Tale of two cities or Why I don't PVP (Sorry just ranting)

I'm not sure if this fits here or not but I'm posting my random thoughts.

I don't PVP in this game thought I would like to. The problem like many I don't like the PVP rules. Why?

Well the basic is this from level 1-14 I learn a the game mechanics. I get used to said powers how they perform. What they can do to said foes.

Then level 15 and going into Bloody Bay. WHAT THE HELL! What I spent getting used to changes. It's a whole new system to get used to.

Much like driving when someone learns to drive an Automatic transmission and then they sit into a Manual Transmission car. This change is what bothers me I simply don't enjoy the changing systems when going from a PVE to a PVP Zone. Yes people had said the technical flaws in PVP I'm not going to bother with that.

Really who does? It's how it FEELS how it PLAYS and the mentality we players get from it. The way it seems to me is we have not one City of Heroes/Villains but Two. The PVE CoX and the PVP CoX.

Okay this Rant is over. Am I wrong?

exactly.

I've been over this before in multiple locations; here in the forums; on Gamenikki.com (still down as RawServe will not respond to emails or phone calls and the situation is turning ugly); and zerias.blogspot.com

The basic problem is that the PvE game is based on inherent imbalance. Each of the archtypes in the game is deliberately weak in some areas, and deliberately strong in other areas, which is to say they are inherently imbalanced. The imbalances drive the team-based combat of the PvE system where players should work together in order to over-come each other's weak spots. The need to balance the majority of the game content against a teaming experience is why the developers sometimes have to take drastic measures to halt a particular play-style or holy-grail goal that a segment of the player base pursues.

An inherently imbalanced game makes for a incredibly imbalanced PvP enviroment. If you look at all of the good multiplayer games, they are based on two basic design principles: At Some Level the players are equal :: Skill matters

The concept is most visible in first person shooters such Unreal Tournament, Quake, Prey, Doom, Far Cry / Crysis, and so on. All players start out with a basic weapon, and while they can gain over-powering weapons or armors, skill is still a factor. A player with a sniper rifle or a rail gun is dangerous at a distance... but enough armor or good enough use of cover, and that range advantage can disappear in a heartbeat.

Even when looking at the kings of mixed-combat play; Monolith's Aliens Versus Predator 2 and Verant's Planetside; the concept still held up.

AvP2 with only two players could be a decidedly unfair fight depending on what avatars the players controlled, whether or not class based weapons were in play, and whether or not alien life-cycle was on. However, AvP2 allowed players to adjust the scoring for each defeat... so that a face hugger dropping a marine with access to the smart gun awarded more points than the marine with the smart gun dropping the face hugger. The result was a multiplayer experience that could account for whether or not the actual combat was balanced.

In Planetside, there was a spot for everybody. Even if you weren't in the league of VT-Grumpy-Bunny or Fatal1ty when it came to FPS combat, you could still find something to do in Planetside, be it a medic, a driver, a pilot, an engineer, or a combat strategist calling out which targets to hit and planning the battles. Even then, the actual FPS combat was still balanced against each Empire having similar weapon classes, even though those weapon classes behaved in different manners. The Vanu were terrors in water-bound and vertical combat situations. The Terrans ruled in open-field combat and more traditional FPS combat. In close quarters combat though, it was the New Conglomerate that held the advantage. Despite all of the different combat factors, Planetside's core combat still came down to who had the better aim. Skill mattered. A cloaker could take out a max armor. A skeeter pilot could down a BRF.

***

So, in order for City of Heroes to work in a PvP enviroment, in order for it to provide good PvP, things have to be balanced. The PvE combat is not conducive to PvP play... and if the developers want to retain the aspect of City of Heroes were each archtype is supposed to give a different play experience, the PvE combat is never going to be conducive to PvP play.

The design goals are diametrically opposed.

***

This is complicated by the fact that the majority of players who participated in CoH PvP were not interested in good PvP play. They weren't interested in a balanced enviroment, and there stands a stark disconnect between the likes of Macskull and Conflict, and the actual development staff.

The PvPer's largely want OMGWTFBBQ, I GANKED U HARD IN THE @$$ IM AWSUM YU SUK MAH... I'm sure you can fill in the rest. Ergo, the PvPer's, or rather the vocal PvPer's on the forums, want an imbalanced enviroment similar to Ultima Online.

Well, thankfully, Castle and the rest of the development staff is smarter than that. Castle seems to have a handle on good PvP requiring that the PvP game be different from the PvE game. Issue 13 was a step in the right direction for where PvP play needs to go.

***

That being said, there are other over-riding factors. My own personal opinion is that PvP play would be best served by it's own separate game with it's own separate development staff. That's my opinion.

That also isn't likely. NCSoft got burned badly by Tabula Rasa, an Inherently Imbalanced PvE game like City of Heroes. Tabula Rasa quite literally blew up, putting a smoldering crater into NCSoft's financial reports, as it chased after a very vocal PvP minority. NCSoft and Destination Games found out the hardway that the available market of gamers willing to PAY for PvP content in a PvE game was a lot lower than the vocal minority had indicated.

The fallout from Tabula Rasa will probably continue to have a large impact on the future of City of Heroes. NCSoft is likely not going to authorize funds for developing any further PvP content in City of Heroes. Basically, that means that NCSoft isn't going to pay Paragon Studios to work on PvP content, not that Paragon Studios can't work on PvP content.

Rather, NCSoft's reported desire is that they drive the players willing to pay for PvP content to AION and the Guild Wars series, driving players to games that were created and built with PvP play in mind... not added as an afterthought to appease a vocal minority.

***

So no, you are not wrong that CoX PvE and CoX PvP are two different games. They have to be two different games in order to achieve their design goals. Unfortunately, those competing design goals mean that future PvP development just isn't likely.

