What are you guys doing to revive PvP? A suggestion.

[SwitchFade]

1 hour ago, Super Atom said:

If you don't like PvP, don't PvP or engage with the PvP community.

 

It's really not a hard concept, truly.

Similarly, pvp should never intrude on pve, or affect any aspect of PvE gameplay.

Edited July 19, 2021 by SwitchFade

[Super Atom]

1 minute ago, SwitchFade said:

Similarly, pvp should never intrude on pve, or affect any aspect of PvE gameplay.

 

I agree, thats why the initial suggestion of forcing people off indom for the sake of pvp was shot down hard.

 

I love PvP, i hate forced PvP.

[Illy]

1 minute ago, SwitchFade said:

Similarly, pvp should never intrude on pve, or affect any aspect of PvE gameplay.

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. 

[SwitchFade]

1 minute ago, Illy said:

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. 

An open world new server that is in addition to the servers already there?

 

Ok. Who pays for it? I'm not. Not a cent of my contribution should go to it.

 

Would all the pvpers agree that they, and only they, pay for said server and find new development talent to volunteer, in addition to the current dev team? And, any development time necessary to set up the code to allow the open world pvp and continuing balance and maintenance should be below all PvE priorities, unless said new team is found.

 

Essentially, that's a pretty big ask for me to go from hard no vote forever, to yes. If the pvp player base was large enough, this would already have happened on live. As is, could instantly revert to the first issue it launched and still be sparse; pvp in CoH was never well populated, compared to PvE. It was never a good fit.

[America's Angel]

5 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

I nominate @America's Angel for the task.

 

I'd be up for it. But I don't think the GMs are looking to bring on anyone to help run PvP stuff right now.

 

14 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Ok. Who pays for it? I'm not. Not a cent of my contribution should go to it.

 

While I agree that an open-world PvP server is a nonstarter. It's worth pointing out that you're not a customer. You don't get a say in what your donations are spent on.

 

Giving players the options to "toggle" pvp on/off in their bases would be good, though. (And something that is currently possible with the existing tech, but just restricted to a GM command.)

[Illy]

20 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

An open world new server that is in addition to the servers already there?

 

Ok. Who pays for it? I'm not. Not a cent of my contribution should go to it.

 

Would all the pvpers agree that they, and only they, pay for said server and find new development talent to volunteer, in addition to the current dev team? And, any development time necessary to set up the code to allow the open world pvp and continuing balance and maintenance should be below all PvE priorities, unless said new team is found.

 

Essentially, that's a pretty big ask for me to go from hard no vote forever, to yes. If the pvp player base was large enough, this would already have happened on live. As is, could instantly revert to the first issue it launched and still be sparse; pvp in CoH was never well populated, compared to PvE. It was never a good fit.

 

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. 

[Glacier Peak]

30 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

Similarly, pvp should never intrude on pve, or affect any aspect of PvE gameplay.

Intrude, perhaps this is accurate and I can see the reasoning behind this.... however, this game in its current state has cross-play across this figurative boundary. Plenty of PvE content in PvP zones, plenty of reasons for PvPers to PvE in order to achieve better performance (accolades, IOs, etc.). Heck, PvP IO sets add additional bonuses while players are PvPing (though the dreaded diminishing returns of PvP shreds these bonuses in to oblivion lol)

 

I think it is a nice balance where it is right now and there hasn't been a compelling reason to rock this boat.

[Glacier Peak]

2 minutes ago, Illy said:

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. 

This suggestion has been discussed in one form or another a few times in this sub forum and tends to involve separating PvE content out of the equation and allowing PvPers to have a place just for themselves (specific zone/SG base PvP/new zones/instanced pvp maps/etc.). 

 

😅

 

 

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

25 minutes ago, America's Angel said:

Giving players the options to "toggle" pvp on/off in their bases would be good, though. (And something that is currently possible with the existing tech, but just restricted to a GM command.)

There is a GM command that sets all targets to enemies that works on NPCs, though I can't vouch for whether it works on players too. The concern I would have is with how the game applies PvP specific power attributes and DR to players in PvE contexts.

[Super Atom]

I'd like to see base raiding added back in. It'd be a lot easier to manage, the issue before was people intentionally making bases with glitched blocks so you couldn't get to the goals. Probably easy to prevent on a private server just with how connected everyone is. It was fun, the several times i did it back in the day everyone had a lot of fun.

[Glacier Peak]

4 minutes ago, Super Atom said:

I'd like to see base raiding added back in. It'd be a lot easier to manage, the issue before was people intentionally making bases with glitched blocks so you couldn't get to the goals. Probably easy to prevent on a private server just with how connected everyone is. It was fun, the several times i did it back in the day everyone had a lot of fun.

