Switch "Echo" zones to free for all zones

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, Black Zot said:

 

The evidence is already there, in this or any other game you care to look at, that adding open PvP to a zone does not and cannot increase traffic in said zone.  Your hope is an illusion at best.

I am open to reviewing the evidence you mention.

[Ferrus_Xeno]

No thank you, PVP has never been liked in this game except by a VERY vocal minority.  Like Apparition said, I would just avoid the zone completely.

[Glacier Peak]

4 minutes ago, Ferrus_Xeno said:

No thank you, PVP has never been liked in this game except by a VERY vocal minority.  Like Apparition said, I would just avoid the zone completely.

Thank you for your post. Perhaps a middle ground could be found or compromise could be reached for the folks who do not support my suggestion. 

[Ralathar44]

As someone who loved PVP in many games, my first MMORPG being Dark Age of Camelot, I've got to say HECK NO.  PVP was never a thing in this game and is not going to be a thing.  It's not fun or balanced for most people including people of the PVP crowd like me.   All it would result in is frustration in people who wanted to experience the content of those zones and get the badges and people would go to those zones LESS.  Nobody wants to get ganked by some twink who spends all their time in PVP and has dumped billions into their build while they are just trying to get badges or experience the content on their mid level alt.  Especially since said gankers typically wait for you to have mobs on you in traditional open world PVP cowardice fashion or camp the routes you need for things like badges. (I killed so many would be gankers in EQ 2 it's not funny lol)

This game is about making neat characters, experiencing different playstyles, rolling alts, experiencing story lines, farming, chilling with chill people, etc.  It's basically the polar opposite of the PVP mentality AND the mechanics of PVP in City of Heroes are quite frankly imbalanced stinky butt :P.  And I say this as someone who has gone through all the balance tiltowhirl of DAOC and GW 2 and WHO and EQ 2 and Archage and Age of Conan and etc :P.

If someone like the PVP in this game, I hope they have fun, but they need to understand that it's not great and simply not wanted by the overwhelming majority of the playerbase and that's why it failed.  I'd even prefer the PVP of Champion's Online, just as broken but at least the zombie mode was interesting in a way PVP in COH just isn't.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Ralathar44

[Black Zot]

10 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

I am open to reviewing the evidence you mention.

 

Look at any PvP zone, in any MMO.  Odds are, it's dead quiet compared to the PvE zones.  Why?  Because open PvP is 99% some poor sap getting stomped on by an adversary he can't possibly defend himself against.  Nobody enjoys being bullied - imagine that.  The only traffic in these zones is the handful of people willing to endure said bullying to achieve some PvE goal, and the bullies that hunt them.

 

4 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Thank you for your post. Perhaps a middle ground could be found or compromise could be reached for the folks who do not support my suggestion. 

 

There is no middle ground - a zone either allows PvP and is empty, or forbids it and might see some activity depending on what else there is to do there.  If you want to add foot traffic to a zone, add missions and PvE objectives that point there.  Forcing PvP on people just encourages them to find other zones - or other games - to spend their time.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

While I agree that PvP isn't particularly popular in this game, the suggestion wasn't to add zones, it was to change existing and underutilized zones in to ones which supported and incentivized player visits. 

At least to me, these would be better utilized as zones for much needed incarnate level co-op content instead of PvP.  There are already plenty of lower level zones in my opinion.

[Greycat]

Absolutely not, thanks.

 

If it were hard to get into BB, Siren's, WB or RV because of the PVP population, you may have a point, but right now you'd just be giving more people who want nothing to *do* with PVP even *more* reason to avoid the zones. There's not enough of a PVP population to even entertain the thought of the idea of this.

 

These zones may not be *heavily* used, but they are used.

 

On top of it, we very specifically do *not* need a level 1-15 PVP zone. There's enough of a power disparity in BB with 15-25 (even ignoring the +5 levels of powers when exemping down.) We don't need someone getting their jollies messing with people that have all of 1-2 attacks and nothing (or TOs, which are essentially nothing) in them. (Note I don't call those people PVPers. THese would be the same people who used to enjoy teleporting people off tall buildings - thus the devs adding the "prompt teleport" prompt - or into guard towers, thus prompting a redesign with a back exit. These people are known as "asses.")

