New Year, New Discussion - PVP

Gosh the best hootin nany time I have had in PVP was just last night in RV. I had just entered in on my empath and there were lots of pvpers. A blaster on the red side and two stalkers and me on my emp and a ta. It was thrilling and exciting to see the zone so full! My pulse was racing when I tried to heal the ta but the totals went down and my movement was supressed so the stalkers could spam sharks. It is exciting not to have to use so many varied toons since only a few are viable in pvp. ARGG! This kind of pulse pounding, heart racing pvp is what drives me to keep paying each month! SUPER FUN!

Hello


I always enjoyed the SG base raids in CoH/V. Yes there were some bugs/exploits that could be used but it was fun for the most part.

I've said this before but my 'biggest' complaint with PvP was that everyone had to have the same build with the same powers (for 90% of the time at least) to even have a shot at winning.

I think if the i13 PvP changes didn't happen and the second (now third) builds were still available it wouldn't have been so bad. That way I could have a "pvp build" on my toon and not worry about messing up my "pve build". But now with all the i13 pvp changes/etc it's not fun.


For me, there has to be more in/to pvp than just a 1 on 1 fight; needs to have some sort of "capture the flag" or "king of the hill" or something. RV tried to do that but...there was no real reason to capture and 'win' in RV beyond the measly influence/xp bonus.

This is why I liked base raids more than just zone or arena pvp. There was an objective (protect or blow up) the base.

My best PvP experiences were in a game called Planetside, where everyone was on a somewhat even playing field and we had to use the rules of the game, cooperation(both on a small and large scale), and skills/experience in order to take over meaningful objectives and win. To be considered a great player you had to utilize wit, knowledge, skills, teamplay, and a strategic mindset. A well built character didn't matter nearly as much.

Another good PvP experience I had was in the MMO Warhammer Online. You didn't feel useless no matter which class you chose, and while a new character wouldn't be able to defeat a geared out character 1 on 1, the sheer size of the important battles and the availability of temporary pvp powers/siege weapons meant that powerful characters weren't that important.

So, I feel like a lot of the effort that went into fixing CoH PvP was invested in the wrong areas. Make the battle objectives more engaging and meaningful, and you'll get bigger battles. Get bigger battles, and the imbalance won't matter that much.

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Since most of the the people who have chimed in here commented about Zones, I'd like to say the most fun I've had in PvP Past (pre-i13) and Present has been in larger scale 6 v 6 to 8 v 8 arena.

CoH PvP is great to me mainly because of the Pace/Speed. Having to fight another team over a map that can be up to several square miles large, with everyone zooming around at 90MPH, launching damage spikes with thousands of points of damage while support tries to out heal them is pretty cool. I know it was viewed some time ago as "A bunch of people bunny hopping around where occasionally someone dies" but what makes it fun is the coordination it takes to get that kill.

I'd encourage you if you haven't already to watch a few Kickball matches on Freedom or maybe even try to make a match or two for the current league there. Most of all it'd establish Arena PvP isn't quite dead yet, but more so, hopefully you'll get to see what posters are talking about when they mention "Team Arena".

Truth, Lib. The "fireflies zooming around", which is the Dev's take on PvP, apparently, is the most fun. Large-scale team PvP is the pinnacle for me, since it requires coordination, even now.

Oooh. Z, throwing himself to the wolves... Wouldn't have seen it had a friend not pointed this out.

Let's see. While I'm not typically arena or even one of the "hardcore" PVP folks (no PVP builds, etc,) I've still had fun at times.

- Very early on. Had my first Peacebringer running around Bloody Bay, grabbing shards. A Brute came up and attacked - got a good first stun in. Got out of that, healed, swapped to Dwarf to prevent further stuns. Brute's reaction: "Mommy...." We beat on each other for a while, me staying in Dwarf because he'd land stuns frequently enough that human form wasn't really an option (and we didn't have the "Dwarf as breakfree" yet.) Ended up as a draw - I'd get him down, he'd heal, he'd get me down, I'd heal. But it was still fun, overall.

- Same PB. Ended up in a (good natured) rivalry with a Stalker on Pinnacle named PeekABoo for a while. Regardless of what happened elsewhere in zone, if one of us was in when the other came in, instant fight.

- Same PB. Ended up eating 3 ASes and holding off a team of villains for a good few minutes. Finally killed (teleported myself away too late, heal wasn't up yet.)

- Same peacebringer chasing after a brute. Especially watching one of the Nova blasts chase them across the zone almost the entire way.

- Went into Siren's with my Fire/Kinetics Corruptor. PUGged at least two other corrs (don't recall now if our group was four Corrs or three and a Dom.) Held the zone for probably a good 20 minutes until heroside reinforcements showed up and we were just overwhelmed by numbers.

