Will PVP ever come back?

I've read a lot on the wiki and forums about base raids, and I somewhat regret missing that era of the game. Any chance of that ever coming back? Although I don't know how the execution was, in theory it sounded like one of the most interesting and challenging features of the game.

However, more than that, I wonder if features are ever discussed to actually pit villains vs heroes? For example, quests built around two teams competing for objectives where the villains need to do one thing, and the heroes another?

It just seems that the fact that there are both villain and hero paths is largely wasted due to the lack of competition between the two camps, and PvE seems like it would get old quickly even with the large amount of content.

They utterly destroyed PvP in this game in I13. Simple answer is no.

1) They rather killed PVP when they changed it completely with issue 12 or 13.
2) Base raids were dependent on NPC/object defenses and objectives within the base that were frequently buggy, and are definitely getting worse because of the alignment system and its strange interactions with player alignments and faction alignments within missions(like the "Rescue Jason and Kenneth from TPN" mission where Jason Maxwell was and stayed hostile).

I don't think it will ever come back in this game without a serious revamp of practically all the old code(i.e. a sequel or rewrite).
The changes they made in issue 12 or 13 drove most of the PVPers away, and still aren't right. That would need to be fixed and improved greatly before base raids would come back, as well as other bugs and issues.

The PVP in this game will never be that popular again, not even as popular as it was, because they drove off most of those who were here for PVP.
Just like Freedom didn't seem to attract as many new people as expected(probably because this is still an older game that is an acquired taste with a lot of daunting systems and options and a rather terrible UI and bugs and usually poor performance on anything but higher end system while being practically unplayable on low-mid systems), any changes to PVP have very little chance of attracting new PVPers, especially if it can't attract completely new players to the game(which is a tall order for just one aspect to do when other games already obviously do it better because they drew people away).




So, don't hold your breath. I don't expect to see pvp come back in popularity even if they fix all the problems with it.
Sorry to be pessimistic, but it's hard not to be with certain aspects of this game the way it is.

Come back? It was never popular to begin with. The devs admitted that at it's height only 10% of the player based ever set foot in a PvP area. It was never popular outside of a tiny section of the player base, so it's no wonder that the devs have given fixing it a low priority.

Sure I feel bad that the PvPer's suffer because of this, but the devs are going to focus on the areas where the overwhelming majority of players want to participate in.

As a new player, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, "once I've played through the story arcs once, then what?"

There is a lot of content, but it still seems that with everything being pvp and the actual people based challenges not being there (whether that is PvP, competitive type quests, or GM run events) it seems like you still reach an "end" where there isn't much new to do.

The long game is that they still add new story content (not quickly, but they do add it). They also add new powersets for the different archetypes.

Playing through the stories with one AT (Tanker or Scrapper, for example) is nothing like playing it on another (Blaster or Controller). That's where the replayability is in this game.

Also - there's no way to play through the current amount of stories on a single character without turning off XP to prevent outlevelling content. That also encourages making new characters.

Paid subscriptions get over 100 slots to make characters and experiment with powersets and ATs. I have over 50 characters myself because I like to experiment. There are some players who have 4 to 5 times that many.

But as for PvP, there really isn't much presence here and really never has been. As someone who has built 5 bases, I have zero interest in bringing back base raiding to see them destroyed.

Sentry has a SG and a channel set up on Virtue server for PvP related events. So far they've got a little over 30 members in the channel and lately there's been some good activity in Recluse's Victory. Check it out if you're interested.

Let me give you a *slightly* less pessimistic answer - though in honesty it can only be 'slightly" less.

There is still a PVP community in the game. You have to look for them a bit - even if you can't post there, take a look in the PVP and in the specific server subsections of the game. You don't say what server you've been playing on, so I can't suggest specific people (or having specific people try to get in touch with you.)

What you'll mostly find is arena PVP, or arranged zone PVP, usually in Recluse's Victory if anywhere.

Base raids are essentially dead and gone. They're not active now, and they made changes to base editing which allowed the base builders to do many things which used to be "illegal" because they blocked paths and the like. (For instance, on one or two of my bases, there's no way you could get to my generator - slightly vital if you wanted to destroy it and take down defenses.) As twitchy as the base editor is - the person who created it is long gone and apparently didn't document the code well, or at all - they're VERY cautious about making any changes. So base raiding is gone, yeah.

PVP missions... have been asked for. But the rules about how characters and powers act in PVP are vastly different than they are in PVE (the issue (13) of PVP Doom you keep seeing referred to.) It was... *unpleasant* around here to say the least at that time. Before, the zones, even on a fairly quiet server like Pinnacle or Victory (my main "homes") could really get jumping. Siren's Call was a lot of fun, there would be multiple teams on both sides going after reach other, you could go in unless it was, say, 3 AM on Wednesday, and expect to run into a fight at some point.

