Current PVP 'splaining

[The_Warpact]

Ok, this is a multiple question kind of thread because, my memory is either bad or I just don't know or I missed the thread discussing it.

Why couldn't PVP be rolled back to how it was? IOs fudge that up?

Who would be in favor of that?

And in all seriousness because I don't know, how much resources would it actually use to do so.

 

I sincerely miss old pvp and just cannot get into the "new" pvp. I really miss base raids but I know that ship has sailed.

 

And yes I realize that all the pvp haters, carebears, etc would be adamantly against it "cUz Ur gRiEfInG me WhIlE I'm baDgiNg" but seriously grow up its a game or better yet ask for help and someone will. A larger population for pvp would make PvPers happy.

Edited April 13, 2022 by The_Warpact
Learn 2 spell

[MJB]

i assume you mean roll back to before i13:

 

15 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

Why couldn't PVP be rolled back to how it was? IOs fudge that up?

io's existed before i13, though there are new sets/procs and whatnot now but w/e lets ignore those. technically there is nothing stopping a rollback other than a few issues it would present that ill talk about later.

 

16 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

Who would be in favor of that?

many people are, many people arent, some people want a halfway house or completely different system put in place. i dont recall ever seeing a formal vote or anything

 

16 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

And in all seriousness because I don't know, how much resources would it actually use to do so.

it depends™. there was a test a few months ago on the private beta server for what it might look like, and while there were some bugs with certain power interactions not respecting the pve/pvp flags, the dev work to make the test happen was pretty small. mostly just disabling some zone wide flags iirc. the test overall was some decent short term fun but it extremely quickly turned into the people who knew what mechanics were extremely abusable completely destroying everyone else with 0 counterplay.

 

however there are some things that exist now that didnt before that could bring up significant balance issues, for example poison only existed on mm's, scrappers didnt have em, procs werent nearly as big a deal, etc etc. so really quite a lot of dev work would need to go into balancing these sorts of things unless people would be happy facing ice/poison controllers with perma mag 20 holds and -300% slows, or ice/plant blasters with perma mag 12 holds and 3 shot capabilities (and no free res to counter that), or em scrappers literally 2 shotting people, sentinels literally existing at all, etc etc.

 

the main arguments i keep hearing for reverting pvp to pre-i13 are one of a) "my build works differently in pve and pvp and i dont like that" or 2) "i used to be able to take my <insert terrible pvp combo> character into zone and still do well.

 

the problem with a is the aforementioned balance issues, and we all know how much pve players love having balance changes put on them for pvp reasons. also a pve build would still never do well in a pvp setting even with the same mechanics available. simple things such as phase shift being fantastic in pvp, good travel power selection being mandatory or even that pve softcap defence does almost nothing in pvp when players have so much access to tohit buffs mean that people would _still_ need to have pvp builds to do well.

 

meanwhile problem 2 is more nuanced, really in ye-olden-days people could take whatever into zones and do well because no one knew what they were doing and everyone had terrible builds, but unfortunately we now live in a world where people can watch the best players to know how to play, and builds are extremely cheap to get up and running. so yes ar/elec blasters could do well in i12 RV, but only because they were facing other people with terrible builds. ar/elec in reality sucked then and still sucks now, the only difference is now everyone can have a good build set up in a few hours whereas before no one knew what a good build even looked like, and if they did it still took weeks to get it up and running.

 

are these problems solveable? absolutely yes, but they would require a lot of work/resources.

 

i feel like i should also mention since it will inevitably come up from someone who hasnt tried pvp in the last 14 years, i13 had multiple parts to it and imo the worst parts have already been reverted or changed, to go through them:

 

travel suppression: completely removed in homecoming in all forms, pve has more suppression than pvp atm

heal decay: completely removed in homecoming

diminishing returns: still exists and is annoying, talks about adjusting curves to allow more sets to be viable happen but nothing has come from it yet. double edged sword

damage tied to animation time: still exists, but is arguably a good thing for balance

mez changes: still exist and suck if youre a controller/dominator player for sure, but also does mean you are allowed to play the game without buying break frees every 2 minutes

 

im sure im missing something but w/e, you get the gist. imo travel suppression was the biggest problem in i13 and movement atm is better than it was in i12, i recommend trying it out.

