like we arrived in the nick of time. What does that make us?"
"Big damn heroes, sir."
"Ain't we just."
-Mal & Zoe, "Firefly"
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I believe a dev has come out and said that they will not spend much time balancing PvP for 1-on-1 matches.
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Correct: Positron asked for feedback on 2v2 and above. (Reiterated)
I think an sphere of influence would be a good idea for players. Say I taunt someone, then run to the other side of the arena. If the person I taunted is outside my sphere of influence (for argument sake, lets say 50 feet) or if I'm knocked out, then the power "turns off". Same can be done for holds and effects.
I'm not going to be doing any more PVP testing until the stamina bug is fixed. As an Illusion controller, many of my powers have a very high endurace cost, so after I'm defeated once I'm pretty much unable to do anything except try not to die again. And with most teams taking the tactic of 'kill the trollers first!' PVP becomes Not Fun very quickly.
I have to say that so far, I'm not finding PVP as much fun as I had hoped it would be. I know that it will get better with more testing and balance, but right now I'm having more fun levelling up alts than I am PVPing.
My PVP experience is also making me think I will not be interested in COV when that game comes out.
to original poster: Agree with almost everything.
You don't brawl enough. Toggle drops are lame and broken vs anyone who relies on toggles.
Just want to add my vote for special game types, even if it means releasing everything else in the patch and holding on the arena. Capture the flag, rescue, etc... are needed.
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I think an sphere of influence would be a good idea for players. Say I taunt someone, then run to the other side of the arena. If the person I taunted is outside my sphere of influence (for argument sake, lets say 50 feet) or if I'm knocked out, then the power "turns off". Same can be done for holds and effects.
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That makes sense !
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I'm a huge fan of PvP games. I can play Unreal Tournament for hours (much to the consternation of my wife 
But the difference between a game like UT and CoH PvP is huge.
In UT you can jump right back into combat after respawning. In CoH PvP I have to turn all my toggles back on and wait for endurance to regenerate. That does not make for a fast paced fun game.
In UT even if the other guy has the flac cannon and all I have is the pistol, I have a chance. In CoH PvP if I get held it's game over and I get to look forward to turning all my toggles back on and waiting for my endurance to regen.
CoH PvP isn't, in my experience, fun.
Hm... I wonder if they could force first person view, and then make attacks aimable instead of targetable...
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It really sounds like the only reason you don't like PvP in CoH is because its not a FPS.
CoH isnt a FPS don't make it a FPS.
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Terrorize: Basically the same thing as a perma-hold. Not fun and yet people still insist on using it even after being told of its rediculousness. I started having a rule, if you use terrorize, I use taunt. Then no one will have fun.
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There's a serious difference between the Dark Defender Fear and the Ill Controller Fear when compared to the Scrapper DM or DA fear in PvP. The latter two have been tested and shown to allow retaliation strikes, retaliation movement, have a reasonable accuracy, sensible duration, do not perma-fear and overall are balanced. The Defender and Controller versions on the other hand, well I know the Defender one is bugged through testing. And the controller one from observation looks possibly bugged also.
In short, there's a distinction between the fears atm that people who don't really understand fear need to learn. The scrappers from my testing are fine. Your beef is with the other types of fear.
As a controller i totally agree that taunts and holds should drop if you exit the area of the opponent, anything else is cheap, however the poblem is if your in a air battle and you hold a opponent and he drops then the hold drops and your at square one. so the devs would have to work on that. As for chain holds in one on one its possible in a team battle it is not, as long as you have a intelligent team. your being chain mezzed simple answer kill the freaking controller/def/blaster/scrapper/tank cause we all have the ability to get stun or some kind of mezz. A tank/scrapper with CM is pretty much unholdable by a controller, and a blaster/def is much harder to hold. This game is team based thats why they are asking for 2 on 2 not one on one. As for break free's giving a immunity for 5-10 sec thats crippling, its like a controller asking for luck or respite to make you imune from damage for 5-10 seconds. We hold thats they whole primary set for the most part my imps are a distraction and my sings cant hold a scrapper or tank who is slotted right and on the fair chance i overcome mag, they pop a breakfree and its over if im close. In team play controllers are ussually target #1 which is very smart but since taunts broke and only cheap people use it. right now its really hard to test our ability. A smart troller on a team wont focus on a tank they will work on helping kill squishies cause they are all we can normally effect. Once taunts fixed more testing will be nessisary because no AT is functioning as they should with it broke, def cant stay alive neither can controllers or blasters cause no one is attacking the tanks and they cant taunt to get aggro. This bug itself is altering all of PvP. However PvP may not be for everyone on the same hand just something you gonna want to do i guess
All battles, even large ones, require that there be some kind of 1 on 1 balance, otherwise thoses with defense quickly overrun those without. As it is now High Defense ATs can damage Low (to Non-Existant) Defense ATs much more rapidly, many times in 2 shots, than Low Defense ATs can retaliate or make due. This means the basic stratagy become squish the low stuff because its easy and only confront the higher stuff later if you have to. If 1 on 1 balance is ignored it will cause a lot of greif over the arean in general.
