With license to develop, why not try a new brand of PVP that may excite casual gamers?

[Darmian]

PVP?  Not my thing.  I've met cool PVPers and (mainly back on Live) I've met lots of gankers. But you know, if I go badging in a PVP zone and get ganked, that's on me to be fair.  What REALLY annoyed me about PVP is the Rogue Isles has TWO amazing zones wasted on PVP.  Bloody Bay and Warburg are atmospheric and cool and could be filled with contacts and missions, but no. Redside has ELEVEN zones* (including The Abyss and Monster Island) and loses two of them to a very niche part of the game. Blueside has TWENTY FIVE zones, of which only ONE, Siren's Call, is PVP. Recluse's Victory?  Fine with that. Shared future combat. Not to mention the entire Arena system. Or you know what? Have PVE versions of the two zones as well as the PVP versions.  If the Echo Versions of zones can exist, and the mini PI that is Monster Island, then that can happen too.

 

And all the above doesn't include the Shadow Shard either.

 

*Villains can access RWZ and DA and IIRC the Echo Zones too, but that still hardly fixes the imbalance.

Edited January 10 by Darmian

[High_Beam]

7 hours ago, Snowbunny said:

I would do PvP if it was in their own area separate from the PvE stuff. The other poster recommended doing it through the LFG interface which doesn't sound like a bad idea. However I also kind of like the idea of PvP in PvE zones and maybe only have level 50's targetable who are flagged but I doubt people will like that so..

That is how it is currently in the game; Siren's Call, Bloody Bay, Warburg and Recluse's Victory are PvP zones where players can attack each other at will (less the tiny safe entry areas).  And there are some mini-games (mentioned above by @UltraAlt) as well as control the zone in Bloody Bay and Recluse's Victory.

[High_Beam]

2 hours ago, Darmian said:

Bloody Bay and Warburg are atmospheric and cool and could be filled with contacts and missions,

You can get a taste of Bloody Bay in the Drowning in Blood Trial as well.  

[Darmian]

4 minutes ago, High_Beam said:

You can get a taste of Bloody Bay in the Drowning in Blood Trial as well.  

True, but it's a run through.

[Doc_Scorpion]

9 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Honestly, there are probably far more people interested in Base Building than there are in PVP.

I've been playing various MMO's for around twenty years, and when it comes to PvP there's one universal truth - PvP is a very small niche interest.  And it almost always has a bad reputation among PvE players because it almost always attracts some...  very unsavory types.  (And the PvP community at large pretty much always defends their behavior, just making the perception worse.)

Somehow though, PvP players steadfastly remain blithely unaware of this.

[SeraphimKensai]

As a retired PvPer and no one of importance, I'd suggest for the greatest shot at getting PvP changes implemented is to:

1. Join the Homecoming PvP discord server : https://discord.com/invite/7URmx7yH)
2. join Homecoming's gold standard testers group and help test proposed PvP changes and report your experience with them back to the devs (here's the link: https://discord.gg/DptUBzh)
3. Find PvP chat channels in-game to join
4. host some of your own events whether kickball, fight club, zone, or whatever (make it fun).

If you run your ideas through the PvP community and they gain traction, it's more likely that the HC staff will support what you're suggesting. Lastly, changes aren't quick (unless it's a serious bug that needs addressing), the staff likes to have substantial testing of things that are in the pipeline before they hit production.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

I've been playing various MMO's for around twenty years, and when it comes to PvP there's one universal truth - PvP is a very small niche interest.  And it almost always has a bad reputation among PvE players because it almost always attracts some...  very unsavory types.  (And the PvP community at large pretty much always defends their behavior, just making the perception worse.)

Somehow though, PvP players steadfastly remain blithely unaware of this.

I'd have to say this is probably the biggest thing for me. Very well stated. I've met some PvP'ers that I respected a lot. I've even done PvP against them and enjoyed it. However, more than 90% of my experience with PvP was what I would consider to be toxic behavior. And as even the PvP'ers I respected like to point out, it is all still valid PvP. It doesn't matter how toxic a PvE'er may think something in PvP is, the PvP community always circles the wagons around their fellow PvP'ers. (Don't get me started on examples please. I would rather not spend the day seething again.)

 

Am I against PvP itself? No. I've actually enjoyed the occasional PvP against friends and even against some dedicated PvP'ers. Even in PvP zones. (Where I get soundly obliterated almost every time by the actual PvP'er, but at least it was an enjoyable match.) So if others want PvP? More power to them. Have at it. Enjoy. However, just as I am in favor of PvP'ers having their space to do what they enjoy? I want my space to do what I enjoy. So I will always oppose adding PvP to anything PvE. I'm not opposed to a new PvP environment that mimics the PvE environments and activities, just opposed to adding PvP to anything PvE we have.