 

Edit: To be clear, this is not coming from someone anti-PVP. I used to enjoy PVP, even if I didn't build for it. Some of my fondest memories of the game on live are things like my ma/regen stalker and a ma/regen scrapper fighting for a good 15 minutes straight and getting nowhere  (it was amusing,) or my corr, another corruptor and a dom holding Siren's for a good while until there were just too many heroes, or - well, multiple things with my energy/energy brute. I could go on. Even here, I go into PVP zones expecting PVP. I've even gone in looking for it, burning time on (say) the Sirens "battles" and having nobody show up for a good hour and change during prime time.

 

Even with that, I'm opposed to this idea.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Greycat

[Glacier Peak]

10 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

At least to me, these would be better utilized as zones for much needed incarnate level co-op content instead of PvP.  There are already plenty of lower level zones in my opinion.

This is a fair alternative and I would support this suggestion. I think it would require a tremendous amount of investment of time and resources though, so I'm more inclined to my suggestion which would just require a dev command to flag all for PvP.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

39 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

This is a valid observation. As I mentioned in my OP, these zones do not serve any game play function besides players like myself badging there or going to chill. And I agree, I can't prove my suggestion wouldn't end up doing the opposite of what I intended. My hope is it doesn't though!

 

Thank you 

Uhm yeah at this point I think you are either being intentionally obtuse to try to play the innocent, or.... nope yeah i think your just being willfully obtuse about this, because there is zero chance anything positive could come from this.

 

Players go to echoes for all sorts of reasons, and making them a pvp zone is something I can promise you the vast majority of CoHers here now or who may eventually find their way here would ever want to see. For example going to hunt mot in old DA. yeah in that hellish mist we really want ganking stalkers waiting for around to sucker punch the GM hunting groups and fuck them over.

 

You can not use things like hope, and feelings to fuel game dev energy. The team is small, their resources thin, and anything they do needs to be aimed at things the majority will want and enjoy.

 

Needs of the many, outweigh the wants of a few who get their kicks from PKing.

[Ukase]

2 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

This is a suggestion, based on my opinion. I expect people to disagree or feel strongly about this suggestion, so I look forward to the discussion.

 

I love the look of these old zones and enjoyed them so much back on live just as much. It was surprised to see them tucked away in the back Ouro portal (or base porters) when I started playing on HC. Since they don't have contacts or system functions (tram to other zones, arena, AE, auction houses, etc.) they would be easy zones to switch with little time or resource investment. They could all be switched to Player versus Everything zones (including other players, like Warburg).

 

I'd say Echo: Galaxy City would be a great Level 1-15 zone. Echo: Faultline would work with Level 15-30 (imagine those huge drops off the sides of the tall cracks with a knockback!). Echo: Dark Astoria Level could be 30-49 ( imagine that awesome zone with the music and ambience!). I say cap at Level 49 to give a high level PvP zone without Incarnates.

 

PROS: 

• "New" Zones for PvP
• Gives players another reason to visit the zone besides gathering the exploration and history badges. 

 

CONS:

• ???

 

Let's hear it!

Reality: Volunteer development staff. 
Priorities: Functionality & maintenance & server stability

Truth is, next to nobody uses Siren's call. Except maybe to hunt boss Warriors for the defeat badge, or get the explorations. I say this because when I'm there getting these things done, nobody is there. Ever. Never. Obviously, I'm not there all the time, so it could be that a few folks go there for actual pvp, but I highly doubt it. Despite how easy HC has made it to have an exemp build, a max-boosted build and a pvp build, rarely anybody uses the pvp zones we have, except maybe on indom. The only reason folks go to bloody bay is for Shivans, and explorations, and maybe to kill shivans instead of doing that ouro arc that's got nothing but shivans in it. 

