Discord Weekly Discussion - Week 35: PVP

[El Foya]

6 minutes ago, Meretricious said:

For the moment, I find it hard to accept a blaster HP nerf because that already affects PvE negatively. A buff, on the otherhand, would be easier to implement since HP and all are percentages.

I actually agree with you about nerfing blaster HP back down, raising it was a good choice. My suggestion was to lower the bonus resistance blasters get in pvp from 40 to 20 instead,

[macskull]

24 minutes ago, grimreaper12k said:

Also that melee damage is often too low even in 1v1 melee "fiteclub" situations and many drag on for 10+mins or end in draws, which is only important because it shows that even in optimal conditions melee damage is lacking. Lastly, while gap closers like webnade and taunt do help, ranged classes tend to stack +range buffs and also have easy access to webnades so the effectiveness is diminished.

 

Maybe I'm just too thirsty for the days when a headsplitter crit was a death sentence for a blaster, but I'd at least like a reason to play kickball on a punchy dude again besides "spam taunt".

I wanted to address the highlighted part - the fact that a melee fiteklub duel can go on for 10+ minutes with neither killing the other while they're both standing toe-to-toe has less to do with the damage either character is putting out and more to do with how survivable they are. Hell, even if you take your standard ranged damage dealers and try to spike damage onto a Tanker or Brute you will probably not be able to kill them unless your damage is perfectly timed. If you stuck a Blaster in melee range of a Tanker and neither was allowed to move or use inspirations (which is pretty much what fiteklub is) the Tanker would win that fight nine times out of ten.

 

Re: +/- range and webnades... you can double-stack taunt and it'll floor an opponent's range, or at the very least force them close enough to you that you can close the gap and get attacks off while they're animating to attack you. Outside of the arena's temp webnade powers you either have to be devices, trick arrow, or traps to get webnades (or /TA on a Blaster but Entangling Net Arrow is banned in competitive arena play) and none of those are particularly common, or you have to run Mace Mastery for that webnade and end up with a defense shield which is in most cases pretty bad on squishies.

 

A big part of the "headsplitter crits used to hurt" thing is the change to normalizing damage vs animation times and the removal of unresisted critical damage. I'd be okay with making crits unresisted or at least partly unresisted again.

20 minutes ago, Troo said:

 

well, I can't argue that.

 

1 on 1 yes.

Add the possibility of another entering the frey and it changes. 

Numina, Sister Psyche, Back Alley Brawler, Manticore together vs a group of players can be a challenge. 4v4? Or, if the Freedom Phalanx had brains or could change tactics... Should pvp be more challenging than that? Maybe, maybe not.

 

What you've described is what we used to do to pvp melee monsters with a Rad/Dark corruptor. Never really much danger for the corruptor while an opponent got to choose. Try and run away or face a slow demoralizing defeat. Was that fair.. not really. She definitely wasn't defeating anyone with decent HP very quickly.

If any other player targets were around, that changed the dynamic. Toe to toe was a no no. Different tactics.

If against a more nuanced AT, that absolutely changed the dynamic. Different tactics.

 

@barrier I am of the opinion that high level pvp should be more a stalemate than a race to see who can spike who first. This is from an energy/regen stalker.

I loved open zone free for alls, base raids, 1 v 1 arena, and even gladiator matches and small team matches. The kickball shot caller spike fest.. meh. Seems to come down to which team can listen the best.

Heaven forbid a team that isn't using microphones wants to play. That type of pvp has a place - but it shouldn't dictate what happens elsewhere. 

 

Side note: The frantic button smashing to cycle targets in the video @grimreaper12k posted.. It made me laugh and sad at the same time.

You could put any number of AVs up against a single player and the only "difficulty" in that sense is that even with softcapped defense, eventually enough attacks will land that the player will die (though I've also soloed the ITF where you get to deal with Romulus and all the AV-level Nicti at the same time) I can get on my Stalker and AFK in the middle of one of the huge groups of monsters in the Hive for a long time and probably won't die. This game's PvE isn't challenging unless you intentionally make it more difficult for yourself, which is why I PvP.

 

The reason spiking is the most common thing you see in high-level PvP is because it's the most effective way to deal damage - if you're not coordinated on a target their Emp will heal them, or they'll evade around geometry, or they'll phase. It sounds simple in practice - "tab to the target, throw some attacks when the caller says 'go,' and move on to the next one" but there's a whole lot more to it than that.

 

[El Foya]

@macskull I'll give taunt another go, just remember being disappointed with it last time I tried using it. Forgot crits used to be unresisted, that might be a huge part of why my scrapper feels so underwhelming. Thanks!

[Illy]

I would get into this game's PvP if what I saw from videos looked like a tolerable experience. All I have ever seen is : "3, 2, 1, SNIPE" while people zip around with SS/SJ.