[Greycat]

On 1/9/2024 at 7:39 PM, Rudra said:

Back on Live, yes, there were devs that would log on and play with us. Usually, they would join someone's team. (It was weird when we had a dev join us and the first words he posted on team chat was "Sorry, I'm not familiar with playing, so please be understanding." He was still LOTS of fun to run around with, and wasn't as rusty as he was worried he was.) I've heard of but never seen devs spawning GMs, or even groups of GMs, but while I've heard the rumor it happened, I've never seen it done in this game. And even then, it was never the dev playing against the players, it was the dev spawning some serious opposition for the players to contend with.

 

 

Only time I can think of / absolutely say for sure this happened was in the COV beta, when we were trying out... might have been Bloody Bay, I don't even remember.

 

Since everyone was testing villainside, they hopped on signature characters or random "Agent XXXXXX" Longbow, and groups of players would gang up on them.

 

(I know II have screenshots of this *somewhere,* danged if I can find them though.)

 

[Greycat]

9 hours ago, Rudra said:

I'd have to say this is probably the biggest thing for me. Very well stated. I've met some PvP'ers that I respected a lot. I've even done PvP against them and enjoyed it. However, more than 90% of my experience with PvP was what I would consider to be toxic behavior. And as even the PvP'ers I respected like to point out, it is all still valid PvP. It doesn't matter how toxic a PvE'er may think something in PvP is, the PvP community always circles the wagons around their fellow PvP'ers. (Don't get me started on examples please. I would rather not spend the day seething again.)

 

While I've already agreed - no PVP in the PVE zones - I've got to give some of the "other side" here, too.

 

Someone enters a PVP zone. There's a countdown, a big warning that players can attack you, etc. They go in and get killed... *and start cussing out the PVPer for PVPing in one of the few PVP areas* because "I wasn't here to PVP!" - getting badges or whatever.

 

And almost universally, *whatever the PVPer says is wrong,* they're evil, they're "gankers," "I'm gonna report you," etc, etc, etc. They were supposed to *completely ignore their preferred playstyle, in one of the few, typically dead areas they can enjoy it,* so this one person (who never bothered saying anything, the majority of the time) can do ... whatever "I'm calling it PVE" thing they want to do. (I'll be honest here, it seemed like it was *massively* badger-vs-PVPer where PVPers were told they were evil and shouldn't be allowed to do what the zone's intended for because the badgers were *obviously* supposed to have priority with what *they* wanted to do instead.)

 

PVPers circle the wagons around their fellow PVPers? Damn right. Because that's what PVPers tend to face.  They deal with their community internally - if someone really is being an asshat, they find themselves "out." And in a community as small as the COH PVP community is? That's very out. To where, yes, at least in zones back in the day you'd find them being warned about and *the other side helped out* to drive the toxic person away.

 

Note, I'm not talking a bit of trash talk. Or something said in frustration or celebration. I'm not talking "you teleported me into mines and a stalker!" Or just existing as a stalker. Or just trying to PVP in one of the few places that lets people, with one of the few people actually showing up in that zone. (Yes, I've seen or had *all* these things considered "toxic," so I tend to be ... a bit skeptical of the label when applied to PVPers here.)

 

Not saying that's what Rudra does - I don't know, never encountered them in that situation - but there's been historically a *lot* of unfair hate of anyone interested in PVP, and PVP in general, in COH, and a lot of unfair labeling of people involved in it since live.

[Doc_Scorpion]

14 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Only time I can think of / absolutely say for sure this happened was in the COV beta, when we were trying out... might have been Bloody Bay, I don't even remember.

Ghost Widow popped into a mish I was on during the I12 (?) closed beta...  (Which was actually kinda spooky)  We'd just discovered a pool of swimmable water (you can actually submerge) and she wanted to know what we thought of it.  (This was new then, and I don't think it was ever used anywhere else.)

[biostem]

The problem with PvP, IMO, is that there is really only what the game engine does and does not allow you to do;  There is no system in place to enforce "fair play" besides what the game itself permits.  I'd much rather participate in PvP with a better sense of weight classes or other such systems - pretty much anything that prevents things from degrading into "whomever has the biggest purse wins".

[Rudra]

30 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

While I've already agreed - no PVP in the PVE zones - I've got to give some of the "other side" here, too.

