What Are Heroes Running FROM?

If any PvPers do decide to try out sending an "Incoming!" tell a few times (from safely out of line of sight, and not necessarily seconds before an attack), I would like you to post your experiences, good and bad. It would be educational.

My delusion is that it hurts not a whit (exaggeration): You aren't giving up the element of surprise, because the target has no idea what kind of attack is coming, when it is coming, or from where. Of course, after your attack begins, they will be able to see that you were the gal who warned them before attacking (assuming you aren't two-boxing). I don't see that as a downside.

The upside is that you might get a good dialogue, some friendly player interaction, or at least some amusement or even an assessment of the target's capabilities and combat style.

EDIT: Granted, if 10 people try out PvP and 1 likes it, that's a win. By the same token, if 4 of them could have liked it if their attackers had been more carebear, but decided not to PvP because of how they were treated, that is also a lose.

There seems to be an attitude that being a PvPer is genetic. I beleive that is only partly true.

I've received warning from stalkers before getting AS before.

If you are in PvP not moving you are either bait or slow on the whole PvP thing.

This gives stalkers plenty of time to go "Shink Shink" before they do it.

Cool.

Keep in mind that in PvP Zones everyone should be sidekicked/exemplared to a set level. This means that in BB a level 15 CAN kick a level 24's tuckus, and vice versa. It's all about the build, the attack chain, and so forth.

... that is, unless they changed this and I didn't notice. It's entirely possible, as after PvP got royally nerfed with the "diminishing returns" and travel suppression crap, I've not set foot in any of the PvP zones. So they could have removed the SK/EX mechanic entirely. *shrug*

Heh, all MMOs have travel suppression in PvP, it's just that you usually can't tell because the rest of the game is just as slow...

Even as a hater of PvP, I don't really agree with the "incoming" or "ask permission" idea for the PvP zones. I understand the risks in a PvP zone, and I accepted those risks when I came in. I won't whine if you attack me, I won't complain about being killed, and I'll probably just leave until you're gone.

BUT . . .

I do expect a level of decency out of other players (which in my, admittedly limited, experience I don't often see).

I expect that if I make it clear that I'm not interested in fighting you (usually by running away at every opportunity...assuming I make it), that you will leave me alone.

I expect that if I'm OBVIOUSLY involved in something else [ie fighting arachnoids in the tunnels] that you won't jump in and gank me right in the middle of it (at least not more than once).

I expect that if I'm not worth rep (because you just killed me a minute ago) you won't kill me again [or over and over and over again] just because you can.

I expect that if I'm OBVIOUSLY solo (due to you killing me before and me simply going back to whatever I was doing, which obviously doesn't include you), that you won't gank me over and over again or bother with an 8 on 1 gankfest.

However, that's rarely what I encounter when I do go into the PvP zones.

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For the record:
My introduction to PvP:

Back in the early days of UO. I'm on an obviously newbie toon (starter gear, no mount, etc). I've just spent the past hour wandering around in the wilderness. I'm literally in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly *BOOM* I'm dead. Mr PvP just hit me with a known exploit/bug that allowed for virtually instant-kill with no chance of reprisal.

Then he loots my body, taking what little in the way of reagents [needed to cast any spells..a mage without reagents is literally helpless], and resurrects me. When I ask him why he attacked me un-provoked (and he wasn't one of the RP "murderers/psychokillers", that at least I might of understood), his response was "I was bored".

OK, fair enough (if a little jerky). Well could I at least have a few of my reagents and my one recall rune back so I can get back to town? (remember I'm at least 1/2 an hour slog away from the nearest town..with no equipment/abilities/spells available). His response was, shall we say, not printable here. Followed by *BOOM*, I'm dead again.

Welcome to PvP.

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For a more recent example from CoH:

I'm on a defender trying to get a shivan. I've finally, after a long set of fighting, worn down all the turrets to near destruction (so I could do the kill them all quick before they respawn tactic).

Assassin strike! I'm dead. OK, rather lame as I'm obviously trying to get a shivan, but a part of the risks in the zone, so I don't complain (out loud at least).

