I think they also realized that PVP represented minimal value to either them or the player base. So, in effect, lolPVP.
Honestly, I've always been under the impression that arena PvP has been playable. Its different than it was, arguably less complex, but playable. (Alpha only / pre incarnate days).
Really it wasn't "Broken" per say, not perfect, but also not broken/unplayable.
That being said, I think they realized that the people who enjoyed PvP would be there in some form or another. Those that didn't usually were not avoiding PvP because the system was less than perfect. They were avoiding it because they weren't into PvP in the first place. CoH is a game that caters to letting players feel very powerful. PvP does pretty much the exact opposite.
There were of course some people in the middle, who stopped PvP'ing because they didn't like it but stuck with the game anyway. I imagine it was a pretty small % but they were still there.
Realistically, we see 10-30 people in freedom RV at any given time. For the past few leagues you see 50-100 people signing up usually. Last estimates for the game pop were between 60k and 100k subs. Even if you increase those numbers 5 times over, it still ends up being a pretty insignificant number to justify spending resources that were already spread thin.
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Well honestly, it was always pretty broken, even before I13. There were tons of bugs and things that didn't work properly or logically. That's why everybody was looking forward to I13 initially, because we figured they'd fix the problems and make PvP into a meaningful part of the game.|
Originally Posted by MrLiberty
Really it wasn't "Broken" per say, not perfect, but also not broken/unplayable.
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The main reason I didn't like arena PvP was the required setup time. You'd need to schedule a specific time to play, making it an obligation. Then you'd need to sit around (sometimes for hours), waiting for everybody to get set up. So a 20 minute match could realistically take like 2 hours to do. Meanwhile with zone PvP, you could log in any time and start playing immediately. There were pretty much always people in zones, and you didn't need to ever wait for anybody or anything. I liked that.
I think a lot of people felt the same way. Arena was just too serious, considering how laughable the competition in this game was to begin with. I don't mean player skill level, but just the way the game was designed to basically thwart real competition. Anyway, the point is that for most people, zone PvP was the only truly accessible PvP in the game. So arena being less broken, for the most part, didn't help. It only affected, like you said, 50-100 total people.
Oh well. No matter what, we'll have our memories. Fact is, even with all the problems, PvP in CoH was some of the most fun I've ever had in online gaming.
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Originally Posted by Supermax
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JAH: I had just increased Base salvage storage to 100 salvage for Issue 24.... |
They were fixing my all time base pet peeve?!!!?
AAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!
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Don�t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. - R.W. Emerson |
YUMMY Low-Hanging Fruit for BASE LUV
Broken means broke means unplayble. Broken is being unable to enter the zone or join arena matches.
Broken means there exists a power that is an I-Win button for one group or another.
Broken means only one powerset/combination is playable.
What you are refering to are bugs and power balance issues. By which standard would mean all MMO pvp is broken.
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honestly though before "the change" we had a league that supported 12-15 teams of 8 (having more than 8 in the sg) The first test pvp leauge we spent over 2 hours picking teams we had so many sign ups. There was never the level talent playing the game as before that change. There has never been a league where the winner was in question, even with points, the d6 system etc. There was just not enough of a talent base. |
Originally Posted by MrLiberty
Honestly, I've always been under the impression that arena PvP has been playable. Its different than it was, arguably less complex, but playable. (Alpha only / pre incarnate days).
Really it wasn't "Broken" per say, not perfect, but also not broken/unplayable. That being said, I think they realized that the people who enjoyed PvP would be there in some form or another. Those that didn't usually were not avoiding PvP because the system was less than perfect. They were avoiding it because they weren't into PvP in the first place. CoH is a game that caters to letting players feel very powerful. PvP does pretty much the exact opposite. There were of course some people in the middle, who stopped PvP'ing because they didn't like it but stuck with the game anyway. I imagine it was a pretty small % but they were still there. Realistically, we see 10-30 people in freedom RV at any given time. For the past few leagues you see 50-100 people signing up usually. Last estimates for the game pop were between 60k and 100k subs. Even if you increase those numbers 5 times over, it still ends up being a pretty insignificant number to justify spending resources that were already spread thin. |
In the intial ladder - Jal beat OS, OS beat Freaks, Freaks beat Jal. First second and third ranking came down to technicalities. There was at one point anyone of 4 full teams that could compete on even levels. The VR/Team V/JAL fights were epic. The talent pool was such that adding two great players to a team could change them from mid pack to fighting for top spot.
