PvP Broken? Let us count the ways..

[Reiraku]

18 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Wait what? Is that a real article?

 

*Checks the calendar.*

 

After reading that article I feel like someone's about to jump out at me at yell "April fools!"

The article is real, but the text has been edited. Most of the content is the same, but the edit closer reflects the reality of what happened.

[CR Banana Man]

"PvP from now on will be on our priority list. If something isn't working out, we'll be in there tweaking it and making it work, for the entire future of the product, not just Issue 13." -Matt "Positron" Miller

 

 

[macskull]

On 4/10/2022 at 3:34 PM, CR Banana Man said:

"PvP from now on will be on our priority list. If something isn't working out, we'll be in there tweaking it and making it work, for the entire future of the product, not just Issue 13." -Matt "Positron" Miller

...and then fast-forward to the post-shutdown AMAs where the devs admitted they hadn't had any further plans for looking at PvP after I13.

[Troo]

21 minutes ago, macskull said:

...and then fast-forward to the post-shutdown AMAs where the devs admitted they hadn't had any further plans for looking at PvP after I13.

 

MM: "Plans are easy. Yes we had plans. What we didn’t have was enough interest from the players to ever warrant the TITANIC amount of work they required."

 

JAH: "I had just increased Base salvage storage to 100 salvage for Issue 24. I also really wanted to revamp PvP so that it didn’t feel like the game was fighting you (travel suppression, heal decay), but rather so that all the same balance tools were present but in the hands of players instead of the inanimate server (maybe all your tier 1 and tier 2 attack powers would apply 50% heal decay and 5-6 seconds of travel suppression). I also wanted us to gravitate away from Animation Time = Damage - this completely nullifies the role of burst damage in PvP, essentially flattening the “skill cap” of choosing when to use which abilities in combat. However, as Matt said above - both facets of the game were so niche, they couldn’t really justify any investment with a return. Any changes that were made to these systems would have to be entirely spare time projects, and would have to justify themselves as higher priority than any of the other myriad of things we wanted to tweak about the game."

 

Topics: under the hood, bases, pvp, bts?

Developers: Positron, Arbiter Hawk

 

 

[Killawar]

On 3/21/2022 at 11:59 PM, Troo said:

• The damage of all attacks has been refigured. Basically, the longer the activation/animation time of an attack power, the more damage the power is going to do. There are adjustments for recharge time and Endurance cost, but the actual time the power takes up in an attack chain is the primary consideration.
• In general, the base damage of all Archetypes has been increased in PvP zones and Arenas. The Containment bonus for Controllers in PvP has been reduced because of their higher base damage.
• Being hit by an attack triggers movement suppression, just as making an attack does. Suppression for being hit by an attack is always the same duration. Any power with a negative impact on the target (including all debuff powers) is considered an attack.
• Note that Teleport powers are completely disabled when suppressed.
• Healing powers also trigger suppression.
• The greater the base range of an attack, the longer the suppression for the attacker.
• Teleport Foe and related powers in Gravity Control and Warshade powersets now grant 3/4 of a second "untouchable" flag on the target.
• Resistance and defense powers have greater diminishing returns when stacked than in PvE, and lower caps.
• Healing powers suffer from diminishing returns when several are used in a short period of time.
• All Archetypes (except Tankers and Masterminds) have some default resistances to all attacks in PVP.
• Unlike in PvE, defensive toggles do not suppress when you are held/stunned. This means that not only do the toggles not drop, they continue to grant defenses while the player is held/stunned.
• Melee classes gain extra resistances to all debuffs and to movement slows. These bonuses are linked to the power in each set that gives status protection (Unyielding Stance, Wet Ice, Plasma Shield, etc.).
• "Buffing" Archetypes (Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors, Dominators and Masterminds) have less ability to benefit from all buffing powers than other ATs (the powers have less effect on them, and their caps are lower).
• Melee ATs gain more benefit from buffing powers than other Archetypes (the powers have greater effect on them, and their caps are higher).
• Defeating enemies in PvP can award inf, Inspirations, and rarely Salvage, but no XP.
• In general, there is no such thing as Status Protection in PvP, only Resistance. The exception is Knockback protection, since Knockback is a binary effect. The base durations of status effects are greatly reduced in PvP (generally 4 seconds for Controllers and Dominators, 2 seconds for all other Archetypes).