 

as a final note:

36 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

I really miss base raids but I know that ship has sailed.

everyone wants base raids back, last i heard they are just royally broken and dont really have anything to do with i13.

 

tl;dr it could be reverted, but this is a very different game compared to i12 and it wouldnt be the same as it was. current situation also isnt perfect.

[Glacier Peak]

Thank you for taking the time to write that @MJB

[The_Warpact]

1 hour ago, MJB said:

i assume you mean roll back to before i13:

 

io's existed before i13, though there are new sets/procs and whatnot now but w/e lets ignore those. technically there is nothing stopping a rollback other than a few issues it would present that ill talk about later.

 

many people are, many people arent, some people want a halfway house or completely different system put in place. i dont recall ever seeing a formal vote or anything

 

it depends™. there was a test a few months ago on the private beta server for what it might look like, and while there were some bugs with certain power interactions not respecting the pve/pvp flags, the dev work to make the test happen was pretty small. mostly just disabling some zone wide flags iirc. the test overall was some decent short term fun but it extremely quickly turned into the people who knew what mechanics were extremely abusable completely destroying everyone else with 0 counterplay.

 

however there are some things that exist now that didnt before that could bring up significant balance issues, for example poison only existed on mm's, scrappers didnt have em, procs werent nearly as big a deal, etc etc. so really quite a lot of dev work would need to go into balancing these sorts of things unless people would be happy facing ice/poison controllers with perma mag 20 holds and -300% slows, or ice/plant blasters with perma mag 12 holds and 3 shot capabilities (and no free res to counter that), or em scrappers literally 2 shotting people, sentinels literally existing at all, etc etc.

 

the main arguments i keep hearing for reverting pvp to pre-i13 are one of a) "my build works differently in pve and pvp and i dont like that" or 2) "i used to be able to take my <insert terrible pvp combo> character into zone and still do well.

 

the problem with a is the aforementioned balance issues, and we all know how much pve players love having balance changes put on them for pvp reasons. also a pve build would still never do well in a pvp setting even with the same mechanics available. simple things such as phase shift being fantastic in pvp, good travel power selection being mandatory or even that pve softcap defence does almost nothing in pvp when players have so much access to tohit buffs mean that people would _still_ need to have pvp builds to do well.

 

meanwhile problem 2 is more nuanced, really in ye-olden-days people could take whatever into zones and do well because no one knew what they were doing and everyone had terrible builds, but unfortunately we now live in a world where people can watch the best players to know how to play, and builds are extremely cheap to get up and running. so yes ar/elec blasters could do well in i12 RV, but only because they were facing other people with terrible builds. ar/elec in reality sucked then and still sucks now, the only difference is now everyone can have a good build set up in a few hours whereas before no one knew what a good build even looked like, and if they did it still took weeks to get it up and running.

 

are these problems solveable? absolutely yes, but they would require a lot of work/resources.

 

i feel like i should also mention since it will inevitably come up from someone who hasnt tried pvp in the last 14 years, i13 had multiple parts to it and imo the worst parts have already been reverted or changed, to go through them:

 

travel suppression: completely removed in homecoming in all forms, pve has more suppression than pvp atm

heal decay: completely removed in homecoming

diminishing returns: still exists and is annoying, talks about adjusting curves to allow more sets to be viable happen but nothing has come from it yet. double edged sword

damage tied to animation time: still exists, but is arguably a good thing for balance

mez changes: still exist and suck if youre a controller/dominator player for sure, but also does mean you are allowed to play the game without buying break frees every 2 minutes

 

im sure im missing something but w/e, you get the gist. imo travel suppression was the biggest problem in i13 and movement atm is better than it was in i12, i recommend trying it out.