That just never happened again after the pvp changes.
I don't buy that insignificant thing, they spent a lot of time on pvp ios - full sets that give dual bonuses in pve and pvp...that's not something simple. If pvp was never anything but an afterthought why put all that time into it?
I think you missed what I was saying for the most part. I was speaking of i13-present. There was a point where the devs felt PvP deserved attention and tried to incorporate it into the game moreso than it was. Hence arena bug fixes, damage normalization, PvP IO's, etc. With some things, they missed their mark (HD, TS, DR, etc). Not many will argue that. But when they didn't see a return for their time investment, it was pretty much echo'ed in the statement by Positron. The desire was there, but the manpower wasn't, especially not for the expected rewards from said investment of man power.
I don't think I'd go so far to say there was never a level playing field post i13 in the leagues. There were a few held on champion (5v5 and an 8v8) that didn't have "That team" involved. That team being the best of who were left from the old test teams. In those leagues you ended up with a lot more close matches and there was no one team that stood out above the rest (like you saw in a lot of the post i13 freedom leagues).
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Well that's semantics. By broken I meant pretty much bugged. I have no problem with balance issues. Some stuff will always be better than other stuff in PvP. Meanwhile, the other stuff is better at some other part of the game. That's fine. But there were some very serious bugs in pre-I13 PvP. Granted a lot were fixed eventually, but the fact is, PvP was always an extremely neglected part of the game. There were exactly two times when the dev team actually spent significant time on PvP: when it was created, and I13. That was the problem. PvP is an extremely important part of MMO's, and it requires constant attention. Not two times in 8+ years.|
Originally Posted by MrLiberty
Broken means broke means unplayble...What you are refering to are bugs and power balance issues. By which standard would mean all MMO pvp is broken.
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Anyway, most people will remember I13 as the PvP killer, but the truth is, "lol PvP" existed almost from the very beginning. I13 was just the nail in the coffin. I always blamed the devs for it, but now I realize it was most likely not even their fault. It appears that NCSoft just has some really horrible decision-making.
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I didn't really want to post here. I haven't logged on the game since the announcement because there's no point for me.|
Originally Posted by Supermax
JAH: I had just increased Base salvage storage to 100 salvage for Issue 24. I also really wanted to revamp PvP so that it didn’t feel like the game was fighting you (travel suppression, heal decay), but rather so that all the same balance tools were present but in the hands of players instead of the inanimate server (maybe all your tier 1 and tier 2 attack powers would apply 50% heal decay and 5-6 seconds of travel suppression).
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Anyway, the only good news about this was that the game ending for PvPers doesn't matter much at all.
This pretty much proves we were never going to get what we wanted. Here's Arbiter Hawk, high up as he is, saying he wanted to change PvP to not -remove- TS, but just apply it differently.
I don't blame him for the exact idea he presented, I don't assume he spent a lot of time on that one specific idea. Obviously, by making t1 and t2 attacks apply TS, runners wouldn't be TSed. It would be worse in my opinion.
What I wanted to say was, I understand the problem a lot more. Having travel suppression is one of the most basic components of online games, and it's hard to find an MMO without it (In PvP especially). With the amount of movement we had, it only justified travel suppression even further, in their eyes anyway.
That doesn't mean it was right, but it tells us why the devs thought it was. They're more likely to follow other MMOs, or more experienced developers who have worked on other games, and implement travel suppression.
It was listening to their superiors and other successful MMOs, or listening to a bunch of PvPers (Who were seen as immature or elitists).
The problem was that travel suppression didn't actually accomplish anything because both parties were slowed by every action. If we're both traveling 90 mph, or we're both traveling 25 mph, the only difference is that the bases are further away. If they wanted that, they should have expanded the zone.
Even worse, stack a good amount of defense and the attacker is slowed while the defender runs freely.
The PvP changes were not for the PvP population. It was for the casual gamer, and that's reinforced by what Arbiter Hawk said.