Warburg and RV may see an occasional fight here and there, but most of the time it's a pvp-er getting excited about seeing a badge hound in there and they pounce. Given the chatter, it's rarely any kind of contest for the pvp-er and next to no fun for the badge hound. 

IF we saw that 10% of the player base was routinely using the pvp zones we have for non-badge activity (sorry folks, pill boxes are a badge effort, and not pvp) I could get behind it. But CoH is not a game that has an high pvp player base, because pvp in CoH is stupid. Diminished returns are stupid. Having to make a special build to participate is not making folks any more eager to participate. Feeling you have to have a special powerset combo for a given AT isn't helpful either. 

I don't know what the solution to pvp is for CoH  - but it's not more zones. 

[Rathulfr]

No, thank you.  I'm not a fan of PvP at all.  I don't think we need any more PvP zones.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

While I agree that PvP isn't particularly popular in this game, the suggestion wasn't to add zones, it was to change existing and underutilized zones in to ones which supported and incentivized player visits. 

 

I believe there is a Level 11 cap for using the Ouro portal, (and Level 15 for the Ouro flashback content). That is in line with my suggestion of Echo: Galaxy City being a Level 15-30 zone. 

For use of Ouro, it's level 14. Level 15 to actually do any ouro arcs. To get the portal (and progress on the day badge) on HC servers, it's level 1. On live, you could try to get to ouro via Echo:Galaxy as a sub level 14, and it would port you back to Atlas within a few seconds. 

As for increasing traffic in the zones, let's keep in mind what they are: relics of the past. 

Echo:DA does see a fair share of traffic for Adamastor. 

It could be that Echo:RWZ could stand to have a drop ship or Ukon Gr`ai make an appearance from time to time. 
Echo:Galaxy could stand to have some gigantic Shivan plague the area. 
Echo:Atlas...honestly, it makes no sense to me why Echo:Atlas even exists...dunno what you'd put there. It's only slightly different from the regular Atlas. Maybe I missed that bit of lore. 

[AerialAssault]

Why do Echo zones even need "more foot traffic"?. They're snapshots of a time gone-by, a faded memory kept alive by literal techno-magic, an interactive museum of what once was. I don't really see why they should be anything more than that.

Edited August 11, 2020 by AerialAssault

[ShardWarrior]

16 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

This is a fair alternative and I would support this suggestion. I think it would require a tremendous amount of investment of time and resources though, so I'm more inclined to my suggestion which would just require a dev command to flag all for PvP.

Why would it require a "tremendous amount of investment of time and resources"?  The zones are already built.

[Grouchybeast]

I feel like I'm fundamentally missing something about this suggestion.

 

There's already such a small PVP population in the game that it almost all takes place in the Arena + one out of the four PVP zones.  And your proposal to make PVP more popular is to take the miniscule sub-population of PVPers who PVP in the other three zones and spread them out over seven zones instead?

 

What's the actual mechanism by which you envisage this increasing the number of players who want to PVP?  Badgers don't convert into PVPers when they've collected the exploration badges in four zones, but eight zones will somehow definitely do the trick?  I genuine don't understand the thinking behind this.

Edited August 11, 2020 by Grouchybeast

[Greycat]

8 minutes ago, Ukase said:

It could be that Echo:RWZ could stand to have a drop ship or Ukon Gr`ai make an appearance from time to time. 
Echo:Galaxy could stand to have some gigantic Shivan plague the area. 
Echo:Atlas...honestly, it makes no sense to me why Echo:Atlas even exists...dunno what you'd put there. It's only slightly different from the regular Atlas. Maybe I missed that bit of lore. 

No "shivan plagues" in Echo:Galaxy, please. Or dropships in the RCS.

 

Atlas exists because it looks different, pre graphical update, and there are people who didn't like it. Want a quick example? Compare city hall old and new.

 

 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

I should point out that I actually do enjoy good PvP. Going all the way back to pen and paper D&D, nothing imo gets the blood flowing like having to roll on your best bro in RL because your character needs that holy relic for his church and the rogue you brought along for traps and locks wants to sell it to the highest bidder.