BUT, rather than go on his way, or even use the bunker I've weakened. Mr PvP proceeds to simply kill the turrets (getting at best 1 or 2 exp for them as they are all just a tick away from destruction), so that they'll all respawn, and THEN leaving.

Now, why do that? You didn't use the bunker, you didn't gain anything for it. All you did was prove you're an a-hole who just wanted to ruin what I was doing.

AND, about 20 minutes later - he does it AGAIN [at this point I just said screw it and left].

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[edited to remove one final comment that came off as a bit too snarky for my tastes]

... sadly, that's the kind of player that a "PvP Game" will attract. But, they tend to have money for upgrades (purchased from the game company or from *ahem* third parties) and will often get multiple accounts. So Mr. PvP is a 'lucrative customer'.

Nevermind how much jerkassery he may indulge in.


And... I'm looking at the 'tag cloud' for this thread. It appears that there's some Forum PvP going on as well.

Oh good lord.

MM's with full squads in BB? RUN AWAY.

Muahahahahaahahaaaaaaaaaaah!

'Tis the curse of mankind that each new generation has to relearn the lessons of it's forefathers... In this case, in this thread, I got as far as page 4 before I gave up and decided to just go straight to breaking out the history lesson.

The MMOs as you have experience them today are the product of nearly a decade of observation of human nature within the medium... but each MMO itself exists upon a certain point along the time line, from which due to the difficulty in overhauling the entire structure and starting again, few ever escape from.

It begins, at least for the first of those "M"s, with Ultima Online, launched in 1997; a game which started out with a complete free for all regarding player interaction. The designers assumed that those who wanted to play constructively would band together to protect each other from the self declared renegades... they thought their game would hold up a mirror to life, and "Good" would ultimately be dominant, whilst still allowing the rogues to exist. The problem was, in real life we can't just walk away and play a different life, we have to find a way to mitigate the worst excesses of human behaviour... In Britannia however, the "Dread Lords" basically controlled the entire world, as those who wanted to play constructively just walked away from the game; There's a basic article on the problem here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Ultima_Online

As a consequence, Origin/EA decided to divide the world into consensual, and non-consensual world wide PvP... with the result that approximately 80% of the population immediately bolted for the consensual world on the very first day, and never went back.

Most of the following MMOs took note of this, and designed their worlds with such a consensual/non-consensual division from the start, assuming they'd be able to maintain both player bases on the same hardware, but just a few lines of important toggle code apart. Everquest, and yes, our City of Heroes (launching without PvP at all, but with it as part of the later design plan) are part of this second wave. However, they all started to run into the same problem... the PvP parts of the world rapidly lost population, frustrating the PvPers who wanted to gank and kill people that simply weren't there any more, or were themselves off playing a dedicated PvP server, EvE Online, or Quake III Arena instead. The second wave solution was to try and create content which would draw the PvE players into the still existent PvP worlds. Bribing them in, basically. In the case of the continuing Ultima Online, it was Power Scrolls and unique loot from events over on the non-con world. In City of Heroes' case, it's unique badges, and the endlessly discussed Shivans; which I shall return to shortly...

But the reality of this approach just made things worse; The PvE'ers grew intensely frustrated trying to out-twitch the dedicated twitch gamers, who growing up in the culture of "anything to win" were often hacking to buggery on top of the different skill set and levels of skill. Nor did they like the other parts of PvP culture; the trash talking, the "pwning" rather than just winning... In Ultima Online, the result was that they very quickly lost interest in even trying to get to the PvP events, let alone wrest control of them from the PvPers. And as the Power Scrolls could be sold on the free for all player market, the ended up dominating the high end PvE market too. The result was an increasingly divided and angry player community; the PvE ers wanted the goodies, but couldn't get them, and the PvP players had them, but no one wanted to come to an increasingly unequal fight against them and have their inevitable teabagged-corpse.

