Ralathar44

Good post, is it just -res that pierces this heavily or were the AV/GM modifiers changed from what they used to be? Because Venomous Gas is -25% res and it's getting 16.25% here so either it's only being reduced by 35% against an AV which is nothing close to any of the information I've been seeing regarding AV/GM debuff resistance. I've definitely noticed a significant reduction in slows and apparent effectiveness of other debuffs during my personal play but obviously without direct numbers examples like that picture it's partially guesswork. If it's all debuffs piercing that much then it's a rather major change from the numbers I know of with information from within the last year. For example how much reduced would -slow or -recharge or -def or -endo receive?

Yup, empathy pretty much just becomes a buff bot end game and while I love that it's buffs are valuable it's heals basically ceasing to be part of the set is a sign of a deeper problem. Fort the right 4 people, drop RAs when up, Throw the occasional adrenaline boost and blast. Most people are so powerful end game that people more or less stop taking damage and even controllers and defenders can often take group aggro safely that would have destroyed them quickly at lower levels. Even my baby stone/regen brute with just half his alpha slot can almost solo +4/8 carnies and he's not even properly optimized....not to mention he's regen and that's not ideal for dealing with that much aggro :P. In a properly balanced end game we'd still get hit, people'd still get hurt, heals would still be useful, and fights with individual mobs would take longer than 10-15 seconds. Not specifically because that's needed for empathy, but because that's needed for a wide variety of powersets to be useful.

Not unless you're recharged and hastened out they don't. All of those times are even less than 1/3rd of their base recharge. Considering that only happens when you're twinked out I think my shorthand of 1/3rd of the power recharge is much more fair as most people will never be fully twinked out and indeed most of your character's career will not be in that state. Even serious players don't fully outfit every character they create or play to that level. If you base all balance on the bleeding edge capability you will inevitably get skewed results when comparing it to the average experience. Everyone gets extremely broken with end game with full IO sets and incarnates, we know that and that's part of why kill speed has become so fast. Sleet and Heat Loss are both AOE debuffs, meaning you want to use them primarily on groups and you'll want to have them ready for the next group. If they finish recharging 3-5 seconds into the next group then its effectively down for that group due to the level of damage teams do at your tricked out levels just plowing through groups. Envenom has a shorter cooldown because it's primarily a single target debuff, the AOE portion of it is fairly small and does a lesser debuff than done to the main target. Envenom's entire set is focused around a single target and even with the proc machine that is poison trap it's struggled for a long time largely because of that. Because the reality is that most fights in this game are group fights and normal bosses go down plenty fast enough to all other power sets. And AV/EB/GM only receive like 15% of your debuff. So that massive -85% res poison defender can deal out is reduced down to -12.75% res. Still enough to make a difference but not as crazy as it looks starting out.

Stacked force multipliers of any type unsurprisingly multiply effectiveness. You could do this with even the 4 weakest defender offense increasing sets. That's the nature of multiplicative support, not the power of individual powersets. However, odds are you have 4+ stacked leadership on that team pulling alot of weight too and the power of leadership =/= the power of your primary buffer/debuffer set. We already know stacked leadership alone is strong enough to break the game lol :P.

