Was there a point to this rant? A lot of your reasoning is flawed or incomplete, but I just don't even see what the point is. Are you complaining that people complain too much? Are you accusing the developers of poorly designing PvP in this game? Are you blaming the genre for the lack of competitive PvP? Really, this makes little sense. Of course, that is all aside from your condescending tone, which will garner you little support.
PvP tried to kill the Metal. IT FAILED.
PvP always seemed tacked on to me. I can see the need for it, but lately it has come up less and less.
Some SGs used to use this, but it's been years since any have tried it as an event in the groups I've spent time with.
If anything, AE killed it. Why bother fighting each other when you can fight other creations and earn XP while doing it? Some SGs have frequent AE missions rolled out and do all there RP fighting there.
Running City of Heroes Panel - Dragon*Con 2012 MMORPG track
3 on the rant scale.
The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.
0/10: Wall of text, didn't read.
Carry On,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
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It literally was.|
Originally Posted by CentralNexus
PvP always seemed tacked on to me.
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When the game was still in development, Jack made some comments about how he didn't see a point for heroes to be fighting other heroes. If you were here prior to Cryptic Studios (the original developers) splitting off and selling the game to NCSoft (originally just the publisher), you'll recall that Jack had a "vision" for the game and vetoed damn near everything that came up outside of that vision.
He eventually acquiesced to adding PVP--in arenas--a full year after the game launched in Issue 4. But since the game wasn't developed with PVP in mind, it had a lot of problems that were basically ignored for the next few years.
Inventions came out in Issue 9 and made a definite performance difference between the haves and the have-nots; I really feel that this was the point when PVP became truly unfriendly to new players and created a solidified PVP community (which was good) that was difficult to break into (which was bad).
Castle tried to fix PVP in Issue 13. I respect what he attempted, and actually agree that almost every change he made resulted in a more balanced experience on paper... but he cranked the dial on everything he changed to 11 when a 3 or 4 would have sufficed. Throw some unfriendly dialog in from both sides, and the resulting fiasco drove a wedge between the PVP community (or what was left of it after i13 hit beta--many didn't even stay for it to be released) and the developers; the wedge remains there to this day. Aside from a few bug fixes when new powers misbehave according to the i13 PVP rules, PVP has remained largely unchanged ever since.
But perhaps I've given too much of a history lesson before making my point... Ultimately, I don't think anything "killed" PVP in City of Heroes; I think it was just stillborn as a result of being "tacked on" after the fact.
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Chad's about summed it up. While PVP is a fitting concept for City of Heroes, the engine itself was NOT designed with PVP in mind therefore the PVP in this game is really lacking and broken.
http://www.virtueverse.net/wiki/Shadow_Mokadara
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I don't know who this person is, but that line has to be directed at me, unless someone else does that, in which case I want to know who.|
Originally Posted by Dasher
or the armchair engineer who has gone through fifty websites examining game code to tweak the "perfect build" over opponents who quite possibly don't even know such sites exist... or knowing, couldn't care less.
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Also, your defintion of skill is a little vague. Wouldn't you say some doctors are more skilled than the next? All they are doing is aiming for a specific target as to what to do and try their accuracy at it.
Same with builds, PvPers aim for something in their build and try to hit it. Some miss, some aren't even aiming for the right thing and some hit it.
You can't win the game with math, or else this game would have bored me years ago, and that's from someone who just spend half of today in excel with dual blades.
A build is a slab of stone you need to carve into what you want. How well you carve it (getting the numbers you want) and whether what you're building is great (Aiming for +hp on a stalker is a bad idea) is all dependent on skill, creativity and art. There is no "best way" or "best build".
The beauty of this game is that numbers don't always match up, I regularly see builds that are "worse mathematically" than their opponent and win. I know because I've made a lot of people's builds, watched them fight and thought the other person would win.
Math and perfect builds help, and knowledge of the powers, the game, the code and how they all interact is the cherry on top, but they are't, nor ever will be, a replacement for skill.