Base raiding allowed cool things like this....

 

 

[GraspingVileTerror]

I think an interesting, if perhaps convoluted solution, to the issue with Bases being built in such a way as to give one side a distinct advantage is that:

A)  No-clipping during building is disabled, so there is no building above or below the map.
B)  No internal teleporters.

C) (and this is the kicker) the Base Builder must be able to successfully raid their own base within 1/4 of the normal allotted time for a Base Raid.  If the person who built the base can't do it under test conditions, then the base isn't available for PvP until reconfigured.

 

But also they need to find a way to fix Pet pathing in bases, or it's just a non-starter entirely.

[Super Atom]

2 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I think an interesting, if perhaps convoluted solution, to the issue with Bases being built in such a way as to give one side a distinct advantage is that:

A)  No-clipping during building is disabled, so there is no building above or below the map.
B)  No internal teleporters.

C) (and this is the kicker) the Base Builder must be able to successfully raid their own base within 1/4 of the normal allotted time for a Base Raid.  If the person who built the base can't do it under test conditions, then the base isn't available for PvP until reconfigured.

 

But also they need to find a way to fix Pet pathing in bases, or it's just a non-starter entirely.

 

Yeah, It'd probably require some updating but It's certainly a good place to start when considering things for PvP content. Base building is easy and free with a lot of extra stuff, so as long as the PvP bases built followed some rules to ensure fairness/fun it would be nice.

[America's Angel]

46 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

There is a GM command that sets all targets to enemies that works on NPCs, though I can't vouch for whether it works on players too. The concern I would have is with how the game applies PvP specific power attributes and DR to players in PvE contexts.

 

Yeah Faultline was using it to turn on PvP in bases on Brainstorm last year when we first tested it. So it is doable.

 

Disclaimer:

 

Doable =/= easy to implement for players

[Haijinx]

3 hours ago, Super Atom said:

If you don't like PvP, don't PvP or engage with the PvP community.

 

It's really not a hard concept, truly.

 

This is why I stopped after a light hearted joke.

 

I've never PVP'd in this game.  Don't particularly like it on other games.  

 

I was once worried that it would detract from other development resources, but MEH,  It sure doesn't seem to have.  So if the Devs want to do something for the PVP folks, that's cool.  

 

[America's Angel]

52 minutes ago, GraspingVileTerror said:

I think an interesting, if perhaps convoluted solution, to the issue with Bases being built in such a way as to give one side a distinct advantage is that:

A)  No-clipping during building is disabled, so there is no building above or below the map.
B)  No internal teleporters.

C) (and this is the kicker) the Base Builder must be able to successfully raid their own base within 1/4 of the normal allotted time for a Base Raid.  If the person who built the base can't do it under test conditions, then the base isn't available for PvP until reconfigured.

 

But also they need to find a way to fix Pet pathing in bases, or it's just a non-starter entirely.

 

Restricting what bases are allowed to have PvP switched on is the wrong approach. The criteria you listed here would disqualify the vast majority of bases from having PvP enabled in them. That is the opposite of what we want.

 

What we want is base builders being given access to a command, or some form of item they can place in their base perhaps, which allows them to manually switch PvP on in bases they own.

 

Players then have a sandbox environment within which they can do what they want. You can have competitive players designing maps that are balanced, but you can also have story-driven players using cool looking maps for RPVP scenes that don't care in the slightest about fairness.

[TotalThunder]

5 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

An open world new server that is in addition to the servers already there?

 

Ok. Who pays for it? I'm not. Not a cent of my contribution should go to it.

 

Would all the pvpers agree that they, and only they, pay for said server and find new development talent to volunteer, in addition to the current dev team? And, any development time necessary to set up the code to allow the open world pvp and continuing balance and maintenance should be below all PvE priorities, unless said new team is found.

 

Essentially, that's a pretty big ask for me to go from hard no vote forever, to yes. If the pvp player base was large enough, this would already have happened on live. As is, could instantly revert to the first issue it launched and still be sparse; pvp in CoH was never well populated, compared to PvE. It was never a good fit.

 

Yeah, and I don't want my taxes to go towards making bombs. Funny how that works.

 

PvP has been part of the game since Issue 4, and one of the main features with Issue 6 and the release of CoV. Pretending that it's some niche side thing that the actual devs didn't care about is just being willfully ignorant.