 

Someone enters a PVP zone. There's a countdown, a big warning that players can attack you, etc. They go in and get killed... *and start cussing out the PVPer for PVPing in one of the few PVP areas* because "I wasn't here to PVP!" - getting badges or whatever.

 

And almost universally, *whatever the PVPer says is wrong,* they're evil, they're "gankers," "I'm gonna report you," etc, etc, etc. They were supposed to *completely ignore their preferred playstyle, in one of the few, typically dead areas they can enjoy it,* so this one person (who never bothered saying anything, the majority of the time) can do ... whatever "I'm calling it PVE" thing they want to do. (I'll be honest here, it seemed like it was *massively* badger-vs-PVPer where PVPers were told they were evil and shouldn't be allowed to do what the zone's intended for because the badgers were *obviously* supposed to have priority with what *they* wanted to do instead.)

 

PVPers circle the wagons around their fellow PVPers? Damn right. Because that's what PVPers tend to face.  They deal with their community internally - if someone really is being an asshat, they find themselves "out." And in a community as small as the COH PVP community is? That's very out. To where, yes, at least in zones back in the day you'd find them being warned about and *the other side helped out* to drive the toxic person away.

 

Note, I'm not talking a bit of trash talk. Or something said in frustration or celebration. I'm not talking "you teleported me into mines and a stalker!" Or just existing as a stalker. Or just trying to PVP in one of the few places that lets people, with one of the few people actually showing up in that zone. (Yes, I've seen or had *all* these things considered "toxic," so I tend to be ... a bit skeptical of the label when applied to PVPers here.)

 

Not saying that's what Rudra does - I don't know, never encountered them in that situation - but there's been historically a *lot* of unfair hate of anyone interested in PVP, and PVP in general, in COH, and a lot of unfair labeling of people involved in it since live.

I can get that. I have no issues with PvP'ers defending their own from abuse, harrassment, or other unacceptable behavior from others. And I do understand that CoH has a rather good PvP community compared to other games I've tried. However, I have not cursed out a PvP'er for doing PvP in a PvP zone unless I already asked them to leave me alone and they agreed, only to gang up on my solo character again and kill me. I get PvP happens in PvP zones. I believe you and I specifically have had this conversation before on the forums. As well as @Glacier Peak and several others. If you want a list of the reasons why I absolutely loathe, detest, and abhor PvP? I can give it to you. And it wasn't for PvP'ers doing PvP. (Edit: At least not what I, as a PvE'er, would ever think of as being PvP.)

 

And every time I brought up such activity to PvP'ers? The response was always the same. Some variation of suck it up, buttercup. Profanity from the victor to the loser? Accept it. Offensive actions like "teabagging"? Accept it. So yeah, while the PvP community may police their own? I sure as hell have never seen it. And I'm working myself into a rage, so stopping here.

 

I get there will be PvP in a PvP zone. I understand just being in a PvP zone makes you PvP. I have no issues with any of that. (Any more. Lots of discussions had on that, that I really don't want to go through yet again.) I'm fine with there being PvP. I want the PvP'ers to have fun. I want everyone to feel welcome in the game. I just don't want PvP anywhere near the PvE zones/content. Not because someone thinks it may be fun (always a PvP'er). Not because someone thinks it might breathe new life into the game (also always a PvP'er). Not for any reason whatsoever.

 

When done right? (Yes, a very subjective statement, I know. Unavoidable. Sorry.) PvP can actually be fun. I remember doing some valley PvP on WoW. (Don't ask me what it was, I don't remember.) It was frantic and it was fun. I've dueled PvP'ers 1 on 1 and even 2 on 1 in Siren's Call. It was fun. However, I can only deal with PvP in very, very, very small doses. And I sure as hell don't want to have to worry about whether or not there may be a PvP event in the zone I just logged in to or have to wonder why my Brute is being held, stunned, or immobilized by mobs that I have always been able to ignore before in a PvE zone on my mission assigned street sweep.

Edited January 11 by Rudra

[Doc_Scorpion]

4 minutes ago, biostem said:

The problem with PvP, IMO, is that there is really only what the game engine does and does not allow you to do;  There is no system in place to enforce "fair play" besides what the game itself permits.  I'd much rather participate in PvP with a better sense of weight classes or other such systems - pretty much anything that prevents things from degrading into "whomever has the biggest purse wins".

That's why I enjoyed group PvP in Puzzle Pirates - the game enforced weight classes.  And while it would allow *you* to force combat with [the equivalent of] a purple, but if the purple tried to force combat on you...  Hilarity did not ensue (for the purple).  That meant almost all fights were at least somewhere in the vicinity of fair.

