This is why I'm not PvPing.

This part... yeah, maybe I'll come back to it later. *sigh*

This is a myopic point of view. Both of those blasters are balanced against the environment, but in different ways. One of them might be more popular than the other, but that doesn't mean that nobody likes or plays the less popular one, nor that it is imbalanced against the environment.

In fact, it's the very fact that one of those types of blasters is more powerful in PvP (or the other is less powerful, depending on your point of view) that is part of the problem. That's an imbalance. It's that sort of problem that needs to be addressed.

And I'm hopeful that if we manage to get crossshard teaming implemented, that the PVP system would end up being low hanging fruit.

Since I13 I think most of the vocal and caustic PvPers went away, but the PvEers had no reason to go so now the scales are lopsided. I can't say how it is in zones anymore but there were some really rude PvPers in the past on Justice.

Nerf rock, paper is fine.

Sincerely, scissors.

Also, your cat in the hat OFFENDS ME GOOD SIR!

Some of my characters

Again, "balance" does not mean what you seem to think it means. In fact, it is completely possible to make a powerset do something that makes it desirable. AR need not do as much single-target DPS as Fire Blast, but it should do something that makes people want to use it instead. If it is considered suck-tastic in all functional regards, then something is, in fact, wrong with it, and it should be changed.

Is balance going to be perfect, down to the decimal point? Of course not, especially when contrasting capabilities that do not relate directly. If one powerset does strong debuffs or mezzes and another does straight DPS, you're always going to have to define specific and probably conditions under which to compare them. But if your game system is such that debuffs rarely have practical value, then no one is going to value debuffing, and that set needs change.

Any less intent than that is being lazy. Intent and reality don't always match, but if the intent is never there, the reality almost certainly won't be.

"You can make anything viable with enough skill" is completely subjective hogwash and nothing but a cop-out. If something is so much not competitive for some form of play such that no one plays it except people who don't know better, it's not viable. If it's only played by people who are gods among gamers just to break even in performance with Jow Blow on some other powerset, it can be balanced better.

My point is that each player character should at least begin with the same opportunity and potential. It wouldn't make sense to stack the deck one particular player's favor just because he happens to be sitting in the "right" chair, would it?

I can't argue with this part!

My ears hurt just thinking about it.

Indeed. See: Guild Wars, where powers constantly change to keep the PvP FotM target moving.

I've worked with several very experienced PVP game designers who would give their eye-teeth for an answer to that question.

Reality is, Paper, Rock, Scissors does not exist. It cannot exist in a world where there is a huge X Factor: Player Skill and ingenuity.

AR has better range and accuracy then Fire...the balancing point would be where two bots using the power sets both unslotted and identically slotted had an even chance at winning. If this is true then it just comes down to player skill and slotting choices.

Man, that's an awesome quote right there.

Also, if I may, it might be more helpful to try and design some form of pvp where the players "build" the arena, either by customizing the area people fight in, or the rules, or the power balance (either by negating the effect of enhancements or outlawing inspirations or temps, or what have you). Sort of like a pvp architect. No idea where you'd start from or how you'd go about doing it, but I get the impression that if you approached pvp from the 'customization' side, it'd have a lot more appeal.

Well, we already have that to a degree with the customization options in the Arena.

As to the other idea, we did something like that: Supergroup/Villaingroup bases. It almost melted the servers.

I was responding to a case where the two were specifically contrasted. I'm not trying to create an actual debate here about the merits of these two powersets, in PvP or PvE.

But AR was consistently viewed as largely under-performing in pre-I13 PvP. In that context, high accuracy was less meaningful since there was no Elusivity for Accuracy to strongly counter. Moreover, damage resistances were not normalized across types, and L/S resistance was the one resistance type all ATs could get. I that context, that left range as its only real advantage, which, while useful in pre-I13's high-speed PvP, was not seen as sufficiently useful to counter the degree to which it was resisted.