@Sentry4 @Sentry 4
PvP Redux is discontinued, for obvious reasons. Thanks to everyone who helped and joined.
"i13 dealt CoH PvP a fatal blow - WARE.gov put the nail in the coffin" -anonymous
Ps. TL;DR
I am the new format.
Blue ray killed dvd
Dvd killed video
video killed the pvp star
and video killed radio
ergo i killed pvp
This is a lame rant. However the question is an interesting one. Pvp prior to ai13 although unbalanced was fun. Now it is okay but not nearly as fun. Really the only reason I still play coh is because of the pvp. But since i13 and all the nerfs thereafter (remember widows being gods of pvp until their defense got nerfed) have made pvp almost comical. My main pvper has gone from decent to a complete stud back to decent just due to i13 and the post i13 nerfs. The way the devs ignored the pre 13 pvp community was tragic. So I think, like most of my pvp freinds that i13 killed pvp. Widows got hammered by post pvp nerfs and were basically made irrelevant, at least in SC where I pvp the most. That should not have happened. My own little rant. Maybe lame too:0) not sure if I feel any better though:0(
LOL killed PvP
I was there.
Ignoring anyone is a mistake. You might miss something viral to your cause.
It was the one-armed man.
i13 killed pvp period. Tacked on or not the fastest and most exciting mmo pvp is in this game. IO's did nothing to change that...A skilled non ioed player could usually always beat an ioed out idiot...except for maybe perma dom. Teams in this game were easy to get on if you showed up to test and tried. Or if you really wanted to do it show up with your own team and learn.
Castle and his pvp fixes destroyed pvp. He listen to the carebear pvers who all said it was too hard, the pvpers run away when you attack them or gang up on you and kill you when you enter a zone. i13 he tried to introduce non gank code that woule reduce the amount of damage a player took the more people who had him or her targeted. The pve care bears all swore they would pvp more if it was easier...so he made the changes, drove the pvpers away and the care bears all said "woopise..I fibbed"
Beyond the title and the mass exodus that basically cut the PvP population by at least 2/3's at the start of it, what the OP said about perfect builds and all that pretty much only applies to 1 v 1's. There is no "Perfect build" for a 2 v 2, 3 v 3, 8 v 8, etc. There are of course build goals, such as being close to 1606 HP, but how you get there is up to you.
The rant came off like like someone who is bad at PvP and looking to blame their lack of coordination on "Armchair engineers and groups of 12 year old bullys" Excuses are excuses. The better players don't always have the best builds, I run around RV on my stalker that has 1 set of purples in AS, no pvp IO's and isn't even level shifted or alpha slotted, but guess what? I can still AS like no ones business and whether its finishing a target, or provding a huge alpha strike for other people to jump on, it works well.
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Well, what you said about widows in i13 is part of the wrong view and feeling going around which motivated the nerfs to widows. Widows were not ever GODS of pvp. I been participating in PvP since 2006. When i12 came out and decked out Widows hit the scene, I still saw very good Spines/Regen beat Widows, saw Rad/Psy defenders beat widows, I saw Mind/Storm Controllers beat widows, I saw Ice/Thermal controllers beat widows (in i12 when slows were still very powerful). In short, it was all rock, paper, scissors.|
Originally Posted by FuegoTrue
This is a lame rant. However the question is an interesting one. Pvp prior to ai13 although unbalanced was fun. Now it is okay but not nearly as fun. Really the only reason I still play coh is because of the pvp. But since i13 and all the nerfs thereafter (remember widows being gods of pvp until their defense got nerfed) have made pvp almost comical. My main pvper has gone from decent to a complete stud back to decent just due to i13 and the post i13 nerfs. The way the devs ignored the pre 13 pvp community was tragic. So I think, like most of my pvp freinds that i13 killed pvp. Widows got hammered by post pvp nerfs and were basically made irrelevant, at least in SC where I pvp the most. That should not have happened. My own little rant. Maybe lame too:0) not sure if I feel any better though:0(
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IOs made a huge divide between peeps who had them and who did not. Many players just walked away from PvP at that point. Either you came up, somehow with a lot of money to buy the IOs or you were not going to compete, not even practice. IOs make a huge difference, regardless of what anyone else says, and that's in addition to skill. IF you want to practice with a non IO'd toon vs IO'd toons, your vision of what really is going on is very short and distorted. Practicing on a decked out character vs another decked character will help any player learn and do better.
