An open letter to the Devs, re: PvP

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I completely gave up. I resubbed for a month to check out MA but it's boring to me. CoX no longer has me in it's grasp. I'm free at last free at last. I can't even sit at the computer to play it. I tried after taking a long break and was like "what in the world did I used to get out of this?" Good luck all.

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If I get you back on free for a day...can I has ur stuffs?

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"Forum PvP doesn't give drops. Just so all of you who participated in this thread are aware." -Mod08-
"when a stalker goes blue side, assassination strike should be renamed "bunny hugs", and a rainbow should fly out" -Harbinger-

I read about half the post, and I agreed with everything. Then I stopped reading, because what's the point? Nothing is going to change. You're fooling yourself if you think it will, even for a second.

The ironic thing is that most of the info here was stated BEFORE I13 CAME OUT! Oldschool PvP'ers like me told the devs exactly what would happen. And I guess we knew the game even better than we thought, because it happened exactly as we predicted. AT roles were erased from the game, attack chains became laughable, phase became a 100% requirement for everybody that doesn't want to die every 5 secs, zone PvP devolved to pure fight club half the time, test arena PvP completely died....etc. ALL of it was predicted. And they ignored it all, and went ahead with the changes.

I admire your effort mac, but I'm afraid you just wasted your time. At least the community can tell that you have a very good understanding of the game mechanics.

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Seriously?

All of that writing should have just gone to an in-depth "Take revenge on Castle" arc, for all the good that's going to come from this post.

The devs have proven they will not ever listen to us. Just give up, it's a hopeless fight.

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I wanted to make MA arc Devs work with gold farmers lol

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Good post, Mac.

As I said during beta, new PvP is like living in Harrison Bergeron's world.

It's too bad. Everyone shouldn't be the same.

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Ironic how he ends up dying at the end of that story. It's an eerie parallel.

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mac, i read just about the whole thing, and i couldnt agree more. i remember a time when myself and other payers (both pvp and pve) played for a rediculous amount of hours at a time. maybe somewhere of 5-10 hours a day if not more. i rarely find myself spending 5 hours total on this game a week now.

PvP is what alot of us looked forward too, why, well b/c the content of this game just got old. you can only run so many ITFs or MoSTFs and QKHTF b4 you want to shoot your own face off. I use to look forard to goin into a zone every day and see what i could do, both solo and teamed. it WAS the thing to do. Yeah masque and peril host some good fight klubs on victory, but it will never give us that satisfaction that we were used to pre-i13.

all in all, if the devs do read this and still do not take anything into consideration that will let our near dead pvp community know that pvp is not a concern to them anymore. it seems as if there tryn to hide behind i14 b/c they are out of interesting stuff to release. i mean honestly, what is soooo interesting about i14? ok, wow we can make our own missions(if they work, b/c there are still a million bugs in it), wow we can get tickets to unlock stuff. man that is mind blowing!!!!

i am not totally against i13 or i14, mainly just the gimp PvP, but im not anywhere near as motivated about this game since those 2 issues. if i were the devs, i would make a server for pvp and pvp only(not the test server) and bring pvp back to the way it was. yeah there will be difficulty in choosing who gets what name if more than one person have the same name, but that is a dev issue, not a player issue. if they want to get there (numbers) up to normal or better they need to honestly rethink the current pvp.


/signed

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@The REAL Chop

My teachers always told me to follow my dreams. To bad they are all Nightmares.

I agree mac.

Some things to add.

As far as I know there is no MMO on the market that has yet to have truly successful "open zone" pvp.
Where PvP becomes accessible, balanced and fun is when it is instanced in Battlegrounds or Scenerios.
Same # of people per side. Clear objective to win the scenerio. Battling other players over said objective. Rewards worth having at the end.

But honestly, this has no chance to sway Developer whim.

Look at what we currently have. Who on the Dev team has prior PvP heavy experience when it comes to development? Which one of them has PvP'd in this game to any extent.

(I do not count stepping in to a zone and fighting a few people once a month as PvPing to any extent. More of a side diversion.)

In my view the Dev team is trying to recreate the wheel when it comes to PvP. Might be great if it succeeds but the chances of that are so slim as to be near non-existant. Add that to being out of touch with the playerbase they are trying to change the game for and that doesn't seem to be the recipe for success.