 

as a final note:

everyone wants base raids back, last i heard they are just royally broken and dont really have anything to do with i13.

 

tl;dr it could be reverted, but this is a very different game compared to i12 and it wouldnt be the same as it was. current situation also isnt perfect.

Good grief, thank you for the comprehensive write up on this. This answers a whole lot and makes me think pvp is doable now, I was still under the assumption alot of stuff ie travel suppression was still a thing.

 

21 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Thank you for taking the time to write that @MJB

You got that right GP. Thank you indeed.

[M3z]

Basically it'd just be a nightmare to rollback(nothing to rollback to to begin with, the code isn't there) and implement. A lot of balance issues.

 

I don't think there is really anyone who'd be against going back to i12 as it's superior in every way but obviously there'd have to be changes and balancing and I don't know if I'd trust certain devs to do that on their own. If they did it with the pvper's input then sure.

 

The HC devs really strangled their population and its growth by cutting streaming/vids (im sure they are 100% aware of this) and now I can't see any justification to spending much time on pvp given how small the population is now. Of course I'd love for them to do so but I don't see them updating even the PVE side of things (I think the last update was last April 2021??) let alone doing pvp specific changes.

 

And also the mez system from i12 would have to be revamped for sure.

 

Overall, it's just too complicated, we have almost 0 dev resources and the few devs who do do powerchanges are on a "I know best" mindset so I don't think you'd really want them making changes for pvp lol. I'd rather focus on small bandaid changes to the current meta and current issues than completely revamping, it's just more realistic and more likely to happen.

[Glacier Peak]

I don't mind the idea of making mez valuable again (past caging, taunts, and 3-4 second mez limits). I don't mind the idea of Telekinesis being reverted back to its former "glory" either. At the same time, there is no escaping the damage meta. Either you contribute to the damage spike, survive and disrupt, provide anti-damage (aka healing) and support, or you are wasting a potential slot on the team. 

 

Edit: Oh also important, even if you aren't contributing as any of the above, if you can call targets in voice chat competently and distribute teams evenly in pick up matches, you can fulfill an important role 😄

Edited April 13, 2022 by Glacier Peak

[The_Warpact]

2 hours ago, M3z said:

Basically it'd just be a nightmare to rollback(nothing to rollback to to begin with, the code isn't there) and implement. A lot of balance issues.

 

I don't think there is really anyone who'd be against going back to i12 as it's superior in every way but obviously there'd have to be changes and balancing and I don't know if I'd trust certain devs to do that on their own. If they did it with the pvper's input then sure.

 

The HC devs really strangled their population and its growth by cutting streaming/vids (im sure they are 100% aware of this) and now I can't see any justification to spending much time on pvp given how small the population is now. Of course I'd love for them to do so but I don't see them updating even the PVE side of things (I think the last update was last April 2021??) let alone doing pvp specific changes.

 

And also the mez system from i12 would have to be revamped for sure.

 

Overall, it's just too complicated, we have almost 0 dev resources and the few devs who do do powerchanges are on a "I know best" mindset so I don't think you'd really want them making changes for pvp lol. I'd rather focus on small bandaid changes to the current meta and current issues than completely revamping, it's just more realistic and more likely to happen.

Well thats depressing...lol.

[M3z]

2 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

Well thats depressing...lol.

Only if you think the current meta is unplayable and irredeemable. I still think it can be fun and 8v8 arenas (casual pick up groups with balanced teams) can be very fun. Zones on the other hand I have no clue how to fix that lol. There are so many cheese strats that make it unbearable.

[The_Warpact]

21 minutes ago, M3z said:

Only if you think the current meta is unplayable and irredeemable. I still think it can be fun and 8v8 arenas (casual pick up groups with balanced teams) can be very fun. Zones on the other hand I have no clue how to fix that lol. There are so many cheese strats that make it unbearable.