i13 made some really neat changes but also made some devastating changes. For example, it was sweet to have buffers in your team before i13 like bubblers, sonics, or slowers and other types of support. DR killed the support aspect of team pvp in a big way. Sonic shields are useless in pvp now, DR killed them. Bubbles... DR killed them, and healing decay also killed the healers until it was introduced as an option to remove HD. I was one of the players who wrote a letter to the Devs asking them to give us the option of removing DR from arena and to remove TS and HD. It was granted thanks to all of the players who voiced this. But the Devs gave squishies cap'd resistances... so what is the point of removing DR when a squishy can cap their resist thanks to the bonus resists given?
Why has not the resist number given to squishies not been reduced in order to accomodate the elimination of DR? WHo knows. If you remove DR, there is still no point for many buffs. Those blasters and squishies will be moving all over the place with cap'd resists already with no outside help.
The best MMO for PvP, IMO, is still Guild Wars, or Nerf Wars, called by many. It is the most balanced MMO for PvP. It is vastly popular for its PvP and PvP there is very very competitive. They implement a lot of great things for their PvP--
1. Their PvP zones or maps will not load until an even number of players are on both said or have chosen to enter the zone. So there is no such thing as an RV type map with 30 players from one side and 5 from the other. You Q up to enter a PvP zone or map, then you wait for the other side to Q up, and everyone is picked from the pool of players choosing to enter, like a lottery, at random, then they all zone in, battle it out.
2. There are Competitive PvP missions in GW as well. So not just zoning in and aiming to kill and only to kill opponents. Competitive pvp missions are an option, not forced upon anyone.
3. The gears, their equip, ANYONE can have them. Let me give you an idea. When I started in GW, I did so to participate in their PvP. My concern was equipment and gear, or I tried to find out, what is their equivalent for IOs in GW. I was very delighted to find out you can buy the PvP Kit for GW. That means you can get the best equipment for PvP and creat a pvp character and use all of that for PvP and for PvP only.
You can not load into a PvE zone with a character which was made for PvP only. But they created a place or a server, or a zone, for PvP only. They offered new players and any player the option to jump right into PvP without having to spend a long long time gather enough Gold or hording equipment and materials to craft or acquire gooooood equipment for PvP. You can buy the PvP kit and you are set, go fight.
4. Devs change the powers in GW to have an execution different in PvP than that of PvE in many cases when it is certain that it would be OP in either field.
5. You can respec your character at any second before entering the fight, without losing your stuff. You can have almost an infinite number of builds stored in a file which you can use at any moment to fight any type of opponent or team setting, etc.
It is very frustrating to build 1-3 toons in CoH and deck them out with everything, then nerfs or other changes happen, then your investment is almost completely lost or entirely lost. Now getting a different toon, getting all the accolades, then IOs, then all the incarnates you want or need to pVP... that's a very long process. In GW, you create a new PvP toon, u got all the gear and powers available when you create it and you can change them whenever you want outside of battle. You don't lose anything.
What killed PvP? THere is not enough interest in making this a more important issues, not enough from enough players, and not enough from the Devs. That is my opinion.
Repeat Offenders forever !
