Will PVP ever come back?

So you're saying they won't be expanding on the frisbee toss mechanics.

/ragequits

Relax, this will happen LONG, LONG before PVP gets fixed. Different color of frisbee's and animations for the coyote and liger vanity pets to catch and toss the frisbee as well.

Freedom, Virtue, and Champion have fairly active PvP populations.
There are plenty of other challenges (competitive and otherwise) available besides directly fighting other players once you hit the level cap. Still, you can find PvP if you look around in the right places and it's almost like learning a new game that's similar to, but also different from, the PvE game since many combat mechanics work differently in the PvP environment.

Still, PvP is not a significant part of the game for most players, so if PvP is essential to your enjoyment of an MMO this may not be the ideal game. i'd still suggest playing until it's no longer fun. Also, if you like to try out different playstyles this game has a huge amount of variety in that area with the number of different archetypes (classes) available. Even different powerset combinations in the same archetype can play very differently from each other.

Wow you sound like fun.

Short note, PvPers hate all that content. We are just forced to run through it for PvP benefits.

Right, because simply stating facts about what the devs are working on instead of PvP is a reflection of a what a person is like to team with in the game.



Reality check, you don't speak for the PvP community only yourself.

There are other games that offer quicker and better PVP without PVE getting in the way.
You're here because you like this game, most of it.

You're just fooling yourself if you think you're here for "only the pvp".
No offense intended.

Uhmm no they don't. As others have said - you do not speak for the pvp "community." Making such broad statements does not further your stance...if anything it does the opposite.

And you are not forced to go through any pve content. Farm a toon to 50...spend loads of influence on IOs... pvp.

Plenty of pvpers pvp without incarnate powers or accolades.

To the OP - if you are simply looking for a pvp mmo....this game is probably not for you. Yes there is pvp in CoH, but it is not; nor has it ever been, a central focus of the game. This is not to say you couldn't join one of the many SGs that pvps a lot and enjoy this game for years. My adivce is to play for free...get to know some people... look into joining a solid SG that does pvp and go from there

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Pinnacle actually isn't THAT active right at the moment.

There is a small group of players, myself included, that are trying to revitalize PvP on Pinnacle. But it hasn't really taken off yet.

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

You quoted me? Even though it was Golden Girl who said it?

While I'd say PVP has never been balanced in this game, it wasn't completely borked until after the i13 changes. It was at least playable for most of the AT's prior to then. Zone PVP, particularly Siren's and RV, was usually active with a handful of players even during server mid-day, and prime-time US you could easily find 35-40 players in those zones. And this was on Infinity, Justice, etc.....never the most popular servers.

But you are right...it never was the "overwhelming % of the population" that most PVP'rs claimed. I'm guessing it was never more than 10%. Still....that's likely 4X the number of players that regularly run missions in the Shadow Shard. Not like that's a great comparison but still....

True.

PvP battles on Pinnacle are more like barfights

Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately.

PVP, PinnBadges, iTrials, sometimes the costume contests...

Home sweet home.

Thanks for pointing that out. I don't know how your name popped up when I hit the quote button on GG's post. But have no fear I will manually edit that so it reads correctly.


Maybe I had you accidentally included as a multi-quote and didn't realize it, but still I don't recall there being more than what GG said when I made the quote.

I'm definately not a straight out PvPer. I don't like PvP games just to PvP. I do believe that PvP options add new challenges to a game that PvE can't. With that said, I'm not a fan of arenas, or that kind of PvP. I would much prefer to see a couple of missions created where a team of heroes compete against a team of villains that a mission where you just step in a room and mash buttons to kill each other. I find those kind of missions to remain a challenge longer, due to unpredictability. Once you learn the "trick" of a PvE mission, it will never be the same.

What I'm looking at is interactions more than anything. Most teams I've done missions with might as well have been bots. They don't speak, except for some OOC team chat instructions. They already have the missions memorized, and everyone runs from one fight to the next, racing through the mission at max speed.

Some places where you can get interaction to make things less 2 dimensional:

Roleplaying:
I'm sure there is some characters with a lot of story behind them, but you'd never know it from anything I've seen. They are a costume and a collection of powers. There are no personalities. Any history is just a character you can right click to read...it has no impact on how the character is played. Instead of deep well thought out characters, success seems to be measured in how many level 50's someone has.

PvP Challenges:
As I said above, this doesn't have to be combat, although the fact that there is no threat of combat makes me wonder why villains were even introduced to City of Heroes. I'd love to see missions where players can work against each other, since the challenge is different when you get different players against you. ...And no, costume contests are not what I'm looking for in Player vs Player challenges, although that seems to be how people compete.

Player vs GM Challenges:
Whether it's a GM spawning different villains, possessing them to add in some unexpected snazzy dialogue, complete custom missions run on the fly, or even whole campaigns architected by one or more GM's, having GM's change things up adds a lot of the element of the unexpected, and creates unique storylines. Saying "I did the positron quests" means nothing. Everyone does that. It is just an expected part of every single hero (or at least those who know more than DFB.) However, if you had a story of "One time, Positron personally led us to break up a circle of thorns ritual where they were summoning a giant demonic octopus!" Now you have a story that is specific to your character, and not all your characters, and gives something to talk about with others. Who knows, it might even encourage roleplaying.