In summation, this is the problem:

 

Your character is no longer your character the moment you enter a PvP zone. I honestly do not think any of this is necessary anymore given that we have IO's to supplement a lot of the "perma slow/cc'd" stuff now. The damage calculation stuff was just completely unnecessary, powers did not need a functionality change, we just needed more options to counter certain strats - and we have them now in the form of IO sets. 

 

Just make PvE = PvP and I guarantee you'll see a ton more people start. Hell, just make it an option in an arena setting or alternate Siren's Call zone (Siren's Call Pre-13 or something). Let the I-13'ers have their cake and give the people who don't like it a separate place to PvP. 

[Killawar]

On 3/22/2022 at 6:23 AM, Marbing said:

This. I used to PvP a lot, then i13 and I haven’t touched it much sense. PvP is now just broken. 
 

I know current PvPers disagree and they will band together and say that they want things to stay the same. But, I will never agree with them. PvP pre i13 > than PVP now.

They don't "agree" with you because they want to pretend that they're  l33t3r than thou because they know how to exploit every miniscule and terrible mechanic/point in the I-13 system.

 

In reality it's not a matter of agreement. When the majority of the PvP playerbase quit the game because of the changes back in the day you have a concrete problem. 'Liking' i-13 genuinely is like enjoying the taste of excrement. Yeah, you can and that's your 'opinion', but it's a terrible decision on your part and the group you're going to get together with is going to be very niche, hence the current "PvP community" who swears up and down that I-13 is 'better' yet they refuse to see the results beyond their arena scoreboard which is a total lack of interest/build divergence/alternate strats. Granted, these (a lot of the time) are the people who live on a diet of KBs and don't remember than a good chunk - if not the majority - of the PvP back in the day was zone pvp. 

[Killawar]

On 4/1/2022 at 1:05 PM, PeregrineFalcon said:

Don't believe me? Read the thread about Idom, the PvP server, dying People are desperately trying to get people to play on that server. Everyone left that server when it was announced that it was the PvP server. Even the PvPers left. Most of the Homecoming PvP happens on Excelsior these days.

Wave a magic wand and revert things pre i-13 and I would guarantee it wouldn't be dying anymore. Unfortunately we only have access to the Magic origin, not a magic wand. 

[FDR's Think Tank]

On 3/22/2022 at 10:50 AM, Troo said:

 

that's weird. pvp was fun, diverse, and fairly popular for many in COH.. I'm not sure why you'd feel the need to try and insult folks.

 

 

There are many ways PvP could be repaired in this game.

 

However, consider what a successful PvP game looks like. DOTA? PUBG?

 

People understand that PvP would take time and effort to repair, but the pay off is inviting in competitive gameplayers into the community. They FEAR that community will be changed by the influx of people interested in functional PvP.

 

I disagree with this fear: the idea that a competitive game community is toxic may have some truth to it... but the games people think of in that regard are PURELY competitive games. Game players have many faucets to them and depending on the circumstances will react very differently.

 

It would probably be difficult to balance a PUBG type experience in this game.... but as battlewraith above pointed out, Battleborn (Ouch, what a rough example) did a MOBA like set up that would be highly effective in this game. I would go a step further in it:

-2 Teams, Each with a Core Tower and possibly a series of smaller towers along the "routes".

-Minions are spawned that do more damage to Towers than Players do.

-Players do more damage to minions than they can to each other, but as they wipe out minions, they can upgrade their abilities against other players.

-Towers do more damage to players than to minions, but strike the first target that appears, rather than aggro on threats like normal.

This would would largely disincentivize "Jump Jousting" and other silly looking exploitive behaviors in PvP..... but only in this particular mode. People might still do it, but not enough to make people feel concerned. 

[Maelwys]

On 9/8/2024 at 6:41 AM, FDR's Think Tank said:

It would probably be difficult to balance a PUBG type experience in this game

I remember being involved in a few Supergroup PVP raids back whenever that was a thing.
Aside from the fact that any destroyed items remained destroyed (and the obnoxious geometry/terrain exploits where the defending base could be built to "wall off" access to things or create inescapable killboxes) it was actually quite fun to have what amounted to a big mad superheroic capture-the-flag game with your friends.

I also enjoyed some Gladiator matches (yes, really) which I genuinely think could still become a brilliantly fun minigame even in the HC era with some very minor tweaks.

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, Maelwys said:

I remember being involved in a few Supergroup PVP raids back whenever that was a thing.

It's a thing still. Homecoming re-enabled this feature.