PvP Revamp! For the future of the game!

I'm sure i'm not the only one who has had the following ideas nor posted about them; but I do hope that maybe, just maybe, some of these suggestions may get passed along to the Dev team and make it into i18-19.

With Going Rogue on the horizon the game will see a massive repopulation boom with players flooding to new powersets, zones, faction, and switching sides; and what a great time it would be to see a new system of pvp implemented to further compliment such a new development achievment since City of Villains.

Our current pvp system is relatively barren and flawed in many different ways. A lot of you wll disagree with me; but please try to think open-mindedly about this.

So City of Heroes originally started off as just a pve game, then along came a spider and PvP! CoH vs CoV; PvP was relatively lively but as the years went on it dried up and became a dust-town in mostly every server and zone. From my experiences in pvp I can give quiet a few reasons why, but also what i'd like to see changed or added; so now I will begin.

---First: Zone Buffs/Debuffs---
Currently in PvP zones players can under-take in instanced pve missions by contacts and once the mission is completed you will have eaither buffs your allies or debuffed your enemies; this is the first fatal flaw I saw the first time I tried PvP. I would join in a zone and immediatly have overwhelming debuffs on myself and my enemies would have immense buffs on them and in order to fix this i'd have to do the pve missions (or hope someone else would), but I didn't join a pvp zone just to have to do more pve missions! I came to throw ice bolts and fire balls at heroes / villains! Sure some of you will argue that these misson don't require a lot of time solo or don't provide much of a bonus, however, I feel that if you want players to effectively be apart and immersed into pvp you shouldn't have them instanced for even a moment let alone reward/punish players who do not want to do these missions with buffs/debuffs on them.
My Conclusion: Remove instanced PvE missions in order to buff/debuff sides; instead have outside PvE missions that require players to raid a fortification or wipe out a wave of enemy troops; the rewards won't be buffs or debuffs for heroes or villains but for their NPC armies. With that being said I will now go on to my NPC rant below.

---Second: Enemy NPCs throughout the zone---
PvP Zones arn't just empty areas with only Players fighting eachother; throughout the zones there are NPCs of various factions standing around waiting for a player to have the misfortune of running into them. On various zones you can find skirmishes of longbow and arachnos each allied with their respective sides however on all zones you will find various other factions (freaks, shivans, CoT etc.) mobbed about like in regular PvE zones. There isn't too much wrong with random factions lieing about but I do find one thing in particular a major thorn in my side and that is that these NPCs keep players from fighting in that area or camping out there. No no no the NPCs arn't directly keeping players from going into that particular spot but they do have the ability to make players shy to a more open fielded area in which they can fight their foe with no NPC interefence. With all this + the few skirmishes of Longbow + Arachnos I have two conclusions to make; one drastic and one simple.
My Conclusion (Drastic): This conclusion is to further the immersion that players are in a warzone fighting against their rivals! Remove almost (or all) random faction npcs and instead replace them with skirmishes of longbow and arachnos. I would like to see some freakshow or Council every now and then fighting against the longbow trying to reclaim some territory just so players know that there are still the sympathetic few that the spotlight doesn't shine on. With that being said I would like the skirmishes of longbow v arachnos to not just be in a set spawn but also randomly appear in different areas and charge at the enemy base; engaging any opposition they meet. This allows players to have reason to do the PvE Missions I requested above in order to gain a field advantage; as your NPCs push closer to the enemy base more of the territory they have covered becomes available for you to have a home-field advantage fight in. What will happen with the NPCs finally reach the enemy base you ask? Well of course this allows some flexibility to the developers to decide.
My Conclusion (Less Drastic): Just replace most of the faction npcs on the map with the longbow / arachnos skirmishes as mentioned above.

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After reading just some of the stuff people below talked about I was reminded of an idea someone once told me; and so I think i'll put it in here. Please remember that this was not originally idea and the credit goes to anyone who has ever thought of it.