I don't think CoH PvP will do much for most players. The power sets where not designed or tested for what would be fun in PvP. When you start from a design that wasn't meant to be fun for PvP then your unlikely to reach a point where PvP will provide long term fun for the majority of the playerbase. The prime example of this are control powers. I've never played a game where being helpless was fun for the target. But with CoH you can't take that away and still have functional controller powersets.
I take the arena to be an occasional distraction that lets me enjoy a different type of play. I don't ever expect it to be a mainstay for my CoH gaming experience.
Nogala
But various forms of PvP could work! You can do a capture the flag, and yes it woudl be in a different sense than UT. For example (taken from a previous post I made):
Using moderate to larger maps, teams of 2 or more, you have a glowie pedestal spawn with the players. They have to defend that pedestal from being clicked by the opposing team(s).
Here is the catcher. The pedestal takes 15 seconds to click. By clicking the pedestal you lose ALL powers -- your toggles drop, your status effects drop. They will not even come back unless you die. So... you better be sure you want to click that pedestal when you do.
This will bring in strategic lay such as Ice Controllers keeping an Ice Slick on the pedestal, fire tankers being able to effectively use Burn in PvP, A blaster with Devices putting down some trip mines and full-auto. A storm defender ready with his hurricane or Bubble defencer with his repulsion field, etc.
The fun at figuring out ways to defend your pedestal and take out the defender of the opposing teams pedestal would be awesome.
I don't think it would take too much to add in a pedestal like that in the current format of the Arena. Please consider doing so.
If you do, simple variations can be added such as having a once sided battle -- on team has no pedestal and is offensive only while the other is defensive and has to defend 1, 2, or 3.
A traiditonal capture the flag setup is even possible, say you click (insta-click in this case) the opposing team's pedestal and when you do you lose all your powers but gain 2 temporary ones -- super speed and a power like the Nemesis Staff with 5 charges. You also get a special aura... a big glowing orb above your head (the "flag"). That makes you an instant target for the other team of course. You have to run back to your team's pedestal and click it to get the point.
Matches would be won in any of the above ideas by clicking or capturing the flag 1 - say 10 times or you could set a time limit of 10 or more minutes and whoever gets the most points wins, etc.
This are just base idea, much more can be added on or modified.
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Taunt: Broken, useless, and rediculously powerful all at the same time. If you're taunted, you run away until the taunt wears off - useless and not fun. If you taunt defenders and/or blasters, they become completely useless and it is not fun for them - rediculously powerful. Anyone gets perma-taunted - completely not fun - broken.
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all I can say is woe to the tank that taunts my defender. There is no tank that my defender can't take down. the same applies to invuln and dark scrappers... and regen scrappers that don't use perma MoG. I am the toggle dropping KING!
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I have to say that so far, I'm not finding PVP as much fun as I had hoped it would be. I know that it will get better with more testing and balance, but right now I'm having more fun levelling up alts than I am PVPing.
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I have to agree with this but am not totally surprised by it. Playing an L35 Emp defender/supporter my experience is based on 3 matches all with no restrictions. A 4x4x4 and a 3x3x3x3 were just total mayhem with no strategies or team work as far as I could tell. As we went in I would cast Fortitude, Clear Mind (on each teammate), Adrenalin Boost, another Fortitude, finish with Recovery Aura and toggle on Tactics and Manoevers and then they charged. After that I spent the rest of the 10 minute matches dying and flying back to my teammates to turn on toggles and try to heal. I got held, slept, frozen, slowed, scared (fear), blasted by pets and blasters, and when I fell to earth ripped up by the melee AT's. Averaged about 8 deaths in each of these matches and only managed to cast 4 or 5 heals and renew AB once or twice. Also had terrible lag in these games. Team may have performed well but it certainly wasn't any fun for my AT.
I also did one 2x2 against a scrapper and controller in which I did a little better. Cast same spells on my tank teammate and hovered above him casting heals as required. Their controller would split attacks between me and the tank and when ever I went down the scrapper would take me out in two hits and then get back to attacking the tank. I think I died 6 times in this one. My tank teammate never died (and did thank me) but with my deaths they easily came out on top.
I never expected to beat an opposing player and don't care about the rankings but I had hoped it would be fun, and it isn't for me. In PoE my mission teams rarely have players go down and I have taken teams through TF's with no team deaths so I think I'm a decent healer. I love being able to keep teammates going against anything but PvP is a waste of time as far as I'm concerned.