 

I'm a pvper at heart-- I come from EVE and Guild Wars. I would like to PvP in CoH... but every AT has to be viable. Right now it seems like coh pvp is just a game of shot-put with blasters.

[macskull]

19 minutes ago, Illy said:

I would get into this game's PvP if what I saw from videos looked like a tolerable experience. All I have ever seen is : "3, 2, 1, SNIPE" while people zip around with SS/SJ.

 

I'm a pvper at heart-- I come from EVE and Guild Wars. I would like to PvP in CoH... but every AT has to be viable. Right now it seems like coh pvp is just a game of shot-put with blasters.

Honestly the movement speed is what makes this game's PvP so good. Way more reflex-based and fast-paced than other MMO PvP tends to be.

[Zenex]

1 hour ago, Illy said:

I would get into this game's PvP if what I saw from videos looked like a tolerable experience. All I have ever seen is : "3, 2, 1, SNIPE" while people zip around with SS/SJ.

 

I'm a pvper at heart-- I come from EVE and Guild Wars. I would like to PvP in CoH... but every AT has to be viable. Right now it seems like coh pvp is just a game of shot-put with blasters.

Back before i13 you could pvp with any AT with many workable power combinations (some better than others) including scrappers, brutes, and tankers, the exception being peacebrings and warshades really.

 

This is where i13 came along and in an attempt to make pvp more attractive to those who pve they made a bunch of changes I.E. Heal decay(gone) Travel suppression(gone) Mez overhaul, Crippling DR, and completely changing how powers work from pve to pvp. 

 

These changes are what made pvp as so un diverse as it is at the moment both in AT and powersets, Buffers and Debuffs are far less useful now, and the name of the game is who can deal the greatest amount of damage fastest which Blasters do best along with increased surviverablilty blasters are what you'll see.

 

4 hours ago, macskull said:

spiking is the most common thing you see in high-level PvP is because it's the most effective way to deal damage - if you're not coordinated on a target their Emp will heal them, or they'll evade around geometry, or they'll phase

Mac nailed it to as why you are seeing nothing but 3 2 1 snipe.

[Doc_Scorpion]

13 hours ago, macskull said:

If you're going to make further mechanics changes, they should not be designed with the primary objective of getting new players involved because there's no guarantee that will happen

The nature of games (incl minigames/games within games, such as PvP) is that they lose players over time...  (There's a million reasons not involving the game itself that players move on.  New jobs, new IRL partners, all the way up to death.)  Unless you have a way of attracting and keeping new players, the game and/or minigame will invariably die.  No, there's no guarantee that new players will come - but you have to try.  That's why, back in the OG days, the dev team tried to find a way to attract new players to PVP.  If they didn't, there were absolutely inevitable consequences.  To a thoughtful dev team (which the current one certainly is), these considerations still apply.
 

13 hours ago, macskull said:

unless you're making those changes with the input of people that actually do PvP, you're likely to alienate those players as well.

The surest way to kill something is to tailor it to the unavoidably narrow and short term interests of the current players.  (Plus the more general principle as articulated back in the day by BABs:  "The best thing a dev can do is listen to their players, the worst thing a dev can do is listen to their players".)  Players rarely think like Devs and almost never keep the larger picture in mind or remember to take the longer view into account.

Even in cases like I13, the devs did take the input of players into account - but the players need to realize that "taking their input" and "giving the players what they ask for" are not equivalent statements.

[Illy]

7 hours ago, Zenex said:

Back before i13 you could pvp with any AT with many workable power combinations (some better than others) including scrappers, brutes, and tankers, the exception being peacebrings and warshades really.

 

This is where i13 came along and in an attempt to make pvp more attractive to those who pve they made a bunch of changes I.E. Heal decay(gone) Travel suppression(gone) Mez overhaul, Crippling DR, and completely changing how powers work from pve to pvp. 

Are the changes considered a failure? 

[barrier]

11 minutes ago, Illy said:

Are the changes considered a failure? 

Yes.

 

We had two active PVP ladders on test and multiple leagues. Between 2006 and 2008, the time when I was actively pvping on a test team, we had 2 active ladders (red and blue) and at least 2 HUGE leagues where we were picking from draft rolls with probably upwards of 150-200 people to pick from (I captained a team back then).

 

That would be nothing short of a dream today and even at its post i13 high point, we probably only had 6-7 active teams in the 2011 league.

 

Most arena PVPers left after i13 - and with good reason.

Edited February 1, 2020 by barrier

[Gibson99]

15 hours ago, barrier said:

Want to tell me more about the last time developers took your point of view to task?

Can you tell us your PvP view points the devs have implemented? 