(I also don't count talking to a select few people who play the game as being "in touch with the playerbase." That's just talking to your friends.)

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Good post Mac. Very detailed and true.

I wish Castle would at least view and respond to some of your points but that won't happen. I have given up hope for pvp in this game.

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I agree with all of this. Kudos for still trying. Once I saw how all of my toons (support) played, I curled up into a fetal position and cried a little.

I have to agree 100% on the suppression as well.

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Ya i have to agree full force with mac the new pvp changes isnt at all what the pvpers wanted. Maybe if u asked and took the advice of the people that actually do pvp and not the advice from pve players that hardly spend anytime in pvp maybe it would be a better pvp overall. One thing that would majorly help is if u had like a seperate server for pvpers wanting to play in the old pvp ways. That way it doesnt interfere with the "new" pvp that everyones "supposed" to enjoy.

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Zaelapollo Grantz/Archvillain

Macskull, I only very occasionally PvP so I can't comment on the details of your proposed changes. I just gotta say I applaud the detailed suggestions, the reasoning, the examples, and the calm tone of your post. I sure hope a redname posts or PMs you to ackknowledge that they've read it. You might want to PM a link to your post to Posi or Castle if their mailboxes aren't full.

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Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.

First off, i whole heartedly agree with almost every post the pvp community has made in attempts to reach the devs, and actually enjoyed reading this one.... THe following is how castle in general would read the post...


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--- Before I begin: the TL;DR version is in bold italics. ---

Well, here we go. I’m going to post this with the full knowledge that it will probably never land on someone’s desk, or that no redname other than a moderator will set eyes on it. But I’m going to post it anyways. Why? Because I care. I like this game and its players – I may not like the decisions of the developers within the last six months or so, but the people I play the game with are important, moreso than the game itself. I sent off this post as an email to NCSoft as well – I think it’s time I made my voice heard.

We have been told several times now that the developers consider post-I13 PvP ….. Oh Great, Another pvp post…blah blah blah blah

The PvP changes in I13 caused the birth of high-end organized PvP. For an overhaul that increased the popularity (and population) of PvP, that should have been a first sign that something was very wrong. Almost every test ladder team formed and hundreds of subscriptions were created in the month or so after open beta began. PvPers were delighted, and rightly so – they had spent years without any official support forming ladders, making rules, setting up matches, and making detailed and comprehensive lists of suggestions to better the system. When I13 was released those PvPers were overjoyed to found almost everything they had asked for, and almost nothing they hadn’t. The ladder is just beginning to get back off the ground again – but for what? Will you go through a few months from now and make more seemingly awesome and asked-for changes, and then keep telling the players you’re listening to their feedback while you’re actually doing exactly what they want? For the future of this game’s PvP and this game in general, I hope so.

Anyways, I’d like to begin by taking a look at the post that sparked this all. At the onset, we have:
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We began by looking at the disparities that existed, and discussed how to address them. Ultimately, we decided that in order to allow better competition between the AT's and powersets, we needed to take some drastic measures. We decided that a different rule set needed to apply in PvP than in PvE. By changing the basic rules, we hope to encourage a greater variety of character builds in Arena PvP, and ultimately in Base Raids and Zone PVP.

At the core, many of the power effects are the same: Heals still heal, attacks still deal damage, and holds still hold. However, the new system makes a number of adjustments that should be friendlier to a wider range of AT's and skill levels. The goal is for players to be able to bring any AT and powerset combination into PVP and to be competitive and have fun! Furthermore, with the Issue 13’s Multiple builds feature, players can design a PvP specific build and not have it affect their normal character.

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I think the people that were best-qualified to say what tweaks and changes PvP needed were The Uber-Awesome All Knowing Devs. Yet those lists were largely granted, and some heavy-handed rules were implemented with very little player feedback taken into consideration. DEVS KNOW ALLLL

CASTLE EATS DONUT NOM NOM NOM

Now, on to the meat of Castle’s post. Let’s start with diminishing returns (DR).
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Nearly all attributes characters have are now subject to Diminishing Returns. The specific numbers vary from attribute to attribute, and from class to class (it's easier to Buff Resistance and Defense on a Tanker, than on a Blaster.)
* In general, a single buff will have near full effect, while additional buffs begin to offer less and less benefit. Example: Under the old system, Aim + Build up might provide a combined 67% To Hit buff, while under this system it provides a combined 49% To Hit Buff.
* The calculation is based on the sum of all buffs, so the order the buffs are applied in does not matter.
* It is important to note that the Real Numbers tool will not always report the results of diminishing returns accurately, at least initially. This is specifically true of Damage Buffs, which always display the Pre-Diminished value.

