New Year, New Discussion - PVP

I've never had fun with PvP in this game. No matter what rules you implement, there will always be certain primary/secondary combinations that wipe out 90% of all other player builds. Which builds accomplish that might change, but it's just the way the game is set up.

My favorite PvP was in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; light, arcade-y, and action-packed. You run around, you find people, you shoot 'em. All players move at similar speeds depending on your skill choice, and there really aren't that many skill choices to balance. Targets die quickly and players respawn fast. If an engagement is over and you aren't taking any damage, health is healed in seconds so you're never screwed because you won a fight. Even if your team loses, you still get "personal points" just for having a presence (not necessarily even getting very many kills).

You can function as a tightly-knit team, or not. You can stand on your own, or assist in the accomplishments of others. Being the wild card and doing something different than your team can just as often be the reason your team won as the reason you lost (instead of one happening more than the other). And if something isn't working, you can switch build mid-battle while respawning.

It doesn't really matter that much who wins, as long as you have a presence in the game (not just standing/running around), you're rewarded. And the rewards, while useful, aren't going to make you invincible, a player just starting out can still beat a longtime veteran. It's not build vs. build, it's a combination of a great deal of factors, with the heaviest being reaction-based.

But the largest reason why it's successful, why any PvP game is successful, is that it was made for PvP. It's not something that was incorporated later to give players something to do when there's a lack of content, it's the whole game. It's what all resources are balanced around.

If you want to make a fun and successful PvP experience in this game, then you need to go back to square one and start from scratch with new PvP-only set ups. Builds that have wiggle room, but are largely the same. No travel powers, no absurdly powerful debuffs, no untouchable defense, no disjointed damage parameters, and if you can use inspirations at all you can only have one at a time, and they're all of an equal tier.

Alternately you could go the WoW path and make PvP the only way to get some of the best gear in the game (while not being a random drop). And people will hate it, and complain about it constantly, and continuously search for ways to exploit the system by doing as little as possible (sort of like how it is now).

I thought the idea wasn't repeating the same ideas that are "well documented". Obviously, making Sonics, Kins, etc viable again will let people play their favored toons in PvP and actually serve a legitimate purpose.

To be honest, I don't see the point in stating other good PvP experiences, because clearly, the majority will be from *this* game, and it's prei13, when this game had a decent PvP population and was more fun.

Regardless of what random little pieces of this and that go through, to fix PvP, lifting i13's changes will save PvP and is the end result/request of almost every post. Some will re-sub, others won't quit, and people will gain interest because it's actually fun. This game's PvP now is so ******* boring.

It's not hard to figure out when most PvPrs left. It's also not some coincidence, but that's clear enough already.

The only thing keeping PvP alive at the moment is a few players taking initiative and nostalgic players, still PvPing because it used to be fun and *some* of our friends are still subbed for some odd reason.

I've always thought that players should give drops like any other mob. So in addition to the occasional rare PVPIO drop, I think they should also drop regular IO recipes, SOs, and inspirations as well as inf and XP. So long as it remains tied to the bounty timer (can't kill the same target over and over again quickly) then I don't think it is exploitable. In fact, it would be less exploitable than the regular game, where you can earn all those things faster.

Boiling down what is fun from posts in this thread:

1. the ability to contribute with a wide variety of ATs and powersets
2. playing with and against many players
3. intuitive play (as opposed to forget everything you learned in the game and learn these arcane formulas)
4. fast-paced, dynamic mechanics

Allow PvP IOs to drop from critters in PvP zones and/or as part of completion drops in these same zones.

Faction control over individual neighborhoods (timed bonuses based on ratio of faction victories in a given neighborhood)

Zone control (same as above but for the entire zone)

Influence over mob factions (making them neutral or allies) depending on players' actions within the zones.

Being able to summon a Gladiator pet per person less than the team max (a solo player being able to summon up to 7; a duo, up to 6 and so forth)

We want proof of life, Z.
Show us you're not bluffing. Take 1 day of Dev time and give us the right fixes in the right direction. It is not nearly as hard as it sounds.

I'm gonna be nice now, because I like reminiscing.

