Official Thread for Recluses Victory: PvP Zone
By
Adam7,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 24:15 in Developers' Corner
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Yep, well once the children that Drone teleport for 2 hours straight leave the zone it actually becomes fun..
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There's an easy way around this, of course: Stay away from the opposing base.
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Sensible people keep saying this and the sublime ease of the solution still makes me chuckle. 
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Just to be an @!# I once had 3 friends, each of us with tport foe, yank someone halfway across the zone to the drone. Took several tries before we got it to work and it was quite fun. Even the target was amused.
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And, of course, long ago it was declared that absolutely no behavior in a PvP zone could ever be "griefing".
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No, that was never said.
If you're going to make a statement like that you should have the link to back it because some idiot's going to think you actually know what you're talking about and get himself into trouble.
First of all, anything in the EULA listed as griefing is still true in PvP zones. It doesn't say 'except in PvP zones'. A hero training mobs over other heroes in a non-FFA PvP zone will get into just as much trouble as doing it in a non-pvp zone.
In SC Heroes are not ENEMIES of each other and doing that is griefing where-as dragging mobs over your enemies is not. You're using them as a weapon to help kill your enemies.
Also Cuppa made a post a few weeks ago listing a few things that were in fact griefing in PvP zones and can get you warned and banned for doing them.
I quote:
In response to a player question Cuppa replied:
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The Devs say - No. (Unless something is occurring over and over with the intention to harass, then it may be actioned.)
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Which falls into the EULA.
Also her post saying that you cannot swear AT people in PvP or it could be griefing. Of course my search-fu is failing me. Can anyone find that or did another red-name say that?
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Kali speaks the truth once more. Of course with red names saying crap like:
[Quote] Somebody also did the recall friend thing on one of the hero pillboxes, making it impossible for villains to take (a very <censored> thing to do IMHO.)
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What do you expect from the playerbase?
Might as well say, "Hey, you suck for using our crap programming!" Very constructive.
Quick, someone mod me.
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Okay.
The redname QUOTED that. They didn't say it.
ETA: ...I, um, messed up my quote tags the same way to illustrate the point! Yeah, that's it. *eyeshift*
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Kali speaks the truth once more. Of course with red names saying crap like:
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Somebody also did the recall friend thing on one of the hero pillboxes, making it impossible for villains to take (a very <censored> thing to do IMHO.)
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What do you expect from the playerbase?
Might as well say, "Hey, you suck for using our crap programming!" Very constructive.
Quick, someone mod me.
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Okay.
The redname QUOTED that. They didn't say it.
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Either the boards are borked or he tagged wrong. It still shows up as original material on my screen.
Believe it or not, I AM glad to hear it wasn't a red name original. Thanks for setting it straight, Dart.
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Yep, well once the children that Drone teleport for 2 hours straight leave the zone it actually becomes fun..
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There's an easy way around this, of course: Stay away from the opposing base.
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Kali speaks the truth once more. Of course with red names saying crap like:
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Somebody also did the recall friend thing on one of the hero pillboxes, making it impossible for villains to take (a very <censored> thing to do IMHO.)
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What do you expect from the playerbase?
Might as well say, "Hey, you suck for using our crap programming!" Very constructive.
Quick, someone mod me.
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Er, you don't have a single red-name quote in there dude. All that stuff was said by players. What the red-name said was:
<a href="http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=shibboleth&Number= 5498699&bodyprev=#Post5498699" target="_blank">[ QUOTE ]
regarding the pillboxes and recall, Heroes did not do this- it is a bug; currently, when someone controlling the pillbox dies the turrets sometimes follow them to the reclamator.
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I think you're confused because he gaffed the quote, however if you look you can see the bottom line for a the quote-box and see that he's clearly quoting Texan.
Foot in mouth?
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Believe it or not, I AM glad to hear it wasn't a red name original. Thanks for setting it straight, Dart.
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2000+ posts and you couldn't figure that one out man?
Why in one line would he 'rag on players' for doing something like that then a little ways down say it's not something a player did but a bug?
Didn't read the whole thing before jumping all over it did you? 
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Yep, well once the children that Drone teleport for 2 hours straight leave the zone it actually becomes fun..
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There's an easy way around this, of course: Stay away from the opposing base.
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Kali speaks the truth once more. Of course with red names saying crap like:
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Somebody also did the recall friend thing on one of the hero pillboxes, making it impossible for villains to take (a very <censored> thing to do IMHO.)
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What do you expect from the playerbase?
Might as well say, "Hey, you suck for using our crap programming!" Very constructive.
Quick, someone mod me.