"Best" for what? The content most people face? Incarnate Trials? GMs? Etc. I think you're confusing "most effective at x/y specific situation" and "most effective at playing the most common player experience" and the hardest most players experience regularly and in most of each character's lifespan is the normal 0-50 content and then normal 30-50 teams and tfs after that. Not bleeding edge stuff, not incarnate TFs, just generally facing normal +4/8 missions of +4/+5. Regen Scrapper offers a pretty hands off experience with a self rez, self heals, and endurance management help and is powerful low to mid level while doing what you need high level. Most people are not looking to tank as a scrapper, heck between half and 3/4 of brutes are not looking to tank either. They just want to survive whatever aggro they happen to pull and mess things up while focusing on their primary set...which is the reason they picked scrapper or brute instead of tanker. Regen covers the ability to do that extremely well and if you screw up then you just revive and get back to work. It's also very slot efficient with 3 passives and then out of the box powers on top of that with MoG and Revive. You don't need to survive a full pull, just the aggro you pulled from the boss and a few minions/lts and Regen is more than sufficient for that. Especially with Tough/Weave and IO sets. Regen Sentinel is actually even better since you get more spike protection. The Instant Regeneration Absorb toggle gives you a constant buffer, your ranged nature means you take alot less damage just by virtue of avoiding melee more, and you typically get a reliable CC option in your primary. I'm also not sure what people are expecting out of sentinels, there are plenty of sentinel builds that can basically tank so ofc they shouldn't have blaster level damage. That defense comes at a cost. Similarly ninjitsu gives a good balance of defense, self healing, endurance management, recharge, and gives the AOE placate. If you want more protection than Regen but don't want the complete lack of self healing and utter under end drain madness of the pure defensive/resistance sets then ninjitsu is a good option. Then you add on smoke flash.. It's basically a defense powerset for people who hate the panting and lack of hp heal of defense powersets + a get out of jail free card. It gives the average player facing average content everything they want as a player. Will it hold up to Broadsword and Ninja Blade are mid tier popularity, so those feel like odd pulls. If you're pointing to the 5th most powerful primary as an example of what "everyone plays" when it's half as played as even second and third (much less first) then it's a good sign your argument in that regard is prolly flawed. Claws/Regen has always maintained a fair amount of popularity as a fast endo light set that also had some ranged attacks. Most of it's benefits don't show up well on a DPS spreadsheet. That's the problem with "intangible" powers and power creep as well. It's well known that "given the chance players will optimize the fun out of a game" and power creep inevitably moves everything towards kill speed for optimized exp/$ farming in every MMORPG. That's why it's so important to realize this progression as it is and keep things reigned in so that you can have a wide variety of playstyles remain powerful. And sometmes that means unpopular major changes like ED even. The game is once again on the cusp of choosing a street, are we ok with continued power creep and ever increasing focus on kill rates and pushing harder content faster? Or do we want to re-focus again on what makes this game great with the huge variety of concepts, powers, and playstyles that are viable ENOUGH to be played on even semi-serious teams looking to push. CC and MMs are in a fairly bad way and the supportive power sets are slowly seeing a larger division and effectiveness as the kill efficiency focus (since survival has become more or less passe at our current power levels) sharpens.

You can see the diminishing returns pretty clearly with slows as your slows will go from flooring enemy movement speed to barely affecting enemy movement speed at +4/+5. That same diminished of effect is happening with every single debuff, it's just all very abstracted so it's not as clearly visible. And again as kill speed increases even having a significant amount of uptime on your debuffs becomes a challenge for many powers/sets. Again, there is a good reason debuffer sets are far less played. There is 1 debuffer anywhere near in the top half of the most played defender sets: Radiation. Radiation with the loaded PBAOE buff AM, fast re-charging toggles, ~100% uptime coverage of basically every debuff imaginable, and significant amounts of -regen is able to keep constant uptime on debuffs avoiding one of the main limitations of debuffer sets...consistent uptime in fast kill teams. It still has AM to fall back on even when scaling reduces it's debuffs significantly. Next closest debuff set is dead halfway down in Dark Miasma. Let's not pretend the entire playerbase is ignorant, they know what is good. Folks gravitate in general towards what is easy and what is effective for that AT's role. Defenders are the team support class and they gravitate towards the best team support sets. Note that the problem isn't that debuffer sets are weak. I personally think they are well balanced for the most part though polish could always happen ofc. The problem is the game simply was not designed for us to go against +4/+5 and things were balanced with that in mind. Design changes were put in explicitly to try and enforce that design philosophy. The reason +4/+5 are the things we face now is because of power creep and power creep did not gift all power sets or ATs equally.

