Player Summit Q&A

Preparation IS important, but it shouldn't be the end all be all of the conflict. Planning & execution go hand in hand and EVE is weak (IMO) in the execution portion of PvP. I frankly don't even consider it strong in the preparation for a battle in comparison to SB and even DF, but at least its not a weakness for EVE.

In terms of player skill in regards to PvP I don't think there is much in EVE at all because the entire game is dedicated to building fleets and getting the resources for them. Its probably the deepest current MMO in that regard and certainly takes time and dedication but little in the regard for actual tactics. There is much more social engineering than strategy, which includes those folks that get to be "friends" with people on the development team. EVE is much like checkers in that regard, there isn't a ladder or even a metric in game that directly tracks who is good and who isn't at PvP. There are things that track overall corp success, but PvP skill is really a small part of that because the game itself doesn't require skill or tactics to succeed in combat.

CoH has a different set of problems, the actual combat takes a great deal of twitch and tactical skills but the PvP community is tiny. In terms of speed its by far the fastest PvP in a MMO, but it lacks territory/resource control options. (lol, base raids) Off hand I'd agree with Fiery, comparing the two is basically impossible since they are almost complete opposites in terms of approach.

I can't believe I am saying this but Tokyo actually has a point about the size of the PVP community having an effect on how competitive the PVP is.

Just look at the latest Freedom PVP League. One team is clearly dominating everyone, then you've got maybe two other teams who are close to being on par with each other but still far below the top team in skill. That adds up to about 30-35 people who determine the outcome of the league out of how many thousands of subs in COX?

Don't get me wrong, the PVP in this game is still enjoyable even in its borked post i13 form but competitive? Does ware.gov even consider any of the other teams as competition? I doubt it.

Merc didn't mean it. He was making fun of you, Tokyo.

For such a dead playerbase, these discussions accumulate a ridiculous amount of back and forth circular arguments, allbeit usually the same 3-5 people going back and forth for pages upon pages.

For what it's worth, I never considered CoH PvP to be extraordinarily competitive, but where there is PvP there will be some level of competition, no matter how small the player base. Beyond that, I think that it's fairly obvious the level of competition in this game is fairly tame compared to other games where competition has a bigger emphasis, and most of those types of games aren't usually MMOs. I think the only MMO in recent memory that has come close to the level of competition of the various FPS games is probably GW. MOBA's like LoL can be fairly heated also.

In terms of MMOs, for most people the draw in PvP is less about competition and more about what is more entertaining, keeping in mind that PvP always has some level of competition. In most cases, larger sustainable populations do tend to lead to more competition, especially in terms of MMOs.

If we're going to debate which games are more competitive, I'm not sure why we are talking about MMOs.

Who cares, play the game doing what you like to do and have fun with it. The competition for most CoH PvPers is an afterthought, myself included.

/rant

Also, one reason why CoH has the potential to be fairly competitive is the way Arena works, specifically from a social standpoint... Just look at arena chat. Most forms of truly competitive PvP come from head to head, team vs. team type of matches, which is what Arena sort of does if it weren't for the other factors making PvP in this game bad at times.