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Er, you don't have a single red-name quote in there dude. All that stuff was said by players. What the red-name said was:
<a href="http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=shibboleth&Number= 5498699&bodyprev=#Post5498699" target="_blank">[ QUOTE ]
regarding the pillboxes and recall, Heroes did not do this- it is a bug; currently, when someone controlling the pillbox dies the turrets sometimes follow them to the reclamator.
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I think you're confused because he gaffed the quote, however if you look you can see the bottom line for a the quote-box and see that he's clearly quoting Texan.
Foot in mouth?
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See above.
No foot in mouth. No sense feeling ashamed for a mistake caused by poor posting habits. The only time I feel ashamed is when I allow myself to be crass enough to use the self-rightous smirk and then realize the guy I used it on is willing to admit a mistake in the post directly above me.
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Believe it or not, I AM glad to hear it wasn't a red name original. Thanks for setting it straight, Dart.
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2000+ posts and you couldn't figure that one out man?
Why in one line would he 'rag on players' for doing something like that then a little ways down say it's not something a player did but a bug?
Didn't read the whole thing before jumping all over it did you?
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Hazard of posting while multitasking 
Just an observance of what I've seen in the PvP zones of this game...It's pretty much casual play, mostly favoring whichever side brings in the most characters since the zone is unorganized most of the time. You will have 2-3 groups (on Virtue at least) organized well enough to pop in and take control of the zone, and repel or defeat larger numbers, but often times these are groups that have been playing together for months and use a voicechat program like Teamspeak.
I don't see highly structured SGs/VGs with focused PvP efforts becoming the norm though. As much as I love strategy and coordinating my PvP efforts with a group of my SG mates, the player base seems very casual at best and team coordination among this particular majority would be like herding cats. Not to take anything away from Villain successes in testing, but an organized PvP oriented SG/VG taking on casual players is like sending the New England Patriots into a pee-wee football game, and isn't a fair indication of balance.
EDIT: Off topic and not worth the argument. Snip!
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And the heroes out-gun the villains by lightyears in that respect with 2 debuffing/buffing/healing AT's - who basically enable the heroes to surpass the villains in the offense department as well.
Id like to see the same experiment with less corrupters against an organized hero group.
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Corruptors are the best PvP villain team AT, bar none. Corruptors can cross buff each other to resist caps, end drain, slow, resist debuff and scourge the selected target for truly horrendous DPS through any healing or buffing. We've done it before in Warburg against well organized hero groups in straight up fights. Corruptors are what offenders want to be when they grow up.
So, with what the best villains can offer against the best heroes can offer in zone, I'm still not too worried. As Thor says, the factional imbalances that exist are relatively small and would only show up in very high performance PvP. They require minor tweaks at most.
As far as AT imbalances, you've got a point. It would be nice if there was more diversity in what the "best" was, sure. Unfortunately, I just don't really see that happening without a redesign of the game (COH 2 anyone?) Some ATs (like brutes and MMs) are just, by nature, better suited for PvE. Some ATs (stalkers) are awesome at solo PvP, but don't synergize as well in a larger team. I think MMs and brutes have more potential in RV than any other PvP zone, personally, but we haven't had a chance to run them yet. I'm the biggest proponent of MM PvP in LotD right now, and my highest is still in the 30s.
Something pie-in-the-sky I would like to see that might help encourage faster meta-game evolution, more diversity in builds for both sides and less of a "[censored] did I spend 6 months levelling this gimpy piece of [censored] for?" feeling is some way to level "PvP-only" toons very quickly with easily obtainable unlimited respecs (ala GW.) It's excruciatingly hard to put together a PvP spec if you don't already have the right ATs.
It sucks to spend hundreds of hours grinding a toon up to realize it's just not that effective, particularly if you were a late comer to PvP and didn't realize that you even had to make that choice. It also sucks to get owned in the arena or zone, realize that it's a build issue and basically be stuck until you can re-roll and re-level.
So, to answer your question directly, you're not likely to see us with less corruptors for the time being. We very much hope, however, to see more organized hero and villain groups in RV both on test and on live. I think it would be awesome to get a half dozen or so organized SG/VGs fighting for control of RV at the same time.
Just my $.02
What he said: I got an Earth/EA Brute that spends most of the time stuck on the ground. If I wanted to beat squishies, I need flight. But being Earth, I suffer the same problem all MMs do, which is I can't attack flyers with my knockdowns, and hurl boulder isn't as effective because they see it a mile away and back off so I still have to run to them (most of the time through mobs or around buildings) to smash them. By then, suppresion drops and they are flying again. It's a gimp build, so I gotta reroll another brute that can take on flyers.