After Issue 13, that pretty much vanished. A few people stuck around, but most either transferred to Freedom to consolidate the community, or just left. Now, it's somewhat spotty - I was actually surprised, last night, to see someone on Triumph calling people to Atlas for some casual PVP. If I hadn't been in the middle of a task force, I probably would have gone over to see what was up. It would have been the first time I'd actually PVPed in... well, at least six months, in honesty probably over a year. (I go into the zones with some regularity just for the temp powers, but rarely see anyone else there... and when I do, they rarely want to actually give PVP a try.)

As for long term... you'd be surprised how replayable the game is. It *does* play differently with different ATs - or even different powersets within the same AT. If it weren't, I wouldn't have been here since issue 3 (with only a small break at the turn of this year.) I'm one of the people Ad Astra mentions with 5-6 times as many characters... I've got - think I'm at 309-310 now. (Just because the name "It's Demon Time" was open - I thought that one would be fairly obvious and gone, but found it amusing.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

pvp itself is basically limited to the freedom/virtue servers

last i recall base raids were officially dead and most likely to never come back, gladiator matches are fun, but again thats a semi pvp related thing thats been declared dead and wont be worked on anymore

Freedom/Virtue are your only hopes of finding anything close to competitive PvP. In the past there has been PvP leagues on Freedom and one stupid one on Champion with 4-7ish teams with rosters of about 12+ people. A laughable comparison to pre i13 Test ladder rosters. The most recent League happened around November/December of 2011 on the Freedom server, however once that finished numbers dropped again.

If you're looking for an endgame raid/PvP culture like some other 800 lb gorilla MMOs out there have, this probably isn't the game for you. We have the VIP-only incarnate content which is starting to move in that direction, but the culture of the game remains one focused on community and alts rather than on endless carrot-and-stick grinding on a 'main'.

That's not to say you can't have one or a few characters you enjoy and play predominantly - I know many people who play their level 50s all the time and have for years even before Incarnate content opened up progression for 50s. There's fun to be had here. Personally I love the customization and the depth of the game, its inclusiveness, and its lack of endgame raid culture.

If you're the type of person who only has fun when they level up, has the best +10 sword of pwnage, or needs a lot of pvp to hold your interest, then this may not be the game for you, and that's fair. I do think, as Ironblade said, it's a bit premature to dismiss the game without ever really playing it through, but that's your prerogative.

A recent redname post on the subject should give you the answer you are seeking. In a word....no, not likely. The devs are far too busy with other, more important things than addressing PVP. Not that they don't want too, perhaps, but more because the list of other more important things (like....princess hats, staff fighting powerset and stealth panthers) take precedent. That should give you some idea of where PVP realistically ranks in terms of priority.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger We all know that PVP is not a priority for the development team. I've never blown smoke regarding that fact and will always be very up front with it. There's a multitude of reasons, but if I have to point at two: Once we start opening the Pandora's Box of PVP we cannot close it. PVP is a constant battle requiring constant tuning, power balancing, nerfing, buffing, etc, etc...To be honest, that's not our focus. We have limited numbers of Systems Designers and their primary focus is on creating new Powersets, proliferation and revisiting older Powersets (when there is time.) PVP activity is not a priority for the vast majority of our Community. Yes, I agree that the argument could be made that it's a symptom of the cause rather than the cause itself, however it is what it is. For better or worse, City of Heroes is a PVE centric game where (many, *not* all) players would rather the challenge of designing an amazing costume than duking it out in the arena. <snip> We continue to plead the case of the remaining PVP Community to the development team. I continue to push for changes to PVP to be made and improvements to be considered (Keep in mind, improvements in recent memory such as the individual settings for Arena matches were done in one developers spare time, after hours.) There are ideas, and even devs who really want to do things with PVP, but *anything* we would consider requires code work, possibly animation work, and definitely a significant amount of systems designer work. The designers, engineers and artists are already tasked to the max, already working multiple hours of OT and already pushing extremely hard just to get the content we are working on out the door to the players. There is no lack of desire to do something, anything, with PVP. There is a difficulty proving that it's better to work on PVP over a new Powerset.

There's still PvP on a few of the servers - Freedom and Pinnacle are qutie active.

Besides TS and HD, the lack of varity for support toons that is acceptable because of DR limits a lot of player's play styles.

None the less it is still fun, but very confusing to new players.