CoX's State of PvP

That would be a good arena-like system... but I'll add one more-- not really "PvP" in the classic sense, but it broadens the whole system's use to include the most rabid anti-PvP'ers out there
- let the creator designate one party (or himself) to appear in invisible camera mode, capable of controlling any NPC spawn with mastermind-like controls (or even "jump in the body" of one). Suddenly, you have all sorts of PvP options along with classic NWN-style Gamemaster capabilities. You'd need to nerf rewards to assure the obvious exploits wouldn't go anywhere, but you'd now have VERY broad appeal of the system that extends beyond the smaller PvP subset.

Did they ever get around to fixing it so it worked that way? Because a few weeks ago it didn't work properly and there was much PvP griefing (of course) on the so-called PvE server. And that was after a major patch a few weeks after Devs said that it would be fixed in the next patch. And as much as I dislike PvP, that wasn't the reason I ultimately gave up on that game and resubbed to this game.

They'd make a lot of people happy by simply reverting the system to work the way it did before the cluster castle implemented.

And it's true that some powers just didn't work well for pvp, but the answer to that problem is to address those individual powers as they make themselves known, rather than simply changing how all powers (and how even entire at's) work, making pve look completely unlike pve.

And if you fix up a 'condemned house' you can make it liveable and enjoyable for a lot of customers, with pretty minimal effort.

I like the guy's point who posted about making pvp io's drop more often than I win lamborghinis in the real world.

PVP is only a mess because the devs in charge recently have completely screwed up. Of course there are a lot of customers who dont like pvp, so they're fine with it, but there are a lot of customers who enjoy that aspect of gaming, so to completely sweep it under the rug is a mistake, imo, especially when it really wouldn't take much to improve the situation.

Another PvPer who truly believes that PvP is the only thing that draws users to a game

also: standard code rant is till in effect. easy my hairy behind

Duke Nukem Forever is coming out :P

I don't see anything in his post suggesting that. I'm a 100% PvE player in this game and I feel the exact same way as he does.

Castle said, a while back, that he did not get all the changes he wanted; what we have now is some sort of compromise between Castle and ... uhhh ... he never did say. How often do compromises work out?

Anyway ... the original system was broken. Hideously broken. In many ways. The problem is that the 400 or 500 hundred active PvPers LIKED the broken gameplay, even if it limited the total number of people who would PvP.

What we had, IME, is a group of dedicated players who liked the speed, specific buffs, and coordination required to OMG spike an opponent.

What the devs saw (Castle alluded to watching a Test match with BaBs) amounted to 2 or 3 kills in a half hour, lots of bunny hopping, and a handful out of powerset combinations (with no melee, Khelds, or 'trollers) out of the thousands possible. The PvPers saw this as a demonstration of what PvP should be about -- skill, speed, and coordination; the devs saw an exclusive club that placed a ceiling on how many players would ever PvP.

There was a disconnect between the two visions that Ex never managed to bridge.

Throw in some ill behaviour that led to a chunk of the PvP community becoming marginalised (PWNZ, the Egg Nerf), some miscommunication, some broken promises (looking at you, Posi), and things ... fizzled out.

There was systemic failure throughout the system on all sides: the players; the devs; the community reps. To lay the blame on Castle is, at best, a self-serving delusion.

No offense but that is probably the stupidest justification for not revamping anything in any game. Why? Because unless you can physically see and interpret the data into something that can be useful you won't know what a possible outcome can be. For all you know, fixing PvP could be a huge blessing and bring back a ton of players or it could just stay the same way it is not. With ever Issue comes new content that could have the potential to be a bust, so the developers are taking a gamble with just about everything they publish.

Wow, very nicely put and basically what happened in my opinion.

I was only a casual pvper and yes the old system was fun but it was also equally annoying and frustrating to a new pvper. In time however i was able to adjust to the broken system as well, but being a squishy I never expected to survive much.

The new system...meh the mess surrounding it just drove me from it. I will still occasionally pvp but to be honest it has been a long time since.

Still I think BurningChick summed it up perfectly.

Actually the costs vs value is something that is considered every time they want to make a new addition to the game.

It's not stupid at all. It's quite sensible.

