Could a PvP Task Force work?

I just thought of this. It may have been discussed before, but by search-fu is anemic. I'm sure someone with more in-game savvy than me can work out the finer details, but here's what I'm thinking:

-PvP TF would start in a high level PvP or Coop zone. There are two teams, one heroes and one villains, six to eight on a team (or less... I'm just throwing it out there). Maybe the contact would interface somewhat like an arena kiosk.

-Once the PvP TF starts, the two teams go off in separate directions with related missions. For example, villains could be setting bombs, heroes dismantling bombs, villains robbing banks, heroes protecting banks etc. (Here would be a cool opportunity to use the mirroring tech they put in the new Posi so heroes could fight mock-ups of the villians in their lead-up missions, and vice versa). They would bounce from zone to zone finishing missions and moving along. Missions should be in PvP zones, so there would be opportunities for teams to ambush their opponents at a common door or something. Perhaps good teams could have most of the team hauling through missions and one or two people working to slow the other team up. Perhaps there could be a slider like in Siren's Call and Recluse's Victory, except that it shows where the opposition is on their side of the TF.

-First missions would all lead to a final mission, where the first team there gets an advantage. Perhaps it is a battlezone with neutral turrets to be activated, buffbots to be turned on, or pillboxes like in RV, whatever. First team to arrive in the zone gets to set up before the other team gets there, giving them a strategic advantage.

-Last mission is PvP, heroes against villains in the zone. I don't know how deaths would be handled, maybe everyone gets three and they're out... or there is a rez suppression... or it's most kills by the time the timer dings. Whatever.

-Rewards should be good. Perhaps double the PvPIO drop rate on the TF. Maybe losing team gets 25 merits and the winning team gets 50. Whole thing should take no more than 90 minutes with 30 of them being in the last mish. Some badges are always nice.

What do you think? Maybe this might get people into PvP a little more, or at least have there be a little more back and forth between the populations.

I'd actually love this. This would entice me to PvP in a PvE manner or with a "Normal" build.

-Rachel-

Love the idea, just a few random thoughts:
1. Smaller teams. Yeah, 6v6 or something would be fun, but with the population on most servers, being able to start at 2v2 or something would be more realistic.

2. Possibly let the teams mix? (Hero/Villain, that is.) Of course, this'd be an issue if we're doing these in-zone.

3. I'd think either the missions would have to be timed (so a "slow" team doesn't end up holding everything up,) or one team finishing the objective in a mission sets the other team's to "failed" or some such.

4. Biggest worry would be imbalance. Doing 2v3 isn't so bad, but having people drop so the last PVP mission ends up at something like 3v8 would, frankly, suck. (Not to mention be exploitable - easy-ish merits/other end of TF reward by having friends/alts just drop and give you an easy kill, just handing over the end of the TF reward.)

Still, I think the idea would be fun.

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Thats a pretty good idea you have thar!

I love every bit of this idea, I am full heartedly behind this! And I agree completly with the above posters THIS is the way to make PvP more fun for people, not heavy handed sweeping changes to the system.

Also, this is the longest a PvP suggestion thread has gone without flaming.

Great idea. sounds immensely fun and would present ever changing content because no two runs would ever been the same.

Unfortunately the dev's either hate pvp, or just have no farkin clue about the mechanics of it, sooooo.

I'm posting in support of this idea.

Hey devs! This is a good idea. Use it!

This would work I think. Aboutthe whole exploiting thing. How about if you're team has people missing you get a few extra turrets.

Cool idea... Hopefully a dev notices it and possibly takes it into consideration...

This kind of suggestion, not surprisingly, comes up fairly often. There are two problems with it.

Farming. With that reward structure, you don't get a PvP task force, you get two teams running it to farm merits. 50 merits for a win? Five of these and you can buy anything you like! You'd destroy the economy, and I mean destroy it. 50 merits every 90 minutes? Even the losers get about as much as you'd normally expect (25 vs 29 expected).

I'm sure you'd say that the bonus is merited since there's PvP involved, but that's simply not true. There's no great threat in being allowed to win over and over again to gain merits. Especially since you're gaining a load of merits for losing too.

Drop those levels to a normal level, however, and you have the issue of coordination. Someone's mentioned disperate team sizes, but if you go for locking it at a minimum of 6 per side, you now need to have 12 players all wanting to do this at the same time. Easy if the rewards are so massively peruasive (read 'abusive'), not so easy when they aren't.

Likely, an unfarmable version of this would see relatively little use without some form of sophisticated team matching system (akin to the dungeon matching system in WoW). That's a tremendous amount of effort to go to for something that won't see much use.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be worth it, and the technology could be of benefit across the game, but I can't see it happening soon, and don't go expecting the reward levels you've proposed because if I can see how to use this to farm merits, anyone can.

I like the idea of this, but before it works it needs some proper designing and thought behind it as well as sorting out any issues pvp has..may first thought was..what about people not in the tf/sf can they still attack u if its in open area pvp or will it be in a completly seperate area

I'm not a PvP'r but this sounds like a cool idea.

Something I've thought of while working on a MArc would be the ability to combine MA and the Arena. There are times when I'd rather the foe(s) in the MA missions were "the real deal."