Make all IO's available in Paragon Market! NCSoft, the chinese are making BIG money selling influence and other stuff in the game. Best way to stop them = make the paragon market a place to buy all IO's and perhaps other things as well.
i13 pretty much ruined PVP permanently in this game.
i12 Test Ladder had become one of the most active points in competitive PVP in the game, with several more teams ready to join the fray right before the update. Castle made VERY VERY clear that i13 was not made with the PVP community in mind, and the pvp community in turn cancelled subscriptions en masse, some moving on to other games and others simply disappearing. The most saddening part about the whole mess was that i13 was promised to be the first step in a sweeping change to PVP for the best, but nothing major happened after i13. PVP was wholly ignored after the initial bridge burning. There have been glimmers of hope since, the FPVPL Season 1 being the best example of this. There has not been a competitive league or ladder since (I do not count the last league with WARE in which the winner was decided before the season started).
That being said, I will make this perfectly clear: If the devs ever created a test server like environment with a ruleset similar to where we were in i12, dozens and dozens of "old school" pvpers would return. To put it plainly, no other game has managed to capture the enjoyment of CoH's PVP engine in its prime: its requirement for absolute skill and coordination and its 3D combat which allowed for so much invention and creativity.
I hold no hope that a game in this stage of its development cycle would suddenly have a reversion as extreme as what I envision, but it is nice to pretend it could happen.
-Sneaks
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100% this
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Originally Posted by SneakyProphet
i13 pretty much ruined PVP permanently in this game.
i12 Test Ladder had become one of the most active points in competitive PVP in the game, with several more teams ready to join the fray right before the update. Castle made VERY VERY clear that i13 was not made with the PVP community in mind, and the pvp community in turn cancelled subscriptions en masse, some moving on to other games and others simply disappearing. The most saddening part about the whole mess was that i13 was promised to be the first step in a sweeping change to PVP for the best, but nothing major happened after i13. PVP was wholly ignored after the initial bridge burning. There have been glimmers of hope since, the FPVPL Season 1 being the best example of this. There has not been a competitive league or ladder since (I do not count the last league with WARE in which the winner was decided before the season started). That being said, I will make this perfectly clear: If the devs ever created a test server like environment with a ruleset similar to where we were in i12, dozens and dozens of "old school" pvpers would return. To put it plainly, no other game has managed to capture the enjoyment of CoH's PVP engine in its prime: its requirement for absolute skill and coordination and its 3D combat which allowed for so much invention and creativity. I hold no hope that a game in this stage of its development cycle would suddenly have a reversion as extreme as what I envision, but it is nice to pretend it could happen. -Sneaks |
@-Kurgain
-FAP-Renegades-Whirligig-Velocity-Bedlam
Castle.
Twixt did it.
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Originally Posted by SneakyProphet
i13 pretty much ruined PVP permanently in this game.
i12 Test Ladder had become one of the most active points in competitive PVP in the game, with several more teams ready to join the fray right before the update. Castle made VERY VERY clear that i13 was not made with the PVP community in mind, and the pvp community in turn cancelled subscriptions en masse, some moving on to other games and others simply disappearing. The most saddening part about the whole mess was that i13 was promised to be the first step in a sweeping change to PVP for the best, but nothing major happened after i13. PVP was wholly ignored after the initial bridge burning. There have been glimmers of hope since, the FPVPL Season 1 being the best example of this. There has not been a competitive league or ladder since (I do not count the last league with WARE in which the winner was decided before the season started). That being said, I will make this perfectly clear: If the devs ever created a test server like environment with a ruleset similar to where we were in i12, dozens and dozens of "old school" pvpers would return. To put it plainly, no other game has managed to capture the enjoyment of CoH's PVP engine in its prime: its requirement for absolute skill and coordination and its 3D combat which allowed for so much invention and creativity. I hold no hope that a game in this stage of its development cycle would suddenly have a reversion as extreme as what I envision, but it is nice to pretend it could happen. -Sneaks |
omg way to copy what I said with your big fancy college wordz sneaky...ps kurg why you leave swtor??
