So... why aren't YOU pvp-ing?

I used to PvP quite frequently before i13. I'd step into the zones with any character of any powerset combination and do relatively well. I also participated quite often in Virtue's Giza Fight Nights. I LOVED those fight nights, for several reasons, but the main reason was that I would see the widest range of power set combos. It wasn't all Fire blasters with super speed. There'd even be kheldians!

I was looking for the video with the kheldians, but unfortunately it's been removed. But look at this chaos! I loved it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O4ii...ailpage#t=164s

Granted, I was the rather mean Dominator using telekinesis.

I participated in an RP-PvP event sometime last year and I loved it, but it was a combination of things, one was the RP. People were putting up with my constant dance based puns (I was on a villain named Bullet Ballad). There were a wide range of powersets represented and not everyone had super speed, and the over all feel of the people participating, nothing mean was said (unless it was in character directed at another character, not the player). That last part isn't really that big of a deal, I don't like the trash talking, but it didn't stop me from going into the pvp zones pre i13. I would just tune it out (no ignoring, no shutting off chat).

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...54#post3628354

Edit:

Also this -

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quantum Evil 2) The necessity of speedjumping around like we're all Incarnates empowered by the Well of the Fleas.

If you're a scrapper and I'm a brute, why are you jousting? It won't give you the advantage thanks to power queuing, just stand there and fight like the melee you're supposed to be. I understand a ranged AT using jousting, to keep their ranged advantage, but between two melee AT's it's boring and annoying.

On an unrelated note, I miss aerial battles so much, too bad all I'll ever find are super speeders in a PvP zone now. I loved Shecky's pvp show, the two times I managed to catch them.

Some of my characters

I don't PVP because the game functions entirely different in there.

I don't PVP because the ratio of jerk:nice is skewed out of balance, even to the point of corrupting people who are nice in PVE into total jerks.

I don't PVP because I don't have the money to spend on top-notch builds so I will never be competitive.

EDIT: I don't PVP because SS+SJ is stupid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

These two quotes sum up my feelings pretty closely:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow I don't disagree that the changes failed, and spectacularly. I tried PvP before, just because I could take my build and know how to play. Post I13, I don't know what the hell is going on in PvP, what suppresses, what doesn't and how I should build. If I ever wanted to bother, I'd have to do so much homework that for something I don't even like, there's just no point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emberly Why don't I PvP? My characters play completely differently in PvP than what I am accustomed to in PvE. Not just that I am no longer a whirling death machine, but all my stats are reduced, I have no status protection, my controls are massively reduced in effectiveness, and my powers do damage based on some formula I don't understand. Add to that the constant feeling of swimming through glue because I get my travel powers partially or completely negated any time someone so much as farts at me, and it makes PvP a tiresome prospect. I think I am the target player of the i13 revamp, in that I was not a PvPer before i13. However, the changes made it so I will never PvP, because when I enter a PvP zone I might as well be in a completely different game on a completely different character.

I started this game in earnest back around I10 or I11. Once I'd gotten used to the PVE game, I finally succumbed to the allure of Siren's Call, specifically the temp powers and zone mini-game. In those initial dips in the PVP waters, I didn't always win, but the excitement of having a live opponent was still fun. When the battle for zone control got enough players involved, it was actually kind of a blast. Battles were fast-moving and dangerous. I could understand how people enjoyed PVP, and I could see doing more of this as I leveled up.

Then I13 came, and with it a whole new, different set of PVP rules. The first thing I noticed: my powers just felt wrong. Attacks that should do a fair bit of damage didn't do much at all, while controls stopped controlling and travel stopped travelling. Seriously? This is what they thought would make me want to PVP more? Thanks, but no thanks.

In an attempt to make everyone's build feel like a special snowflake, they instead made PVP slow to play and more annoying to learn than it's worth.

d

I used to take characters into the PvP zones all the time. There were usually a handful present- enough to find someone to fight- and usually in lopsided proportions, so I'd switch to the underdog side just to keep things interesting. No custom build, no planning out strategies based on the new mechanics, no hardcore competition, just PLAYING. I took defeat (and victory) gracefully, congratulated the victor and tried to give those that were getting frustrated reason to laugh.

I followed the mindset that when you're PvP'ing, you're "someone else's content" and- just like how we avoid game content we find unappealing- if I'm not providing a good experience in some way, shape, or form then I'm not giving anyone any reason to stick around. My success was measured by the overall experience, not some PvP rating. I met some really great people on Liberty while PvP'ing, so whether they realized it or not, many PvP'ers seemed to be following that same rule.

Not everyone did, though.

