Cathedral of Pain is Returning

Exactly. The only way the CoP will need 24 players is if it has 24 simultaneous glowies to click on the last mission.

It might actually improve, plus the carebears would be vicious in the arena if costume parts were up for grabs.

No, we wouldn't. We would be pissed (and justifiably so), and endlessly complain that linking costumes to PvP is a really, really, really bad idea.

i13 was an attempt to make PvP more appealing to us "carebears", and we all know how well that went over. Attempts to force PvP, or even encourage PvP, among the PvE crowd are destined to fail. Those that want to PvP will do so; those that want nothing to do with it should not be enticed into it.

Trying to get people that don't want to PvP on their own to engage in it with the lure of phat lutz, or anything else, is just stupid.

forcing it pvp is probably a bad idea. linking it to something like costumes or something like that isn't. I really don't see how encouraging pvp is a bad idea at all. they've already put badges in zones i really don't see what the big difference would be. People who know they don't want to pvp won't and it might even plant the seed in a new players head as an alternative play in the game. Currently there is no "ease in" if you will to i13 pvp. there isn't a pop up that tells you "hey your defense rech recovery rate and resistance are all reduced your powers don't work the same and you get slowed down for clicking an insp".

even if the crappy system was fixt (hopefully this would be included in the fix) there should still be some kind of incentive or goal to pvp (something better than pvp IOs).

For a moment humor me and let's pretend PvP was presented in another way. Say you were playing on your hero and working on a story line. At the end you were offered a special optional mission. The contact received a tip that a bank was going to be robbed and wants you to defend it. The mission map is one of the regular bank missions and if you accept you spawn in the vault room. Meanwhile random pc villain xx spawns at the mission entrance and starts making their way toward the vault.

For discussion sake, lets imagine that if the devs were going to institute competitive pvp missions they would make sure the system was balanced first. No archetype would have an inherent advantage over others in this imaginary system. Also, imagine that while in this mission, the i13 changes do not apply to either characters and powers are viable in both pve and pvp.

If you defeat the villain, you have successfully stopped the bank robbery and are given an adequate reward for your time invested. If you are defeated, the villain successfully robs the bank. You are still given a reward (less then if they had won) for your valiant efforts in stopping the villain.

Would you honestly not participate in such missions simply because they are pvp related? If there was balanced, goal-based pvp would you still not participate?

Of all the "carebears" that the devs DID listen to...why was it not this one???

i13 was the result of wanting to make pvp more appealing to pve'ers. As a result the "actual" pvp community was cluster ******.

The irony is...Eiko is the one carebear I wish Castle listened to.

Well, first, I'd be the villain. Heroes suck.

Now, for serious: yes, I would honestly not participate in such missions simply because they are PvP related. I don't like PvP. I don't want to play PvP. I have no interest in competing against other players. That's why I don't play FPSes, why I only play RTS against AIs, why I avoid large swaths of online gaming.

I'm a freaking carebear. I don't want to compete. That's why you guys call us "carebears".

And a few issues ago they changed every Villain accolade to completely remove the need several of them had for PvPing, because we carebears had no interest in PvPing despite all the incentives in place for us to do so.

I don't begrudge you folks your PvP; different strokes, different folks, and all that. But any attempts to tie PvE and PvE benefits into the PvP system are poorly conceived, even more poorly executed, and demonstrably the wrong way to go.

qfe

you still haven't given a definite answer on why it would be the wrong way to go to *encourage* pvp (other than i don't like pvp). taking on the past (and quite frankly poor) example of PvP IOs, with the exception of glad jav's and panacea's, pvpers don't use them because they're generally worthless for pvp and offer much much more to the pve'r with ex'ing and all that. poorly executed? yes, definitely but if they changed how they acquired these I don't think they'd be considered the failure that you make pve benefits from pvp out to be.

Even still, since they are very hard to acquire, most players disregard them anyway as there are plenty of other ways to power up your character and are more of a luxury than a necessity. For the most part, purples are the same way but yet no one really complains about those either. My point being that, knowing the devs, any pve benefits added would be completely optional and not necessary (since that has been their selling point on basically everything added so far)

AMONG PvEers. Trying to encourage the PvE crowd to engage in PvP is an exercise in futility; the subsection of people whose thought is "I'd PvP, except for ..." is a very small one, and not much worth targeting.

While there is a spectrum to it, the two general camps are going to be "PvP, Awesome!" and "PvP, Ewww!" Trying to get the "Ewww" camp to buy into your PvP is simply not going to be particularly successful. You can make rewards enticing enough to make the lighter parts of the "Ewww" camp do the PvP, but they're not going to be enjoying it. They're going to be doing it for the rewards, and not for the joy of the PvP experience itself.

Trying to encourage PvP with "Look at this awesome stuff you can get!" is not going to get you a healthy, happy, and hopping PvP community; it's going to get you a bunch of people in it for the rewards, and those looking for actual PvP fun and excitement left with little challenge and rewards that don't even benefit the part of the game they actually enjoy.

Games with thriving PvP communities are - to the best of my knowledge, universally - that way because the PvP gameplay itself is an enjoyable experience - often for both the veteran and new-comer. The rewards that come from PvP might be gravy, but the gravy is never going to be good enough when you keep trying to feed meat (PvP) to the vegans (PvE).

