Open World PVP Server

[DarkFalzLord]

Have the devs ever considered making a PVP server? Like one where villains could get to paragon city and heroes to rogue isles and, for example, fight in open world or collect tips from npcs or something about instances (missions) where the opposite faction is currently in and allow invading the instance?

 

Could be fun!

[Disruptor]

This would potentially be cool in a sequel which is very unlikely with reworked pvp combat (w/ opt in pvp similar to War Mode in retail WoW that perhaps grants access to unique pvp powers or bonuses) but I don't think it will be happening on HC ever.

 

I've talked to a friend about open world pvp in a CoH2 where you opt in and heroes can do active pvp missions to stop villains from robbing banks in real time and villains can commit crimes. Basically like open world mayhem mission/safeguards, etc. Potentially entering buildings/instances to stop one another, there could be a GTA-like star rating for villains 1 where you could roam the city committing small crimes with little to no notice but 5 stars would make every hero in the zone aware of your presence, etc.

 

 

I think null the gull, alignment stuff and the way heroes and villains access zones would need to be worked or changed. Less war walls, less separate zones more open world but I don't think any of this is ever happening.

[Greycat]

It'd never happen.

 

I don't say that as "Grrr, I hate PVP" - I liked PVP (until, frankly, a mix of i13 and IOs made it even more of a build-off) but the game's not designed for it. The archetypes aren't really able to be balanced for something like that - they'd have a hard time being balanced *internally* with all the different powerset combinations, much less against each other. (Balance has basically been "Get a team and face a team.")

 

On top of it, even at its height the - let's call it PVP-friendly - population has never been huge. Given I can pretty much walk unslotted and toggles-off into any PVP zone and stand there yelling "HERE I AM, FREE REP!" and be perfectly safe, I'd be surprised if such a server would have enough population (much less steadily on population) to make it worth it.

 

As mentioned... a COH 2 rewrite, with PVP considered and in from the beginning? Maybe.

[Disruptor]

37 minutes ago, Greycat said:

It'd never happen.

 

I don't say that as "Grrr, I hate PVP" - I liked PVP (until, frankly, a mix of i13 and IOs made it even more of a build-off) but the game's not designed for it. The archetypes aren't really able to be balanced for something like that - they'd have a hard time being balanced *internally* with all the different powerset combinations, much less against each other. (Balance has basically been "Get a team and face a team.")

 

On top of it, even at its height the - let's call it PVP-friendly - population has never been huge. Given I can pretty much walk unslotted and toggles-off into any PVP zone and stand there yelling "HERE I AM, FREE REP!" and be perfectly safe, I'd be surprised if such a server would have enough population (much less steadily on population) to make it worth it.

 

As mentioned... a COH 2 rewrite, with PVP considered and in from the beginning? Maybe.

 

 

I'm not an expert in mmorpgs but CoX is one of the few where pvp and pve function very differently, I recently watched a video from a mmo dev who said this is typically always bad because it requires players to learn separate mechanics and gameplay. An example they used was as simple as a stun being 4.5 seconds in pve but being 1.5 seconds in pvp. 

 

I really liked pvp in coh during the early days esp when cov launched, I had tons of fun but Ive since played a lot of other pvp games and IMO coh pvp is not good or fun and poorly designed. Of course fun is subjective but I dont know if you will find anyone that objectively says coh pvp is well designed or "good" in terms of quality gameplay. 

[Darmian]

2 hours ago, DarkFalzLord said:

Have the devs ever considered making a PVP server? Like one where villains could get to paragon city and heroes to rogue isles and, for example, fight in open world or collect tips from npcs or something about instances (missions) where the opposite faction is currently in and allow invading the instance?

 

Could be fun!

As mentioned earlier, highly unlikely to happen. 

 

(But mentioned in a different thread WAAAY back, suppose your Villain does a Mayhem mission?  Then the system registers your villain and powerset and the next time a Hero does a Safeguard mission, you get doppelgangered in as the Villain?  Ok, it's not PVP, but it's a bit more immersive.)

 

 

[Greycat]

5 minutes ago, Disruptor said:

 

 

I'm not an expert in mmorpgs but CoX is one of the few where pvp and pve function very differently, I recently watched a video from a mmo dev who said this is typically always bad because it requires players to learn separate mechanics and gameplay. An example they used was as simple as a stun being 4.5 seconds in pve but being 1.5 seconds in pvp. 