I used to PVP and one of my favorite battles was in Bloody bay.

I was running a Dark/Dark Scrapper and ran into a group of Player Villains. A robot MM, A corrupter and a Ice Dom. It was a wonderful fight I had the challenge of facing three on one battle but my Scrapper was tough enough they had to work together to win.

I went after the Ice Dom because her powers was slowing me enough that I knew... I knew I would loose if I didn't get rid of her. In the end I couldn't take her out before I died so the Villains won.

We all had a blast! It was an epic fight a challenge for everyone and it came down to the effects of the Weakest member of the Villain's team powers. I still think it's fun that the person who had the least damaging powers in the team had the greatest effect on me. I doubt it would work after Issue 13.

I don't PvP because I don't have an IOed Psychic/EM blaster or Mind/Fire dom.

Part of the problem of the old PvP mechanics was the nature of some of the powers.

Example: Your average scrapper stood little or no chance against a Mind Control Dominator of any kind. The reason for this was one power in particular that Mind doms have access to: Telekinesis, a toggle based hold power. If that Dominator stacked enough holds to get through your protection and then hit you with Telekinesis, you were pretty much helpless for as long as the dominator had endurance to keep the power up. (I never did figure out exactly how many breakfrees you needed to use to break the hold)

In the early days of PvP a stalker could kill a squishy in one hit. Which was just broken. An invisible assailant that can kill you instantly. The anti-oneshotting change was probably the first PvP nerf in the game.

Some of the changes were good, like the change to TK (I lack the words to adequately describe how much I HATED that power). Some of the changes were bad (travel suppression when attacked and heal decay comes to mind). But they are TRYING to bring some kind of balance to it so heavily IOed characters played by skilled players aren't completely unkillable in a PvP zone.

They haven't succeeded yet, but I'm willing to see what happens with it.

While I'm not the hardcore PvPer like others on the forum, I do PvP.

Just last night I logged into the game to have my toon drop a mission. She was parked in RV, so before I went to drop the mission, I decided to see if anyone was out...ended up staying in zone for and hour or two.

My only complaint about PvP, is that when you go to the effort to make a toon (any toon) kick butt in PvE, it's wasted in the PvP zone.

Now, this in and of itself may not be a bad thing. We have two builds. You can build for one PvE on one build and PvP on the other. Right?

No! You can't!

Some sets just suck that much in PvP.

Now mind you, I still PvP with concept built toons. I go around using ninja run as a main travel power on my corr. But I find this to be the reason I think PvP needs changed. To go from OMG to crash and burn is going to get on people nerves. And that's just from PvE to PvP.

Sucks more when it's issue to issue changes. :/ My WP/EM tanker used to feel great, not so much anymore.

I hate PvP... but will, on rare occassions, do it if I'm with a team of friends and the team makeup is such that we "fill gaps" and compliment each other.

Personally, I'd rather put on the 16 oz gloves and spar vs. sitting at a keyboard and play pwn or be pwnd.

i13 killed PvP because the changes sucked bottom line. They did the complete opposite of what they were supposed too.

Prior to i13 you could run an SOd out toon in zone and if you had skill you could man-handle people. Now? Sorry, you didn't spend months farming to get those IOs so you are **** out of luck. To actually compete you can only select from a small pool ATs and powers in high end play. IOs just thinned out everything even more. Kins? Pfft.

Anyone saying i13 PvP is the better direction is high and clearly does not or has never actually PvP'd on a regular basis or at high end levels.

Castle should have been fired on the spot for being willing to implement those changes. It's not only that they implemented it with such negative feedback, but it has been proven that the changes didn't work. Still, people aimlessly justify the release. Brain check fools, pvp was decimated in numbers and quality, in the end, that is all that matters.

You could fight 1 on 3 and survive if you had skill. Now? GTFO.

Personally, my opinion has always been that PvP in an MMO is (for me at least) a complete and utter waste of time. I have absolutely zero interesting in spending the time and effort required to make a special character just so I can PvP. If I PvP I want to be able to just jump in and do it with my regular characters. Therefore I am very unlikely to ever try PvP in an MMO and instead when I want to play against other people I'll play games like Team Fortress 2. That way I get a game where skill matters but I don't need to spend loads of time getting a character to the point where my skill matters. For me to be at all interested in PvP in an MMO it would either need to be balanced to the point where any character is competitive regardless of build or have some way to make a "PvP Character" for free (I think Guild Wars has something like this).

The biggest gripe people have with the PvP changes was that they went ahead and did it in spite of a ton of negative feedback.

The thing people aren't realizing when they complain about that is the fact that the negative feedback was coming from the people they were trying to shift the balance of power AWAY from in PvP zones: The highly skilled players playing heavily IOed characters on teams that are coordinated enough to damage-spike anyone they want any time they want.

A team of relatively new PvPers never stood a chance against those people. Unless a PvPer took you under their wing you were never able to figure out what works and what doesn't in PvP because the high end PvPers would never give you a chance to learn. People don't learn how to PvP when they die 15 seconds after the countdown stops every time they venture into a zone.

Not all PvPers were like that, in fact I'd say probably not even the majority, but enough were to give PvP a reputation as an elitist bunch of jerks who would gank you en masse before you got a handle on things. Even when the powers were largely the same PvP was much more fast-paced than PvE, and players making the adjustment would get repeatedly killed while figuring out what was going on.

The only thing they DID succeed in doing (IMO) is new players have a bit more of a fighting chance now than they used to. Since you will generally live long enough to get a few attacks off and move around a bit, someone new to PvP has a chance to learn what works and what doesn't.......as opposed to the old PvP where if you didn't pick it up in seconds flat you were doomed to be frustrated by your inability to do much of anything.