Edit to answer your edit:

That is a balancing point. In all likelihood, it is the most simplistic one in which the sets are actually equal in DPS. That is not the only way to balance powersets. Ignoring how it might step outside AT roles for a moment, what if AR dealt lower damage (or at least more-resisted damage), but being hit with all its attacks severely gimped its target's ability to travel? That would not likely become a relevant advantage in bot-on-bot combat because CoH AI sucks at using travel powers. But players might be able to leverage that on a team to a degree that it was attractive to bring AR out in team contexts.

Unless you're using the word differently than what i'm used to something has definitely changed since the last time i was in PvP. AFAIK mezzes were not made autohit, but no one has any mez protection. i could be wrong though.

For what it's worth i13 did make PvP much less enjoyable for many players. Then again i personally never said that i13 broke PvP, just that it made it more difficult to learn, actually reduced the number of effective AT and powerset combinations, and actually made an entire travel power pool almost useless. PvP wasn't balanced before i13, but in my opinion and the opinions of quite a few others it was no more balanced afterwards, just more frustrating for most players.

i can't promise that i'd PvP a lot if there was a revamp since for me PvP was always a sometimes activity, but i'd certainly give it another shot.

"I'M THE TARGET! I'M THE TARGET! THE STALKER HAS SHARKS! AP...AP!!"
@Sepultura
‎'You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.'

i had some glorious PvP battles in bases during the brief times they were somewhat playable, but yeah, the servers didn't seem to handle base PvP very well.

I know you don't want to get side tracked but I can't PM you.

Do you currently PvP (sorry if I missed that part earlier)?

It doesn't, you'll have to talk to someone else to discuss hypotheticals I'm only currently interested in how actual powers work and play off each other.

Every player character does begin with the same opportunity and potential, but that ends as soon as you get past power selection at character creation. That some builds are better for PvP than others is not a problem with the PvP system in and of itself as it is a natural side effect of a game having a variety of powers. You can apply the same argument to soloing AVs or GMs - you don't see someone building an AR/Dev to solo AVs but you see people with Ill/Rads or something similar with high DPS and high survivability, because that's what the situation calls for. You don't see Sonic Blasters farming because Sonic isn't a good set for mass AoE damage. That's how it works in PvP too. Characters need to accomplish specific goals - in the case of damage dealers, deal as much damage as possible as quickly as possible - and there are some sets that are, simply because of how they're designed, better for that task. The only way you would ever be able to "fix" that (assuming it's even a problem in the first place, which it really isn't) would be to make every powerset and power roughly the same, and I'm sure you can imagine how well that would go over.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

So I'll drop the actual names from this as to not continue on a tangent you have no interest in.

If two sets are relatively balanced to not give a notable advantage but one just doesn't appeal to as wide of an audience that is fine. Not every set has to have a huge fan base if it's not broken. But if players don't like a set because it under preforms that is an issue.

That's one gem of an image.

It is a problem, but as you say, it's one I don't think this game will ever be able to address because it's too baked in. I think it all stems from designing the game for PvE first and then thinking about PvP balance far later, and really far too late.

Designed from the ground up, there should be no such thing as a damage dealer that's markedly inferior at actually dealing damage, unless it gives up that damage dealing for some other useful capability (or, to what I take as LISAR's point, some conditionally better way to deal its damage than another set). It's true that over time I saw Con's crew put together a lot of different powersets for different contexts (zone vs. arena vs different team sizes), but there were also AT/powerset combos that seemed clear winners and losers over the long haul. Like Zwil said, time needs to be invested in bringing the really outlying laggards up and the really outlying FotMs down.

Everything doesn't need to be equal. It just all needs to be useful somewhere. And preferably, there's nothing that is always useful everywhere.

Going back to this I don't think we can use CoH AI as a reasonable measure of set performance in any fashion. Even if it had a serious power prioritization overhaul the fact it just doesn't see the game as we do or even play by the same rule set makes it unreliable.

*hugs* I love it when people understand me.