 

Or a game with even half way decent PvP. Hell Age of Conan in its first few months before it followed wow with pvp gear and gear in general being buffed up and being more important then the class build and player knack with their combo system, stealth system etc.

 

On that game during its golden days of the first month or 2 after it launched I played a ranger who went everywhere pvp could occur in stealth, slowly traveling, always using tracking to have an idea if another player was about, and if I found one within 5 levels of me above or below, even on tankier melee classes that would murder me if they got in close fast enough, I loved the pvp and engaged at every opportunity in open world one on ones, yes always from the point of ambush.

 

But that isnt to say I didnt take on more then 1 now and then. One day My aquilonian ranger was wandering the deserts of stygia, when I caught the tracks of a pair traveling together. One was a demon  summoning witch, the other a hellish blackgaurd clad in heavy plate and carrying a mighty two handed sword. Both about my level.

 

So I stalked these 2 for nearly an hour, watching them, and they were not clueless, one of them must of caught a glimpse of my foot prints in the sand or the like and began to use their search regularly to break my stealth, I had to step up my stalking and use terrain to keep them from seeing me, always just a dune or two away but always on their track.

 

Finally they approached a small village, more a trading post and few huts, at an oasis, and my chance came. The warrior must of needed to sell or turn ina  quest there, but the witch waited on her horse just outside the gate. And this is when i struck. A volley of arrows flew, and then i leapt upon her with sword and dagger and finished her quickly. My danger sense tingled and I spun around just as her warrior companion came charging down the hill towards me. Now many a ranger would of attempted to leave a snare to slow him down and flee. But by chance this warrior coming at me was on the only other class Id been playing, so I knew what was coming at me.

 

As he closed blades flashed, we circled and parried and strove to complete our comboes while breaking the others, but he didnt know the arts of the melee ranger, few ever bothered with them, and I knew his own arts as well as my own. So after a heated 20 seconds or so, he too lay dead alongside his witch friend.

 

And both those players gave me huge props for it. We ended up becoming friends. Each fight was a fair contest that only my use of ambush tactics and player skill let me win against them both in the end. I learned it had even been a trap I had sprung and managed to fight my way through. They had thought for sure that the witch could of kept me busy enough for the warrior to double back, and had I been a pure archery ranger spec I may well have fallen to it

 

However the BIG dif between a game like AOC and CoH is that PVP was baked into that game from the get go, and at least until they added stupid pvp tiers and gear it was pretty fun even with the classes not so evenly matched as long as you were around 5 levels of each other. Also that game worlds setting, in the world of conan, no one is truly to be trusted, no wandering stranger on the road is to be treated as any less of a threat then a pack of starving hell hounds.

[TraumaTrain]

5 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

We actually have four PvP zones

Yes, four, but three of them are underutilized. RV is the only one I ever see actual PvPers in; they want their incarnate abilities, I guess.

[srmalloy]

4 hours ago, Black Zot said:

Look at any PvP zone, in any MMO.  Odds are, it's dead quiet compared to the PvE zones.  Why?  Because open PvP is 99% some poor sap getting stomped on by an adversary he can't possibly defend himself against. 

From what I've seen in other MMOs -- and one of the things that encouraged me to join CoH just after launch was that it didn't have PvP -- is that entirely too much of PvP consists of people whose only measure of their "1337 5k1LLz" (and, yes, I'm using 'leet' deprecatingly, as many of them are so firmly wedded to it that I wonder if they can actually write coherent English) as a gamer is how fast their level-capped combat god with BiS gear can gank newbies fresh out of the starting zone, roaming around looking to bump their gank score. Sort of like people measuring their worth by how many ants they've stepped on.

Edited August 11, 2020 by srmalloy

[Glacier Peak]

7 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Why would it require a "tremendous amount of investment of time and resources"?  The zones are already built.

Adding Incarnate content to the Echo zone was what my quote was referring to. 

[Glacier Peak]

6 hours ago, Grouchybeast said:

I feel like I'm fundamentally missing something about this suggestion.

