Illy

I searched for a storyline guide, and low and behold this thread popped up. Its exactly what I wanted, thank you for making this.

Continue developing pvp around the interests of private, arranged fight clubs and artificially balanced arena matches, and you will see that 2.4% sink to 1.2% in no time flat. No one who is interested in pvp but has never gotten their feet wet wants to awkwardly elbow their way into these insular and idiosyncratic cliques. But that's the only option they're given if they want to start pvping: learn how to adhere to a strictly enforced doctrine of self-nerfing and arbitrary archetype bans. I'm telling you this from the outside looking in: its a cancerous scenario, and the un-initiated don't want anything to do with it. We're all too old now to show up for try-outs in some video game. That's why I suggested bringing the pvp to the noobs instead by introducing some form of world pvp, even if its just the option to flag yourself for pvp. Zone and world pvp allows them to play at their own pace, their own way, with whatever powerset they choose, and with whoever they want. Its way more friendly to the larger population of CoH than sweaty arena matches.

I didn't bother reading the post you're reacting to, but I expected when creating this thread that a few PVE-oriented players would be moved to visceral anger at the mere mention of pvp. I was not disappointed. They came to this thread to express their bizarre hatred of "pvpers" (I guess we're a "type"?). Its not worth interacting with them.

When players must resort to campaigning in order to raise pvp activity, in lieu of quality mechanics which by default attract people to pvp, they only prolong the miserable slow-death of the activity while at the same time expending huge amounts of effort, and for so little return. In my experience, when the burden is placed on the shoulders of players, those shoulders prove much to feeble even to save activity levels, much less bring about some kind of restoration. A more personal answer, though, is that I am one of those players who will get ganked by a min/maxer with a billion dollar build-- I'm a noob compared to most of these people, as I've had no reason to believe so far that a significant time-investment would be worth it for me, not until I gain some indication that pvp is on the rise. So if someone wants to exert themselves toward this effort, though it would be futile in any case, it would have to be someone who is, for lack of a better term, a veteran.

A server merger and the ability to flag oneself for open-world pvp is my last thought after reading all the responses. Just my opinion. But I don't think any idea would really succeed unless the general player-population issue is sorted by introducing a server merger.

Like America said, we aren't customers, so I'm not sure cost is relevant. Your next point is a valid one in that the pvp population was probably never large enough to make such a server popular, and if there aren't a high amount of players on such a server, the mechanic of open-world pvp would be pointless to begin with. I'm not sure it would have happened on live even if the interest had been there. The chorus of complaints or requests which arise from huge swaths of an MMO playerbase tend to go on unheard more often than not. But yeah, the option to flag yourself for pvp seems to be the more reasonable approach. It would be cool if they could implement that.

Even when a separate server is created for those who feel oppositely? Open-world pvp is a style preferred by a sizeable enough portion of MMO playerbases, which is why several MMOs feature it.

Sounds like a good idea to me. It would make paragon city much more immersive to see heroes and villains battling it out every once in awhile. Giving players the option to "flag" themselves for pvp has had success in other games.

My next question is, if someone organized a once-weekly zone pvp night, perhaps on saturdays, do you there are enough players to make it worth it? Could it be popular?

This was a thoughtful response. PvP not being in the "dna" of CoH is probably a factor that can't be overstated.

I'll do that, thanks for the suggestion.

This is fair, I'll concede to most of these points. I was surprised to see how few players were online tonight in general. Even if the most attractive pvp system imaginable were devised, there probably aren't enough players around anymore to make anything of it.

I'm not surprised that you think the people who still pvp in CoH are the "pvp" sort. The real pvpers left long ago.

Your only suggestion so far was to continue to listen to the same pvp community whose suggestions have been used to tune and tweak pvp into the current state that it is. We'll have to agree to disagree I guess. I'm completely the opposite; I think radical changes are the only thing that save dying features in MMOs, but that's just me.

Nothing like what I suggested was attempted... Nothing even close.