PvP Broken? Let us count the ways..

[Jiro Ito]

I saw a suggestion elsewhere in the forum that I thought was great:  PvP IOs should be made free to purchase, but only functional in a PvP setting (similar to the PvP versions of Accolade powers), thus lowering the bar for entry to PvP.  I ran up against a PvP build in RV while badge collecting and the imbalance was ridiculous, but the time and cost of setting up an alternate PvP build is one I'm not willing to pay to PvP casually.  I think this, and more things to do in PvP zones such as new task forces, would help encourage more people to engage in it on a casual level.

[Bionic_Flea]

Pre-13 PvP was fun for me and made more sense, but it was broken in different ways.  There were always certain powersets and combos that were greatly superior than others and a few powersets and combos that were just terrible.  That's still true, but some of the premier and bottom tier combos have changed.

 

I would not want a reversion to I13 nor do I wish for their to be another complete re-do of the PvP system.  The current devs have been working with the few dedicated PvPers that remain and have made some requested changes to improve PvP based on that discussion.  I support that continuing.

 

If you want fun, easy, relatively fair but competitive PVP try getting a group of people to roll new toons up to level 5 or 10 and stop.  No IOs.  That's fun as hell to me.

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, 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.

You know, it's funny that you say that, Troo. Because I distinctly remember why the PvEers feel this way about the PvPers.

 

A week or so before Issue 13 went live the PvPers realized that they weren't going to get the developers to change their minds. So they appealed to the player base. They started a thread with a short video showing people what PvP in CoH was like, how fun it was. And they pleaded with the PvE players to join them in their push-back against the changes.

 

The response was hundreds of posts of "If the PvPers hadn't been such d*****'s to me I'd probably be on their side, but after what they did to me I hope the devs kill PvP. LOL"

 

Now if the PvE player base had joined with the PvPers to push back against the PvP changes would the devs have implemented them anyway? Well, history (GDN & ED) says yes, but who knows? But we never got to find out because of the animosity the PvEers had against the PvPers. And many of the PvEers still, to this day, have that animosity.

 

I'm not defending people who insult PvPers, just explaining where it comes from.

.

Edited March 22, 2022 by PeregrineFalcon
Grammar hard this early in the morning.

[Bionic_Flea]

45 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'm not defending people who insult PvPers, just explaining where it comes from.

 

While there were certainly PvPers who were rude and poor sports, to be fair one must also acknowledge that many PvPers were verbally abused for the mere act of engaging in PvP without uttering a word.

 

 

[Jiro Ito]

It's too bad that, at the time, the community wasn't able to come together to help the dev team find a solution.  The I13 changes killed my SG, all my friends left the game, and I left shortly after as I had no one left to play with.

[lemming]

My only interest in the PVP stuff is picking up the badges.   I just don't like PVP, but my only friction with them is when they gank a char just doing their own thing.  If that happens I tend to just go do something else, though my friends and I found a decent way to combat that is bring in a char on the ganking side to do spotting for revenge purposes.

[PeregrineFalcon]

7 minutes ago, Bionic_Flea said:

While there were certainly PvPers who were rude and poor sports, to be fair one must also acknowledge that many PvPers were verbally abused for the mere act of engaging in PvP without uttering a word.

I'll take your word that that happened. I personally never saw that, unlike the reverse.

[Marbing]

PvP in its current state isn’t worth the price of admission. It exist for a small subset of people that wish to keep it in their comfort zone. Not for the CoH player base as a whole.

 

 

edit: typo

Edited March 22, 2022 by Marbing

[battlewraith]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'll take your word that that happened. I personally never saw that, unlike the reverse.

 

Lol yeah ok. I was fairly frequently verbally berated for attacking people in pvp zones. The funniest one was when I was solo on a brute against a team of eight and they said they were going to petition me for ganking. 

 

[biostem]

IMHO the best way to implement PvP in an MMO is not to do so as a direct player-on-player fight, (maybe leave that to some form of solo or team dueling), but instead have competitive events - like heroes having to defend a base against waves of NPC attackers while villains do the same against heroes, or some sort of goal/objective-based challenges - so you don't have to deal with powers working differently or people coming up against wacky builds that exploit meta-aspects of the game.

Edited March 22, 2022 by biostem

[The_Warpact]

Both sides were bad to be honest. Yes, I do remember PvPers that were straight up @ssholes (like breaking team in WB and then attacking the team or sh!t talking or repeatedly killing people) and unfortunately how people are built the bad memories stand out above everything.

 

But, there was alot of good fun too and unfortunately its people that ruined for the folks that genuinely liked to do it. Hell you still get people who would happily gut it out of the game over perceived things that might or might not happen and heaven forbid they did get killed in zone. "You're griefing me while I'm badging in a pvp zone"!

 

People suck...no truer statement exists.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

But, there was alot of good fun too and unfortunately its people that ruined for the folks that genuinely liked to do it.

I think a lot of it boils down to needing to have PvP as a major consideration right from the get-go and having some form of "active refereeing" when it comes to game mechanics vs the spirit of the competition...