City of Heroes, being a late Second Wave MMO tried to avoid this, originally by taking a unique "No Competition For Loot" approach, but also by when finally releasing PvP, leaving the hook to draw people over something personal, that they could eventually work towards no matter what, and not ever have taken from them... the Badges, and Shivans which were largely useless in PvP, but an enormous help in PvE. However, like most of the MMO industry, it had not yet sunk in that those kind of players hated the whole experience of PvP. They didn't want to spend however many hours doing something they hated, for a boost in efficiency doing something they actually liked.

This is why Third Wave MMOs have accepted an almost entirely self contained Consensual model, and what PvP there is has absolutely no negative qualities at all for your character. Witness the genre-conquering World Of Warcraft, but almost any MMO you can name that entered development let's say after 2004/5 or so; Tabula Rasa, Everquest II, Lord of The Rings (which interestingly, is trying a slightly different approach by letting PvPers be the actual E in PvE, but only as lowbie monsters I believe?) they all have the ability to step into PvP as you require, fight for bonuses that matter only to PvP (or have comparatively little use in PvE)... but if you don't want to ever PvP, you can just ignore it entirely, because there's nothing there you'd want compared to going PvE Raiding instead; the loot there was always maximized for that particular style of play instead. Even world PvP on PvP servers now allows you to bank and trade in peace, but almost all the best loot is Soulbound or similar, so you can't bend someone over the bank counter trying to corner the market on it either...

Now the old Dread Lords from a decade ago may howl about that, and that's where this thread has come from; It seems some in our Warzones haven't yet realised that they are at least 2 generations of MMO experience behind the times; but you can't criticize the new ideologies numbers from a business stand point; World Of Warcraft has around 11 million subscribers. People in general on both sides like the modern balance that's been found. Indeed, you could say City of Heroes is trying to emulate that formula somewhat, by bring in pure PvP character specs, and PvP recipe loot... widening the division between the worlds, but specializing them to taste.

And just because some people don't understand why this is, no business is going to go back nearly the entire lifetime of MMO experience and give you a second change to take a different path... not with so much money riding on their modern approach instead. Who'd want to be CoH after all, or even pre-Trammel UO when you can be today's World Of Warcraft? Indeed, every time you've killed someone who asked to share a Warzone in a mutually beneficial way in CoH, you've proven you aren't capable of following a different path by instantly reverting to being greedy and acting like it's your zone only; so they've forced a solution on you from above. A solution that works too.

That CoH's PvP balance has always been atrocious hasn't helped either, but that's another story...

Thanks! I knew some of that, but it's nice to have the info neatly encapsulated.

There was actually a thriving pvp community in the aol-based Neverwinter Nights prior to UO's launch, but since all players' characters topped out as 10/11 cleric/mages and everyone had access to the exact same list of magic items, what you essentially had was the battle of the sprite-clones.

In certain respects, because everyone was essentially playing the same character, the pvp in NWN was ultimately balanced and you never ran into the Dread Lords phenomenon that plagued UO. There was much trash talk among the guilds of the day, (KAAOS, ITB, MECH, BDA, etc), but the pvp was more akin to strategy than twitch with a large twist of luck thrown in the form of saving throws against specific spells.

NWN online playerbase was always much lower than UO's though... even though the game did stretch from coast to coast and beyond.

This is not to say that PvP was a more civil experience prior to UO though, only that the inherent behavioral issues with the activity weren't brought into sharp relief until the appearance of UO's black cloaks.

I think your recounting was pretty accurate though... though NWN was the forerunner to UO, UO certainly had a far more sweeping impact on the MMO development world.

Wow....just have to say...what an awesome post Bovine!

It is quite interesting, I think the main problem for City of Heroes was that many people joined because it didn't have PvP in the begining, it was a safe oasis away from the Horde/Alliance PvPfest of WoW (though the epic battles of Tarren Mill were a sight to behold...) which even then had seperate PvE and PvP dedicated servers.

WoW itself has gone through many changes, originally (as mentioned) there were no battlegrounds so people created 'hotspots' where the two sides would clash and the battles were long and bloody but on PvE servers these were consentual PvP since you actively had to toggle PvP mode on in the open world. However there was a darker side, on the PvP servers Stranglethorn Vale was an absolute no-go for players in the lower level range because those in the higher level range would still be around, questing and hunting.

