An open letter to the Devs, re: PvP

Woah stickied thread is stickied.

One of the goals of the changes was to reduce the performance gap between the experienced and well-built PvP build and the "so-so" build piloted by someone who hadn't really PvPd much before. While I think that it wasn't a bad goal to shoot for, it made several broad (and incorrect) assumptions about PvP in general:

* Necessity of certain builds to be competitive (ironically, with the removal of most skill required to PvP, this is actually more true than it was before I13)
* Necessity of an expensive build to compete (I PvP'd quite a bit before I13 on SOd or cheaply-IOd characters... of course I'd lose to those with better builds and more skill but that's part of the learning curve and the way MMOs with "gear" work)
* Imbalance in 1v1 situations (PvP followed, and still follows, a rock/paper/scissors balance for 1v1 situations... every build's not on equal footing relative to other builds but teaming helped or eliminated that gap entirely)
* Fights must be resolved (if a fight wasn't resolved under the old rules it meant both players were either really bad or really good, and the two builds in question were on roughly equal footing in a 1v1 situation)

Basically, it seems like the R/P/S balance that was present in 1v1 situations was considered unbalanced, so an attempt was made to put every build on equal footing (yeah, look how well that turned out). In an effort to "normalize" 1v1 PvP, they basically threw team balance and synergy out the window. I don't think many people would have a problem with the changes as implemented if they only applied to zone PvP, and options were available to restore all of the old-style mechanics. Basically... a way to keep high-end PvPers competing against each other without having to play with a dumbed-down system while doing so.

Personal opinion on the I13 changes - some were good, most weren't.

* Mez changes: good for casual zone play, bad for semi-organized (or uneven-sided) zone play and team/solo arena play
* DR: see above
* Heal decay: bad for everyone
* Travel suppression: bad for everyone (esp. teleporters)
* Base resistances: bad for everyone in its current form
* Global resists/defense in patron/epic armors: good for everyone
* DPA balancing: good idea, poor implementation - bad for everyone in its current form
* Removal of unresisted debuffs and damage - see mez changes

/signed


This company will not admit it made a bad decision period. Doing so would make it possible for this admission to be disseminated to external mediums and portray the image that they have provided their customers with a less than satisfactory product or that they are operating it inefficiently. These forums are for the purpose of hearing player complaints to allow for the developers to make player recommended "improvements" to the game while also allowing them to claim they heard other complaints when they actually paid no attention to them at all or had no intention of changing or fixing said complaint in the first place. Their biggest asset is a series of unknowns and us, the subscribers. The unknowns are how we, as subscribers, will never know how well they operate together in their development processes', how well they accurately determine the most important issue addressing the game or how well they determine what their main priorities should when addressing player concerns and future game development. In this way they can dispute most all accusations of their shortcomings for the simple fact that these things cannot be accurately determined due to lack of knowledge of the processes which lead to their decisions. Any post of a complaint can be described as a mere opinion of a few and not an accurate depiction of their shortcomings. They may say things like "this stuff is hard" or "managing a game this large is very complex" in sincerity or as a way to deflect blame. The intent from where we stand will never be known and that's how they want it. The best companies in the world are those that are not required to accept responsibilities for their mistakes. Furthermore, These forums at the same time act to keep most of the criticisms about the product more localized and less likely to be spread into multiple locations on the internet, possibly causing public opinion to dictate the company's success more than the actual product itself. If complaints were made in large numbers outside of these forums then the response we have seen to this point would be very different.

+1 to the OP

And there's your firsthand experience: in their efforts to make more things work, they somehow managed to make even less work.

Great post! lets hope something gets done one day soon!

oooo i just noticed this thread got sticky

Im a mix player. Ive never taken pvp or pve seriously. Ive always played what I wanted because it was fun.

I pvped most with and Invuln/SS back in the glory days before IO's existed (man i miss them). At that time it was considered a less than satisfactory build, but I made it work and it was fun. I have never been involved in the test server pvp, or any of the serious organized pvp at all but I have pvpd with alot of people over the years who did. Many of them tried to talk me into playing an FOTM because they said I could be good. Thats not me though, I wont roll alot of toons I think might even be fun because they are FOTM. I also pvpd a bit with my Ice FF.

Then IO's came out. . . . . still a bit bitter about them but the game was still fun even if you were too lazy to farm to IO your character. I pvpd with my Invuln SS and was able to prove that no you did not need to IO your toon to pvp, Ice FF was still fun and usefull to my teammates.

Then they turned pvp on its head. At first I was thinking all right they did something about slows. I recall refusing to fight slow based toons before this change. In retrospect I think they over nerfed them but thats par for the course. So at first I tried to tough out the pvp. Alot of changes to absorb but I thought I could adjust. My tank did well, sometimes a bit too well. My Ice FF however has become absolutely useless and unplayable. My secondary is now a thing to be ignored in pvp so my oldest toon. The second one I ever made, I think back in June of 2004 is now permanently retired. Cant even recall the last time I logged on to him.

However the more I pvped the more I realized that if I wanted to compete even on the casual level that I do I would have to put some fairly serious effort into my character. The Ice FF was butchered but the Invuln SS was playable still so I started doing up builds, crunching numbers and even started farming a bit. Then i realized that I was spending more time doing things that I did not enjoy just so I could IO a character to try something I wasnt even sure I was going to like.

Playing this game began to feel like everytime I was talked into trying WoW or a WoW clone by a friend. Grind Grind Grind. . . dont worry in the end it will be fun Grind Grind Grind. . . but you know what it never was.

Each time these major changes were implemented I left the game for awhile. Each time I leave I leave for a little longer. I even made one of those "Im sick of this leaving the game posts i think heh, and my messages in the cancel survey were always detailed but did state that I woudl be back.

I honestly thought that when Champions came out that CoX would finally be dead for me but it didnt live up to its potential. Even when I tired of it I didnt come back to CoX for a few months.

This most recent return only happened because a friend talked me into coming back and server hopping to virtue, if it hadnt been for the free transfers I probally would not be here right now. So virtue seems to have a bit less farming and I have been doing alot of TF/SF's and its been fun. I still miss pvp and I really miss Base Raids those were my favorite though I think even they would royally suck now with all the lame pvp changes.

In short CoX has become nothing more than a temporary diversion till something else new and shiny comes along. For me to return to the level of love I had for this game it is going to need a serious overhaul. One that I do not think the devs will do.

Why, because in my opinion they refuse to admit that they made a mistake. They are human, mistakes can and will be made. What really shows your worth though is coming out and not only admiting you made a mistake but making an effort to fix it. When my friends get on a rant in vent about the various decisions made about this game I used to defend the devs. I still do occasionally but on the rare instance that I do it feels a bit forced.

I guess what Im asking for is come out and admit you made a mistake. Then start asking your players what you can do to fix it and stop drawing a line at the the crossroads of pvp and pve. There are alot of us out there that enjoy both.

Sorry for the rant guys thanks for reading.

I agree with the OP over 9000% Well done, I would've loved to have done it myself but have not near the experience when dealing with numbers and hard facts.

You know, the way I see it ... The cream will always rise to the top. Like NASCAR gave their drivers the crappiest blocks of steel to ever ride on wheels ...You still seen the best adapt & overcome. Same here. PvE is a game But I feel PvP is a sport. It's one mans mind against another & lets hope the Devs keep it hard hitting enuff to keep us interested. Altho I rather did enjoy when a troller took 15 minutes to kill a scrapper. you could see that he would have killed himself to get out it if he could have. TK FTW!

You're saying that you hope they keep nerfing it to keep us interested? Yeah, that makes sense...

Why should the devs care about catering to such a small group, 99% of the community doesn't pvp(don't even mention test rofl) and there time and resources are gonna be spent accordingly.

Its posts like the one above thats part of the reason people dont play it. If something is obviously flawed, would it not make sense to fix it?
Players complain about the lack of end game content, well pvp is a superb end game thing to do, if it works and because it involves players, the content never really gets old and its challenging everyday, where as once you work a TF/SF once you complete it, its the same thing when you do it again and get boring very fast.

Now back to the actual issues, for me, whilst the travel supression is a big pain in the butt, I can also see why it was implemented. However I do feel its too severe and slows down the entire match considerably, what made CoX unique was the speed it was possible to fight, everything has slowed down now and whilst this means you have more time to do things, half the fun of it is now gone.

The Status supression (as i call it) of control powers needs to really be sorted out, I understand completely why they were nuked in such a heavy way, but the effects are too heavy to make them any use at all for players that arent controller or dominator.
Example here: you have a claws charecter with a hold on epic powers, now this hold does 2s hold unslotted, whilst eviscerate takes 2.33s to animate so it wouldnt even benefit you at all. Now you waste your slots and buff this up to 4s hold, yes you get one attack in if you are very fast, you get the slightest lag and there out again, and this is even considering that they have no resists to holds which if they do will put you at a pointless stage again. Combined with the cooldown and endurence usage, the powers are completly useless unless they have a -fly or -jump on them such as web grenade.
Now as i mentioned the old status effects were indeed too long, especially since they negate armor effects etc, so why not just change them so they do not negate armor effects but half it for dominator and controller only, have the hold extended to around 4s unslotted for regular AT's and 6s unslotted for controller/dominator? Resist effects would still be applied as normal.
I understand controller in particular would lose a lot of damage, but controllers arent really designed to be an attacking class, there more supporting anyway, and in a group a hold such as mentioned would still be lethal and dominators wouldnt lose much damage and would actually be able to control. Where as regular archetypes have a reason to choose holds etc again and are not overly benefiting from the complete negation of armor and resists would still be needed.

Defence seems broken to me at the minute as well, its a difficult one to work on because the balance has to be just right. Currently a lot of builds have focussed accuracy and/or tactics and can completley negate all defence even at soft cap.
One thing I have never understood is why defence has 45% to softcap where as Resists has 90%? This only makes it more difficult to balance because each % of defence = 2% resists apparently, now you get a 45% defence Super Reflex charecter and stand them next to a Invul Tanker at 90% smash and lethal resists, in pvp the defence charecter will die first everytime, why? because to hit is way too easy to stack. Charecters designed for -Resists usually can negate anywhere between 30% and 60% resists, which makes them hit a lot heavier, but 30% and 60% off defence means you get hit almost every time.
Solution: lower to hit boosts in pvp, just dont nuke them to make them pointless so we get unhittable charecters again!
Standardising defence with resists would also benefit players and allow them to understand easier. Perhaps allow defence to scale to 95% and increase defence gains, but change how it works so 1% defence - 1% resist, the reason i said 95% defence, not 90% is because currently at 45% defence your supposed to have a 5% chance to be hit before enhancements, now at 90% resists for tanker you take 10% of damage before buffs, theoretically.
All you would be changing really by having 95% defence instead of 45% is how the window looks summerising your powers. Where as a slight reduction in to hit boosts would benefit defence greatly.
Im pretty sure theres some other things to mention but my brain hurts now from all those numbers lol.

Preech dawg, /signed.