Here's what the devs can probably feel comfortable that they know. They know they have a decent handle on what PvE players here like. They have had successes with that. Sure, you're right, every new thing they add to the game is a gamble, but if they don't rewrite the existing game, their worst-case scenario is that they wasted time on that addition. They don't generally speaking need to essentially re-balance the existing game to add new stuff, though they may need to work carefully on balance with the new stuff itself. The new Incarnate content is a good example of this, and look at the approach they're taking with it - they're adding it a bit at a time spread out over a pretty long time, and meanwhile, everyone's got all the stuff they already released. When the devs make an incremental PvE change, they know they will get tons and tons of feedback and available datamining info as people play it.

I don't see how PvP fixes would work that way. Compared to PvE here, PvP has a tiny playerbase. The devs can't add new core PvP mechanics the same way they can add new PvE content, and the problems with PvP actually do necessitate changing its rules, affecting all its existing "content" and not just new additions. If anything, the devs have shown they don't have a handle on how to do that well, meaning that doing anything is even less sure to be a success than any PvE thing they might add. They can make incremental changes to PvP to be sure, but incremental changes may not bring back incremental participation increases, and if they do not, the devs will have very limited data or feedback to gather to determine if the early incremental changes are "good". That could be bad, since the early changes set a foundation for the direction things take.

So even though spending time and resources on any given PvE change is never a sure thing, compared to their track record on PvP changes and the challenges they face in correcting where its at now, PvE changes probably feel like investing in gold during ahead of a financial meltdown.

Agree with UberGuy above.

You can theorize all you want that a PvP revamp will bring people back, but all the industry history suggests that isn't so. Go with any of the modern MMO's with a PvP component. Virtually all of them have had game mechanics revamps for their failing PvP, from Star Wars' NGE to Age of Conan's PvP overhauls through basic EQ2 and WoW PvP class rebalances, just to name the most visible. In all of these, the tales are the same-- the revisions didn't reverse the exodus, merely slowed people don't "come back." (and these tales do get around to other devs via conferences and professionals shuffling around between studios)

A few might trickle back, but no record numbers. They've gone on to other PvP experiences elsewhere and are participating and competing there. The sour attitudes that usually reflect their exodus from the previous PvP experience don't go away, and that negativity makes them unwilling to invest any time in a system they already lost faith in.

... and even if they broke all trends and DID come back in record numbers, we'd need MORE than just bringing back the PvP exodus. Back before this change, the devs noted that PvP participant numbers were too small to warrant sustainable developer time. Too few of CoH players were PvP'ing. (made up numbers for sheer illustrative purposes ahead) It would be hard to justify spending 20% of an issue's development budget on something that will be of use to 3% of the population.

We needed a system that would expand interest in the existing playerbase... and that not-PvP'ing base has shown remarkable resistance to that idea.

At the end of the day, a video game company is just a business.

It makes more sense to spend time on something 80,000 players will use than it does to spend time that 1,000 will use, especially when the time you spent on the thing that 1,000 will use is time that could have been spent on the thing that 80,000 will use.

Additionally, Paragon Studios is at the mercy of it's parent company, NCSoft. The game will only continue to have funding as long as it continues to make a profit. Judging from the fact that PvP is nearly dead and the game continues to thrive, it's pretty clear that PvP is not a significant income earner for this game.

Yes, the devs want to make a fun game, but they are constrained by the fact that the game must also turn a profit. Spending a lot of time on something that the majority of the playerbase has proven they don't really care about just isn't a financially sensible move. It makes more sense to spend that time on the stuff that people actually like.

I don't know what the actual number of active PvPers is, but I can guarantee that at some point the devs and probably some accountants crunched the numbers to see how disastrous it would be if they all quit at once. Now, they knew how unpopular the PvP changes were before they put them on the live servers, and they did it anyway. That says to me that losing 100% of the PvP population of the game would not hurt the bottom line enough for them to worry about. You can't tell me a business would do something like that without looking at the potential consequences of it, because that would be incredibly stupid. If the vitality of a PvP community in this game would make a significant impact on the game's profits, it is unlikely they would have pushed changes through that they knew were unpopular and would likely have people quitting over.

So, as much as the devs want to give us a good game to play, spending time on PvP just doesn't make a whole lot of sense for the continued growth of the game. If they DO make changes to it, it's going to happen when they don't have any major projects going on, so I'm not going to hold my breath on it, because the Incarnate stuff is a pretty major project that's going to be going on for a while.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

Conspiracy theorists might even say Paragon/NCSoft hastened the demise of PVP to reduce other complaints.