 

It didn't happen on live because there were already too few players on too many servers, which is a problem that Homecoming already has. Torch, Indom, and Reunion playerbases could easily be merged (once a solution for character names is found), and then one of those other servers could be turned into an open PvP server. Which removes one - actually reducing the overall server cost. Everybody wins.

 

Edit: Also, I have this distinct feeling that you wouldn't need extra talent or devs to make it happen. Something tells me that PvP is just a flag that can be applied to a zone or area.

Edited July 20, 2021 by TotalThunder
yeet

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, Super Atom said:

If you don't like PvP, don't PvP or engage with the PvP community.

Ahh. "If you're not part of our community, you have nothing to contribute, so go away and don't bother us; we don't want you around." It's nice to see that we've managed to avoid elitism on Homecoming. Oh, wait....

[skoryy]

13 hours ago, Haijinx said:

 

This is why I stopped after a light hearted joke.

 

I've never PVP'd in this game.  Don't particularly like it on other games.  

 

I was once worried that it would detract from other development resources, but MEH,  It sure doesn't seem to have.  So if the Devs want to do something for the PVP folks, that's cool.  

 

 

As a strict PVE'r, I would honestly be interested in arena tournaments if/when things are balanced out better.  Those do seem fun.

[SwitchFade]

9 hours ago, TotalThunder said:

 

Yeah, and I don't want my taxes to go towards making bombs. Funny how that works.

 

PvP has been part of the game since Issue 4, and one of the main features with Issue 6 and the release of CoV. Pretending that it's some niche side thing that the actual devs didn't care about is just being willfully ignorant.

 

It didn't happen on live because there were already too few players on too many servers, which is a problem that Homecoming already has. Torch, Indom, and Reunion playerbases could easily be merged (once a solution for character names is found), and then one of those other servers could be turned into an open PvP server. Which removes one - actually reducing the overall server cost. Everybody wins.

 

Edit: Also, I have this distinct feeling that you wouldn't need extra talent or devs to make it happen. Something tells me that PvP is just a flag that can be applied to a zone or area.

Stating that considering pvp niche in this game, and following that with a statement that server population was low, is a direct contradiction. PvP was always niche in CoH, proven by actual data that showed the miniscule pvp population, even on live, when compared to PvE.

 

Regardless of feelings nothing Is a simple fix, it would require considerable resources, which has an opportunity cost.

 

Contributions are not equivalent to a tax, should pvp become a significant resource allocation, I'll cease contributing. Funny how that works, eh? More whimsical is the point that if pvp should become world "flagged" and I had no choice but to witness it, I would quit and move on.

 

And no, you couldn't have my stuff 😜

[Super Atom]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Ahh. "If you're not part of our community, you have nothing to contribute, so go away and don't bother us; we don't want you around." It's nice to see that we've managed to avoid elitism on Homecoming. Oh, wait....

 

That's not what that means. It means, if you don't want to PvP or see PvP then don't PvP. It's optional, you don't have to be there or do it if you don't want to, meaning you have no reason to bash it or talk ill or suggest it shouldn't be in the game, as some are doing. If you hate PvP so much, you just simply need not to do it.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Super Atom

[Super Atom]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

Stating that considering pvp niche in this game, and following that with a statement that server population was low, is a direct contradiction. PvP was always niche in CoH, proven by actual data that showed the miniscule pvp population, even on live, when compared to PvE.

 

Regardless of feelings nothing Is a simple fix, it would require considerable resources, which has an opportunity cost.

 

Contributions are not equivalent to a tax, should pvp become a significant resource allocation, I'll cease contributing. Funny how that works, eh? More whimsical is the point that if pvp should become world "flagged" and I had no choice but to witness it, I would quit and move on.

 

And no, you couldn't have my stuff 😜

 

PvP was a huge part of CoH until issue 13 and even after, the most populated server (Freedom) had a huge PvP presence, the zone PvP was always huge battles. To say PvP was minuscule is a bold face lie. After issue 13 and PvPers began to quit, the playerbase suffered greatly especially on my home server of Guardian which went from a medium population server to a low population server. PvP was so prominent at the time, it was a selling point for City of Villains and its PvP zones. Even twords the end of the game, Virtue (Roleplay server) had a decent sized PvP community.

 

It would not require "considerable resources" nor would it require the current developers who are hard at work doing PvE content to stop what they're doing. It would require the same amount of attention it current gets, I don't know if you've noticed but patch notes usually have PvP changes in them as is. So guess you better move on? Your contributions are not to the developers or their time, It's to the server cost. The developers owe you nothing and do not have to do anything you think they should or shouldn't, your entitlement is kinda disgusting TBH.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Super Atom

[TotalThunder]

1 hour ago, SwitchFade said:

Stating that considering pvp niche in this game, and following that with a statement that server population was low, is a direct contradiction. PvP was always niche in CoH, proven by actual data that showed the miniscule pvp population, even on live, when compared to PvE.