[A Cat]

I haven't PvP'd on HC, but I used to a bit on live way back in the day when things worked the same between PvP and PvE (or at least more so than in later issues). I mainly don't want to have to retool a new expensive build/learn a bunch of new stuff for what little PvP activity there seems to be. I know I am lazy but there it is. 

[GM Impervium]

Hey all!

So, this thread should probably be in the PvP forum; I left it in General for a day to gain some insight from non PvPers, but I'll be moving it to its proper place now 😃

[Reiraku]

5 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'll take your word that that happened. I personally never saw that, unlike the reverse.

As a PvP regular, I can promise you it was awful. The things I've seen said about PvP and PvPers from PvE players was far worse than anything I ever saw from a PvP player. Everything from tasteless comparisons to AIDS, wishing terminal diseases on people who PvP'd, and general vitriol from a genuine Nazi apologist (yeah, you read that right). It got pretty sickening.

[battlewraith]

20 hours ago, Reiraku said:

As a PvP regular, I can promise you it was awful. The things I've seen said about PvP and PvPers from PvE players was far worse than anything I ever saw from a PvP player. Everything from tasteless comparisons to AIDS, wishing terminal diseases on people who PvP'd, and general vitriol from a genuine Nazi apologist (yeah, you read that right). It got pretty sickening.

One disgruntled badger informed me that people like me were "the reason why abortion needed to be legal." Lol.

[PeregrineFalcon]

19 hours ago, battlewraith said:

One disgruntled badger informed me that people like me were "the reason why abortion needed to be legal." Lol.

First, I want to say that this is clearly a horrible and unacceptable thing to say to someone. I don't care who they are.

 

Secondly, it's worse to say things like this online because we all know that most people wouldn't have the courage to say this stuff to people IRL. So it just makes the person saying it online look like a coward.

 

Third, I don't know that we want this thread to devolve into us just posting examples of the horrible things people have said to us. Or maybe we do. If so just let me know, I have a long list of horrible things that people have said to me online. And some of those people were game devs.

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

First, I want to say that this is clearly a horrible and unacceptable thing to say to someone. I don't care who they are.

 

Secondly, it's worse to say things like this online because we all know that most people wouldn't have the courage to say this stuff to people IRL. So it just makes the person saying it online look like a coward.

 

Third, I don't know that we want this thread to devolve into us just posting examples of the horrible things people have said to us. Or maybe we do. If so just let me know, I have a long list of horrible things that people have said to me online. And some of those people were game devs.

I don't think a Festivus style airing of the online grievances in this thread would be welcomed by the mods. My question for you is this: when those game devs said horrible things to you, did you quit playing those games?

[M3z]

i13 made everything awful-

 

-Created 2 versions of the game, gatekeeping everyone out of pvp who didn't understand the changes(pre i13 you could bring a pve build and somewhat function/play, post i13 you really had to have an understanding of the mechanics to create a proper build to do anything remotely productive)

-Made mechanics like debuffs/slows/mezzes meaningless, the game now boils down to a damage/proc race. Melee is trivialized by lack of mezzes and jaunt, their only function is taunting which is a completely binary mechanic with 0 counterplay and 0 fun to do or fight against.

-8v8s+community rules makes pvp somewhat fun(thanks homecoming team for bandaiding some of the worse i13 mechanics(HEAL DECAY HELLO!??!) despite this but outside of that there really isn't a point to playing anything in pvp but a psy/plant blaster

 

The solution is to readd the old mechanics but there are so many things that'd need to be checked/fixed from IOs/balance perspective and other things that it's too much work for this dev team to accomplish, no fault to them it'd just be a mountain of work.

 

And regarding the behavior, Live was pretty bad, homecoming is extremely tame with some crazies in zones here and there who talk shit(honestly who cares lol) but for the most part organized pvpers only talk shit to each other and not to new people.

 

 

Our Pickup group from this tuesday: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1440771645

 

Was playing em/stone scrapper having some fun.

Edited March 31, 2022 by M3z

[M3z]

On 3/22/2022 at 3:18 PM, Marbing said:

PvP in its current state isn’t worth the price of admission. It exist for a small subset of people that wish to keep it in their comfort zone. Not for the CoH player base as a whole.

 

 

edit: typo

lmao no

[Marbing]

11 hours ago, M3z said:

lmao no

I like how you said this, disliked one of my posts, and then also agreed with me here:

 

21 hours ago, M3z said:

i13 made everything awful-

 

-Created 2 versions of the game, gatekeeping everyone out of pvp who didn't understand the changes(pre i13 you could bring a pve build and somewhat function/play, post i13 you really had to have an understanding of the mechanics to create a proper build to do anything remotely productive)

-Made mechanics like debuffs/slows/mezzes meaningless, the game now boils down to a damage/proc race. Melee is trivialized by lack of mezzes and jaunt, their only function is taunting which is a completely binary mechanic with 0 counterplay and 0 fun to do or fight against.

-8v8s+community rules makes pvp somewhat fun(thanks homecoming team for bandaiding some of the worse i13 mechanics(HEAL DECAY HELLO!??!) despite this but outside of that there really isn't a point to playing anything in pvp but a psy/plant blaster

Thank you.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Marbing

[DarionLeonidas]

I think the most important question to ask oneself is “Why do I want to do PvP?”