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Oh Mai Castle Ur Su Awesum

LOWER HP DR CURVE … CASTLE NERF GRUNT

Blah Blah Blah

Next, let’s talk about travel suppression.
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* PvE Travel Suppression continues to work as it has since it was introduced. PvP Travel Suppression will be handled differently, however (see below.)
* All Teleportation and Summonable Teleportals are Disabled while PvP Travel Suppression is active.
The Duration of Movement Suppression in PvP is now variable based on the most recent suppression event applicable to the character. In case of multiple events applicable on the same server tick, only the longest value is applied.
Suppression events are:
Activating a foe TargetedRange (range > 7') damaging Power: 3s * Sum of damage scales.
Example1: Power Bolt has a damage Scale of 1.0 (0.1 + 0.9) resulting in a Suppression Duration of 3 seconds.
o Example2: Power Burst has a damage scale of 2.12 resulting in a Suppression Duration of 6.39 seconds.
* Activating a foe Targeted Melee (Range >0' && Range => 7') damaging Power: 2s* Sum of damage scales.
o Example1: Swipe has a damage scale of 0.76 resulting in a suppression time of 1.52 seconds.
o Example2: Eviscerate has a damage scale of 1.99 resulting in a suppression time of 3.98 seconds.
* Activating a foe targeted Range debuff or control power: 3.5s
* Activating a foe targeted Melee debuff or control power: 2.5s
* Placing a Location Based Entity: 4s
* Activating a self or friend targeted Heal power: 4s
* Activating a Friend targeted Buff power: 4s
* Being the target of an attack: 2s

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Such an Awesum Ideaz <3 u castle


Make Fortitude Suppress eetz Oberpowereded

Buffz are the awesum

Next, let’s take a look at the control powers changes.
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Control power changes are fairly extensive. The goal here was to make control effects less binary in nature. The shorter durations of status effects, combined with the change from status Protection to Status resistance means that these powers will now how impact on a PvP situation more frequently, but are no longer quite as severe a deciding factor.
* For Controllers: Change Duration base to 4 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attributes. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations.
* For Dominators: Change normal control Duration base to 4 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attributes. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations. Change Domination control Duration base to 4 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attribs. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations. Change Magnitude bonus from +3 to +1.
* For ALL OTHERS: Change control Duration base to 2 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attributes. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations.
* For Tankers: Change Taunt to a fixed 6 second duration.
* For Scrappers and Brutes: Change Taunt to a fixed 4 second duration.
* For the Manipulation Pool: Change Taunt to a fixed 4 second duration.
* For Stalkers: Change Placate to a fixed 10 second duration.
* For VEATs: Change Placate to a fixed 4 second duration.

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Changing Mez Prot 2 Mez Res Was The Bestest Change Evar

The other problem I see coming from this is essentially the “normalization” of all ATs. By drastically reducing the control ability of Dominators and Controllers, and by increasing the damage on their mezzes, you’ve basically turned them into DOMINATORS with less HP, ADDING one of the unique aspects of those ATs. The change of focus from dynamic team roles to “damage damage damage” CREATES team balance and makes PvP more like a HEAVEN. Support can support, control can control, healers can heal – about the only thing anyone is good for is a bit of rebuffing, BUFFING, CONTROLING and damage.

Next, heal decay.
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* A Heal Event now imposes a 25% Resistance to further heals on the character, regardless of source. This Resistance to heals will last for 15 seconds, and stacks with itself. This means that if you are healed 4 times, no further healing will affect you until the resistance duration ends.