It's absolutely the case. Debuffing sets are competitive to buffing during normal level ranges but as levels rise they are left behind. - Buffing sets get full value while debuffing sets get 50%/30% of their original value vs +4/+5. Vs the hardest targets this scales down even further to 15% vs AV/EB/GM. - Buffs uptime is based only on duration/recharge considerations...if your buffs are up 100% of the time then they have ~100% uptime, perhaps as low as 95% due to application delay depending on recharges/team organization. Debuffing set requires application every new mob so your recharge needs to be as fast as your clear speed for you to have 100% uptime. A debuff with 30 second duration and 20 second recharge still does not have anything close to 100% uptime. - Buffs are on before a fight starts, debuffs require time to apply at the start of a fight. - If the team splits your buffs are still helping everyone they are on 100%. If the team splits your debuffs only affect those people near you. - Targeted AOE debuffs respect the AOE cap, thus an AOE buff that hits your whole teams works on everyone but a targeted AOE that attacks an enemy mob often dos not effect the entire mob. This is actually something Trick Arrow does not have to worry about and that's a noticeable advantage of the set, especially with large pulls, multiple pulls, or ambushes into the same area. But it can be a significant concern for other debuffing sets. Debuffs are competitive in +2/+3 level content because debuffing values are balanced much higher than buffing values and they affect the whole team targeting the debuffed enemy. Acid Arrow for example gives a ludicrous -41% defense and -20% resistance to a single target and is spammable and when stacked with disruption arrow that's -40% res. But you don't get that vs +4/+5. You get 20.5%/10% -def/-res and 12.3%/6% -def/-res. Vs AV/EB/GM its even worse at 6.15%/3% -def/-res. Also because of the hardcap of 95% chance to hit it's never going to have 100% uptime and any accuracy targeted debuff will face that. But lets take your example of Cold Domination stacking an absurd amount of -res. You put -60% res before diminishing returns in AOE target with a theoretical 100% uptime on sleet and 50% uptime on Heat Loss. Higher with recharge and hasten so for fun overkill let's just assume 1/3rd of the original recharge for a recharge of 20 seconds and 120 seconds. Theoretically sleet should always have 100% uptime and Heat Loss should have 75% uptime. But that's not how it works in practice. In practice you apply those debuffs to a group and they die within 15 seconds, prolly less than 10 if you have blaster or sentinel nukes available. And then you gotta let the someone go in first to engage/soak alpha so damage is often being done, sometimes entire nukes landing, before debuffs even land. So realistic maximum uptime is closer to 60%-70% on sleet and like 10% on Heat Loss. Sure on a well oiled team nukes will wait for your debuffs, but you described a version of the game in which most people take empathy as a healer set and ignore the buffs so we're already not assuming anything close to a well oiled team. Also, your ideas of how defense scales and how people are built has some dissonance with your idea of how people play empathy even at high levels. Remember, almost all of us on these servers are CoH veterans. Either alot of the playerbase are derps who cannot expect to play well and build well (meaning healing also still has value) OR you're overblowing your comments about people playing empathy. And again, a single incarnate on teams invalidates basically all impressions of how that team functions because incarnates can often force even bad teams to succeed for anything but the hardest content (since they can often solo or almost solo the entire mission themselves)....that hardest content being like 1% of the total content of the game lol. On paper at face value debuffs are still good. But realistically as kill rate increases debuffs get much worse (lower uptime) and as level scaling increases debuffs get much worse (lower values). Both of these happen in very high level content. Which is why my TA/A is dang near a paper weight in high level teams and my Empathy defender can still make a huge difference. Oil Slick Arrow is a joke on high level teams while being amazing on mid level teams. With a recharge of at least 60 seconds even at 1/3rd of base recharge it has a very low uptime when groups are dying in 20 seconds or less. Even lower due to the application+lighting lag and the need to fire disruption arrow and acid arrow first to avoid sacrificing on their uptime. And the damage/slow/knockdown vs +4/+5 is minor despite it being so strong against +2s. Again, TA/A is a main of mine from sunset, I'm extremely well versed in it and it suffers severely from the problems I mention.