I really don't think this is true at all. Mainly becuase if this was the case you'd have more people pvping for the pvp io drops, which we clearly don't. But to compare to pve, do you really think people would play PvE (or rather would pve have the same population) if no rewards were given? if there were no IOs, merits, inf, markets anything? of course not. Will giving pvp an incentive likely draw people that just do it for the rewards? probably, but it would also bring in some of the pve carebears that would have never thought of even trying pvp. you aren't going to create a community if there is no end to a mean (aside from *just* fun). having a fun gameplay is a very large aspect of that (i12) but even in games with thriving pvp communities, FPSers, even RTS pvp games, there is a point to the pvp other than just for the sake of pvping.

and to reiterate using your analogy, no meat would be forced, it would simply be introduced as an alternative option, which in the current game, it isn't. at all. ever.

PvP IOs do not drop often enough nor grant enough benefit (aside from giant prices at market) to make the effort of PvP to earn them worthwhile. And even at that, I know first-hand that PvEers still set up arena matches specifically to farm PvP drops, hoping to get and split the sale of an IO. In this case, there's no real point in doing zone PvP for them, so the PvP community does not see any increase from them.

When PvP zone missions gave better rewards than PvE zone missions, you did see people doing "PvP" for the rewards - and coupled with cries and threads of "Hey, leave me alone, I'm just doing missions/getting badges/getting nukes!" These people aren't there for the PvP; they're there for the reward, and would like to be left alone while they get them, thankyouverymuch.

You're stuck in the mindset that led to i13 in the first place; this thought that if you could just find the right incentive, the right combination of risk and reward, you could get everyone to come play your wonderful PvP game and flourish and grow and thrive. But this thought completely ignores the fact that lots of people don't like PvP, and never will.

If you want a robust and thriving PvP community, you cannot focus on the rewards that entice PvE players - levels, experience, "loot", new abilities. We might delve into that part of the game to get those rewards, but we won't like doing so and will try to find ways to get them without too much discomfort.

PvP or PvE, ultimately the reason we all play is because we enjoy doing so - we have fun. There is no reward great enough to make anyone endure large levels of "not fun", especially not in what is otherwise supposed to be entertainment.

Making PvP fun for PvPers should be the main focus. What rewards that would entail I cannot speak of - I'm not a PvPer. But I can pretty much guarantee that the rewards are not going to be the same things I seek as rewards in the PvE game.

This is 100% accurate. While there is nothing wrong with offering some rewards that are desirable to pve'ers to encourage them to check out pvp, the meat of the rewards need to be pvp centric. They need to reward pvp'ers for pvp'ing.

The place to focus on more pve centric rewards for pvp activity would be if they ever introduced pve content that had elements of pvp like the oft enamored Real Bank Robberies and such. But since the i13 rule-set has made such endeavors impossible that shouldn't be the reward system they employ. And yet it is the one they employ.

I both agree and disagree with this statement. I agree that forcing PvErs to PvP for "phat lutz" is a bad idea. Ecouraging PvErs to PvP with rewards isn't neccesarily a bad idea.

For instance my first experience with PvP was GuildWars. The reason why I became competitive in PvP was because players recieved Special capes and Auras for winning guild battles and taking heroe's ascent, there were achievment rewards as well as "phat lutz" to have in competitive PvP.

This game doesn't have ANY rewards for competitive PvP and competitive PvP (for me) just isn't rewarding for its own sake. So I pick up a group in RV and farm people for PvP recipes because it's something I can do when i'm bored and the PvP drops fund my PvE builds.

This is exactly right. However there wouldn't be anything wrong with offering something that is semi decent to introduce/encourage pvp within the pve community. pvp should have a reward for competitive pvp, but giving newbies something to get their foot in the door wouldn't alienate Pvers

No, the mindset behind i13 was to make pvp easily accessible and easier for the common player. not to introduce a tangible incentive to introduce pvp.

strait from the website: We are trying to make PvP more accessible to new players, while giving experienced PvP'ers the advantage that comes with formulating tactics around the new systems we're putting in place. PvP from now on will be on our priority list.

you know there's a dUmb exception...

I think Hostess Cakes gift baskets might have gotten people a little further...

does 2 people 3 boxing it count?

wtf

@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."

It's like they almost believe what they are saying. That last sentence is rich.

+1.
The devs always thought that the pvpers in this game were like the WoW or WAR PVPers; and that was the main mistake. It was pointed out to them, over and over, that PVP in this game had more in common with class based shooters (ET: Quake Wars, TF2, etc), than with those other games.

Look at where people went after they left CoH post-i13. Yeah, a lot of the Achiever crowd went on to WoW, but a lot of other people ended up playing TF2, L4D and MW among other related games.

So basically the devs destroyed the PVP community in hopes of attracting a sort of player that has far better options when it comes to slow-mo PVP (Seriously, why do I want these shizzy PVP IOs when I can get beastly gear in WAR, and I don't have to touch PVE once to level.).

PVPers in this game hate PVEing, and are rarely the achiever types. You give us all free IOs (test server? anyone?) and free 50s (AE! MM Farm, wdup?) and we won't complain. Give us fully io'd acco'd toons in PVP with three clicks, and we really won't PVE.

So get this thread out of this forum.

Yeah, PVP IOs should have done that. It's a shame I have to just AFK farm those while watching teh sexy tubes.

Crappy drop rates on IOs that are most definitely not superior to purples in PVE (in most cases) = Yeah, Imma just farm or buy them.