Favorite match ever:

UJL vs. VRC - second match

A video of people jumping around with someone occasionally dying on that match:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz1xBZjLL7w

After reading in the boards over and over how traps is bad, UJL recruits Arbegla. Quite possibly the best mastermind around, pre-i13. He rocks a build with taunt and essentially specializes in herding pets into poison gas and farming the crap out of other masterminds.
We work on that strategy for weeks. Things that seem completely out of whack start to make sense (I'm using sonic rings on him as an anchor, post sonic disruption agro nerf/fix and it works).
So yeah. VRC has destroyed us in practice. Their heavy therm team was pretty scary back then. So yeah.. destroyed us, just like every other team. Myk would go on to keep making fun of us for not taking practice seriously as we kept on trying to generate knowledge by figuring out odd team lineups that while unusual are still viable and optimized for specific circumstances.


So, in an i10 match, VRC attempts to use doms as blasters after having their poison mastermind team decimated by our trapper/poison team (blood mark/hellora is the poison mm). 4 doms. 4 corrs is their lineup. Great doms too. Aura is among them. Ajax is running sonic.

We end up out gunning them; net result double digits to zero.

What made this a fun moment was the way in which a number of factors came into play which then resulted in our win:

- Skill curve that was high enough to create actual high-end competition. The amount of skill required to run a coherent team in i9-i12 high end arena teams was far more than that which is required to run a coherent jump team in i13+. What that meant is that you felt an extremely sense of accomplishment when you were able to keep 7 clarities up while perma-caging a target (15 sec timer) and debuffing occasionally.
- Strategic thinking. While I won't say that villainside pvp required faster-twitches than hero-side pvp, it required a lot more strategic thinking. Countering a line-up was not nearly as easy as most of the i13+ cry-kiddies currently say it is. VRC switched to doms hoping that they could mez-out a team with 2 therms, a kin with ID and a sonic. We stayed on the mastermind knowing from previous encounters with the Renegades that poison traps were amplified by domination, so they would be getting held for longer periods of time. GMW and UJL had just figured out how to integrate storms into their line-ups just when i13 hit, and using them to counter therm teams was working out well enough (From what we were observing back then, the only teams that were using o2 boost adequately were these too. We were seeing fully drained players popping blues in teams with storms in every other team in the ladder.). The game was complex enough that no team held full knowledge of every possible interaction between power-sets and line-ups. i13 flushed that down the drain.
- Teamwork. With the skill curve being so relatively high compared to mindnumbing PVP, there was a tendency for teams to mesh in ways that made them look very similar to real-life sports teams. I think this is something that the devs never had a chance to see, but when it came down to it, we all had to spend so much time together to be somewhat decent at this game that bonds between people were inevitable. I still keep in touch with most of my UJL teammates in one way or another (even if it's just calling syph a fgt every 3 months or making shini angry every 2 months). i13 destroyed in this more ways than one. From the ****** beta experience to the buggy implementation to the end-implementation in which these three factors became pretty much irrelevant.


Second most favorite moment:
http://megavideo.com/?v=UCPN77WB

miss you barrier <3

At risk of being crucified, I'm actually a PvPer who prefers the current changes to how it was, so I'd prefer it not to be too similar to pre-i13. I've participated in matches with the old rules and observed even more... it's basically people with SS and SJ bouncing around everywhere with someone occasionally dying, but nine times out of ten they just run away and heal.

Yeah, it's fast-paced, but it's also aggravating as hell for me. The lack of travel suppression, for instance, just left me bouncing around aimlessly until someone happened to accidentally get near me for half a second, then they bounced out of range again and that was that. Our current system allows FotMs, but it's pretty clear that the old one also forced people to spec a certain way if they wanted to live. Not to say our current system is perfect (I'd love to see positive changes!), but comparing what we want to pre-i13 is kind've counter-productive I think. This isn't directed at any one post or person, just a thought I've had from all the PvP threads I've been reading.

Remember, there IS a silent majority out there who won't necessarily agree with whatever changes the forum community wants, so it's impossible to really make everyone happy.

As someone who is consistently amazing, I'm quite happy with PvP as it is. Granted, there are less opportunities to experience it, since everyone else is so disappointed with it.

When it comes to goo memories though, aside from taking down 5-6 people singlehandedly in RV by controlling my pets, a heavy, and turrets effectively, I'd have to think back to the old days in SC.