Because PvP is not as good as it had been prior to i13 and I need to know if you're to blame for the current brokeness. 😉

 

[siolfir]

1 hour ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

The nature of games (incl minigames/games within games, such as PvP) is that they lose players over time...  (There's a million reasons not involving the game itself that players move on.  New jobs, new IRL partners, all the way up to death.)  Unless you have a way of attracting and keeping new players, the game and/or minigame will invariably die.  No, there's no guarantee that new players will come - but you have to try.  That's why, back in the OG days, the dev team tried to find a way to attract new players to PVP.  If they didn't, there were absolutely inevitable consequences.  To a thoughtful dev team (which the current one certainly is), these considerations still apply.
 

The surest way to kill something is to tailor it to the unavoidably narrow and short term interests of the current players.  (Plus the more general principle as articulated back in the day by BABs:  "The best thing a dev can do is listen to their players, the worst thing a dev can do is listen to their players".)  Players rarely think like Devs and almost never keep the larger picture in mind or remember to take the longer view into account.

Even in cases like I13, the devs did take the input of players into account - but the players need to realize that "taking their input" and "giving the players what they ask for" are not equivalent statements.

I agree with the first part that I highlighted, and completely disagree with the second. The surest way to kill something is to completely revamp it so that nothing is recognizable from what the people who used to like it enjoyed, because, as you yourself stated, "there's no guarantee that new players will come." That's what happened with the i13 changes - many of which were suggestions from threads like this one, but they were all implemented at once and then never revisited when there were complaints about how things interacted.

 

So instead of trying to gain interest by completely revamping everything to cater to some phantom player that will likely never be interested, you instead listen to the people who enjoy it and figure out why they enjoy it, what makes it unique here, and try to expand on those ideas, so that the people who like it will like it as much or more (theoretically increasing retention of the people who would leave as things grow stagnant), and bring in new players who are looking for those things as well.

[Gibson99]

10 hours ago, macskull said:

Honestly the movement speed is what makes this game's PvP so good. Way more reflex-based and fast-paced than other MMO PvP tends to be.

This movement speed is really fun in PvP but movement needs to be susceptible to Slows from debuffs. 

That's what made Ice Armor great because of its inherent ability to resist slows. Now every PvP toon has inherent slow resistance and that makes no sense.

Slows are by far the biggest PvP element missing from today's PvP and this needs to be addressed ASAP.  

 

Edited February 1, 2020 by Gibson99

[barrier]

1 hour ago, Gibson99 said:

Can you tell us your PvP view points the devs have implemented? 

Because PvP is not as good as it had been prior to i13 and I need to know if you're to blame for the current brokeness. 😉

 

I'll start with two easy Homecoming fixes that were heavily lobbied by voices coming from the arena teams. You can thank people like Dan Petro and everyone who pushed for the mez fixes the next time you get hit with a hold in RV and it's not an 10 second slotted controller dark hold or next time you get lancered by a beam and you don't end up stunned for 8 seconds straight.

 

I also specifically asked for the nerf to Hybrid which was granting mez protection and that was fixed.

 

On live, arena PVPers drove the devs to do minor fixes like correcting stalagmites on dominators (used to be a base 7 second duration), and unresisted debuffs in poisonous ray after i13, and major changes like adding the the option to play without movement suppression and heal decay in the arena, and fixing the elusivity issues that propped up around i13. I specifically remember making a post explaining the stupidity of playing a fire/sr brute with darkest night and chasing squishies in movement suppression all around RV while being basically unkillable because of how elusivity worked - within weeks elusivity was cut properly cut down.

[Illy]

Well, although my opinion will probably be resented because I don't yet pvp, making CC relevant again as well as melee classes, and the mechanic of travel suppression, would cause me to pvp. Those two things would address the issues I have with it. 

 

Have never heard or played a game with such imbalanced pvp that out of 10? archetypes, there is basically a single one that is utilized. 

[barrier]

8 minutes ago, Illy said:

Have never heard or played a game with such imbalanced pvp that out of 10? archetypes, there is basically a single one that is utilized. 

 

That is a broadly-held misconception.

 

I'm going to run you through a list of examples:

 

Controllers - My arena team has run a pretty successful comp that included a mind/nature controller, as well as several other comps that have included poison controllers. The gold-standard of empathy controllers is a grav/emp and most teams run one. Ill/emps are pretty common too.

Dominators - Earth/fires are a pretty solid part of the current meta because they provide the tightest spike timing available in the game (tied with fire/plant blasters). Mind/* doms are also pretty meta when it comes to mez comps.

Tanks - Tanks serve a taunting function and all but one of the arena teams have run tanks.

Corruptors - You'd be hard-pressed to find a team that doesn't run a nature corruptor in the current meta. Poison corrs are solid.

Blasters - Beam and fire blasters are everywhere.

Defenders - I play a rad/beam defender a ton and so do others. It is not unusual to see nature/ice defenders on a lot of the most common comps. Emp defenders are extremely common as well.