Maybe it was 1 in 10, maybe only 1 in 1000, but eventually I'd encounter an absolute idiots in the PvP zones that just sucked all the fun right out of the place. Unlike other parts of the game, you can't just /ignore them and pretend they're not there. They'll still find you. They'll still do their best to ruin your experience. Your only options are to continue having an unfun experience or leave the zone.


One time I left and just never went back.

There are so many other reliably fun things to do in this game. I don't have time to waste one one that's not a sure thing.

The very first time I played a game that had PvP (this was before CoH had it) I thought I'd give it a try.

I discovered some things that day:

1) Profanity-laden juvenile trash talking was both annoying and apparently the accepted norm.
2) The concepts of sportsmanship and fair play (two things featured in every single competitive real world endeavor) simply do not exist in MMO PvP. And even suggesting that they should is regarded as complete heresy.
3) Numbers 1 and 2 were deal breakers for me.

Since then I have found that pretty much every single PvP community in every single game is like that. So I stay away.

PvP was bad before, but i13 made it worse.

The hardest thing to design around in PvP is to make a working engagement system in a game with pure melee and pure missile builds. The most successful PvP environments tend to simply avoid this entirely by either being focused on ranged (like FPS) or have a engagement model where melee and missile duke it out point blank. Some games have a sophisticated engagement system but it requires constant tweaking to get just right. Mess up even a little and ranged can kite melee indefinitely. If you have any percentage of kiting possible then melee has to have higher burst to compensate for the kiting down time, and when that happens if melee can stay on ranged too long then its unbalanced the other way.

The answer to all of this was supposed to be speed suppression but that didn't work and made PvP less fun. Everything was changed in i13 to slow you down so melee can actually engage missile and it's not trivial to escape and make PvP pointless. The problem with this is that one of the fun things with superhero PvP is the speed of the fights, and this went completely against that. Until CoH can solve the engagement problem and still make PvP feel fast it will have issues.

The second big problem is that crowd control makes PvP unfun, and no game has more crowd control than CoH. That was another problem they had to solve. This fixed this to make everyone vulnerable to CC.

The interesting thing is that I feel that CoH at it core actually comes closer to solving these problems than i13. Melee has a hard time closing on ranged, but ranged is vulnerable to CC. Since the basic game play roots the player each time they attack there is a built in mechanism to prevent kiting.

Making everyone slow and everyone vulnerable was the wrong direction to go IMO. I would have rather seen every melee set get a ranged root and let the management of anti-CC tools (Break Frees basically) be the decision point for ranged characters to deal with it.

At least I used to have fun grinding mobs in RV until stalkers invariably jumped me and tried to two shot me and I would try to fight them. Yes Energy Stalkers were broken and unfun, but at least I got good drops from the mobs and an occasional good fight when others tried to gank me.

Now I can't even do that because my mez protection doesn't work anymore.

I know it would be a hard pill for the devs to swallow but I'd reverse i13 and go back to fix PvP point by point without massively screwing with the game's base systems.

1. I don't have the 5Bil Inf to make a competitive build (($$$>skill))
2. No reward. (badges are worthless and PVP Enhancement Recipes drop less than purples PVE)
3. Unbalanced. Powersets and ATs are balanced around PVE and thus PVP will never be balanced. Go ahead fight that /Regen Brute on a Emp/Dark Defender and let me know how many times you win. It's not just a CoH problem. Any game built for PVE first will never be balanced for PvP.


If I really want to PVP I will go play Tribes or when it hits Planetside 2. All I do in CoH is occasionally get a suicide circle together in a PvP zone during low server pop times and we take turns killing each other in the hopes of a Recipe drop.

"But what is to be gained? It is not a dance. It gathers no food. It does not serve Vaal."

As a longtime afficianado of FPS games (started with Doom II deathmatch modem to modem, continuing with most major genre iterations up to MW3 when my aging hardware lost its ability to keep up) I'm a potential PVP recruit. I dabbled a bit in That Giant Fantasy MMO and had fun- wasn't good, didn't have l337 gear, but enjoyed running around like an idiot on the team objective maps.



Why don't I pvp here?

One, it's a lifestyle.
When I play an FPS, I'm in that competitive mode. When I play CoH, I'm not.
When I dabbled in that other game, I'd finished all the content, wasn't interested in making an alt (never the case in this game) and didn't have the time or inclination to 'raid'- it was another reward path to explore, one that was more congenial to my schedule than their 'end game content'.

Two, it isn't 'built in' to the game.
It was tacked on after the fact, and has always felt like an afterthought. I have no position on the I13 changes- I didn't like or enjoy it before the revamp, and while the changes didn't inspire me to play neither did they seem to degrade the experience.