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Force Field Defenders: I don't know if they're all a**holes but every one I've encountered so far at some point activates that shield thing that basically makes them impossible to hit and then type "lol" and "lmao", or read a newspaper as you try to hit them. Not fun. All I gotta say is be wary of being unsportsmanlike to a tanker with a broken taunt power and a short temper...
Terrorize: Basically the same thing as a perma-hold. Not fun and yet people still insist on using it even after being told of its rediculousness. I started having a rule, if you use terrorize, I use taunt. Then no one will have fun.
Holds in general: any time you are stuck for a length of time unable to do ANYTHING it is not fun. And in the arena, this is true far too often. Running from one held character and pounding them down to another held character just isn't fun. It's also not fun being on the receiving end sitting there looking at your held character for minutes on end.
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I agree with the overall flavor of your post, I just want to add a few points.
FF defenders: If the defender/controller has on his PFF, he isnt doing anything else, he is in essence an observer. Let him have his jollies, if he wants to fight he's going to have to bring that force field down. My lvl 16 ff/rad defender is a pointless hero in pvp so far, I still get smacked around with a well slotted dispersion bubble and combat jumping.
Fear: I agree fear is the achilles heel of many builds, my dark/rad defender just took the aoe fear and the first battle I used it the other team got royally po'ed at me, one of them continued to attack me even after the match was over he was so mad. However that being said the clerk behind the counter does sell break frees...
which also applied to holds. Lets face it controllers, defenders and blasters without some sort of control (holds,fear etc) are taunt bait and shredded to bits before they can blink. All of my scrappers basically two shot any squishy without some way to keep me at bay.
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to original poster: Agree with almost everything.
You don't brawl enough. Toggle drops are lame and broken vs anyone who relies on toggles.
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Squishies will not use brawl though. Brawl = melee = death for squishies. That's why I respec'ed for Force Bolt, which isn't as effective as Brawl. But hey, that's what I get for being Ill/FF...*hides*
in my experience the fear bug is the opposite way round.
i've seen a dark scrapper perma fear a number of opponents. but i've used fearsome stare on several teams and individuals. and a number of times against scrappers i've had to remember to step away from them as i continue to attack because they continued to attack me. the only thing i can see broken with fear and other hold type powers is the immunity timers.
The immunity timers appear to drop at the same time the auto/passive powers drop. so as soon as you die once, there is no immunity timer for anything. This is especially apparent when facing gravity controllers. and i've noticed it when using petrifying gaze that i can easilly hold someone after they've come out of a hold, ran a few steps only to be snared by one of my dark servants again.
I would wager that the immunity timers, like the break frees, have a magnitude limit. and that if the magnitude of all the holds stacked on the player is greater than that of the immunity/break free then you can still be held. it's impossible to get away from 2 singularities using breakfrees because the inspiration just doesn't bring you out of the hold, unless you want to pop 4 or 5 of them at once. and even then you're held a few seconds later when the break free duration runs out. that is rediculous if you ask me. i use a breakfree i should be out of all controlling powers straight away no questions asked.
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Once a hold drops ... it should make you immune to all holds for 15 secs ... including the removal of all active holds ... that way you could give controler's a hard time ... well you only need about 4 seconds with range and line of sight to take down a controler with a blaster ... but being perma-held is no fun ... so make the immunity 5 secs if you want ... but you have ot be immune .. this is crazy.
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Kept getting chain held by a fire/rad last night. Dont remember what the attacks were called but each encounter with her went like this.... Me choking with my hands at my throat, Flames errupt at my feet, green glow springs up around me, imps start wailing on me and then EMP.. and I'm dead. Breakfrees would not work even if I used them when I saw her coming. And the range on that choking attack was greater than slug.
I would use beanbag on her and she would be stunned for a second but a breakfree cleared the effects and then I'm back to choking...etc...
And had several matches where I was perma feared or taunted.. The last one I finally got frustrated to the point that I quit the match and I HATE it when people do that. But when you die, rez and spend a few seconds finding a good position only to get the TAUNTED above your head when you go to attack a member of the other team. That aint right...
After four hours of PvP last night, most of it fun even the lopsided slaughter fests... I'm gonna let the devs patch some of the known bugs before I try it again.
When Taunt gets fixed, the high defense ATs will actually be able to help protect the low defense ones properly without killing everyone's fun.
DS
Why is it that those of you who suggest ways of getting influence assume that a player who has transferred a character is a high level, somewhere in the 30-50s? It is almost impossible for someone pre-30 to go and buy a full tray of SOs because we are constantly scrounging around on live to get enough Inf to buy our next level of Enhancements, and we don't just have money to throw around.
And at these levels, missions don't give out 100k or whatever ridiculous number that one person stated. Those just aren't viable options for many.
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You know .... the Special Olympics has runners that aren't suited or well prepared too. ...Compared to normal races, they're very LONG races too. And even if someone wins, they're still retarded.
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Man, that is just so many shades of wrong.