Eventually battlegrounds were introduced with the whole honor system where only the best of the best got the grandest of PvP focused gear but the open world lost a lot of its epic battles. Time goes on and eventually they introduce a brand new honor system just before the first expansion, the battlegrounds explode as gear not normally available to players becomes relatively easy to get.

Then they introduce the arenas, Blizzard wanting to turn WoW PvP from a side edition into an E-sport (such as Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena or Counterstrike) unfortunately the plan...sort of backfired, the original Arena rewards were not only awesome in PvP but also most of the time the best inslot items for PvE. This led to people 'gaming the system' so they could get the rewards for PvE purposes without PvPing.

Eventually they begun sorting things out, trying to make the PvP arena rewards harder to get and less desirable for PvE (adding Resiliance into the item budget which lowered the crit chance of someone fighting you, it was useless in PvE but incredibly useful in PvP).

Thoughout all of this was the massive problem of balance. Unlike an FPS like Team Fortress 2 balance is incredibly bloody hard to pull off because there's many classes, many different specs within those classes. Each class seemed to take turns in being 'the overpowered one' and that still continues to this day.

PvP balance in MMOs is, quite frankly, impossible its, as Americans would put it, painting the golden gate bridge, once you've finished the job the other end needs painting again. Once you've balanced one class for PvP, then all the other classes need to be looked at to make sure they're balanced as well but once that's done then the original class may be unbalanced again.

For this reason alone PvP in MMOs will never be as popular as PvE, there's the inherent inbalance of it all.

As Bovine mentioned, the Warzones are, now, two generations behind the current MMO curve, the old way was to leave PvE bait in zones to lure people in. How many people would honestly mind a reduction in power of the Shivans and Warburg nukes if it meant they never had to step foot in a PvP zone again to get them? That is the key question.

If they wished them to remain powerful, why not put them as merit rewards? 10 for a Shivan and 10 for each type of nuke, that's quite a lot of PvE effort put in to get Shivans and each type of nuke. Would people object to this if they removed one of the fundamental things that draw completely disinterested parties into a playstyle they hate?

Personally you could probably magic away the PvP zones and they'd be missed by, what, 1% of the population that PvP because all competative PvP takes place in the arenas. Throw the signature hero defeat badges from RV onto those heroes (so any time you defeat Lord Recluse as a hero you get his old RV badge in addition to any badges that particular story arc grants), make the old 'time spent in X' badges history badges and so on.

Or better yet find some way to keep the zones but turn them into competative PvE content in a shared (but not co-op) zone.

How much of an outcry would there really be if the PvP zones got stripped out or the the PvP only rewards became achievable through hard work in PvE instead?

PvP in City of Heroes has, at best, a minority following. At worst it has a tiny, almost cult like, following.

The whole problem stems from the fact that they introduced PvP for PvPs sake without actually considering the implications further down the line, they've balanced and rebalanced PvP without actually ever succeding to draw in anyone beyond the small subset of players who actually did it in the first place.

I say just make the Shivans and nukes available through merits, strip the stupid PvE missions from within PvP zones, clear out all the enemy mobs (NPCs have no place unless there is a specific PvP related goal to them...see Alterac Valley in WoW) and make them purely PvP and then call it a day. Leave the PvPing to the pureists who want to PvP to the Arenas and their zones, leave anything PvE out of it and tada...no complaints...

No mention of Meridian 59? That predates UO by a bit. What about The Realm Online? It wasn't "massively" but it pretty much was an ancestor.

Meridian had free for all, if I recall. According to the wife, she quit almost as soon as she started because she couldn't take more than a few steps out of town without getting massacred.

While your post is compelling, one thing I've learned going from MMORPG to MMORPG is that, despite history, there are very few lessons that really seem to sink in. There seem to be dozens of repeated mistakes every new game. PvP really hasn't evolved, I don't think. PvP is still random from MMORPG to MMORPG, with little heed paid to previous ventures by those who went before.