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Just an observance of what I've seen in the PvP zones of this game...It's pretty much casual play, mostly favoring whichever side brings in the most characters since the zone is unorganized most of the time. You will have 2-3 groups (on Virtue at least) organized well enough to pop in and take control of the zone, and repel or defeat larger numbers, but often times these are groups that have been playing together for months and use a voicechat program like Teamspeak.
I don't see highly structured SGs/VGs with focused PvP efforts becoming the norm though. As much as I love strategy and coordinating my PvP efforts with a group of my SG mates, the player base seems very casual at best and team coordination among this particular majority would be like herding cats. Not to take anything away from Villain successes in testing, but an organized PvP oriented SG/VG taking on casual players is like sending the New England Patriots into a pee-wee football game, and isn't a fair indication of balance.
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I don't care who you are, there comes a point where to survive overwhelming numbers becomes a testament to the skill of the 8 man team (regardless of SG or VG). One good team has proven more than once that its actions and team build/teamwork turned the tide of the zone.
Rystorm (Tribute/Freaks) put it best. An 8 man build that kicks butt in a zone doesn't always translate into an uber arena build. When you build a team spec for a zone, you have to plan for the fact that you are likely to encounter overwhelming odds and your team strategy has to take that into account as well. If 15 people target you at once, you are just as dead as if it was a skilled VG/SG, and your teammates better know how to react.
LotD's team builds are designed for zone combat, whether its an organized VG/SG or 50 random heroes coming at us. Our builds have stood up to 4-1 odds, they've stood up to Tribute + everyone else in Warburg after us, and they're standing up in RV.
The hero cluster is going to go after whatever villain team is busting their chops and taking the zone. That is where the action is, the concentrated fire, the NPC's, etc. If you go into a zone like RV with the wrong build, or a newbie SG/VG member then your success ratio is likely to go down.
PVP success is a PVP zone is all about completing objectives, mitigating damage against vastly superior numbers, teamwork, your team build, and team mates knowing when to concentrate fire, when to buff, when to move, etc.
What our builds have shown is that villains can compete with a combination of a solid build, and teamwork regardless of what other villains in the zone do or fail to do.
To elaborate on my thinking about how cool RV is a little; one of the things that I think is possible with this zone is to actually let the high powered PvP guilds and the more solo and pick-up PvP types actually work together to achieve zone objectives.
For example, the core hunter/killer teams can concentrate on keeping the other side busy/off guard while the pickups work on taking and holding the turrets (which are very much more of a PvE type challenge and are not out of reach of an unoptimized PuG, provided you're not getting ganked by heroes.)
Our second night in RV was very much this way - we spent a lot more time just keeping heroes off balance once we realized there was another villain team (including MMs and brutes) working pillboxes and we managed to take the zone.
I'd like to try this out some more; the idea of factional (not just guild) organization in RV is very appealing. We're kicking around the idea of setting up a scheduled event some weekend very soon to have 2-3 organized guild teams from LotD and other VGs from Freedom (and other servers) with as many pickups as want to come. If we get some good turnout on both sides, it ought to be a blast.
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What our builds have shown is that villains can compete with a combination of a solid build, and teamwork regardless of what other villains in the zone do or fail to do.
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You missed my point entirely. Obviously any team that's organized SPECIFICALLY for zone PvP has a better chance at turning the tides of the zone. But that doesn't mean there's balance between the heroes and the villains, especially when a vast majority of the player base is at best, casual and won't be out there organized the way your VG group is. I'd argue to say that a hero group could do the same thing your VG did in a similar situation with less work than you put in, and be just as successful.
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What our builds have shown is that villains can compete with a combination of a solid build, and teamwork regardless of what other villains in the zone do or fail to do.
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You missed my point entirely. Obviously any team that's organized SPECIFICALLY for zone PvP has a better chance at turning the tides of the zone. But that doesn't mean there's balance between the heroes and the villains, especially when a vast majority of the player base is at best, casual and won't be out there organized the way your VG group is. I'd argue to say that a hero group could do the same thing your VG did in a similar situation with less work than you put in, and be just as successful.
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Perhaps you should define what you're looking for in terms of balance. Balance is a very vague term. Sure heroes can put together zone teams. So can villains. That seems balanced to me. The top hero PvP SGs have put constant effort into their builds (ever since the Arena came out) - I would hardly call that "a lot easier."
I don't think you're really getting our point: organized villain PvP teams are very competitive with organized hero PvP teams, perhaps much more than you realize. The imbalances (and I'm sure there are some) are fairly minor.