Ahh good times. Back when heroes would mob up and clutter in one massive group, wiping out every villain that strolled by, then eventually making it over to the villain base and camping anywhere they could. There was nothing better than charging in the middle of the group, dropping a gas trap, watching everyone vomit and detoggle, then be quickly whittled down to nothing by two other villains who had good timing.

The experience as the underdog, with a situation looking impossible, but finding a way to pull out a nasty trick to take the win and reverse the situation, ahhh it's The Best! Likewise, The Best thing about PvP is the human element. You can't troll NPCs into breaking away from the pack and trying to take you down. A player's effectiveness is only as good as his mindset going into a situation. Put a person into an adrenaline-rushed state where they have one objective on their mind and no strategy, and you have a great fight waiting!

That all said, if I had to suggest methods for improving the system, or ways to provide incentive to PvP, hmm... First idea that comes to mind: Try making the zone itself more dangerous. Add in the PvE perspective. Such as having a zone where just being out in the open warrants a danger from an attack from an ememy group. I could visualize a tank being targetted from random enemy attacks more often, while a stalker or controller, who would be either difficult to find or a "low priority" to an enemy group being left alone more. This way, any benefits one AT would have over another in a pure PvP fight would be challenged by having to endure PvE attacks AS WELL AS player attacks. A way you could implement it would be having a zone where some "stronger ATs are more frequently attacked by random ambushes, while the other "weaker" ATs wouldn't be targetted so much.

You could even have just being out in the open as a rsik to being attacked by an air assault, satellite cannon, or something. This would all stack on to make an environment where players don't have time to gang up or make complex strategies to overnumber/overpower someone. Just as well, it would work to equal the playing field by giving stronger players more enemies to fight to balance out their advantage, and giving weaker players slack and freedom to have more of a chance against others.

And if I had to pick an ideal enemy group to be involved with this, I'd have to choose Malta. If not Malta, perhaps the same ideas above could be used well with Soldiers of Rularuu, since most ATs don't have ease holding them off as well as other groups.

I'm big on PvP in most games, in CoH not so much. I don't know if that is as much due to the 'concept' as the 'implementation' to be honest.

My first heady rush in PvP was in the game Dark Age of Camelot in one of the Battlegrounds. In the BG you fought over a central Keep. There were three sides to the conflict and my side was losing... to start with. Someone decided to lead and organize our efforts and it paid off. There were about 20 Albs, 30-35 Mids, and 14 Hibs(I was a Hib). We split into three groups. The two mobile groups were being used to lure enemy groups into the third stationary "stealther" group. It worked beautifully, the decoys would drag the enemies past us and then stop to fight, the enemies' support characters would stand back to assist and get killed almost immediately by our stealther team. While this was happening our other mobile team ran to our siege engines and ran them for the duration of the battle. Wash, rinse, repeat, we blew a hole in the keep wall and stormed the castle. It was very, very fun.

I've played a lot of different games with a lot of different PvP styles. Another one that I've enjoyed a great deal was Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. We had a group of 5 or 6 people, we used voice chat to coordinate as well as UI add-ons that let us coordinate even better. In WAR the focus is almost entirely upon PvP on a grand scale. What that boils down into is massive zergs of players, barely-coordinated, winning through numbers more than skill.

However, when you have skill, it can really even the odds. Looking at the realm war map my team decided to defend a keep that was under attack. We rushed over and the outer doors were down... not good. We went up the steps inside and the enemy warband (24 players) was already bashing on the keep lord, about to take over the keep! Our leader calls one target after another, we kill them in short order. First go their healers before they know what's happening, then we smash their casters while they're trying to run from us, by now the enemy warband knows they've been flanked and start to come after us... our group consisted of 3 melee healers and 3 tanks, each tank would guard a healer and take half of the damage dealt to them. 6 on 24, we killed all of them (some of them twice or three times) and didn't take a single death in return.

Lurking on triumph there really is no pvp exposure. I will stand by my request for cross server pvp. zones and arena. theres nothing wrong with balance, just not everyone wants to do stuff on freedom

I think Archana put ot best on page 1

Ok, i'm gonna go ahead and explain this for you pve kiddies (devs team, hear meh dammit). i had this argument with castle once, and he just shot me down by saying "this is a pve game" and walking away.