 

I really liked pvp in coh during the early days esp when cov launched, I had tons of fun but Ive since played a lot of other pvp games and IMO coh pvp is not good or fun and poorly designed. Of course fun is subjective but I dont know if you will find anyone that objectively says coh pvp is well designed or "good" in terms of quality gameplay. 

 

If you did it early (when I enjoyed it, frankly) then, yeah, you know this wasn't always the case... and was part of the reason (when introduced in I13) that the PVP population dropped. (The zones used to be a *lot* of fun, even without a "PVP bulid.")

[El D]

As other posters have already said, the insurmountable hurdle to this is the fact that CoX PvP runs off of an entirely different set of mechanics and numbers to PvE. Something like this would either require an entire rewrite of the PvP system or an entire rewrite of the PvE system of power effects specifically for this one server - which is multiple Mount Everests worth of effort as far as CoX development goes. All for an entirely new server that, frankly, it seems like the majority of players wouldn't ever play on due to PvP's popularity taking a massive nosedive post-Issue 13 and never really recovering in interest. Plus the additional maintenance costs of buying another server and maintaining it to begin with.

 

I love the concept behind the idea, I just don't see how it'd work out in practice on this scale given game mechanics and general player opinions. IMO, the current progression has been pretty solid. Adding PvP back into bases is a really fun addition allowing for player-run events and community things, while keeping it specifically under the 'engaged with at the players' choice' aspect. If the entire game and every zone and every instanced mission are PvP enabled though, that just seems like a recipe for making it so much more obnoxious to run content. How would that affect task forces? iTrials? Dark Astoria missions? Would there by any zones that don't allow for PvP at all? Not to mention the impact on badging. A hefty number of players already dislike the necessity of having to possibly PvP to get a handful of badges in the existing PvP zones - having a server that introduces that into every other aspect of the game just seems like most players would look at it and go 'I'm good where I am, thank you.'

 

Rather than apply this to a whole server, I think it'd work better as a contained PvP zone that allows for 'invading instances.' The game does allow for different teams to make it into the same instance - albeit currently only on accident - and the new phasing tech could make for a more dynamic overworld. Hell, even just instituting that 'PvP Instance Missions' thing on its own without a new zone could be fun. Villains get hired by Crey to protect an asset while the heroes have to retrieve it, or competing members of the Midnight Club get their own teams to find a relic from Oranbega. The vast majority of mission maps already have various spawn points and pathing, so it'd readily allow for a variety of objectives, too.

Edited November 14, 2022 by El D

[Disruptor]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

 

If you did it early (when I enjoyed it, frankly) then, yeah, you know this wasn't always the case... and was part of the reason (when introduced in I13) that the PVP population dropped. (The zones used to be a *lot* of fun, even without a "PVP bulid.")

 

 

Before IO's, Set Bonuses and i13 I really enjoyed PvP especially in zones specifically Siren's Call was my absolute favorite. I could take my AR/Dev Blaster or Inv/SS Tank or Mind/FF Con or Emp and have a decently good time even though some of my toons were garbo in pvp. Used to set up a bunch of trip mines and tp foe low health villains into them down an alley in SR or run tp foe on my Super Strength Tank and hit rage, tp foe and KO blow on running enemies.

 

Of course I had an EM/Nin stalker too, amazing times.

 

That said I know HC has made changes to pvp, many for the better like you can make pvp chars now for free w/ accolades which is great dont get me wrong. I really have no interest in CoX pvp regardless if its i7, i10, post i13 or now.

Edited November 14, 2022 by Disruptor

[JasperStone]

4 hours ago, Darmian said:

As mentioned earlier, highly unlikely to happen. 

 

(But mentioned in a different thread WAAAY back, suppose your Villain does a Mayhem mission?  Then the system registers your villain and powerset and the next time a Hero does a Safeguard mission, you get doppelgangered in as the Villain?  Ok, it's not PVP, but it's a bit more immersive.)