Debuffer sets unfortunately get murdered by the purple patch. Since the game has power creeped to +4/+5 as the high level opponents faced your debuffs will only be applying between 50% and 30% of their original values and enemies get exploded at record speeds by classes doing damage. And if we're taking about level shifted tricked out incarnates then we're talking a tiny % of the actual game in which to talk about overall power set viability and effectiveness. I'd wager people spent the vast majority of their time under 50 honestly with how many alts people roll 😛. Past level 30ish your chances of facing +4/+5 rise pretty steadily, but there are still tons of groups at 50 that cannot handle +4/+5 (and sometimes not even +3/8) unless there is an incarnate carrying them. If an incarnate is carrying a team then all power viability for that team is essentially moot :P. We all know that incarnates utterly break the game. Trick Arrow is near and dear to my heart and is hit especially hard by the purple patch. Disruption arrow is providing between 5% and 10% res debuff and even for hard target elimination when you stack acid arrow on top of that it's a 10%-20% on that same target assuming acid arrow hits ofc. Oil Slick Arrow barely makes mobs flop anymore and the damage is quite anemic when the actual damage classes are carving entire mobs of +4s up in literal seconds. The entire mob grouping is often killed before a TA defender even has time to shoot all their arrows. Which means EMP Arrow is also pretty useless. So all you really bring a 10%/6.5% debuff AOE, a 20%/13% res debuff single target, and next to no damage. And if you're a Corruptor those debuff values are 7.5%/5% and 15%/10%. Honestly I'd rather just have another scrapper/blaster/sentinel instead of that pathetic amount of potential damage increase. Or better yet bring a Widow or Soldier and provide double leadership buffs and provide more than the Trick Arrow Defender ever could dream of to a high level team. And I LOVE my Trick Arrow, it was my main pre-sunset. The Current state of Trick Arrow makes me very sad, I feel like dead weight on high level teams and I don't see a way to fix it without yet more power creep or addressing the purple patch to rebalance basically the entire end game. If you're running leadership then your leadership toggles are prolly doing almost as much as your entire primary powerset :(. (ofc part of that is that leadership is arguably too good lol) If we were talking +2/+3 then sure, I'd agree with you, TA can crush +2 and is still pretty good +3. But that's unfortunately not what high level teams face and group damage is usually so high that +2/+3 mobs are instantly evaporated unless AOE caps are being hit. Debuffer sets just get destroyed by the purple patch on +4/+5 mobs. Empathy is still quite strong even late game, a large permanent damage/to hit/defense buff to over half your damage dealers via Fortitude is, by itself, more than TA brings to the table unfortunately :(. Traps can't even set down its stuff before a mob is dead or half dead. Nature is an odd choice to mention. It's prolly about as survivable as Empathy but provides less damage and must constantly refresh the survivability PBAOEs if they are being used. It's one offense increaser is Overgrowth, which is a very nice damage and to hit debuff....but has less than 50% uptime. And if we're saying IO recharge bonuses and the brokeness of Hasten...um...that applies to empathy buffs too :P. Corrosive enzymes is a 12.5%/8% res debuff after purple patch vs +4/+5. It's something but it's hardly great. Sonic Resonance brings plenty of -res so it can actually debuff in AOE for 15%/10% and single target 30%/20%. T I feel like you just threw out a padded list of everything but forcefield just for the sake of having a big list. I could see you making a decent arguement for about HALF of those power sets, but certainly not all of them...much as I might love some of them.

That's right, I said it's king....when it comes to team support. It's far and away the most used defender primary for a reason. Easy to use and understand, familiar to people from other games (but that's not true on these servers, we're almost all veterans here!), yet still top tier at end game and in the capable hands of a veteran. It provides both safety and offense to top tier levels, can reliably self heal, and the two pbaoe buffs also affect yourself...one of which is an endurance management tool. The reason kin is used for Controllers and Corruptors is because defender players are focusing on buffing the team. Corruptors are notorious for focusing on their own blasting (which is why they chose Corruptor instead of Defender, they are prioritizing blasting over team support) and you cannot use Fortitude or Adrenaline Boost on yourself, if you could no doubt empathy would be the most used Corruptor secondary too lol. Controllers use kin to boost the damage of their pets as well as themselves because applying fortitude to individual pets over and over again is a complete PITA and they are disposable too so a long duration long recharge buff is not a good fit for them. And again because you cannot self buff Fortitude and Adrenaline Boost. So it's again the choice on them focusing on their personal damage over the best buffing for the team.