PVP rewards need to be ridiculously better than PVE rewards in order to encourage people to PVP. Simple. Oh and the fact that PVP builds still require you to run out and buy any PVE gear is inherently stupid.

Last time I was in game, I still had to shell out ridiculous amounts of PVE-earned money (marketeering is PVE, because my opponents are just as dumb as the AI in this game) to get purples to slot into a therm so I could get decent damage out of it is not the way you encourage people to PVP. Noting how ******* crowded wentworth's is compared to the deserted wasteland that is RV/the arenas should clue in the devs as to how players are actually spending their time (ie, not doing enough PVP).

Anyways, what it comes down to is this: PVP rewards needs to be ridiculously better than PVE rewards in both drop-rate and overall stat-enhancing power in both PVP and PVE in order to draw people into pvp zones.

These drop rates/stats can be modified as a balance between PVE/PVP is achieved, but as it currently stands, PVP IOs just up the have and have not differential in PVP zones as it currently stands and they are so rare that they end up discouraging new players from stepping into zones knowing they will not be getting PVP IOs and will still be getting jav proc'd to death by those of us who marketeered our way into wealth.

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Finally, my beef with the retarded rep system.
The current rep system encourage stupidity in zones. Rather than going for the weak targets or the biggest threat, it encourages people to cycle through targets in an indiscriminately sequential manner. If you were facing a decent team, this would be a sure-fire way to get bent over.

A good game should reward strategic thinking as often as possible. The drops system as it stands does not do this at all. It is almost as if it is tailored to protect bad players from being farmed in pvp zones. This sort of hand-holding is what got people to leave this game in i13 and what has frustrated others into deactivating their accounts through the last few issues. Hand-hold all you want in PVE, your target demographic in PVP abhors that sort of gesture.

Oh and while the little rep bonus when you kill someone with a higher rep than you is cool, rep drop points are not correlated with IO drop rates, therefore it does not have a net impact on those players that keep cycling through targets in hopes of getting a drop. (Hint Hint, step one into fixing my issue with how drops are handled).

1) Most enjoyed PVP experience... base raids by far....
2) New Arena maps would be epic actually WITH a mini map would be nice :P
3) For the zones at the bare minimum remove Travel Suppression and Heal Decay, because with them the developers have effectively killed zone PVP. Well, on Champion that is...
4) Rewards... I saw a post way back about a PVP Task Force, was intrigued and basically they said it would be...
- 3 or 5 missions long ( needs to be odd # )
-OBJECTIVE::like capture such and such or X number of pill box(s), kill X number of longbow/arachnos, gather all 3 Heavys @ X Pillbox.....so you can get a bonuses (explained below)
-RESTRICTIONS:: Per mission there would be a time limit OR when the first team completes objective, to only allow 1 team to get the buff.
-TEAM BUFFS:: (like the sirens call/warburg buffs) would be awarded for each mission complete.

Side note:: while each team is trying to complete their objective they might have a few teammates trying to kill the other team interfering trying to slow down the other team to prevent them from getting the rewards. The TF would have several missions like this.

-Last mission::::taken into an instance (to avoid grieving) and they have a 15 minute match where the PVP IO drop rate is increased and at the end they can choose to regular TF rewards (merits or incarnate pieces or Hamidon Enhancements)
--the rewards from the previous missions were to buff players in this mission, the odd numbers were to give a certain team an upper hand because they worked hard and got their objectives completed. They even stated the team with the most kills in this 15 minute match got to get Double the Reward Merits (however if you add PVP merits it could work that way)

-At the end it could spawn all the Recluses Victory "Reinforcements are headed to Pillbox (name)" kinda like the Lady Grey spawns a rikti raid...

Overall I thought this would be a cool way to kind of bring some PVE players into PVP because they'd want to try out the new TF and it would be a good way to please PVPrs who want more PVP IOs (like myself) without making it TOO easy.

The original thread went into more detail, but I don't remember it all. They said you would enter the Recluses Victory City Hall and find the contact in there to start it, it had like a minimum of 4 Heroes and 4 Villains and the Max of 8 obviously...