Three, it has conceptual problems.
It started with the arena and added some zones & team play, but the heart of the experience is still in the arena. If there were arranged battles I could just drop in on ala 'that other game' I'd be much more likely to participate. The way things are, you end up wandering around an almost deserted zone until someone you can't see ganks you.
When they announced the system, my first mental picture was a gatefold comic cover pitting the X-Men against Alpha Flight.
What we ended up with was a system predicated more on stealth than gaudy displays of superheroic might.

Four, population.
More than any other game component, PVP needs a concentrated population to sustain it. Even given all of its problems, if somehow magically *all* the PvP enthusiasts in the game were gathered together in one zone, I'd drop in to check it out ever so often. I used to have fun in Bloody Bay if there were a bunch of people there- not doing anything organized, just a lot of us running around trying to keep each other from accomplishing anything.

At this point I'm not sure it's salvageable- they took a big swing at it in I13 and only succeeded in alienating the players who *did* enjoy it without drawing in any new blood.

I don't PvP because there is no one left to PVP with.

As for anyone who whines "I don't PvP because people trash talk in broadcast" You are a complete idiot. Nothing good happens in broadcast and it takes all of two seconds to turn the tab off when you enter a zone. The game has a global ignore function and I can assure you the population is small enough you won't get near your global ignore limits.

That said, there are plenty of reasons not to PvP at the moment. Low population of hardcore PvP'ers (I.E. They have the best geared builds out there) PvE not working like PvP, so even if you do have a great build you need to make another expensive build to be competitive.

Learning curve is incredibly sharp despite the dumbing down of the system. Its a team sport that most players come into solo for whatever reason.

A good many builds being vastly inferior to other builds.

And mostly HD and TS goes out of its way to make a newer player feel completely powerless when trying to survive or going on the defensive.

If I want to fight against someone I'll play a fighting game. That's what I grew up with. That's what I like. That's what I'm used to. In fighting games, things are more or less equal and you don't have to worry about other people getting involved. (Btw, by PVPing I'm assuming you mean zone-PVP and not Arena battles).

There are times when a friend *cough* Toy *cough* will convince me to hop into Recluse's Victory for some funsies or just to hang out but that's the extent of what I'm willing to do.

I can't say whether or not pre-i13 or post-i13 PVP is better or worse but it definitely is different. I will say that I am not a fan of travel suppression and heal decay.

Balance is a tricky thing when you're dealing with so many different ATs and power sets.

And truth be told, the immature trash talking in Broadcast is a turn off. I mean, some people really take it to the extreme. I don't mind poking and prodding but some of the stuff I've seen in RV just makes me want to stay far away. Sore losers are bad. Sore winners are worse. I remember one time someone was making fun of me for bring a Fire/Kin controller in RV. I wasn't aware I needed their approval to bring a character in the zone. But I digress...

But with all that said, even if they "fixed" PVP I don't think the amount of PVPing I do would change.

As I said, if I want to fight against someone, I'll pick up a fighting game.

If I want to be a superhero and save the world, CoH is where I'm at.

[ @Zombie Fryer ][ @Zombie Smasher ]
| Home Server: Virtue |

Twitter: @ZFLikesNachos Save City of Heroes (Titan Network) [Successful "The Really Hard Way" runs: 4] [Click ^]

I tried PvP in City of Heroes, and actually enjoyed a couple of my arena matches ... but only the ones on the smaller, lower ceiling maps, and the more I thought about that, the more I realized that it's probably impossible to build a really fun, really well working PvP ruleset for a game that has 80 mile per hour travel powers and rooting combat animations. You either set it up to allow one-shot kills, which is no fun, or you make it impossible to kill anyone, because by the time your attack animation finishes, they've run or flown out of range of your next attack. They work around this by making glue grenades ubiquitous, but at best all that does it turn CoH into a different game.

I still had some fun trying, though, until diminishing returns just utterly wrecked most of my favorite powersets. Several defensive powersets, actually most of them, specialize in stacking one thing over and over again, whether it's multiple heals or multiple regen buffs or multiple def buffs; i13 took that away from them and gave them nothing back in return. The "a little bit of everything" powersets suffered no such nerf. So it went from being horribly imbalanced in favor of the stacked +def powersets to horribly imbalanced in favor of the less specialized powersets ... no more unfair, I grant, but really unfun for me personally, and swapping one unfairness for another didn't count as an improvement.

There have been games I really, really enjoyed the PvP in. I don't think this even can become one of them, the combat model and the ruleset is just flatly incompatible with the idea.