I'm going to make a toon this weekend and give it a try.

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

4 hours ago, M3z said:

Only if you think the current meta is unplayable and irredeemable. I still think it can be fun and 8v8 arenas (casual pick up groups with balanced teams) can be very fun. Zones on the other hand I have no clue how to fix that lol. There are so many cheese strats that make it unbearable.

Honestly the fix for zone is more players. Doesn't matter what cheese strat the local fight club is running, if you have more people on your team its going to increase your odds of defeating other players. Of course, if you got a whole group of cheesers running that play like its the super bowl, the opposite side might need double the players and scale up. 

 

Edit: Better yet, more players and lower levels in pvp makes it more and more balanced. PvP in teams set to Level 1-4 is cool as hell. Every AT role works well and procs are non existent. 

Edited April 14, 2022 by Glacier Peak

[M3z]

4 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Honestly the fix for zone is more players. Doesn't matter what cheese strat the local fight club is running, if you have more people on your team its going to increase your odds of defeating other players. Of course, if you got a whole group of cheesers running that play like its the super bowl, the opposite side might need double the players and scale up. 

 

Edit: Better yet, more players and lower levels in pvp makes it more and more balanced. PvP in teams set to Level 1-4 is cool as hell. Every AT role works well and procs are non existent. 

Low level pvp is surprisingly a blast. And yeah if there were more people in zones in general the cheese strats would matter less.

[UltraAlt]

17 hours ago, MJB said:

everyone wants base raids back

 

"Everyone" just means I agree or "I think" everyone should agree with that.

I don't "want" base raids back. I don't really care about base raids.

 

10 hours ago, M3z said:

I don't see them updating even the PVE side of things (I think the last update was last April 2021??)

 

9 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I don't mind the idea of making mez valuable again (past caging, taunts, and 3-4 second mez limits).

 

I loved having my ice controller slow melee characters down so much that they could never get to me and slowly eat away at their HP why they ran at me in slow motion.

That lasted all of a week on live before they rolled it back.

Really aggravated me.

I'm sure the melee players really put up a fuss for how frustrated they were because my control powers were actually affecting them.

 

3 hours ago, M3z said:

Low level pvp is surprisingly a blast.

 

I'm really glad to see talk about PVP in the forums even though I'm not going out of my way to find people to get into a PVP fight with.

When I go to PVP zones, there is no one else there beside my team, and we just work on zone goal stuff.

[The_Warpact]

Ok so what sets/ATs are viable now? I've seen builds all over the place on Discord. I've got a Psi/Plant blaster laying around collecting dust would it be worthwhile to get him going?

[MJB]

58 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

Ok so what sets/ATs are viable now? I've seen builds all over the place on Discord. I've got a Psi/Plant blaster laying around collecting dust would it be worthwhile to get him going?

psi/plant is good for just about everything so sure

[Marbing]

Speaking of getting more people in zone, I had an idea in the following thread I think would go a long way towards that: 

 

 

It is also open for additional feedback, trying to keep it civil as I know PvP is a polarizing topic. But that may ultimately be a futile thing lol. Either way, I’d love for more PvP voices to be heard in there. Whether you like my suggestion, or think it’s the worst idea since i13,  or wanted to add any ideas of your own. 😃

[M3z]

Organized PvPers basically had this exact discussion 2 years ago and we all kinda concluded i12 for the most part is better but not feasible to go back to it. Most of the bad i13 stuff has been reverted so the game is somewhat playable so the general idea was the just bandaid the game in its current state and go from there.

 

We were a lot more ambitious in the beginning and were starting to get traction with devs but 1 dev didn't listen to us at all and did whatever he wanted the other dev stopped working on pvp related things after a while.