I've also heard several people talk about MoG being bad or useless but my Regen Brute finds it quite useful and it feels close to balanced to me. My normal defenses handle most situations but if things start going ugly it gives me time to catch my breathe and re-establish control. OR if I get spiked and go down i can quickly pop back up with self rez and then regain aggro using MoG to regain control of the situation. The duration is low at 15 seconds but the recharge is also pretty fast at 4 minutes baseline (under 3 minutes with a single IO) so it's pretty much always up when needed. If 15 seconds after things went sideways isn't long enough to whittle down enemy dps enough to survive then IMO you shouldn't be winning that fight anyways. Sure bosses can take longer, but everything else shouldn't. It serves the exact purpose of being an emergency button used to gain control of a bad situation, which seems to be what T9s in armor sets are aimed to do in general. Though I do understand that with IO set bonuses this benefit can be lessened or be broken for defense oriented power sets. But in that case you've chosen to build that way instead of using that breathing room to build differently. If I was to make changes to T9s like elude, it'd be to make crashes soft crashes, shorten the cooldowns, and shorten the duration, and add flavor. My vision of them is an intended use case of "get control of bad situation while getting a badass momentary power spike". Slot efficient, up much more often, and not as punishing when they wear off. Soft crashes would be things like increasing your endurance costs by 100% and maybe custom penalties in the 10-30 seconds after it wears off instead of losing all endurance and toggle dropping you immeadiately. Examples of spitballed ideas for T9s and self rez's: - Unstoppable: 300 second recharge, 30 second duration with 70% of the current resistance buff baseline. New passive aspect: every hit you land increases your to-hit, damage, and resistance very slightly for 10 seconds to a max of 5 stacks. The passive aspect is always on but is increased greatly when the power is active. (This is where that 30% went). Now allows To-hit enhances and sets. When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled and the passive is disabled for 15 seconds. - Elude: 360 second recharge, 30 second duration with an additional 20% recharge buff. When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled and recharge is debuffed by 20% for 30 seconds. - Soul Transfer: Will revive you with no enemies around, but will do so with almost no hp and endurance as well as self stunned, similar to an awaken. If at least 5 enemies are hit then your recovery, to-hit, and damage will boosted for 10 seconds. Now accepts to-hit sets. - Power Surge: 240 second recharge, 15 second duration. When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled for 10 seconds. (don't forget about the EMP, no hard crash, lower cd, and lower duration makes the EMP a much larger and more reliable part of this power) - Hibernate: When you emerge from hibernation a cold wave radiates out from you (PBAOE) chilling nearby enemies, slowing their movement speeds and recharge. This power can now slot slow IOs and sets. - One with the Shield: 360 second recharge, 30 second duration. New passive: all attacks have a 5% chance to proc additional smashing damage (hitting them with your shield). While OwtS is active this becomes a 100% chance. When power wears off your endurance costs are doubled and you have a 0% chance to proc additional smashing damage for 15 seconds. - Stone Armor: Granite: lol nope this set needs a complete rework. IMO the base armors need to be buffed carry the set, rooted needs it's slow halved + let you jump and use combat jumping (albeit at slowed speeds), and granite needs to become a T9. - Strength of Will: Honestly with the soft 50% endo crash and reduced values this one already feels solid. - Moment of Glory: Keeps same duration and recharge but add a health sized regeneration buff passively. This buff doubles when the power is activated. This power can now slot healing IOs and sets.

I'm interested in seeing the Trick Arrow changes but I suspect part of the reason Trick Arrow underperforms currently is because it takes awhile to get running and then it becomes good during mid levels. However because of power creep you now commonly face +4s (and even +5s) at level 30+ and thanks to the purple patch debuff and control sets get pretty screwed over. And people getting their defenses all soft capped via IOs kinda screws over pure defense sets. So you're left with basically damage, damage, and more damage. And MMs get highly screwed over from this too. Thanks to leadership people can compensate for the to-hit and damage issues of the purple patch and IO sets give people the survivabiltiy they need to handle it but debuff/control/pet survivability has no such compensation and gets left swiftly behind since they do not have competitive options to boost those reliably across power sets. And honestly I'm not sure if we SHOULD be aiming to have everyone handle +4/+5 lol. All of the most popularly played defender sets are because they increase damage. Empathy is king by far due to it's ability to increase the damage and to hit of 4 people at once significantly (while increasing their defense) then Adrenaline boost supercharges someone. Then Regen/Recovery Aura takes care of endurance problems and heals most attrition damage that makes it through people's softcapped defenses. And if someone gets hit hard then it has direct heals and a rez. Many players still view Empathy as a "healer set". Empathy is one of the most powerful and reliable offense empowerment sets available. Thermal should, in theory, be better at increasing damage thanks to forge being even better than Fortitude at increasing damage, but it lacks any endurance management and has no answer to Adrenaline Boost...which is prolly the strongest single target buff in the game. So Empathy ends up being just as good or better at increasing the offense of a team while also being better at keeping them safe. Honestly empathy is and has been one of the strongest sets in the game, but still manages to maintain a reputation as a "healer" set by folks who don't actually understand how the set works. The only non-damage oriented set to crack the top 5 defender primaries is Force Field, because of all the "keep you safe" power sets it's prolly the strongest at pure safety, the easiest to do without screwing up, and the cheapest both endurance and power wise. This makes it the premier set for easily keeping an entire team safe while being able to just happily blast away like a discount blaster. Lowest Maintenance defender :P.