- Numerous Siren's battles going from one side of the zone to the other, multi-team. Typically on Pinnacle or Victory. General unspoken rule that if one side held the hospital/base for more than several minutes, we'd back off, let them regroup - just to get good fights as opposed to many-vs-1 or 2 slaughters going.

- My EnM/EnA brute had far too many good moments, between people insisting (after we had TP Foe protection put in) on trying to TP her for a good half hour straight, being called more than once "that (#*74# Stalker!" and hearing people get warned in broadcast about my stuns - not a PVP build (this was, IIRC, pre-dual-builds anyway,) but I did have it slotted in a few attacks. (This, of course, is generally pointless now.)

- Losing on said brute to... I think it was a pair of Mind/Kins. Just for the *insane* amount of mezzes they'd put out. They worked quite well together, too. I seem to recall a good three rows of just mez icons....

- MA/Regen stalker taking on a Stone tank while two Blasters watched (agreed to a duel, basically, because he kept mouthing off.) Yes, it took a while to kill the guy, but even the blasters were going "Look, just give up, she got you" to the tank. Took on the blasters later. It was a good series of fights, both wins and losses.

- Same stalker taking on an MA/Regen Scrapper. It was a draw after a good five minutes.

- Same stalker, RV. Just for being used to call out the other villains who were completely ignoring the heroes at the base by someone else. ("One of the worst combos for a PVP stalker and she's STILL here fighting, where are you?!")

- Numerous times on various characters pointing things out to others (AR blaster - lowbie - vs my Thugs MM, no AOEs, pointed out a few things that could help and how bodyguard worked. Or my Warshade teaching a newbie Mastermind how to use Bodyguard to not die so fast - long back and forth there. Or another MM of mine fighting AlienOne, spur of the moment, to help him figure out how to fight one - such as "get farther away from the pets and have a mez ready" - pre I13, of course.)

- Don't know that this can be necessarily called "PVP," but I enjoy hunting. Winter event? I'll find winter horde and, if the person's hidden, try to track them down. Or go into BB and try to pick up whoever's been activating the shards and hunt them down. Far more fun when they're on /hide too, so I don't have early intel on if it's friend or foe.

I tend to enjoy fighting "long odds," being a distraction (which a stalker certainly will do - tends to get attention away, for non-league types, from, say, the buffer keeping everyone else alive,) or fighting 2v1 (with me at the 1.) Not to mention running battles.

Non-COH PVP:

- APB. There was one parking garage structure that one group (which played together regularly) was holding - just trying to find a way TO it to attack was a challenge, as it was open around most sides (and they had high quality/highly modded weapons.) Still managed a (hard earned) kill. Watching their tactics was educational.

- Netmech/DOS. (Yeah, old.) Had a clan in the Registry (Black Sheep.) Give me a maze to fight in, and I'd take a 'mech loaded with ("low damage") machine guns and avoid the (open) center to gun down your 70 ton missileboat. Seemed to frustrate some of them. Also an early introduction to "Pick your weapons well." Nobody would use PPCs - huge damage, sure, but slow and highly visible (so easily avoided.) Useful things like missile lock tones came in handy.

- Another netmech moment - one map, Spire (2k straight up.) Took an elemental - person in power armor, really - versus a 100 ton somethingorother. Kills? (a) Run between their legs, let them shoot them off (win for me.) (b) Climb/jet to the top of the building and drop *straight* down. Yes, I died. So did they as I plunged through the 'mech's cockpit. Lots of damage.


Memorable in a negative way - Diablo and Diablo II. Homing arrows from off screen, "training" enemies to spawn points (so they weren't PVP flagged but you'd get insta-killed,) and just attitude of the people in general turned me off PVP for a while.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I think the biggest problem with the PvP system in CoH is that, to paraphrase Yahtzee in his Dead Rising 2 review, "the learning curve is so steep it has a ****ing overhang." By the time you've gotten to a place where you're able to be competitive in the very first zone, you've had 30 levels (25 to be at the top of the zone's level range, +5 because you keep your powers when exemped) to get used to how your powers work. You step into Bloody Bay and suddenly you have 17 powers you need to re-learn how to use because of the different rules.

Even then there's no guarantee you'll be in a position to actually do something. Control powers are generally regarded as worthless because they simply don't last long enough. I know pre-I13 it was all too possible to hold an enemy to kill them by the death of 1000 cuts, but surely there's some median between City of Statues and "Mez? what's that?" that can be reached so that the control ATs can actually control.

In this game, the most fun I've had PvPing was during the CoV beta. Hundreds of people in-zone, and it was just a chaotic mess. I died about a hundred times in the space of an hour, and I suspect I killed about as many enemies. It's sad to know that is probably never going to happen again, if only because of the fact that even if PvP gets re-revamped into the crowning jewel of PvP perfection in such a way as to make any other PvP system look like playing with a hoop and stick, that the playerbase of CoH is so gun-shy about PvP that they'll avoid it anyways.