 

Regardless of feelings nothing Is a simple fix, it would require considerable resources, which has an opportunity cost.

 

Contributions are not equivalent to a tax, should pvp become a significant resource allocation, I'll cease contributing. Funny how that works, eh? More whimsical is the point that if pvp should become world "flagged" and I had no choice but to witness it, I would quit and move on.

 

And no, you couldn't have my stuff 😜

 

Then just quit and move on already, and save the rest of us the trouble. Imagine being this entitled over a dead MMO.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

So rather then engage with anyone directly on such a topic prone to vitriol and conflict, I shall speak of the kinds of PVP experiences I have had across games that I enjoyed and why.

 

Like many I have dabbled at times in MOBA style games, from fps to isometrics like LoL. So I can very much enjoy a pvp fight when i know both sides are basically evenly matched in raw power. I tend to not be as big a fan of shooters that use ranked gear in pvp to let the grinders have a mechanical advantage. This is why in MMO I rarely do PVP with a few exceptions.

 

Exception 1. Guild Wars 1: The classic born of NC soft not long after CoH was, a common game many of us on live had an account on and would go to when needing a break from coh. While that game was built to be a pvp game its expansive rich story campaigns thick with actual strategic challenge has kept it an active game and community all these years along side its amazing PVP system. Because gear in GW does not have a wide margin for its power, even if you are a casual using a sword with only a 18% sunder and +20 health rather than a perfect and pricey 20% sunder and +30 health, as you can see the numbers are so small, the advantage is also very small, and most of a player and their character's ability to win in pvp will be born of the skill choices on their bar and their ability to use them actively and react with them in a strategic way. I rate random arena 4 on 4 GW pvp as some of the best and most enjoyable casual pvp in MMOdom. I still after all these years pop on a few times a month to jump in the random arena with one of my flavor character builds and still manage to give a decent accounting of myself unless I have the bad luck to cross paths with some korean pro. Seriously do not fuck around with Koreans in GW, they will eat your soul.

 

Exception 2( with circumstantial reasons) Age of Conan, the mmo when it launched I joined an open world pve/pvp RP server, and you know what? It was amazing. No characters with stupid names, and at this time no actual rewards for pvp, and gear balance much more like GW so even BIS gear was not much stronger then more common stuff. In the first few months after launch the games open world pvp was almost as perfect as I have ever seen. Players treated each other exactly like we treated any other NPC in the wild. We all would stalk in stealth mode, all be wary when we approached locations in the world that tended to attract a lot of traffic outside of the 3 safe city hubs. And yes we used in game racism to help faction off in general. A barbarian from cimmeria would always back another against some demonic scum bag from Stygia. When you wandered in Stygia as an Aquilonian you would actually want to put on desert garb to hide your fair hair and skin or risk being stalked and attacked by every black hearted stygian.

 

But to do all that turned out to take a fairly active GM team, that as the game waned and it lost funding, the GMs for the RP server got the axe first. It was until that time about as close to being on an MMO with a team of active GMs akin to having a living dungeon master, doing their best to keep things immersive and fun for all on the server. There was even a famous multi gaming MMO called Invictus on the server that Role Played as a active form of peace keeper, traveling in force to areas under strife due to chaotic player on player behavior and force order back into the region at sword point. It was all very good fun really and felt much as you might imagine living in the world of Conan.

 

I did have fun now and then on Champions online pvp in its first year before they made many changes to the game in general that made it not worth playing at all. It wasnt great but it was fast paced and good fun action.

 

IMO a game like COH just does not really lend itself to pvp in large part because of its old school design. sticking when using powers, longer cool downs, and wide range of power in builds. Unless any AT has a real fair chance one on one with every other AT, then pvp in coh cant really work. And we know that is just not possible due to the nature of power sets and arch type design. Trollers do not want to even see a set with a CC protection like scrappers etc all have. Melee non flyers do not want to ever see a flying blaster with a max range snipe etc etc.

 

So frankly I would say any bit of HC dev energy spent on PVP for HC when I suspect the number of players who spend the majority of their game time in pvp are in a very very small minority would be a terrible waste.

[Super Atom]

@Llewellyn Blackwell To change CoH PvP to anything like those MMO's would be a massive waste of time, that's correct.

 

To add the minor things PvPers are looking for, like base stuff and occasional balance tweaks not so much.