 

There's already such a small PVP population in the game that it almost all takes place in the Arena + one out of the four PVP zones.  And your proposal to make PVP more popular is to take the miniscule sub-population of PVPers who PVP in the other three zones and spread them out over seven zones instead?

 

What's the actual mechanism by which you envisage this increasing the number of players who want to PVP?  Badgers don't convert into PVPers when they've collected the exploration badges in four zones, but eight zones will somehow definitely do the trick?  I genuine don't understand the thinking behind this.

My suggestion is to make the Echo zones more active by bringing in a game mechanic which is minimally resource intensive to implement. Going in to the dev command and changing the flag player rules. 

 

Badges and chilling/nostalgia are the reasons I and other folks in this thread have mentioned for visiting these zones. I'm advocating for adding another reason to visit them. 

[Glacier Peak]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

From what I've seen in other MMOs -- and one of the things that encouraged me to join CoH just after launch was that it didn't have PvP -- is that entirely too much of PvP consists of people whose only measure of their "1337 5k1LLz" (and, yes, I'm using 'leet' deprecatingly, as many of them are so firmly wedded to it that I wonder if they can actually write coherent English) as a gamer is how fast their level-capped combat god with BiS gear can gank newbies fresh out of the starting zone, roaming around looking to bump their gank score. Sort of like people measuring their worth by how many ants they've stepped on.

Well it's a game mechanic that has existed in this game for a long time, so I'm advocating for it to be implemented in Echo zones. 

 

Thank you for your post. 

[Glacier Peak]

7 hours ago, Black Zot said:

There is no middle ground - a zone either allows PvP and is empty, or forbids it and might see some activity depending on what else there is to do there.  If you want to add foot traffic to a zone, add missions and PvE objectives that point there.  Forcing PvP on people just encourages them to find other zones - or other games - to spend their time.

I am more hopeful there is a middle ground - this is a suggestion not an ultimatum. I pointed out in an earlier post that all of the normal content was removed from these Echo zones, except for their street spawns. So aside from the badges I've collected and the fun ambience of sitting on the tops of the faults in Echo Faultline or wandering through the foggy and aptly named streets of Echo Dark Astoria, there aren't any gameplay mechanics present in these zones that currently draw players in to experience them. I'm advocating for using an existing game mechanic, which is easily implemented by changing the flagging of players, in to Echo zones to increase the number of reasons a player may venture there. I love badging, I love looking at and exploring the intricacies of this game, I love PvP - these are all game play mechanics. My suggestion looks to use one of these. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

8 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Well it's a game mechanic that has existed in this game for a long time, so I'm advocating for it to be implemented in Echo zones. 

 

Thank you for your post. 

See here is what you dont seem to be understanding, and are certainly not making any kind of real argument, you just keep stating what you want, and finish with a condescending thank you. What your advocating for would be a active deterrent to the above reasons people might choose to go to these zones currently. I am certainly not going to feel comfortable holding an RP memorial for Galaxy Girl in Galaxy City and her statue if while we are all there with our toggles turned off and having a  nice social RP moment, we can get ganked by scum bags.

 

Nor am I going to go hunt  the GM in DA echo with less then a decked out 50 loaded for war if I have to risk ganking. Nor are badge tour guides going to casually use their own fresh alts while showing others the routes to the more obscure badges in such zones if they can be ganked.

 

You need to offer actually arguments for why what you want would not lead to any negative impact on players current player habits.

 

Otherwise nothing you say has any substance nor validity. Thank you very much!

[Greycat]

First, "easy to implement" is never a good thing to assume.

 

Second, even if the zones were switched to PVP and nobody cared, there's one OTHER thing that would probably annoy people. PVP mechanics for powers *are different* from what they are in PVE in many cases. Hell, it's one of the reasons PVP withered after the changes implemented in i13.

 

So not only would your proposed change keep people out who are absolutely opposed to PVP (and deprive us of zones where, for instance, people can hold RP events - Galaxy used to be a very popular event for that - because they don't want someone coming by and *starting fights* for the "fun" of disrupting events,) but even those who would otherwise not care would have zones where their powers operated differently.