 

 

I'd be down for that

[DarkFalzLord]

Thanks for all the responses so far. I understand it is complicated, but maybe it could be an idea to explore, if the devs were up to it. A PVP server could have its own "tweaks" to skills and stuff, as if it was another different "world".

 

Also no one would be forced to join the server, so PvE people would be intact!

[Ruin Mage]

We don't need more servers.

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, DarkFalzLord said:

Also no one would be forced to join the server, so PvE people would be intact!

 

Well, I think the main issue isn't anyone being "forced" to join, but how few people would show up to begin with.

[Astralock]

Besides, Freedom had open world PvP fifteen years ago.

 

 

 

[Luminara]

16 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Well, I think the main issue isn't anyone being "forced" to join, but how few people would show up to begin with.

 

I thought the main issue would be the amount of time and work to fork the code base, maintain and update it on the separate server while keeping everything else running and working on new Pages for the existing servers.  Not the return on the investment, but the investment itself, which would not be insignificant.

[JasperStone]

38 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

Well, I think the main issue isn't anyone being "forced" to join, but how few people would show up to begin with.

My thoughts. 

I rarely PVP so I am not aware of large the community is

...

hmmmm

To the POLLS!

[golstat2003]

The community is small. I doubt the current pvp community could field an entire paragon city of pvp. You would never finds folks to pvp with if everyone is scattered across 15+ zones. You can barely find pvp in the existing 3-4 zones currently. LOL

[biostem]

How do you balance "fair play" with what might end up being the reality of high level villains hanging around Ms. Liberty or other bottlenecks, to just gank low-levels?  In the comics, there's always a bigger fish to keep villains in check.  Short of some sort of "instant defeat areas", (as opposed to the police drones having to individually target bad guys), how do you protect from such behavior?  I'm not against PvP necessarily, but it does tend to point out the shortcomings of the game engine and bring out the worst in (some) people...

[Sirius.Games]

If the new pvp changes are popular maybe but I really don't see this as beneficial as it would increase cost (both dev time and server costs) and the player base that takes part in pvp is a minority

[srmalloy]

13 minutes ago, biostem said:

How do you balance "fair play" with what might end up being the reality of high level villains hanging around Ms. Liberty or other bottlenecks, to just gank low-levels?

The most obvious way to address this is to apply the same sort of force-leveling code that the existing PvP zones use to each zone individually, so that in AP you're force-exemped to, say level 5, in KR to level 10, Steel and Skyway to level 15, etc.; it doesn't eliminate the problem, because characters exemped down still have access to five extra levels of powers that lower-level characters don't have.

 

On the other hand, my experience with open-world PvP is that it encourages play by people for whom the sole metric for their "leet skillz" as a gamer is how fast their level-capped combat monster with BiS gear can gank newbies fresh out of the tutorial and who run like a scared jackrabbit from anything that even hints at having an element of risk. Having the zones scale to 'appropriate' levels would only address some of that. All that said, if this was kept as a separate server that I don't have to pay any attention to, much less play on, my objections mostly disappear, being reduced to a petulant whine about the Homecoming staff's efforts being diluted by having to support a completely separate open-world PvP server with a disjoint codebase.

[Zect]

Much like real-world warfare, open-world PVP boils down to less about the combat itself, and more about the strategy and metagame element.

 

i.e. who fights better matters less than 1) who can get more friends online, 2) motivate them and 3) assemble them in the right time and place. Just ask EVE Online players!

 

I only bring this up because when talking about PVP, people tend to have an fantasy about a world with a perfectly level playing field where "only skill matters" (skill selectively defined as how well you perform in a 1v1 deathmatch with no external elements nor strategy involved). Not only is this fantasy already unrealistic in the best of circumstances, open-world PVP is intentionally as far away as you can get from it.

 

That said... why the hell not! And even if I can't see playing on such a server long-term, I think enabling pvp everywhere or in selected zones could be fun as an occasional event. Consider this for April Fool's next year, devs. And remember to disable the drones around Miss Liberty. 😈

[Astralock]

19 minutes ago, Zect said:

That said... why the hell not! And even if I can't see playing on such a server long-term, I think enabling pvp everywhere or in selected zones could be fun as an occasional event. Consider this for April Fool's next year, devs. And remember to disable the drones around Miss Liberty. 😈

 

That would be one way to get me to leave and never come back.