 

I mean if they didn't listen to the organized community it's hard for me to picture them listening to PVErs who are going to start every post with "I don't pvp" or "I hate pvp". And it's not like this is how I want things to be but that's how it be.

[Marbing]

12 minutes ago, M3z said:

I mean if they didn't listen to the organized community it's hard for me to picture them listening to PVErs who are going to start every post with "I don't pvp" or "I hate pvp". And it's not like this is how I want things to be but that's how it be.

I agree. I think a big hurdle to convincing the Devs to do anything for PvP is convincing the majority of ALL players. With their limited staff and capability as such they are likely more willing to focus on things the majority wants or things they think will please that majority. (I could be wayyyyy off on that though, just my impression).

 

I think one thing that would start pushing the ball in that direction is some PvP Zone alerts or events that offer big rewards. It will entice the PvEers over to PvP zones to get those lucrative awards and thus possibly entice them to learn more about PvP so that they can get those rewards. That’s the idea anyway and I am fully aware that…

 

🎵You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us. And the world will live as one…🎵

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, Marbing said:

I think a big hurdle to convincing the Devs to do anything for PvP is convincing the majority of ALL players

 

There is no reason for anyone to lie to themselves about this.

You are not going to get a majority of CoH players to take part in PVP.

You might as well try to get a majority of the players to participate in Praetoria.

I am not saying this to be mean, but I don't think you should expect something that was never likely to happen.

 

Anything that the PVPers want to accomplish, they need to work on accomplishing with the content and tools that they already have.

If you like it, do it.

If you want other to participate, let them know that you are looking for more to join you.

And keep doing it if you like it, and keep using the tools available to keep telling others that you are looking for more to join you.

 

3 hours ago, Marbing said:

I think one thing that would start pushing the ball in that direction is some PvP Zone alerts or events that offer big rewards

 

The reward for wanting to PVP should be being able to PVP.

Players can go PVP at any time that the like.

There are Zone events in PVP that are PVP player driven.

There are badges.

I think the XP is a little better in PVP zone than in PVE zones already.

 

If you want to have more players in PVP zones, you have to work to build a community of those that want to PVP.

That's not on the DEVs.

The DEVs don't go out of their way to form Cat Girl RP groups, but they are out there if you want to be part of one.

I don't think I have ever heard a Cat Girl RP group complaining to the DEVs that the DEVs need to provide incentives to get other players to join their Cat Girl RP groups.

[DISCLAIMER: I am in no way trying to be disrespectful of Cat Girl RP groups. Go on with your Cat Girl selves!]

[Troo]

Why couldn't PVP be rolled back to how it was? It totally could. Mostly just settings which could be adjusted or toggled..

IOs fudge that up? The number of procs available maybe, avoiding haves and have-nots is possibly unavoidable.**

Who would be in favor of that? In my opinion it is a better starting point. Not close to perfect but a much better starting point. (and could still look at lessons learned since)

And in all seriousness because I don't know, how much resources would it actually use to do so. Easier than tackling other areas such as the Black Market. Cleaning up some items and addressing the inevitable would be the real work.

 

** PvP in CoX has always been build-based. IOs exaggerated this.

 

On 4/13/2022 at 6:10 AM, MJB said:

technically there is nothing stopping a rollback other than a few issues it would present that ill talk about later.

+1

also, very good post.

 

On 4/13/2022 at 6:10 AM, MJB said:

the main arguments i keep hearing for reverting pvp to pre-i13 are one of a) "my build works differently in pve and pvp and i dont like that" or 2) "i used to be able to take my <insert terrible pvp combo> character into zone and still do well.

 

the problem with a is the aforementioned balance issues, and we all know how much pve players love having balance changes put on them for pvp reasons. also a pve build would still never do well in a pvp setting even with the same mechanics available. simple things such as phase shift being fantastic in pvp, good travel power selection being mandatory or even that pve softcap defence does almost nothing in pvp when players have so much access to tohit buffs mean that people would _still_ need to have pvp builds to do well.