Capture the Flag.

CTF is what I love about PvP in any game or genre.

Tribes and Tribes 2 are my personal high moments in PvP. Flying through the air with the flag on my back, shooting at enemies while my team mates tried to clear a path for me. That's what got my heart racing.

I have wanted a CTF equivalent from the moment PvP in City was announced.

Unreal Tournament's Assault mode. PVP with purpose, direction, and required more teamwork than deathmatch.

And I loved trying Siren's Call during COV's beta, even if it was a laggy, low-framerate nightmare of performance!

So you were the community manager that drew the short straw??? lol It would have to be PvP pre-I13 anything after that is just not the same.

I would have to agree with what Liberty said. The most fun i've had in PvP, or even this game for that matter, was in large team arena matches. Competitions like 8 v 8 or 6 v 6 that require coordination with your team mates in order to win. The fast paced action in arena between two 8 man teams is a lot of fun and more so when it's a tournament, cause your actually playing for something. But with the same maps since issue.... whatever, it can get boring quick.

Some other good moments i had were a couple base raids early in this game. Kind of gave a reason to be in a super/villain group. where as now im sure a lot just role personal SG's. The other moments i can remember were outside of this game, like playing Halo. Which was usually playing either team on team, capture strong points, or my favorite: capture the flag. There were just so many different options to customize in the arena that it almost always had something new to try out.

"I took the flag once, ran for my life, got attacked, buried the flag pole in that suckas eye socket and then continued to run to my base until i had it captured. I won."
~Amazing Summary

Zone PvP was fun before the changes, even if sides weren't even, because a few good players could really tilt the scales if the other side wasn't coordinated or prepared. You could have a team of two or three skilled players holding off four, five, six opponents, and because they knew what they were doing they were able to at least fight to a draw if not force a retreat. It was fast, it was dynamic, it was unpredictable. Those are the experiences that made the PvP in this game what it was. Likewise, dueling was a test not of build but of skill - sure, there was the rock/paper/scissors aspect, but when you pitted two good players against one another those were some of the greatest matches to watch.

These days, that experience is largely limited to big-team arena PvP. It's not as dynamic as it once was, and it's not quite as fast, but it's still fun because it requires coordination and if you're not careful about what you do and when you do it, you'll find yourself on a respawn timer. I miss being able to go into Siren's on a PvE-built Scrapper and being able to hold my own against a few opponents, but that's not what bothers me the most. Honestly, I had a great time during last year's Freedom league, mostly because we proved that unconventional non-jump teams can be at least somewhat viable despite the rule changes (and the playoff matches, those were intense). Actually, this was probably my favorite PvP experience post-I13. Managing to win a match on Eden with a Storm team and not dying while having the other team on my *** 90% of the match was intense.

My experience with PvP in other MMOs is limited to a bit in Champions and some during the DCUO beta, not much to talk about there as I think CoX still has a superior system. In regards to other games, it's been mostly Halo and Call of Duty, but again I like the fast pace of games like that.

...Otherwise... if the development team does not have the time or resources to further develop the PvP mechanics for the time being, at least prioritize the PvP-related bugs that are out there. There are bugs - potentially game-breaking ones, at that - which have been unfixed since I13, and even more that have been unfixed since at least I6 (placate, anyone?). We as a community may not react as well to bugfixes as to positive mechanics changes, but a constant stream of bugfixes at least lets us know that you guys do care.

Yo, make my name red. I got some **** to do.

Baby steps, I like it. Major improvement from large sweeping changes. At least he's trying to get a gauge on the community before taking action.

I don't think anyone's knocking it; it's just that the PvP community has been ignored so often in the past, entirely, and when they were *asked* for feedback originally.

It's frustrating, so you'd have to expect someone chiming in with some negativity. Helps keep people rooted firmly in reality, rather than having hope for a large amount of positive change; only to be disappointed yet again.

Ocho seemed interested and willing to do what he could, PvPing with us, getting on Vent, giving us epic temp titles for no reason; but in the end, nothing changed. Not even something as simple as new maps for Arena. We're still using the ones from, what, i4? With one new addition that's buggy and unplayable for competitive team PvP.

With that said, this wouldn't appear to be any different at all. Which is what's annoying, I guess.

I don't care. Couldn't really get any worse and a thread that's intended to help, regardless of whether it will or not, doesn't hurt anything at the very least.

Issue 12 radio button for Arena.
Revisit damage scales on some attacks.
Eliminate or reduce innate +RES shields
Couple more Arena maps (Sharkhead or something maybe)
PvP IOs rarer than manna.

Thanks!

P.S. The most fun was pre I13 when people could run Sonics, Kins, Fire Blasters, Sonic Blasters, Emps, all sorts of stuff and you could have different roles on a team. Sadly, that is mostly gone now.