"Man, I'm tired of all the carebear badgers complaining about getting the PVP-zone non-PVP badges. Let's just kill PVP and shut them up."

--NT (<-- carebear badger)

Because, of course, they possess this tool now with an interface that untrained people can reasonably use, and haven't flagged players to be able to use it because they're jealous of what we might do with it.

500 players, tops, is in no way a "ton". Get over it, son

Where exactly did I say or imply that 'pvp is the only thing that draws users to a game', lol. I didn't. And I'm not much of a pvp'er either, so at least you were consistent in completely bungling your reply.

And if you're the code expert, why exactly would it be so difficult to revert the changes that were made? Don't developers save the code from previous versions of the game, including pvp formats? Please do share your expertise with us.

I'm no PvPer, but I imagine they're still waiting for a way to turn off the *rest* of the i13 PvP changes - the DPA stuff, the mez changes, the gutting of slows, inherent resistance, etc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't heard any PvPers have *anything* good to say about the current system (can't say I blame 'em).

What are you agreeing with exactly?

It seemed to me that chick said its not castles fault that pvp 'fizzled' out. First of all, he was put in charge of the pvp situation, and it was his job to make improvements to the system - he himself admitted this according to quotes that were provided in a thread in the scrapper forums. So it was absolutely his fault, because they were his changes.

Secondly, the end result of his changes were almost universal customer dissatisfaction, and unquestionably lowered pvp participation overall, including your participation. The goal of the changes was to increase participation, yet unquestionably, participation has lessened. So there is no rational way to argue that the changes were positive or successful or 'ok'.

Ultimately, the biggest failure was the fact castle didn't listen to his real customers. Granted the pvp crowd in this game is a minority, no question. But they are the majority when it comes to pvp decisions, because they actually use that part of the game. Instead, castle tried to tailor pvp to suit players that never actually did, or rarely did, pvp, and who never would actually have any intention to pvp regularly. So even if his changes were good ones and met that end, he would have lost the dedicated pvp'ers and the people who he targeted the changes still would not have pvp'd much because they never had any real intention to pvp regularly anyway. The amazing fail came in that for the most part, his changes didn't please either crowd.

Even ignoring those facts, just look at how the changes made pvp almost completely unlike the regular pve game, which really makes the devs claim that they were trying to make it more beginner friendly and easier to transition from pve from, pretty illogical. Then add the almost universally unfavored increased movement supression and diminishing returns, and you have the frosting on the fail cake that was the massive pvp overhaul.

Again, no, we have every justification for being upset with the person responsible for the horrible changes that were implimented, because had he listened to his customers, maybe pvp would have improved and maybe we'd still be seeing improvements and additions to a part of the game that would add value to many customer's experiences. Instead his changes were so bad that they removed almost any pvp interest in this game, which is probably why the big shots have decided not to spend any more time on it.

if that, a lot of the hardcore burned the bridge, they are gone and wont ever return. wasting money on pvp is wasting it for nothing, its dead, burn it down and salt the earth.

As I've said elsewhere, Castle didn't get all the changes he wanted. The buck did NOT stop at Castle with the PvP changes -- at the very least, he had to report to Positron who, in turn, deferred business decisions to Clayton.

Yes, he was in charge of implementing a new PvP system.

No, he was not the final authority on those changes.

Saying the whole mess is Castle's fault misses the roles played the community people, the PvP community, and NCSoft / Paragon Studios.

The three sides of this debacle created such a poo storm that the devs stopped working on I13's PvP changes during beta. And it's possible that the precipitating events leading up to both LightHouse (pretty certain about this) and Ex (not so certain, but it may have been a factor) leaving were PvP-related.

PvP in CoX is toxic. It's a feature that's had a massive amount of resources rammed into it (4 zones, bases / raids/ Arena) and has gained, at best, minimal traction. When people get nostalgic for PvP's glory days, they gloss over how much hand-holding and organizing Ex did for the community. They get better RoI from booster packs.

Why would they revert PvP to a version that about 1000 players played? Those that left won't be coming back. If you decided to stay when they left, that PvP isn't coming back either. Get used to it