[lemming]

9 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Ghost Widow popped into a mish I was on during the I12 (?) closed beta...  (Which was actually kinda spooky)  We'd just discovered a pool of swimmable water (you can actually submerge) and she wanted to know what we thought of it.  (This was new then, and I don't think it was ever used anywhere else.)

The cave spot in Cimerora (spelling, what's that)?    Spent a bunch of time screwing around with that spot when first introduced and still take a dip in there during ITFs

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

The cave spot in Cimerora (spelling, what's that)?    Spent a bunch of time screwing around with that spot when first introduced and still take a dip in there during ITFs

Can't recall if it was part of an ITF or something else, but yeah, definitely in Cimerora.

[Darmian]

12 hours ago, Greycat said:

Someone enters a PVP zone. There's a countdown, a big warning that players can attack you, etc. They go in and get killed... *and start cussing out the PVPer for PVPing in one of the few PVP areas* because "I wasn't here to PVP!" - getting badges or whatever.

 

As I said in my earlier post, if I enter a PVP zone to badge and get taken out, that's on me.  I had more than enough nonsense though back in the day just trying to leave the damn zone after being killed. Yeah, you've killed me. Got your notch.  Now I'm just trying to leave so eff off.  No?  Dead again. Oh well.  There were too many of those versus that one guy in Warburg who saw me collecting scientists for the Nuke and instead of just murdering me just lets me know I've lost my scientist and backs off. Kudos to that guy. 

 

Again, MY ultimate frustration is not PVP in itself, as @Greycat says and with gritted teeth I agree, if you step in you agree to the terms and you ARE a target, but the total waste of zones on Redside dedicated to only PVP and a few badges. Go see Bloody Bay and Warburg, fly around (carefully!) and see they're awesome zones. They should be filled with plot and mission arcs.  The entire Rogue Arachnos Faction is mere decoration! That's just wrong. The entire VEAT storyline (which gets weaker and weaker as you progress) could benefit from this zone. 

[SeraphimKensai]

The idea of weight classes is typically handled for things like arena kickball and such as captains draft their teams, but depending on who shows up their might be a rule like 1 empath per team and such.

 

Also in regards to the who has the biggest purse, in my experience, the PvP community often bends over backwards to help each other whether that be sharing PvP builds, power leveling PvP characters, or even help with slotting a character out by tossing them IOs, or influence. In my day we had so much trust between each other that I had log in info for probably a dozen other papers (my own team and then some players that we we're pretty friendly with) where we'd PL someone a whole new PvP character while they were at work and often fully slot it out for them (especially the newer folks who joined our team that weren't sitting on stacks of billions of influence spread out on mule characters).

 

Most organized pvpers really respect what I'd call the "Spirit of the Game" because we don't want to just roll over someone like a Chess Grandmaster playing a year old. We want our opponents to have fun and improve, so we can continue to be challenged so we can continue getting better and having fun.

 

Sure we can't speak for everyone, as yeah there were people being assholes and teleporting players into drones and sometimes outside geometry (which is not cool), but most of the pvpers I knew would not associate with that behavior as it went against that spirit of the game I mentioned.

 

Given that defeat in CoH PvP doesn't really have many drawbacks to defeat, it always surprised me how few people would PvP, but then again I've pvped in every MMO I've played including Eve online (where defeat there can hurt quite a bit). Then again ever since going to Iraq back in 2003/2005 I don't bother with games like COD and such, so I get that everything isn't for everyone.

 

[lemming]

27 minutes ago, Darmian said:

As I said in my earlier post, if I enter a PVP zone to badge and get taken out, that's on me.  I had more than enough nonsense though back in the day just trying to leave the damn zone after being killed. Yeah, you've killed me. Got your notch.  Now I'm just trying to leave so eff off.  No?  Dead again. Oh well.  There were too many of those versus that one guy in Warburg who saw me collecting scientists for the Nuke and instead of just murdering me just lets me know I've lost my scientist and backs off. Kudos to that guy. 

 

Again, MY ultimate frustration is not PVP in itself, as @Greycat says and with gritted teeth I agree, if you step in you agree to the terms and you ARE a target, but the total waste of zones on Redside dedicated to only PVP and a few badges. Go see Bloody Bay and Warburg, fly around (carefully!) and see they're awesome zones. They should be filled with plot and mission arcs.  The entire Rogue Arachnos Faction is mere decoration! That's just wrong. The entire VEAT storyline (which gets weaker and weaker as you progress) could benefit from this zone. 