Scrappers - Zone is full of them, so if they suck so much, I wonder why people still play them? They are the happy-medium AT for zone pvp.

Brutes - Same as tanks. I play an SS/Rad taunter.

Stalkers - Everpresent in zones. Just like scrappers.

Mastermind - I basically main a mastermind in 8v8s, so I'm not sure what to tell you here. Nature and Kin MM's are not uncommon.

Warshades - Are trash.

Peacebringers - This is an information/build-style issue. I've seen people successfully kickball on peacebringers as offense with off-heals.

 

Did I miss something?

 

I am also not accepting the "oh that class ain't meta". If it is represented in scrims and not just in test comps, then it's working.

[M3z]

17 hours ago, Troo said:

Side note: The frantic button smashing to cycle targets in the video @grimreaper12k posted.. It made me laugh and sad at the same time.

AGREED, these skill less button mashers make me sad too. There is no skill or thought in this kind of pvp, It's just a bunch of blasters tab targeting to same target! No thought, skill or strategy, even if they'd like you to believe that. People actually play like this and think it's fun? And they play like this since i8? and who are these ladder pvpers who think they know what's best? I think there should be an i13 part 2 to take out the rest of these so called "pvpers" (really they are just trolls!)

[gza79]

I guess all the fun times I had in pvp in this game were pre i13.  I was excited to get back into pvp when homecoming surfaced last year but was immediately let down when I found out my holds didn't hold and playing a scrapper was like playing a game of cat and mouse where no one wins. I still believe melee needs some serious tuning as if you look at most teams they may have one tank or brute taunt bot but they are still made up of mostly ranged based toons.  All ranged sets get melee powers as well but there is no incentive to take them currently.  Maybe I am in the minority but I enjoyed the days of blappers because it added more dimension to the game.

[macskull]

2 hours ago, Gibson99 said:

This movement speed is really fun in PvP but movement needs to be susceptible to Slows from debuffs. 

That's what made Ice Armor great because of its inherent ability to resist slows. Now every PvP toon has inherent slow resistance and that makes no sense.

Slows are by far the biggest PvP element missing from today's PvP and this needs to be addressed ASAP.  

 

This is a combination of things - all melee armor sets get 30% (I think?) debuff resistance for free if they don't already have it, the -maxrunspeed attribute was removed from movement slow powers in PvP, and movement speed buffs/debuffs DR pretty harshly. Recharge slows are still a thing and are still very painful, but I agree that movement slows should be useful again. If nothing else it'd give teams more incentive to run a kin.

[siolfir]

5 hours ago, barrier said:

Did I miss something?

Sentinels.

[GM Miss]

Discussion on this topic closes tonight - get those last minute suggestions in! 😄

[barrier]

1 hour ago, siolfir said:

Sentinels.

Yeah those are generally trash. Not going to argue that one.

[Zenex]

2 hours ago, GM Miss said:

Discussion on this topic closes tonight - get those last minute suggestions in! 😄

I think bringing back movement speed debuffs would be a big plus 

[barrier]

Just now, Zenex said:

I think bringing back movement speed debuffs would be a big plus 

I mean, a good way of doing that would be to partially revert the nerf to power boost. My cold mm can't slow anything anymore, at least before the power boost nerf, it could once in a while.

[Gibson99]

7 hours ago, macskull said:

This is a combination of things - all melee armor sets get 30% (I think?) debuff resistance for free if they don't already have it, the -maxrunspeed attribute was removed from movement slow powers in PvP, and movement speed buffs/debuffs DR pretty harshly. Recharge slows are still a thing and are still very painful, but I agree that movement slows should be useful again. If nothing else it'd give teams more incentive to run a kin.

Today's top tier -recharge is negligible compared to that of the past. It's not "still very painful." 

Yesterday's top tier -recharge was a major impediment because power trays disappeared. This -recharge is what one would call "very painful."

If offensive toons can defeat squishies with a few attacks, then these squishes should be able slow them to a crawl and have their powers tray disappear.

 

[macskull]

6 minutes ago, Gibson99 said:

Today's top tier -recharge is negligible compared to that of the past. It's not "still very painful." 

Yesterday's top tier -recharge was a major impediment because power trays disappeared. This -recharge is what one would call "very painful."

If offensive toons can defeat squishies with a few attacks, then these squishes should be able slow them to a crawl and have their powers tray disappear.

 

 Literally nothing has changed about -recharge between pre-I13 and post-I13. It's not like movement slows where they removed -maxrunspeed from the PvP attributes.

 

EDIT: I suppose that's not entirely true, Defender debuffs used to be unresisted and now they're not, but almost no non-melee builds have slow resistance and most of the melee sets that don't get it in PvE only get 30% in PvP.

Edited February 2, 2020 by macskull