---Third: Remove PvP Zones altogether---
People below brought up a good point. City of X is more of a PvE oriented game and pvp was thrown in later after launch. As much as PvP is a beautiful idea for a Super Hero based game it might just be too imbalanced to really make it somethin' special. So; a quick edit here is that making Mayhem / Safeguard missions now PvP/E missions! McBoo brought up some really good ideas below and I believe it may be the perfect thing with Going Rogue allowing side-jumping!

More updates to my thread soon!
5-30-2010: Original Post
6-1-2010: Added Third section.

While I would love to see the PvP system get turned back to the old version, I don't see where this would do anything to help the future of the game. At it's peak, the PvP population was around 15% or so of the player base. Now it's half that. Most of the players don't care about PvP (or hate everything about it) and any changes you make wont mean anything to them. I hate to say it, but everyone who thinks that fixing the PvP system is what it needed to save the game are totally wrong. If people wanted to PvP, they would have been doing it all along.

well, supposedly i13 was to be part of a larger pvp revamp, but that never really materialized. at this point my take is to revert to 12 until they have the full resources available to do a full job on it and let the small but dedicated population have what they seemed to enjoy back in the day(id dial back travel supression too, they enjoyed zipping around, let em). It is a small group, and it likely wont get any bigger, it really is kind of late in the day to try to make this game appealing to the roving hardcore pvpers who tried and subsequently left conan, war and maybe darkfall, they just aren't coming but unless they are going to commit to a full revamp, maybe just go with an appeasement philosophy. heck, if they have the extra resources, making the zones server independant, so we can get zones with 2-4 teams of each faction in them would make zone pvp a lot more fun for people who used to enjoy casual zone pvp, like i did when it first launched.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

CoX has always been more of a PvE game. PvP was thrown in as an afterthought and as a result it was always going to take a backseat to the PvE content. IMO, the easiest way to "save" PvP is to weave it into the PvE content by having head to head missions with individuals or teams competing for the same goal that include one or two instances of required PvP or even a PvP toggle and bounty system for the new Praetorian zone.


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The only problem with your idea is that the Devs have always said that PvP would be optional, never required. The outcry of required PvP would be so bad that the Devs would change (or get rid of) the mission within a week of it going live.

Quick update to the Original Post! Read all about it

Why the sudden interest from the community in the developers improving PvP? Been noticing a lot of these threads croping up lately.

That time o' the month

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I'd rather they put the time and effort into making the mechanics not suck before they started to add shinies (more people PvPd when there were no rewards and the mechanics were actually good than PvP now that there are rewards). However, that won't happen, so I've given up much hope of PvP having any worthwhile changes made.

Trying to bribe people that don't like PvP to go into the PvP zones is just a bad idea no matter how you look at it.

Just thoughts here...

1) Increase Elusivity (sp?)...maybe not to the levels it was before, but better than it is now

2) Get rid of the power reduction that happens when you enter a PvP zone.

3) Get rid of detoggling period. Just have it suppress like the other toggles.

4) Give back a bit of the mez protection one should have to begin with when melee.

That seems like a good start imo.

Mind you I PvP for fun, and these are just things that bother me.

Number 2 refers to Diminished Returns in PvP zones.

I'm sure most of you arn't bothered by this (if not all of you) but I can't pvp at all with Trollers or Defenders; All my CC powers don't work or last for 2 seconds and both of my trolls/defs get targeted first and taken down instantly. I'm not complainin and I know that there is a lot of unbalance-ness in the PvP system and of course a Defender isn't expected to succeed in pvp xP but I would like to see Inspirations as well as Resists get nerfed or have inspirations taken out completely.

Not puttin this is original post because this is just my opinion on a broad matter that I'd like some other opinions on first.

your trollers/defenders get targeted first:

a: because that is the way it is. target the support toons first.

b: because you always take out the squishies first.

that is the way PvP is. if you want to play a squishy, you need to figure out how to build one for survivability. figure out which powerset combos work well and which don't. ask around about slotting in the PvP section. you should enjoy playing your squishies then.