The team synergy you get from 8 corruptors > any combination of defenders/trollers/blasters you care to name. With I7, mostly corruptors with a few doms is going to be brutal, I think. To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure the heroes can even match that without a much larger team (given equal player skill.) People who are use to thinking of corruptors as some kind of mix of gimped blaster and gimped defender are in for a rude awakening. There's a reason a defender's base damage is so low and they don't get fire or ice blast sets, you know. What corruptors are capable of is that reason.
The only major "imbalance" we see in RV right now is that there's a lot more heroes than villains. That's it. Numbers. The average hero in there isn't any more skilled, isn't any more organized and is not really any more well built than the average villain.
The villains (and even the heroes to some extent) seemed to have convinced themselves that zone control was something the villains couldn't realistically vie for on test; that they were relegated to sitting in the base to be tp ganked during the dimensional reversion cooldown period. Numbers can be overcome by skill and build. That's the main thing we wanted to demonstrate on Corruptor Orgy Night*.
We (meaning LotD, as well as the other top end VGs) already know that on "any given Sunday" we can take on the best heroes have to offer in an open zone and win. While we're taking them on, the uncoordinated villains can be taking and defending the turrets. It's not a slam dunk win, nor a foregone conclusion loss. It's what PvP should be.
Competitive.
*- If you want the story behind that, check out my chat logs from the other night.
So... get vent, roll a corruptor, team with other corrupters and a dominator = win RV. Gotcha.
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What our builds have shown is that villains can compete with a combination of a solid build, and teamwork regardless of what other villains in the zone do or fail to do.
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You missed my point entirely. Obviously any team that's organized SPECIFICALLY for zone PvP has a better chance at turning the tides of the zone. But that doesn't mean there's balance between the heroes and the villains, especially when a vast majority of the player base is at best, casual and won't be out there organized the way your VG group is. I'd argue to say that a hero group could do the same thing your VG did in a similar situation with less work than you put in, and be just as successful.
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Perhaps you should define what you're looking for in terms of balance. Balance is a very vague term. Sure heroes can put together zone teams. So can villains. That seems balanced to me. The top hero PvP SGs have put constant effort into their builds (ever since the Arena came out) - I would hardly call that "a lot easier."
I don't think you're really getting our point: organized villain PvP teams are very competitive with organized hero PvP teams, perhaps much more than you realize. The imbalances (and I'm sure there are some) are fairly minor.
The team synergy you get from 8 corruptors > any combination of defenders/trollers/blasters you care to name. With I7, mostly corruptors with a few doms is going to be brutal, I think. To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure the heroes can even match that without a much larger team (given equal player skill.) People who are use to thinking of corruptors as some kind of mix of gimped blaster and gimped defender are in for a rude awakening. There's a reason a defender's base damage is so low and they don't get fire or ice blast sets, you know. What corruptors are capable of is that reason.
The only major "imbalance" we see in RV right now is that there's a lot more heroes than villains. That's it. Numbers. The average hero in there isn't any more skilled, isn't any more organized and is not really any more well built than the average villain.
The villains (and even the heroes to some extent) seemed to have convinced themselves that zone control was something the villains couldn't realistically vie for on test; that they were relegated to sitting in the base to be tp ganked during the dimensional reversion cooldown period. Numbers can be overcome by skill and build. That's the main thing we wanted to demonstrate on Corruptor Orgy Night*.
We (meaning LotD, as well as the other top end VGs) already know that on "any given Sunday" we can take on the best heroes have to offer in an open zone and win. While we're taking them on, the uncoordinated villains can be taking and defending the turrets. It's not a slam dunk win, nor a foregone conclusion loss. It's what PvP should be.
Competitive.
*- If you want the story behind that, check out my chat logs from the other night.
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From what I've read in the thread, you're talking about *ONE* very specific instance where a villain group specifically tailored to PVP and heavily favoring one AT in a zone taking on a group of heroes with a variety of ATs that aren't organized. Obviously the more dedicated group, focused group with better communication is going to win. I see a small groups of players whos characters on the same VG and not nearly as PVP dedicated doing the same thing in Siren's call on the live servers.
But the vast majority of players out there that aren't powergamers like your SG or myself. Battles like those listed above are hardly fair representations of more balanced PvP. You're talking about one end of the spectrum of PvP: highly competitive vs. other highly competitive...but you're using an example that doesn't even fit that...highly competitive vs. casual. I'm assuming assuming that the devs are looking to strike a balance between heroes and villains powerset wise so that a) all ATs are relevant in PvP and have a role and b) things are more competitive for all players and just not the powergamers.