I don’t care for PvP, but I’d do it if I had to, if there were something in a PvP zone I wanted badly.

The deadly problem with PvP in CoH/CoV, is that there is nothing in any PvP zone I want badly enough to have to deal with PvP to get. 
There’s nothing in PvP zones worth fighting for, because nothing in them impacts the game outside those zones.

And before anyone says “Shivans” or “Warburg”, who bothers with the Warburg missiles, anymore, once they have Incarnate powers or the dozens of other tweaks given to regular powersets since the game came back?

In the nearly two years we’ve been playing again, I have seen one Warburg missile strike used in PvE. And it was mine. And the return wasn’t worth the effort invested in getting the missile. Maybe your experience is different.

So why bother?

Badges? Okay. Then what?

”Bragging rights”? Well, now we’re getting close to the heart of the matter, but the points above show that “bragging rights” mean nothing, as well, since a PvP-optimized build is by definition only optimal in PvP zones, where nothing that happens affects the outside game.

So what is the appeal of PvP in a game where it accomplishes nothing?

Battles between players just for the fun of it? Absolutely!

If that’s fun for both players.

But if it’s fun for one player who insists on it, but not fun for a player who doesn’t want to be bothered… well, there’s a name for that.

And it ain’t “good sportsmanship”.

 

  

Edited April 1, 2022 by DarionLeonidas
Typos

[Marbing]

1 hour ago, DarionLeonidas said:

I think the most important question to ask oneself is “Why do I want to do PvP?”

I don’t care for PvP, but I’d do it if I had to, if there were something in a PvP zone I wanted badly.

The deadly problem with PvP in CoH/CoV, is that there is nothing in any PvP zone I want badly enough to have to deal with PvP to get. 
There’s nothing in PvP zones worth fighting for, because nothing in them impacts the game outside those zones.

And before anyone says “Shivans” or “Warburg”, who bothers with the Warburg missiles, anymore, once they have Incarnate powers or the dozens of other tweaks given to regular powersets since the game came back?

In the nearly two years we’ve been playing again, I have seen one Warburg missile strike used in PvE. And it was mine. And the return wasn’t worth the effort invested in getting the missile. Maybe your experience is different.

So why bother?

Badges? Okay. Then what?

”Bragging rights”? Well, now we’re getting close to the heart of the matter, but the points above show that “bragging rights” mean nothing, as well, since a PvP-optimized build is by definition only optimal in PvP zones, where nothing that happens affects the outside game.

So what is the appeal of PvP in a game where it accomplishes nothing?

Battles between players just for the fun of it? Absolutely!

If that’s fun for both players.

But if it’s fun for one player who insists on it, but not fun for a player who doesn’t want to be bothered… well, there’s a name for that.

And it ain’t “good sportsmanship”.

 

  

Yep, as I said: Not worth the price of admission and most suggestions for change are shot down and ultimately get swept into the "I know its broken but just leave it be." crowd. 
 

[PeregrineFalcon]

30 minutes ago, Marbing said:

Yep, as I said: Not worth the price of admission and most suggestions for change are shot down and ultimately get swept into the "I know its broken but just leave it be." crowd.

I'm fairly certain that most of the PvE crowd will agree with me when I say: I don't care what you do to change PvP. Leave it as is, revert it to pre-I13 state, change the rules to something else entirely, whatever.

 

I just don't want the developers spending a lot of time on PvP changes for the 10 whole people who PvP as opposed to the 99% of us who don't.

 

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.

 

So yeah. Do whatever you want with PvP. Just please don't spend a ton of developer time for the 10 whole people who still PvP because that's time you could be spending coding things for the rest of us who don't.

 

Not that my opinion matters.

[Marbing]

12 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'm fairly certain that most of the PvE crowd will agree with me when I say: I don't care what you do to change PvP. Leave it as is, revert it to pre-I13 state, change the rules to something else entirely, whatever.

 

I just don't want the developers spending a lot of time on PvP changes for the 10 whole people who PvP as opposed to the 99% of us who don't.

 

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.

 

So yeah. Do whatever you want with PvP. Just please don't spend a ton of developer time for the 10 whole people who still PvP because that's time you could be spending coding things for the rest of us who don't.

 

Not that my opinion matters.

Oh I agree, my comments are more "for those that want PvP to change...".

 

I don't think it will ever change so long as the general consensus of the community is to leave it alone for <insert any reason at all here> and that INCLUDES the PvP community. Hence why it will remain in its state, and the small community of PvPers and those interested in PvP will continue to struggle to garner any real change. Because the only change can be made (from my perspective) to increase the PvP activity is one that makes PvP more accessible to the general player, not one that just furthers the divide or maintains the status quo with PvP being limited to an incredibly small subset of the games overall population. But, that wont happen. Because it seems the consensus is that the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

 

EDIT: And I absolutely believe you. I play exclusively on Indom. It is my home. Indom 4 Life! REPRESENT! YEAHHHHHH Okay... I'll stop...

Edited April 1, 2022 by Marbing