AKA It was never going to get better. That one small line is pretty much enough confirmation for me. If they were going to touch PvP again, it wouldn't be to fix it for us, it would be to try and get non-PvPers PvPing.
They really came about it all wrong. What's less important than the balance system is the ability of where and when to do it.
If they had made it possible to challenge people to small duels in zones (Like Atlas Park); that would have made PvP incredibly more popular. I'm not a programmer, so I don't want to say it's easy to implement, but it already -has- existed. I once had developer (War witch?) turn on both their and my PvP tags on so we could fight. If that were put in the game, there would be a lot of interest in PvP.
The only way we were going to get PvP alive again was with new developers (maybe if another game buys the rights?).
This developer team was going by the book, and that doesn't work for CoH PvP. The system is too complicated, and it should have been left alone. It was a miracle it was working in the first place, and you shouldn't mess with that.
The only thing I don't understand is why wasn't anybody smart enough to see the reaction when it was in beta? Why didn't they split that PvP with -our- PvP and see which one was more popular?
Worst of all, they pretty much refused to comment. If they were as open and talkative to PvPrs as much as everyone else, I would have known to pack my bags up a long time ago when it was obvious that they were never going to make a move to cater to us.
I wish I had gotten to know the majority of you better, and I wish I wasn't so shy about trying ranged. I didn't like dying, it was an ego thing, and it was extremely limiting.
I'm glad the game is ending. This is NCsoft's way of mercy killing us PvPers.
Edit: That said, university isn't very time consuming, and I have a lot of free time. I'd rather game with CoH PvPers than strangers, even if I barely know you.
Steam: GreedVolt
Skype: Mackenzie.Malleck
Feel free to just add me. I'm used to accepting blind invites.
@Sentry4 @Sentry 4
PvP Redux is discontinued, for obvious reasons. Thanks to everyone who helped and joined.
I've assumed this was the case for quite a while. It was basically a business decision. The amount of resources that would have been required to make any significant improvement to PvP would not have been lucrative. I think that's understandable. I never liked it, but it is what it is. I don't blame them for making that decision; CoH quite clearly thrived much better as a PvE-focused game.
I'm sure they didn't really like it either, if we're being totally honest. Being unable to improve your product the way you want because you lack resources is frustrating, but that's the way it goes, although I'm sure that frustration pales in comparison to your game being shut down for similar reasons.
One thing is for sure: NCSoft is a terrible publisher. If a game doesn't sustain 500k+ subs, they think it's a failure. Tabula Rasa is another great example of this same dilemma. It wasn't a dead game by any stretch of the imagination, but it had limited appeal. NCSoft shut it down.
I almost feel dirty for buying GW2 now, but I'm pretty sure ArenaNet is afforded more independence at this point then most other NCSoft subsidiaries. At least that's what I tell myself to justify it. :/
@TheKatalyst
My **** is bleeding.
The devs spent a bunch of time answering random questions about the game's lore, and there were a couple questions about PvP.
Be truthful, did you have any plans for bases? Or PvP?
MM: Plans are easy. Yes we had plans. What we didnt have was enough interest from the players to ever warrant the TITANIC amount of work they required.
JAH: I had just increased Base salvage storage to 100 salvage for Issue 24. I also really wanted to revamp PvP so that it didnt feel like the game was fighting you (travel suppression, heal decay), but rather so that all the same balance tools were present but in the hands of players instead of the inanimate server (maybe all your tier 1 and tier 2 attack powers would apply 50% heal decay and 5-6 seconds of travel suppression). I also wanted us to gravitate away from Animation Time = Damage - this completely nullifies the role of burst damage in PvP, essentially flattening the skill cap of choosing when to use which abilities in combat. However, as Matt said above - both facets of the game were so niche, they couldnt really justify any investment with a return. Any changes that were made to these systems would have to be entirely spare time projects, and would have to justify themselves as higher priority than any of the other myriad of things we wanted to tweak about the game.
What feature or features did you most want to include but couldn't do to lack of ability or time?
MM: In order: More trials, PVP.
So basically it sounds like they realized that PvP was broken and wanted to fix it, but there simply wasn't enough interest from the player base for it to happen.
Anyway, that answers that