The windup mechanics and the overall slow animations are why I don't play Titan Weapons. It feels slow and plodding without the feeling of oomph for that speed....even if the actual mechanical numbers are superior. Doesn't matter if it's the best melee set if I don't enjoy playing it.

If you're getting stronger but you can only wield that power vs equally more challenging content then that's not power creep, that's just normal power progression. Existing content being easier during the even the leveling power curve because everyone is more powerful is what power creep is. Level 30+ teams these days feel like the same power level as level 50 teams used to feel like back on sunset. No incarnate needed.

Yeah the power creep is real, especially in teams. Between plentiful IOs and how many people have alot of spare endos endo these days it's not uncommon to see 3+ layers of leadershup buffs, more if Spiders/Widows are present. I've been able to engage into +4s without issue on Beasts due to this. +3 used to be a struggle for a great deal of end game teams and +4 able to be handled by very few. 7%-10% defense, +50%+ damage, and + 15%-20% to hit is a pretty huge difference. TBH Leadership is prolly too prevalent right now. I'd like to see changes that diversify the pool powers people use and that means some should prolly come down a little and others should come up. Not having every high level team rocking 3+ leaderships would definitely go a long way in +4 not being the expected mob level faced. +4 utterly screws over debuffers, some buffer sets, and Masterminds. Not to mention the power creep leans everything heavily towards "delete enemy mob" teams. TTK of the average +4 enemy mob is often low enough on a great deal of teams that control and sustainability just do not matter. Your team plows into the pack of mobs, they melt, and the fight doesn't even last long enough for support to be needed. I've had to switch characters numerous times because I was dead weight against +4s for this very reason. To-hit and damage have many ways of compensating with leadership being one of the most prevalant, debuffs and buffs really don't have the same amount of options and not near as accessible. Heck even common inspirations can help you overcome the +4 gap temporarily.

I was thinking that maybe we could get a power pool full of slottable versions of the inherents like Throw Knives and Taser and etc. I know the originals are pretty good so I'd be down with the slottable version being rebalanced in return for the ability to slot it. Maybe choosing the same one as your original gives it a small ACC bonus and replaces it. I just think it'd be cool to use those powers as part of some of my characters and they'd also make good "filler" attack powers to help people avoid taking primary/secondary powers they don't like. I'd actually be ok with this treatment happening to many of the temporary powers honestly. We definitely have enough weapons for a "firearms" power pool, a "street weapons" or "melee weapons" power pool, and a "utility belt" power pool for example. I know power pools are tight as is but more choices is more bettah :D. I mean not all things would qualify, for example we can't just give everyone the buff toggles or flash/stun grenades for balancing purposes, but the attacks/damage are things that can already be obtained by most ATs through their core power sets. But obviously it'd still be a case by case basis for each power.

Pretty much. I have a negative opinion of gankers from a "it's PVP!" angle. But as far as "this is how I like to play" I don't really have a problem with it. They are playing the game as it's designed. It's just PVP as much as a Smart Car is a Mercedes. Technically correct, the best kind of correct, but practically and realistically incorrect. And in games with actual real core open world objectives like Guild Wars 2, Dark Age of Camelot, and Elder Scrolls Online they serve a vital purpose in the overall scheme by picking off stragglers to disrupt reinforcement lines, forcing people to group up and coordinate or be REKT by classes they have no chance against. (outside of the rare anti-gank hunter like me when I deign to pursue that angle) But when you put a ganker vs traditional PVP players, they just tend to fail more often than not because they never learned how to FIGHT...they learned only how to gank. That's not something that tends to be true the other way around. And truly when it comes to server population open PVP and FFA servers fare very poorly in interest level relative to other types, usually outnumbered even by RP servers.