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What he said: I got an Earth/EA Brute that spends most of the time stuck on the ground. If I wanted to beat squishies, I need flight. But being Earth, I suffer the same problem all MMs do, which is I can't attack flyers with my knockdowns, and hurl boulder isn't as effective because they see it a mile away and back off so I still have to run to them (most of the time through mobs or around buildings) to smash them. By then, suppresion drops and they are flying again. It's a gimp build, so I gotta reroll another brute that can take on flyers.
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TP Foe?
(H)Dark/Rad, Rad/Psi, Spine/Regen, Ice/EM, Psi/EM, Earth/FF,
(V)EM/NIN, Bots/FF, Fire/Rad,Fire/Fire, Earth/Fire, Grav/Energy
@Angus.Black
30% for defenders maybe
but defdners dont fight people with focused acc in RV
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To elaborate on my thinking about how cool RV is a little; one of the things that I think is possible with this zone is to actually let the high powered PvP guilds and the more solo and pick-up PvP types actually work together to achieve zone objectives.
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I agree. Bloody Bay was tantalizingly close to a good large scale PvP environment. RV really does set a good stage for platoon v. platoon action - even PuG platoons.
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So... get vent, roll a corruptor, team with other corrupters and a dominator = win RV. Gotcha.
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That's pretty much what I'm getting out of this as well. If you aren't a corrupter or dominator don't bother showing up to RV.
I hate to say it but ... the whole 1 HP in the hospital thing is EXACTLY what this game needs.
1) Yeah - you do have to wait to heal up. Good idea. I've seen so many PVPers hit the hospital and jump right back into the fight.
This is the BIG LEAGUES people. It's where you get owned or your reputation is made. It's where if you really want to take down that other team you really really have to work for it.
Meaning yeah - you're going to have to find a band of heroes and be smarter, luckier or just flat out Better than the other guy.
2) The Delay Kills need to be fixed - that's dumb. I'll give you that - but it's undoubtedly a bug. As for debt... at level 50 if you haven't hit the debt cap you're not playing your 50 nearly enough. What's it gonna do? Double your time to the next level?? Okay so the lower levels have to watch themselves - cry me a river. You're in a PvP Zone for 50s... you want to play with the big dogs - you need to play like a big dog.
Sorry if I don't seem sympathetic to the cries of "this is unfair" and "that's over powered" but it's gotten to the point where this games not just nerfed the players they nerfed the content ... there was a time when goin to the hollows was terrifying. You had debt at level 5 and you had to bust your rump to get rid ot it... and running across a monster in one of the zones was something you did not want to do without a crowd. The other day I and another 50 took down Palladin - and frankly I think I could have handled it solo. That's wrong.
There was a time when you got the ClockKing AV mission - and you were Toast on the Alpha-strike - you brought someone along as a sacraficial lamb - and the fight was one you put in your books.
Last time I fought him - his alpha was a joke. They've dumbed the game down for people who like to say it's impossible at this or that level of difficulty - then when they get up to 50 say there's no decent content.
The content is there - if people would stop asking to have it nerfed to hell and back. This is the end game. This is it. Let's not make it easy for anyone. Make it a right of passage - something to be proud of to say you did it.
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So... get vent, roll a corruptor, team with other corrupters and a dominator = win RV. Gotcha.
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That's pretty much what I'm getting out of this as well. If you aren't a corrupter or dominator don't bother showing up to RV.
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This is just the first thing thats worked. I think there is a high likelyhood that MM's can and will contribute in this zone, we just don't have enough high level MM's that aren't playing other critical characters right now. Brutes can actually do well focusing on destroying turrets, but because the Fury bug in PvP they don't do well against other players in "straight up" combat. Stalkers are the ones that lose some ground. They don't have the team synergy and solo they are more challenging here than in the other zones. This isn't to say they don't have uses or can't be good, but they are countered pretty thoroughly by current common hero builds.
In short the best way I see a VG taking the zone is by having a two teams. One a roving assault team to engage hero groups and the second (or more) is a turret capture team. The assault team will have mostly Cor's and Dom's while the turret works well with more MM's and Brutes with a Thermal Cor or two.
Thorizdin
Lords of the Dead
Old School Legends
Well, it's obvious that there's still a huge bias in PvP. Anything that has a mezz uses it in the high level, any AT that has no innate Mezz protection (and no, team-mates do not count) are just meat.
Guess I'll have to hope they have something in another couple of years that fixes it.
Still here, even after all this time!
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you'd still need like 3 /rads to equal fa's buff
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RI's debuff base is around 30%. FA's buff base is around 25%.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA