Are PvP drops actually helping PvP?

Well this thread has done something for me. I have a grater respect for the developers decisions in I13 and the goals they were shooting for.

Mayhaps you should take the time to realize that all the other post in the thread are telling you that you are wrong. Though I am sure that would slice into the little piece of reality you have created for yourself.



Minor suggestion could you stop being the zen shadow/sentry4 of the market forums and learn how to multi quote. For the love of all that is precious it awesome reading 4 replies in a row from you.



P.S.: play nice with barrier, we just house trained him.

this is me caring.

Man, if you think that was the only one its no surprise that pvp people posting here can say the things they do.

Let me see
1. Gear doesn't matter but expect to spend 3 billion
2. Accolades don't matter but what they give you is what everyone builds for.
3. Skill is what matters but letting people come in on an even material basis is offensive.
4. From uber, coordinating attacks on single targets is important but it just happens magically.
5. PvPers don't gank pveers in zones but if they are in the zone they better damn well learn to like it .
6. Your pve build is fine as long as it has phase, perception powers a self heal and is primarily single target focused.
7. The pveers are somehow bringing you all down perhaps because they don't enjoy fighting ridiculously lopsided battles.

The list goes on and so does the comedy.

If you were to show this thread to someone outside the game they would wonder if the PvPers had lost their marbles

This is one of those "you use those words, but I do not think they mean what you think they mean" times. Learning to simply read and interpret would mean that every item in that list you've created for yourself is wrong, but that would cut into what's left of your argument so you continue to shove your fingers in your ears and go "LALALALA I AM RIGHT I CAN'T HEAR YOU." Because I'm feeling nice, though:

1. Gear doesn't matter. The only exceptions are higher-end arena matches where everyone has the gear. Will you be at a slight disadvantage if you don't have it? Sure, but that's the case in PvE as well, relatively speaking. Playing against people that are better-equipped than you requires you to put more effort into playing your character and devising strategies, which in turn makes you a better player. Perhaps you should try it sometime.

2. See above.

3. Skill is more important than build. That's what was said, that's what you keep ignoring. Part of the "skill" in building a character for PvP (or farming, or AV/GM soloing, or whatever else you want to do) is being able to make the money to buy what you want, the know-how and patience to get it cheap, and the ability to put that stuff together in a meaningful way.

4. No, it doesn't happen magically. No one said it did, but again you choose to ignore that. A team of experienced players will be faster on their target locks and more clean on their spikes, but it doesn't "just happen." People knowing what they're doing can make it seem like it does, though.

5. Upon entering a PvP zone, you are shown a dialog box saying you may be attacked by other player characters. If you continue in, you're giving your consent to be attacked. If you don't want to be attacked, be prepared to get away from a situation in which you might be attacked. Don't come and complain when something happens when you were warned at least once about that exact thing happening.

6. This is a reality of the current PvP system and the mechanics thereof, not the players. Your beef here is with the devs.

7. No, they're "bringing us down" because they expect to be able to compete on our level as soon as they step foot into the zone. Most of the players who are good today became so because they spent a lot of time learning what worked and what didn't in a PvP situation.

Odds are if someone outside the game looked at this thread they'd say, "Oh, this Another_Fan guy is probably very wrong, because there's not another person in this thread that's agreeing with him." Game, set, match.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

What facts do you expect? Do you think there are handy reference books about the percentage of UT servers where some bozo huddled up their pub team and laid down a strategy? Don't be ridiculous. Everyone in this thread is telling you that team leaders on gametypes of the complexity anyone sane proposes for PvP (such as CTF) don't need team leaders for pub play. Your response is that you want facts to prove it? Go log in to some other games that has gametypes and try educating yourself.

Again, pointing out ignorance is not an insult. Taking it as such is likely to lead people to think you have an ego problem, though.

You so have no idea what you're talking about.

Back around 2000 I was in a leadership position on an FPS team that ran something like 28-1 in ladder and league competition over the course of a year. We ran of of our gametype's most popular servers, and we were well respected in our community. We played a game with a very steep learning curve. As I mentioned, it had a light "class" system and multiple weapon loadouts within each. Maps were large and allowed for enemy approach from many directions. Bases were large and usually had multiple entrances you had to defend. Combat was fast, as were travel times. (Sound familiar? There are good reasons CoH was the 1st MMO I had any interest in.)

Given the speed and tactical diversity of the game, it was possible for certain maps to be won in under 20 seconds if a knowledgeable player was on one team and the other team didn't know what was coming.

Despite all this, it was absolutely standard in pubs that everyone just did their own thing. If a team got stomped a couple of times, they started to figure out why, and they adjusted. If they didn't someone in the know usually clued them in. (I don't consider that "leading". If you do, I think this argument is even dumber than most.) And if the problem was that the teams were stacked, then no amount of leadership usually had a chance of making enough of a difference to be worth doing.

You don't seem to understand this word "need".

Do you actually play any team games? Seriously, I'd like to know what you play, and how, because I think you're showing a staggering ignorance of the reality of how most people pub on team video games. Go log onto a pub server and find me the "team leaders" in Team Fortress 2, or Counterstrike, or the various UT gametypes. No one "needs" a team leader or an organized plan. People figure out what works, they (usually) take note of what needs doing on their team when they join, and the pieces (usually) fall into place. Even despite the fact that you can end up on pub teams where that doesn't happen, it's incredibly rare for people to "lead".

The benefit goes up. Just because you would do better with it does not mean you need it in a pub/pug setting. In organized competition? Damn skippy. Pubs are not organized competition.

Frankly, it's not remotely reasonable to compare a master TF run to a head-to-head PvP gametype, unless you've designed sudden-death team deathmatch. Master TFs don't need a plan because they're complicated. They need a plan because they call for inordinate levels of caution. A hami raid needs coordination because it requires 35-50 people to operate towards a common goal. Contrast either one with the typical pub head-to-head team contest, where teams of 8-12 players face off and defeat typically means someone respawns back at their base.

Zones are pub play. The gametypes I'm proposing would have pub play, akin to WoW's battlegrounds. Persistence has zero bearing on the pub nature of PvP outside of organized competition, such as ladders and leagues. If you walk into a PvP contest where you weren't asked to show up, the game was in progress, and you might not know anyone on the team, that's a pub. It doesn't matter if you have been playing the game for 5 years.

Frankly, it sounds to me like you terribly overthink all this. I'm really done trying to convince you how ignorant your position is. I know what I'm telling you is true because it's been my experience over a decade of online play. I don't really know what you've been doing if your argument here is based in actual online play experience, but if it is consider it weird and abnormal.

Try again.


You see that would be impressive all except for the fact that when you were leading a team of 8. I was leading a team of 3500 for electronic arts in their attempt to bring the MPBT universe to life as an online game. And had been involved online gaming in one way or another for nearly 10 years at that point.

BTW if you are seriously comparing your experience in Tribes and Tribes II to COH you have just demonstrated that you are talking out your rear. There is no comparison between those games and COH in any way shape or form.

But if you do want to make the comparison, it would have helped if you mentioned modded servers, People hosting servers in their dorm rooms so they could have zero ping and wouldnt even need to bother with voice chat.

There were enormous problems with that game in terms of serious competition. Even so we were looking at modding the torque engine so we could keep playing our game when EA lost its license. I believe the 3028 spinoff may still be making the attempt.

Good try though, I suppose your resume is impressive to you. I have no need to make the false comparisons you have and I have no need need to assert special knowledge (and in your case either flawed or incomplete in presentation)


There is no way to compare a PvP module of a MMO to a fps on a public server. The social dynamics are entirly different but if you want to see teams with leaders, log onto a server and look for the team that has an overwhelming record of dominance. The odds are that not only do they have a leader but they logged on as a group specifically for racking up on the server.

If you don't think that groups of people don't get together get on their voicechat and then target a server they either own or have mutual good pings to then log in as a group you are sadly misstaken.

If you put in strategic/ or tactical objectives it becomes even more so the case and it has been that way forever. I remember when Heavy gear came out with what was probably the first attempt at that and you would have people log in in waves to overwhelm a hemisphere usually the south for some reason.


As soon as someone chooses to make them that they are, well at least for the side that chooses to do so, for the other it becomes a slaughter.

Or did I miss this from you

If you attach a persistent state MMO or just a persistent state social environment where people can compete for the best players it that goes out the window. If you are going to toss in a situation where it becomes a free fire griefing zone you get what we had.

The zones we had contradict your statements. The prior statements by other people on this thread about the behavior they encountered in zones contradicts your statements. Basic human nature contradicts your statements.

Yes you are the measure of all things and people should agree because you say so.

Of course people who have had their alliances blown apart because their leadership wasnt up to the job or simply wasnt, people who play eve online who have had their corporations destroyed, people on FPS teams that have been wiped out repeatedly to the point they became sick because they were playing on someones modded map, people who played Military Political games and found out later that the three people they thought they were talking to was actually one person who was playing them like a violin would all disagree.

LOL, I can see why you think a grown man wailing on a little girl is an example of healthy competition if you believe this.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...5&postcount=89

Yes certainly an inspiring player. Enough to inspire serious thought about that eugenicists might have valid points.

You might try something called sportsmanship.

It has some interesting ideas. Ones like if a superior player is paired against an inferior player he takes a handicap. He does this so the game presents a challenge to him and has the potential to be fun for everyone.


What you don't get is most people grasp the idea that you can't start a chess game with extra pieces just because you can afford to buy them, you can't enter a J Class yacht in current Americas cup challenges just because you can afford them, the same way the J Class was introduced literally to stop people from buying victories.

If you want to lobby for a sport, of how fast can you make a billion I am sure there are lots of people that play the game that would find it fun, Somehow though I don't expect marvel or dc to put out a comic called the mutual fund manager any time soon.



Gee Mac when is the last time you played an arena team without voice chat ?



She was asking for it, look at where she was and what she was wearing.


It was that way and moreso on the old system. You needed the escape powers no one took in pve. You needed the plus perception. You needed the self heals that no one bothered with. Defense though wasn't as useful


Sure they do. The guy who is going into warburg and would like to get his nukes without a team of stalkers, banes or what have you griefing him till he has to leave the zone and come back later is really being unreasonable. The guy who goes into the arena and winds up with teams that aren't even close to balanced is being unreasonable for not finding it fun at all.

I'd suggest trying the experiment.

<snicker> Really?

It's a shame the time and money put into that wasn't spent on someone else.

Here's the thing though: no one cares what your past experiences are, what you've done, or who you are, because you're wrong.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

Even the PvPec disagrees with you on that. Do you remember the Killer Klowns event ? No Accolades allowed. They sure must have been worth something as the max level for the event was five and it would take one heck of an effort to get them by then.

But yeah that from you pretty much your entire position in this thread. You start with the ridiculous position that having more hit points more damage more accuracy doesn't matter and then just repeat.

Then you go on and ignore everyone that came into the thread and said yes they have had bad experiences with completely unsportsmanlike play by pvpers.

You are right about what I have done and my past experiences aren't the issue. Then again I didn't make them an issue. What is the issue is something that is painfully obvious for anyone reading this thread. PvPers aren't interested in anything approaching a fair or fun game for all parties involved.

Pre I13 you would have situations where badgers were so harrassed they were forced out of zones the same goes for nukes.

Well in the end the Carebears won and chased the PvPers off the game.

Team Care Bear Stare 1
Team Over Compensating 0

You part of the pvpec? Ever ben part of the pvpec? Didn't think so, maybe you shouldn't speak for them then.



I will give you the real answer for this, please try your best to understand it. Villians are capable of getting both demonic and fon at lvl 5. Heroes can not. Both of thos powers are essentially god modes at lvl 5. The reason for this is because you can hit anything at lvl with fon up and you pretty much can not be hit at all with demonic up. As you advance in levels and build alot of things happen that make this no longer true or at least much farther from as lopsided as it would be at level 5.



No one ever said it didn't matter, they said it wasn't required. Please try to understand what people say to you, or just kep repeating yourself like you have been.




I have had bad experiences with pvers and I think that is the core problem with this game right now. Get what I did right there. You and anyone who has complaints of pvpers attitudes and behavior should do two things. One pvp more, there are plenty of good guys out there. Second stop stereotyping. Stereotyping is one step away from being a bigot, and seriously you are starting to come off like one.



There is no fair in pvp. There is no fair in mmorpgs. There is really no fair in mmorpg pvp. The person with the most loot and skill should win all the time. What this game has already done and what you think neds to be done even more so is make it a coin flip. If I wanted to coin flip with some dude at random for fun I wouldn't be paying 15 bucks a month for this game. I want to play against the most skilled an knowledgeable players. And before you spout of again about wanting to uberlet and pwn the noobs, in truth I am pretty bad and get farmed alot. Gues what though, I still have fun. This brings back the point of the real trouble with pvp in this game. Its that the pve centric nature of the game does not lure in the people who would have fun at this. Giving every joe blow in the game a free 50 with a perfect build for pvp would probably barely even make noticeable increase in the pvp poputalion. Sure much like the initial changes of i13 drew some people in for a wek or two, after the newness wore off we would be back to the same people pvping and the same people not pvping.



Just to let you know thats not harassment, thats pvp. If you want the reward you have to balance it with the risk. Even to that point Castle has said before he thought they were far to easy get(shivs/nukes) for the risk involved. Also please explain how i13 changed this except maybe leaving most zones empty.





I have had this talk with many a self righteous ******* before. Please stop acting like pvpers and pvers play different games. Its not your game. Its not my game. Its our game. When a changes occurs that makes us lose any part of our player base its a lose for the community. What did you score or win really with a good protion of pvpers leaving? Nothing would be the correct answer. And in case you didn't know many of those players that left were active badger, hami leaders, task force leaders and numbers/info gurus for the game. True pillars of this games community. To think having people of this caliber leave the game is win for anyone is a crying shame and shows the incredible shortsightedness you have.




I am not sure what pvper kicked your dog, or tried to date your sister or whatever happened. I am sorry for it though, and it would probably be best for you to let it go as it is confusing your judgment.

also, i love you con.
lets make e-babies and bring about the end of the internets.

That would be the same way it isn't required to have all the chess pieces.

I mean the beginner player really didn't deserve the rooks did he ?

You aren't doing well enough at the market ? Lose the bishops.

Well after god knows how many pages of its the "SKILL WITH THE BUILD" you come back with letting people have the loot is wanting to make it a coinflip.

Oh so we are back to having accolades matter.


Or are you still going for: More Hit Points + Harder to Hit + Able to do greater damage <> ridiculous advantage ?

There may not be fair in MMO PvP but what you are arguing for isn't just unfair its ridiculous.

A significant part of your post serves to reinforce the notion that your ego is blinding you to a great many things. You think that your past experience in the middle management of a game company means you have insights that your posts on the topic belie.

I'm sorry, that qualifies you to understand the teaming dynamics of online players how? Assuming you were actually a manager in charge of a staff that size, those people weren't a team of online players. Even if we make the ridiculous assumption that they were, I seriously doubt you had 3800 direct reports. Even if those 3800 people included play testers, how many of them were testing the game unscripted?

All this claim shows is that you were involved in an effort to create an online game. It doesn't show that you actually understand how that should be done. As a counterpoint, I think Jack Emmert has whole lot more recognizable MMO resume than yours, and I think the man is a giant ignoramus about how players actually play games. Ultimately, your posts are vastly more damning than any such credentials serve to counter.

What matters far more in my opinion is how much you've played these games, and how much you've interacted in meaningful ways with the players on the teams you've played on.

Your aforementioned ego-blinded ignorance is showing. Tribes is just the context in which I was heavily exposed to the mindset of competitive play. I've pubbed on plenty of games since. Teams are teams are teams are teams. The head-to-head teamplay behaviors I'm describing don't depend on the game, as long as the matches in question are individual, stateless contests. Read that carefully - the contests need to be stateless, not the environment.

Tribes 2 was not Tribes. Tribes was not based on the Torque engine. As a player, I considered Tribes 2 a pretty serious failure in the eyes of its community, and I liken it in many ways to I13 here. We (and I mean the communities I was part of) never experienced a problem with modded servers in organized Tribes competition, so I'm curious if you think this was a problem on paper or in practice. The only reason people took exception to servers was based on their ping versus that of their opponents. It was typical that each team chose a server, and if needed the matches were split across them. Tiebreakers could be on a 3rd server if needed. Many matches were held on servers managed by the league itself.

In any case, none of that is germane to the topic. None of that is an argument in defense of your claims that people need dedicated team leaders to manage complex gametypes.

Claiming you were an EA insider isn't you asserting "special knowledge"?

By the way, when debating an argument, it helps to say why people on the other side are wrong. All you've done so far is declare me wrong or flawed, but you've not actually shown how my position is logically unsound. This is how we've gotten into whipping out backgrounds - it's not like there's some mathematical derivation that one can use to prove how online teams play. We can only cite experiences. It seems kind of telling that you seem to be the outlier in this thread.

So, again, what experience in playing online team games do you have? How many people do you consider part of the community do you play with? How exposed to their play experiences (and not just your own) are you?

I'd like your stats on how often that happens.

I think you are either much to worried about things that don't happen that often in most games. That they happen is not at issue. The question is: how pervasive are they?

No, they don't. The zones we had don't have anything that works like what I'm talking about. The zones we had were deathmatch.

And pardon me if I take your opinion of human nature with a grain of salt, since you seem to think that people in random pubs have the gumption to form up into an organized squad under a designated leader as a matter of course.

People are way lazier than that.

This attack on my argument is particularly weak, because I can't have formed my opinions on this particular matter without hundreds or thousands of other people. Do you really think it's reasonable that not only did I almost never run into people doing this sort of thing you claim happens all the time, but none of other players I got close to did either? That no one else in the ladders or leagues I was in talked about this big endemic problem? That essentially none of the pub teams I joined in any game over a 5-year span had this "needed" leader in place?

So either I'm lying, I'm the luckiest SOB ever for never running into this big problem, or you're exaggerating the issue.

I'm curious about what part of EVE can be compared to a 3-map CTF match. I'm curious how EVE corporations compare to ladder teams. I'm talking about adding stateless matches that happen to be held in a stateful world. You're talking about losing a CTF match costing you a capital ship or a mining outpost. You're over-thinking again.

Anyone who gets sick over stuff like this needs to not play head-to-head online games. I also think that online games that worry overly much about people like this end up not being very fun.

This is funny as can be. You misread the post, reply in ignorance, then the rest is well you may have done that but "it doesn't matter" Because you know more anyway and if anyone disagrees with you they are ignorant egotistic and in general uninformed. 3500 was the number of the players on our team. I believe the development staff etc was somewhere around 20 it varied seeing as the game was in development for roughly 10 years and had undergone three changes in ownership in that period and at one point outsourced development to an Israeli company.


Good try at comprehension. Fair to middling try with the middle management bit, just a heads up anyone managing 3500 people at just about any software company would be upper level management, In EAs case that would be a ridiculous percentage of their total labor force.

It does underly my point that your argument was much like the man who claims to have 20 years experience but in reality just has the same years experience 20 times. The fact that you couldn't even conceptualize the scale of what some games tried for and just how radically different environments could be just highlights this.

You have said you work in the software industry ? That seems to be contradicted by your lack of knowledge.

The rest of your post just gets more comical.

Edit: Just so you understand, its Cochranisms, Demands for data that couldn't possibly produced and your saying that because you didn't notice it happening it didn't.

You have tried this before in this thread. Online pvp has 0 to do with chess. Please stop trying to compare it to it. And yes if someone is worse at pvp, or the market, of even pve they should be at a disadvantage. Competition is not an everyone wins thing like kids are taught these days. You don't get your pizza here for loading into the zone or arena. Earn it like everyone else, period.




It is skill, it is build, they did try to make it a coin flip and failed. These things are all true. My position has never once changed. I will promise you skill is far more important than money in pvp. Read the rest of my reply instead of cherry picking to try to make you look like you might have a hope of appearing right.



Reread all of it again. There is a difference between a twinked level 5 toon with a distinct advantage in an event that is just for fun and level 50s with a full compliment of powers and slotting. Again you cherry picked to make it look like your point is valid. And again, since the begining my distinction has been accolade are not required. Yes they are nice to have, but you are not serious disadvantage with out them. There are these things called inspires that can pretty much cancel them out. If you have a clue you would know this.




Now that we have your responses covered lets get back to some of the stuff you glazed over that you need to reply to.

I said.

this one most of all


So really what have you won. From what I see in this thread you seem to think you are the 5 year old in a kick ball league and win just for showing up. You can't make a point on a forum, its pretty obvious you have no clue about pvp here or any game. Perhaps you should go back and get coddled by the people who made your sense of self entitlement so strong and leave the game to those of us who have the mental capacity to play. Peace




If you want to translate this to a bad experience with a pvper I basically just told you to get wrecked.

Man I have trouble believing anyone could write that seriously.

If this thread hadn't been endless pages of PvPers insisting they should be able to beat on people that aren't as well equipped as them, I wouldn't believe that. But to borrow your analogy if PvP were that kickball game, you would have all the older kids on one side, they would be equipped with maces and would gang up on any younger kid that happened to wander by.


You are right about one thing though. I haven't made the points I wanted to, I doubt I could have. You and the other pvpers have been doing it far better than I ever could.

You have the worst analogies of anyone I have ever had the privilge to meet. Its mind boggling how atrocious you are it. Its not like that at all. The difference between a full looted out toon and a new player in zones is noticeble but not beating small children to death with maces noticeable. And if you are in top end arena you have freinds who have helped you with builds and got your self looted out anyways. So you really have no point at all. Maybe if you actually pvped you would get it. And by pvped I don't mean go into a zone get kiled by someone whine about and get them to lol at you and you leave. With free server transfers I suggest you come on over to freedom rv and try paying attention. You will see that in all honest the pvp community is tight knit group and helpful to anyone who seeks it. Sure you will get some bad answers or amybe meet a jerk, in that respect it sort of like the forums, if you get what I am saying.




Your form of logic and comprehension frighten me greatly. Not sure if you are on meds or need to be but there is something definitely wrong with you. The only points you have proven is that you can dodge valid points and questions. While at the same time continuing to try to put forth senseless and pointless analogies of the way you think the game should work. All while people with far greater experience and knowledge give you facts that point out how baseless and wrong you are. Yes somehow you are insane enough to think that you are winning something, when in truth you are pretty much an epic failure.

My apologies, I did misread that. So tell us... What did "managing" these 3500 players entail? Were you responsible for their test cases? Did your team document that they formed teams with clear leadership structures when faced with complex challenges a significant percentage of the time? How do you know that their testing and reports were an accurate simulation of how people would play the game "in the wild"? Did your game promote such structures through its teaming interface? Did combat have large scale persistent ramifications closer to EVE's approach, or was it a non-persistent match interface such the Arena in CoH?

Sorry, I work for a multinational corporation with 350,000 worldwide employees. My views on what constitutes "middle" management may be a little out of line with EA's size. Try not to let your e-peen get caught in the door.

You are very hung up on this idea of scale. I'm not. I don't want epic scale, and have explained what context I'm talking about in prior posts. I propose something light, repeatable and fun. I want FPS-style team matches (besides deathmatch) imported into CoH's mildly persistent environment. CoH's "persistent" world is very static. All that persists is our individual charcters' or SGs' progress and achievments. That makes importing new types of low- or no-impact PvP matches a very natural fit. Stop trying to envision this as Heavy Gear or Planetside or Eve. I'm talking about 8-on-8 CTF or Defend and Destroy and you keep referencing the MMO equivalent of Alexander's conquest of the known world.

I'm not posting about how different different environments could be. I'm talking about how consistent they are in practice. I'm sorry, but I don't accept that every pug team head-to-head I've ever joined across a half dozen games in the last decade has miraculously lacked team leadership when in fact it's very common. It's like you're telling me the sky is red, then lambasting me for not providing you proof that it's blue.

Lack of knowledge of what? I work in enterprise systems development and architecture. What does that have to do with this topic?

The only data I've demanded is to know what game's you've actually played that had team head-to-head. If you can't answer that, you really ought to stop talking.