Yea, my badger would be getting attacked ineffectually, but it was annoying and when I said "I'm not into PvP, just grabbing a couple badges", the good PvP players tended to back off.  The others would do the usual stuff that puts a bad name on the others.  Depending on mood, I'd just leave, but occasionally I'd take the gloves off.

[TerroirNoir2]

1 hour ago, Darmian said:

Go see Bloody Bay and Warburg, fly around (carefully!) and see they're awesome zones. They should be filled with plot and mission arcs.  The entire Rogue Arachnos Faction is mere decoration! That's just wrong. The entire VEAT storyline (which gets weaker and weaker as you progress) could benefit from this zone. 

Oh yeah, this could be great.

[Scarlet Shocker]

Realistically, the only way PVP is going to get better in this game is to radically overhaul the mechanics of it and create a new PVP shard for those who want to do it.

 

I'm a big fan of it. On live on the EU servers I created the "Friday Night Fight Club" as some of you may remember, but that quickly evolved into very low level PVP (typically from level 5-10) because that was one of the few ways you could make it equitable.

 

The real tragedy for PVP in this game is there are some great zones, great prizes and interesting story lines that are left to lie fallow and unused because the rest of PVP totally sucks.

 

I would like to see PVP rebalanced to take into account the strength of the various ATs rather than regression towards the mean that we have now where Defenders are basically top dog, and make the new PVP shard playable in all zones (probably with a challenge/flag arrangement so that people can go about their business peacefully when they need to.)

[Greycat]

On 1/10/2024 at 10:16 PM, biostem said:

The problem with PvP, IMO, is that there is really only what the game engine does and does not allow you to do;  There is no system in place to enforce "fair play" besides what the game itself permits.  I'd much rather participate in PvP with a better sense of weight classes or other such systems - pretty much anything that prevents things from degrading into "whomever has the biggest purse wins".

 

Eh, the way I've pretty much always approached it - and which really fits more in with the game itself - is that you *cannot* balance COH, class to class, just due to the wide variety of powersets within each class. We've never really had definitive discussions saying THIS AT is better than THAT AT 100% of the time. It's This powerset pairing, pools and build does well *here,* has weaknesses *there.* It's one of those differences of COH... you don't end up as "Level 28 Fighter #20893721312" playing with "Level 32 Mage #987230948723" that has probably the same, limited equipment choices as every OTHER fighter or mage in that range.

 

For COH, I've always seen PVP balance as "bring a team and cover each others weaknesses."

 

I keep mentioning this, but way back on live I ended up with a PVP PUG of myself (fire/kin corrupter, I beliieve,) at least one dom and I *think* another corr... and we held the zone because we just complemented each other so well we could pick off singles/duos/etc. that kept coming until it became a good team and a half or two teams finally rushing and overwhelming anything we could do. Yeah, I've had my share of 1v1 fights, as well, but that "held the zone" in Siren's is just one of the things I remember quite fondly.

 

(This was... pre IO-craziness, pre I13 changes, of course. Nobody was capped-everything, perma-everything.)

 

On 1/11/2024 at 10:58 AM, Darmian said:

, but the total waste of zones on Redside dedicated to only PVP and a few badges. Go see Bloody Bay and Warburg, fly around (carefully!) and see they're awesome zones. They should be filled with plot and mission arcs.  The entire Rogue Arachnos Faction is mere decoration! That's just wrong. The entire VEAT storyline (which gets weaker and weaker as you progress) could benefit from this zone. 

 

I have many issues with VEATs - I *play* them, mind, one of my mains is one because the powersets fit the character - but the storyline is the only part that ever actually got me angry in COH, to where I just play it to 10 to get the costume slot and ignore the rest of it.  (I could do without the forced-respec-at-24 nonsense, for instance.)

 

That said... well, the faction *is* used elsewhere a bit (WWD, I believe, for starters,) there's specific plot (the whole Jade Spider thing) ending in SIren's... as long as we're just talking an alternative story-based zone, having an *option* going in to if it's the PVP or PVE zone, PVP being exactly as it is now, PVE being like Croatoa or Faultline with zone arcs and a final zone reward (but not the same, or same strength, shivan/nuke/etc. rewards) wouldn't be bad. There's a whole lore basis for why Siren's is the way it is, after all, that could be explored. (It might come off *somewhat* the same as some of what's in Faultline, granted.) The main issue I have with that is that there'd either have to be separate hero and villain zones, or there'd have to be a damned good reason why SuperHer0icDude can't stop EvilB4dM4n when they see each other in zone, and I don't think most (maybe Warburg has this in Rogue Arachnos and Malta, but probably not BB and certainly not Siren's) really have a good baked in reason for it.

 

Have to chew on it a bit.