Minus a few nitpicky details that would have to be hashed out, this is a pretty cool idea, which pretty much guarantees it will never make it in.

I do like the idea of PvP missions but I don't know if a TF is the best way to implement it.

The problem, as stated above, is coordination and timing. You need to get 2 even teams and then get those two teams moving through the missions at a fairly even pace, which is very difficult.

A similar suggestion would be to add mayhem/safeguard missions as optional content in the PvP zones. One quick mission, everything is the same as a normal mayhem or safeguard except that in addition to the normal NPCs you have real players trying to rob the bank or prevent the robbery.

Since this is a timed mission with enough NPC enemies already, one or two clever or powerful players could even take on a team of eight and cause them to fail.

Out of interest, aside from FPS games, can anyone give me an example of this kind of instanced 'mission' being implemented?

I mean, WoW hasn't done it, and WoW is a far more PvP-centric game.

Does Guild Wars do it?

While I fundamentally like the idea of a PVP TF...

- Doubling the PVP IO drop rate would lead to people cooperatively farming the heck out of it (which I personally don't have a problem with, but which the devs might not like).
- A higher than normal merit award would lead to people cooperatively farming the heck out it (ditto).
- There's always going to an issue with a PVP TF with multiple missions, which is keeping the teams' progress co-ordinated. One team finishing their mission could automatically finish/fail the other team's current mission, but I can see that opening up farming opportunities, again.
- An imbalance in rewards for the winning/losing team has the risk of the losing side dropping out before the end, effectively griefing the winners. Adding merits would make this more likely, as diminishing returns would kick in on repeat runs. Having no diminishing returns will bring even more farmers. Awarding an auto 'win' to the team which doesn't drop has a very obvious exploit.

I think the proposed TF/SF is a nifty idea on paper, and the intentions of the OP are clearly good. Implementation issues would make this very unlikely to have the intended effect of making PvP more popular, though.

The level of coordination needed to get two PUG teams set up would make getting this TF going quite difficult. Most likely SGs / VGs would be the ones to coordinate this, which substantially reduces the frequency with which teams would be likely to engage in it.

I could also see this being a favorite with farmers, as at least one other does. And, those who really don't enjoy PvP would be tempted to put a single target attack power on "auto-fire" when the PvP hits, just to get the reward (there would probably be a badge, in addition to merits, and some would go for that). People dropping in TFs happens quite frequently anyways, which would seem more likely to unbalance the PvP element, rather than the opposite. Obviously unbalanced PvP would be a common outcome, which is more likely to elicit disappointment than to elicit excitement.

The core underlying problem with PvP in COX, which this TF in no way addresses, is that many players don't enjoy doing it. That higher-than-normal rewards could even be required is one sign of that, the frequently empty PvP zones is another. The high probability of one team grinding the other into the soil on this TF because of a lack of balance in the PvP parts of this, in addition to all the problems mentioned previously, means that this would be very unlikely to "convert" many PvE players into those who love PvP.

In more general terms, efforts to weave together PvP and PvE haven't worked in this game. In fact, the extent to which such efforts have failed has been as resounding as it has been consistent. Enter the PvP zones if you'd like to confirm this assertion. This sounds like history repeating itself, only in a more linear setting, and with the added problems associated with actually getting this proposed TF/SF to even start, as well as predictable problems preserving any level of uncertainty about how the PvP will turn out.

Again, the intentions are good, but the proposed vehicle seems unlikely to help toward achieving its larger purpose.

Since this is primarily a PvE game, perhaps instead of head-on PvP, the big PvP part could be competing over one or more PvE objectives. For a very simplified example, say a PvP TF was nothing more than two teams fighting a GM, except the two teams were hostile to each other. Whoever deals the most damage to the GM wins the reward. So, if you want that reward, you'd fight over it, because even if you do 49% damage, you don't get it. Of course, this is a very simplified example. You'd need to complicate it with things such as making recovering from a team-wipe more problematic so you can't just zerg the other team every thirty seconds (disabling travel powers would probably be the least frustrating method I can envision), a way to prevent one team from doing 51% damage and then afking, such as giving the GM huge out-of-combat regen or requiring you to have the highest damage in a certain time-frame, etc. and etc. And, of course, more than one objective.

Some sort of PvPvE TF would work better, I think, than pure PvP for this game. It would probably need to only to open at set times of day and allow for random pairings of at least opposing teams, if not allow for sub-8 and solo people to join a random team, and maybe have three options for assignment: pure PuG, semi-PuG, and organized. Pure PuGs would be you sign up and then get dropped on an open team. Semi-PuG let's you form a team, probably below a cap (maybe 4 max?) and then combines the teams into 8. Organized would be like every other TF: you form on your own. For fairness, each setting should be applied to both sides, so you won't have a SG facing a pure-PuG team.

As for rewards, what if the winning side had an option between merits or a random PvP IO (perhaps weighted away from the special ones like the 3% defense) and the losing a small amount of merits? This is, of course, assuming that the winning team completes some certain difficult, final objective. Yes, this would drastically affect the supply and cost of said IOs, but they could still be quite valuable. I mean, we can theoretically run a STF/LRSF daily for a HO, and those are still quite expensive. I'm sure the PvP aspect would drive enough people away that, outside of the initial release of the TF when everyone was flocking to it.