It's not anyone's dilemma to solve in THIS game. PVP is dead :D. Problem is de facto "solved". Badgers by and large won this battle handily in COH as the other poster mentioned.

Im totally down for it if it's own server. I feel it's fundamentally different to opt in at time of server choice vs opting in 20 hours into a game because of a mission or discovery that PVE content you want to complete is hidden in a PVP zone. FFA servers and open PVP servers are up front consent before you ever start, the way it should be. You should have an idea of what you're potentially going to experience as your type of player before you ever roll a character. But, well, those types of servers don't tend to get much traction even in PVP games. So I've come to the conclusion after 20 years tat PVP players are just general not interested in FFA or open world PVP.

Remember, this is those player archetypes I was talking about. Exploration type players like to explore and collect. But they often don't like PVP. Hence cognitive dissonance is created when you force them into PVP to explore and collect. Player types are pretty well studied at this point thanks to MTG and early MMORPGs.

I honestly agree with you regarding the contacts, that and the utterly dead PVP population have made the entire issue well....a non-issue. Now the only thing gated is badge hunting. Time spent badges are easy enough to game without risk, but exploration badges and pill box badges are decidedly PVE content nestled in a PVP zone. In the grand scheme of things I'd call it utterly irrelevant, HOWEVER keep in mind what the context of this thread is! They are trying to turn more PVE zones, content, and badges into zones other players can attack them. So in wider context of the thread it's not about the size of the problem but instead about the overall idea of converting badge hunting and PVE trips into PVP areas. Realistically it'd play out about the same. PVP zones would remain dead and badge hunters would be forced into PVP zones to do PVE objectives and occasionally get ganked. PVP would remain dead and badge hunters would get more annoyed.

PVE objectives in PVP zones will always be viewed this way. Because you're forcing players into playstyles they don't want to embrace their own playstyle. If it was just "you get 25% more exp from mobs in a PVP zone" it's one thing. But when it's exclusive badges, gear, and achievements that don't actually require fighting other players it's different. ESO gets away with it because they have a LUDICROUS amount of content :P. Completing even one of the 3 alliances fully takes hundreds of hours for a new player. And that's baseline game without all the DLC and Expansions. EDIT: This has more to do with "player types". Stuff like "killer", "achiever", "explorer", "socializer", etc. Each player has things they enjoy and don't enjoy doing that are broadly grouped into types of players. When you force players of one type to do activities designed for players of another type to get the things they want....people get upset and frustrated. It's really that simple. The fact I personally do all of them makes it easy for me, but it doesn't make those other folks irrelevant or their complaints invalid.

And the developers of Fallout 76 told us it'd have "16 times the detail" and "it just works". Peter Molyneux made all sorts of grandiose claims to the point he basically destroyed his own career despite being one of the main folks of several highly successful IPs. Half of the AAA game developers told us single player games and horror games were dead for 10 years and only recanted because of how much indies were crushing it in those genres. If you want to look at a single individual you can find whatever message you want backed by some developer or publisher or GM or etc. But none of them actually determine the realistic state of how things are now. Our collective interest and opinions, and more importantly how we spend our time/money, as the gaming community does. Similarly, we're the ones that made early access and "live service games" such a big deal. The industry is only responding to our money. Developers are just making decision based on the current ecosystem decided by gamer interest/spending. If badges are to be collected and quests are sending you to an area as a PVE player, you did not choose that. You were only warned what it would entail. You did not consent to it entailing that in the first place. ESO has the same problem with world completion and skill points pushing you into PVP zones. I like PVP, others don't and I don't like them being forced into it for PVE objectives.