"my build works differently in pve and pvp" This is a real barrier.

"i used to be able to take my <insert terrible pvp combo> character into zone and still do well." Bad combos are also a reality. Though, it would be reasonable to expect your character to function at-least as well as it could, especially against the NPCs. It's also reasonable that Jimmy PvP-a-lot might know the better builds and is likely going to be more prepared to PvP.

 

On 4/13/2022 at 1:50 PM, M3z said:

I don't think there is really anyone who'd be against going back to i12 as it's superior in every way

I'd completely agree with "superior in a vast majority of ways"

Like MJB, you also have made some really good comments here.

 

7 hours ago, M3z said:

but 1 dev didn't listen to us at all and did whatever he wanted the other dev stopped working on pvp related things after a while.

This is/was disappointing.

 

 

 

[M3z]

@TrooYou basically hit the nail on the head about there being lots of barriers of entry and how pre i13 it was much easier to get into pvp as your pve build for the most part functioned mechanics wise almost the same as how it did in pve.

 

I'm working with some people on the organized pvp side of things to create a tutorial that will walk people through how to get into arena pvp including explaining roles, how to play them, how we keep things fair in 8v8s and how to fund builds. I tried to address any pain points PVE/zoners/regular players have with joining in arena. You'd actually be surprised how easy it is to turn 20 mil into a couple bill with just a few hours of work.

 

In my opinion because 8v8s are a controlled environment it tends to be a lot more open to builds and a lot more fun in general to play and on top of that we force balance teams(in comparison to zones which in my opinion are insufferable 80% of the time).

 

I'll post the vid in a couple places on here and the discord channels when it's ready.

[macskull]

On 4/14/2022 at 3:15 AM, UltraAlt said:

I loved having my ice controller slow melee characters down so much that they could never get to me and slowly eat away at their HP why they ran at me in slow motion.

That lasted all of a week on live before they rolled it back.

What are you talking about, the behavior you're describing literally existed from the day PvP was added to the game until the day I13 went live.

Edited April 18, 2022 by macskull

[UltraAlt]

Just now, macskull said:

What are you talking about, the behavior you're describing literally existed from the day PvP was added to the game until the day I13 went live.

 

Oh, no. There was one week where Controllers were KING in PVP on live.

Then they nerfed them again.

 

Tanks have always had the upper hand in PVP.

[macskull]

14 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

Oh, no. There was one week where Controllers were KING in PVP on live.

Then they nerfed them again.

 

Tanks have always had the upper hand in PVP.

Ice Control powers have always had -runspeed, and Shiver had -maxrunspeed, which would totally destroy a target's move speed unless they had slow resistance (most characters didn't at the time). The -maxrunspeed was removed from the PvP version of the power in I13, but before that you could absolutely slow a target to a crawl. Here's an example (around the 3:30 mark, specifically):

 

 

Tanks, on the other hand... Ice/EM was popular in the early days because of the slow resistance and phase/Hibernate stacking before the nophase changes and EM nerfs, but most Controllers and Defenders could make easy work of them if they were played intelligently.

Edited April 18, 2022 by macskull

[Glacier Peak]

24 minutes ago, macskull said:

Ice Control powers have always had -runspeed, and Shiver had -maxrunspeed, which would totally destroy a target's move speed unless they had slow resistance (most characters didn't at the time). The -maxrunspeed was removed from the PvP version of the power in I13, but before that you could absolutely slow a target to a crawl. Here's an example (around the 3:30 mark, specifically):

 

 

Tanks, on the other hand... Ice/EM was popular in the early days because of the slow resistance and phase/Hibernate stacking before the nophase changes and EM nerfs, but most Controllers and Defenders could make easy work of them if they were played intelligently.

Damn I didn't realize @M3z has been making pvp videos that long! lol

[macskull]

That's his old account, but there are a few other old players' accounts around still. The videos are getting harder to find these days though.