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This is probably secondary to travel suppression in CREATING the ACTUAL ladder teams. I know the system was tweaked since this post (there’s no longer 0% effectiveness) but heal decay does belong in PvP in an MMO. Why was it added? This system ensures that the only heals that are really reliable when healing is most needed are BUILT UP AID OTHER AND STIMULANT. This system also ensures that spiking is now a skillFUL damage spam until the target can STILL be healed, after which time the target must either phase, die, OR BE HEALED. As a healer on a PvP team, it’s my job to keep people’s HP bars in the green. I can’t do that if my 400 HP heal is only healing them for 400 HP (yes, I’m using real numbers here). It’s at that point that I have to say “Sorry, I tried.” Quite frankly, that sucks. My buffs to enhance their survivability ARE FULLY EFFECTIVE, so they take LESS damage than they should, and then I CAN heal that damage away? That makes SO MUCH sense to me WE <3 CASTLE. I would happily accept heal decay on self-heal powers (such as Healing Aura or Radiant Aura) if ally heal powers DID cause decay because that makes me feel AWESUM at a time when my teammates need me the most, and that’s SO FUN. If you refuse that prospect, INCREASE the severity of heal decay in general – heals are there to keep people alive when other methods have failed, and reducing their effectiveness is INCREASING the survivability of other players. Why not add heal decay to PvE as well? I mean, if PvP heal decay is any indication, >>>>being kept alive is not working as intended.<<<<

On to damage powers and damage calculation.
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* Powers now calculate damage based on their activation time, instead of their recharge.
* Lower activation time powers get a slight bonus to damage, due to chaining low damage powers being difficult in PvP.
* Longer Recharge time powers also get a slight damage bonus, so higher level powers with long recharge times deal extra damage.
* Damage has been adjusted for all AT's, reducing the damage gap between each AT.

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Let me start off by saying I agree with the idea of DPA balancing, but I don’t agree with how it was implemented. DPA balancing should have been implemented at the launch of the game, for the entire game, not just one part of the game nearly five years after launch. The reason adding this system to PvP now is a problem is simple: things just don’t make sense. Let’s take Flares and Blaze as our first examples. Flares recharges faster, uses less endurance, has a much longer range, and can be used while mezzed, and does almost as much damage as Blaze, the supposed “hard hitter” of the Fire Blast set. Next, this means that some pool power attacks (I’m looking at you, Flurry and Kick) which every AT has access to hit harder than some in-set attacks. How is this balanced? There are certain roles for certain ATs, melee damage should not be a generalist role. But, I forgot – there are no roles now, thanks to all this normalization.

NERF AOE DAMAGE, I GOT 1 SHOT BY NUKES 2 ISSUES AGO, THEY ARE OP

Last but not least, base resistances.
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* Each AT now recieves a bonus resist buff while in PVP, in order to set each AT closer in overall survivability. This resist primarily reduces up the gap in hitpoints between lower hitpoint AT's and higher hitpoint AT's
* Epic armors and Tough (Pool Power) now provide resistance to all damage types while in PVP.
* Any armor set lacking a type of resist or defense will now provide it while in PvP zones.

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BLAH BLAH BLAH


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PS.....6 page post takes long time to edit

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Other hero MMOs are comming out and to get more people to join or reactivate their accounts they should give us an option for pvp with out the crap

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sorry didn't read it, cool wall of text though

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Lrn2read

Oh, and I agree with the post entirely, but the chances the devs will care to se how they screwed up once again will be declined.

I keep getting the feeling this is turning into the NGE crisis, yet only with PvP.

I think it may be a few issues before we see any improvement.

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/Signed... by a non-pvp player.

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/signed

Well said Mac, bravo.

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I am the 99%. Occupy the World.
Minister of Infinity's Secret Police, Official Mooch of dUmb and League, Official Purveyor of Free Straws, the Most Interesting Man in the World.
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes

whats the point truley in playing a dom or controller in pvp no more when you cant hold anyone seriously its stupid and no fun /SIGNED all the way

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...that is a vary well layed out letter i do hope red names read it

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Very well said mac. i would give up the new powersets/IOs and ability to change patrons and the MA if i could get the old pvp back.

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at least mod 08 read it...=.=

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Yes. Our M8 read it for sure!

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sorry didn't read it, cool wall of text though

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Lrn2read

Oh, and I agree with the post entirely, but the chances the devs will care to se how they screwed up once again will be declined.

I keep getting the feeling this is turning into the NGE crisis, yet only with PvP.

I think it may be a few issues before we see any improvement.

[/ QUOTE ]ok weeaboo

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Bitter posters are bitter.

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Bitter and Emoish

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emobitter?

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