Overall I think it comes from me having an RPG background and not an MMO background, so my expectations of what makes things fun long term are probably just different than the long time veterans here. Not saying that it isn't fun for a lot of people. I was just trying to find more out of it before committing to a longer term in the game.

A regularly scheduled team. When you team with people on a regular basis, it's more of a social activity than just grinding out XP.

Or join a team and you can get those (and all other content not in Orob) as well.

This is actually one of the bigger disappointments I have about what little PvP is out there. In my mind, PvP should be another part of developing a character, not the goal of the "end game". I'd prefer to see missions under level 20 that pitted heroes vs villains. PvP shouldn't be something you advance your character through the game and just do it so you have something to do when you can't advance any more. I think big opportunities are being missed. I'd like to see bank robberies and jewelry heists, and lab thefts where villains break in to steal things, an alarm goes up, and heroes have to react in time to stop them. Big rewards for villains for taking the risks (perhaps with bigger rewards if someone tries to stop them than if they were done with a dead server.) I'd see taking down living thinking villains as much more heroic than taking down the same PvE villains everyone else has taken down thousands of times.

That statement pretty much sums up the whole conversation. PvP came some time after launch with the introduction of the arenas. It was fun sometimes, but because ATs were not balanced against each other, there were situations where Arcetype A would almost always beat Archetype B, but B would almost always beat C. "Rock-Paper-Scissors" gameplay at its finest, which discouraged a lot of folks.

Things could have been improved when City of Villains launched and we actually had faction vs faction in open-zone PvP. In the end, though it pretty much remained "Rock-Paper-Scissors" with the occasional Stalker gank thrown in for variety. Now, I will say that PvP in this game was fun during the CoV beta, where you had tons of people fighting all across the PvP zones. Sadly, the numbers just couldn't be sustained once CoV went live.

As for the "Issue 13" thing people refer to: It was actually intended to be the start of a long-term overhaul of PvP to make it far less reliant on the luck of which AT you have vs that of the person you're fighting. A major part of this overhaul was to implement a second form of power balance that only worked in PvP; it was either that or majorly change how the game was played for the vast majority who didn't engage in PvP. The problem was that the existing PvP community at the time was FAR from helpful. In fact, instead of helping to test things out and provide constructive feedback, most either trolled, actively raged, or just crossed their arms and demanded their old PvP back.

As a result, the dev team became far less willing to make PvP a high priority with regard to the devotion of time and resources. Combine that with the "Ultra Mode" graphics overhaul, Going Rogue, the conversion to the Freedom hybrid F2P model, and the departure of the former lead power designer who spearheaded the proposed long-term PvP overhaul, and you've got what PvP is in CoH today. It exists, and may occasionally get a bone thrown to it. But barring some miracle, it's likely not going to be revisited in any significant manner.

This.. AND

Issue 13 happened over 3 years ago. You will see players who have been here less than that time complain how they want Pre-Issue 13 pvp back, but what they fail to realize is that Pre-Issue 13 pvp had A LOT of problems.

With the ever dwindling pvp population I highly doubt anything significant will ever be changed in pvp. One of the main reasons... money. There just is no financial incentive to put hundreds of hours into a system that has such a small appeal to the overall community. CoH is not that 800lb Gorilla MMO and cannot afford to put time/effort/resources into something that will not produce a financial benefit...which is why pvp and bases are left to the wayside with the occasional bone thrown at them.

I do not fault the devs for this as they are here to keep working...and to make money...without which there would be no CoH at all.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Honestly, for all the so-called "problems" pre-I13 supposedly had* (and that is when I did the majority of my PVPing - after all, there were people in zone to PVP *with,*) there's some now that even a reversion couldn't fix.

From the introduction of COV and PVP, PVP was accessible. Yes, you had people that did it all the time, tweaked and tuned their builds, etc. but still, someone could just walk in the zone and at least be able to (a) expect their character to work the same, and (b) be - to varying degrees - competitive. Even, no, but the answer was pretty much given - "Get a team, PVP is geared toward teams."

Now, there are two hurdles to overcome. One, the learning curve has gone up *dramatically* with I13. Heal decay? Travel (and regen) suppression for taking an inspiration? Teleport not working? Mez protection being mez resistance?

Once you hit that... well, look at Neuronia's list. And one sentence needs emphasizing (admittedly I just repeated part of what was said there, in essence)
... I'm also going to add that, IMHO, the SSKing system (where you get powers up to 5 levels above your exemplared level) is just another "bad thing" for the lower zones (BB and Siren's) that skews things a bit too far.

*Note, I know this list will change from person to person, as will the severity of it. But - aside from bugs and geometry holes - there's little that just teaming couldn't trivialize - and some of the binary-ness of it, well, we have that in PVE too.

See my Guides and Tutorials

You will find few, if any, decent PvPers that will disagree with this statement. Pre-I13 PvP had its share of bugs and imbalances, but as a whole the experience was faster, more dynamic, and more friendly to someone who had no idea what was going on.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
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