Cross Server Arena and PvP zones

[TheZag]

Its common knowledge that pvp is barely played on these servers.  This is partly due to the population of pvp'ers being spread out over multiple servers.  There is a higher concentration on the unofficial pvp server,  but overall not many arena matches have enough people qued to ever start.  I will generally see around 10 people qued across 3 or 4 matches so none of them ever reach the minimum player requirement.

 

If the arena system were cross server then the combined player pool would potentially be 50 players or more at a given time.  It could be even higher because many players dont bother to even que up since a match rarely starts.

 

Arena accessibility would help as well.  I dont mean being able to run over to an arena,  I mean getting the arena interface open.  If there were a counter that showed how many were in que and in battle,  players could be encouraged to que knowing a match may actually start.  Being able to que for 'first available' or 'any' or 'any heavyweight' could help as well since enough people to start a match que up but not for the same match.

 

An arena notification channel and featured matches could also help.  A featured match could be randomly selected and for those that have the notification channel enabled would see a message for how long till the match starts and how many players are qued.  This could help focus players into joining the same match.  Maybe a featured battle could offer some reward merits to all participants and a few extra to the winner.

 

My hope is that the barren wastelands known as pvp zones could receive the cross server treatment as well.  We already have cross server friends list, chat channels, and auction house so data transfer between servers already exists.

 

I know this is a big ask and the game code may not even be capable but if i never suggest it then nobody will ever see it. 

[Apparition]

FWIW, while Indomitable is the unofficial PvP server, the hardcore zone PvPers all moved to and consolidated on the Excelsior shard about a year ago.  (Partly why the Indomitable shard player numbers are so low these days... it has the stigma of being the unofficial PvP server, but a good number of the PvPers moved to Excelsior so Excelsior is now really the unofficial zone PvP server, but I digress.)

[arcane]

Yes, I would queue in a heartbeat if you could queue up for some casual arena. The biggest reason I stopped PvP’ing in CoH a year or two ago is because my interest in PvP games over the years has shifted more and more towards casual instanced/arena PvP. You can do that all day long in GW2 and ESO. I would routinely do dozens of matches a day. Maybe PvP 6 hours straight on a nice Saturday. But that literally does not exist here anymore. It used to in a limited capacity before i13, but the PvP community has become way more insulated since then - if you aren’t wanting to play at the hardcore high end competitive level with scheduled practices and mandatory voice chat, they don’t want you there.

 

Casual means no discord, chat window communication optional.

 

Every time I bring this up, some PvP’ers swarm me to say people do that hardcore stuff in every game and I should get over it or shut up. They are misrepresenting the point. The point is that a player has choices in other games. There are healthy hardcore communities and healthy casual communities. The casual arena community in CoH has a population of zero last I checked.

 

That said, interest in PvP is way too low for a sweeping system revamp to be a high dev priority, so this all feels hypothetical.

Edited January 12, 2022 by arcane

[Glacier Peak]

Man the Arena UI is so beyond impossible to work with that I doubt anyone who isn't willing to smash their face on the keyboard is going to try it out. But yeah, I'd be down to try arena more if it was cross server. Then again, I can transfer servers so frequently, I am not sure this would solve the underlying problem of the low population of players participating in PvP.

[TheZag]

2 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Man the Arena UI is so beyond impossible to work with that I doubt anyone who isn't willing to smash their face on the keyboard is going to try it out. But yeah, I'd be down to try arena more if it was cross server. Then again, I can transfer servers so frequently, I am not sure this would solve the underlying problem of the low population of players participating in PvP.

 

Increasing the player pool by having all servers with the same arena should help.  Back when i played warcraft and there were 3 pvp maps to que for,  only 1 of them ever started because a single server didnt have the population to field all 3 battles at once.  The result was nobody even qued for the other 2 maps anymore.  When cross server pvp was introduced,  there were enough people to get all of the maps going.  In turn, more players qued for pvp because it was possible to play the map that you wanted and not just the single map that didnt die out.

 

[Outrider_01]

1. Server, transfer characters. Saving a name for a specific toon is a piss excuse just to PVP if its your PVE toon.

2. Public announcements, start a hardcore community.

3. Set a calendar or time, Oklahoma-man runs certain TFs weekly and several times a week.

4. ???

5. Its up to the player base to fix a social organization problem, not the limited developer staff to fix a problem like PVP unless its buffs and balance nerfs.  

[TheZag]

we appreciate your feedback.  dont forget to vote in our 100% scientific poll.

[golstat2003]

No, because I find the rules in the Arena completely restrictive. It's my least favorite form of pvp in this game.

[golstat2003]

8 hours ago, arcane said:

Yes, I would queue in a heartbeat if you could queue up for some casual arena. The biggest reason I stopped PvP’ing in CoH a year or two ago is because my interest in PvP games over the years has shifted more and more towards casual instanced/arena PvP. You can do that all day long in GW2 and ESO. I would routinely do dozens of matches a day. Maybe PvP 6 hours straight on a nice Saturday. But that literally does not exist here anymore. It used to in a limited capacity before i13, but the PvP community has become way more insulated since then - if you aren’t wanting to play at the hardcore high end competitive level with scheduled practices and mandatory voice chat, they don’t want you there.

 

Casual means no discord, chat window communication optional.

 

Every time I bring this up, some PvP’ers swarm me to say people do that hardcore stuff in every game and I should get over it or shut up. They are misrepresenting the point. The point is that a player has choices in other games. There are healthy hardcore communities and healthy casual communities. The casual arena community in CoH has a population of zero last I checked.

 

That said, interest in PvP is way too low for a sweeping system revamp to be a high dev priority, so this all feels hypothetical.

 

Arcane summed this up better than I could. This is what I'm talking about when talking about the "rules of the arena". The community's rules. And to be clear if the pvp community finds it fun, more power to them. But I'll just continue to avoid it.

Edited January 13, 2022 by golstat2003

[TheZag]

This suggestion is intended to open up some pvp for the casual pvper.  I dont care for the hardcore pvp stuff.  It occurs to me that if there were less system generated matches,  that may help a match to start.  If there were 1 high lvl match, 1 mid level match and 1 low level match then possibly a random battle might happen.

 

And if there was a forum for suggestions that will likely be not the best use of dev time, i would have posted this there.  Im very aware that they do so much with just volunteer time.  But this is the only forum i got so here it is.  Maybe if they have some plans for pvp anyway then this might be considered.