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yes lib but you cheat;P
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Originally Posted by MrLiberty
Beyond the title and the mass exodus that basically cut the PvP population by at least 2/3's at the start of it, what the OP said about perfect builds and all that pretty much only applies to 1 v 1's. There is no "Perfect build" for a 2 v 2, 3 v 3, 8 v 8, etc. There are of course build goals, such as being close to 1606 HP, but how you get there is up to you.
The rant came off like like someone who is bad at PvP and looking to blame their lack of coordination on "Armchair engineers and groups of 12 year old bullys" Excuses are excuses. The better players don't always have the best builds, I run around RV on my stalker that has 1 set of purples in AS, no pvp IO's and isn't even level shifted or alpha slotted, but guess what? I can still AS like no ones business and whether its finishing a target, or provding a huge alpha strike for other people to jump on, it works well. |
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Combination of no attention span for the amount of dialog, and not enough time to play. Cox pvp may be broken, but its so easy to just go into RV and farm nubs for 20 min and log off.
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Originally Posted by B_Witched
omg way to copy what I said with your big fancy college wordz sneaky...ps kurg why you leave swtor??
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@-Kurgain
-FAP-Renegades-Whirligig-Velocity-Bedlam
Every MMO kills "skilled" PvP.
When abilities can be linked in macros or are dependent on "perfect builds", the end result is a parade of collectible-card-game decks which may be committed in a different order, but which simply repeat the same algorithms with slight randomization until one or the other is defeated.
When abilities model actual capabilities, and players are allowed to implement them in creative fashions, only then is there anything like a contest of "skill".
Example: As detestable as "bunny-hopping" may be, if the targeting model reflects the loss of accuracy such a (ridiculous) tactic should impose, then a player who can use it and still hit their target has demonstrably developed a "skill" at using their character's abilities in conjunction with a manuever; this is the very essence of tactics.
Positioning one's character to gain advantage is one of the first things every MMO eliminates, since most MMO players think that "skill" means a perfectly built character.
Perfect builds are not, by any definition, an example of "skill". They are the result of careful, meticulous, even brilliant design and planning, but they are not in any way "creative', since they consist of immutable elements assembled and re-assembled to achive a reliable end result... which may desirable, but is in no way realistic.
The continual superiority of perfect builds in any game system is in fact a condemnation of that system, in which mere mechanics are regarded as creativity, but which, in fact, lack all true creativity as proven by the "perfect build" characters of players consistently at the top of PvP "pyramids". They have mastered the mechanics of the game, but the potential for wonder is lost.
To paraphrase Kipling: "It's clever; but it isn't art."
That said, if MMO's are all about such mechanistic mastering, well then, bravo. I don't have to PvP so I can enjoy the game as I like, and I do.
But I have no illusions that winning -- or losing -- the rare, unavoided PvP match reflects in any way my skill as a tactician or even as a player, and it certainly does not indicate any superiority on the part of my attacker. It simply reflects the immaturity of my opponent -- as when a team of level 50's jumps a group of level 35's who stumbled into a PvP zone; that's a dead giveaway of a 12-year-old frustrated bully -- or the armchair engineer who has gone through fifty websites examining game code to tweak the "perfect build" over opponents who quite possibly don't even know such sites exist... or knowing, couldn't care less.
That's why I have to laugh when PvP'ers complain about desiring a "level playing field" and insist the Devs "nerf" some abilities or eliminate others altogether.
Because what they REALLY want is for their code-crunching "perfect build" to be secure against an opponent's creative use of their own powers, because true creativity is the one thing they can never predict, and when they actually have to deal with it, they cry "noob!" or "hack!" or "that ability is overpowered!"
Well, it may be overpowered in that it's used against them with true imaginative style, and against such creativity, the number cruncher is, indeed, impotent.
HELP SAVE THIS GAME!
If we can save this game, I promise I will never complain about Travel Power Suppression again! You have my word on it!
"The customer is always right."