The rules are a bit more nuanced than that. For example few would consider spawn camping PVP except people who spawn camp :D. Few would consider level 50s killing level 1s in a level 1 zone PVP even though it meets your definition except, again, those doing it. All those activities do is run players out of a server, which is why the idea of that being PVP has more or less gone away over the last 20 years. PVP thrives still, FFA servers and "open PVP" servers letting high levels camp low levels do not, because it just devolves into people fighting folks who cannot defend themselves. You can argue me all you want but people have spoken in a way much more important than online text, they chose their games/servers and where they spend their time. They like PVP, they don't consider FFA/"Open PVP" to be that and thus even large games have like 1 token server, if that. Smarter games are more like EVE or Archeage where players are never forced in dangerous areas but instead can choose to go there for high rewards with higher risk, but they can still obtain the same results in safer zones with slightly more time spent. That's dramatically different from a quest or badge or gear forcing you to go into PVP because they cannot be done/completed/obtained anywhere else. PVE players never consented to being forced into PVP zones for badges or quests. Those are optional design decisions the player never had any choice over that dictate how they experience their PVE. Saying they consented simply because they entered the zone is quite disingenuous. If, for example, I locked half your powerset powers away until I forced you into 40 hours of PVP, under your comment I could say you consented to that. But plainly the real answer is that no, the player did not consent to that and wouldn't want it. Just like players can not consent to cash shops being added to a game after release. "well you logged in didn't you, you consented!" The concept of consent is a bit more complicated than a forced or coerced decision with rewards/prizes Someone in a level 15 zone being ganked by a level 50 cannot fight back. You can say technically they can fight back, but realistically and practically they cannot. They are, at best, a speed bump. If your odds of winning any given fight, with player skill being reasonably equal, is less than 15% then you cannot fight back. It's not a fight, it's a one sided murder. Similarly if I wait for a defender 10 levels lower than me to have 3 bosses on them and then it's not a fight. In these cases it's just a gank. No PVP occurred. The term ganker isn't a slur, though gankers themselves are often viewed negatively for good reasons. Gankers are people who's primary method of "PVP" involves attacking people in compromised states. Mobs on them, low hp, low level, PVE players doing quests with little PVP experience, etc. If able to roam in areas with players much weaker/lower level than them they will overwhelmingly choose that option. They are not looking for any fights with other players, only easy kills that present as little challenge as possible. Some gankers will try to fight to protect "their territory" so they can keep getting easy kills, but most will not and will run the moment the fight becomes more or less even....regardless of whether they are still winning or not. Again, I've got 20 years of experience turning the tables on gankers, I understand them well. Even if you're 100% going to lose a fight and you know it, if you can make them think you're going to win even for a few moments they will normally try to run. They are not there to fight, they are there to gank, they are two entirely different mentalities. These players are traditionally near useless in real PVP situations and tend to avoid them because they have very little real PVP experience or skills. Ganking does not teach you the classes and how to fight them in a realistic scenario :).

You're changing what I said into another argument you believe you can counter easier. What you commented is not what I said. Also I specifically mentioned gankers, which is not the same thing as a PvP'er. Stop trying to redefine the subject as the original quote you replied to was about ganking. Gankers like to think of themselves as PvP'ers but they're not :). PvP requires at least two active participants/sides both with a reasonable chance of winning. When one side has no real chance of winning it's not a fight anymore and not PvP. Typically the thing gankers will do to target PvE players is regularly patrol past the locations they know said players are forced to go or traverse through for quests/badges. Basically all of them claim they want to PVP, but usually when real PVP shows up and they no longer have the clear advantage they quickly log off or move to greener pastures after a few scuffles at most. This happens time and time again in every game with FFA PVP or where PVE players get sent into PVP for quests. It's incredibly predictable. I'm one of those players who often hunts the hunters when they start harassing an area too much. When they lose the advantage they disappear, taking their ball and going home.

Honestly their comment was pretty civil. Most gankers are scum bags. Not all, but most. Because most gankers primarily target only those who they think have no real chance to fight back, which is usually people sent to a PVP zone by a quest or badge, people who are much lower level, and people who are fighting mobs already. And this is from someone who's played Mordred FFA server in Dark Age of Camelot, EQ 2 pvp servers, Age of Conan, Guild Wars 2, Archage, etc. I'm a PVPer in games that do it decently and I have 20+ years of experience at it. I have little to no respect for gankers and they trend heavily towards being substandard players who can't actually handle PVP against a capable opponent. I'd say to date I've killed gankers more than they've killed me at a rate of about 3:1, not because I'm that good but because they are just that bad that they still often lose against a competent player even with all the advantages in their favor if that player is ready for them.