Dream feature: Infiltration

[SpookTheHerd]

Something I would love to see which I can already see the backlash over

Would be the ability to swap to villain zones as a hero and hero zones as a villain. 

I've often considered that this would require duplicate PVP versions of each zone for players who wish to opt out. Maybe that's still necessary, but we know no one would use those (unless there were infiltration based mission doors!) 

 

How it would work:

A hero or villain could swap sides freely, but nearly everything is hostile to them, including vigilantees and rogues, for these purposes they side with the native faction.

Certain groups like Longbow to heroes and Arachnos to villains might actually be set as non-hostile.

 

Starter zones like Atlas and Mercy would of course be off limits, just for reasons of politeness to starting players. Or again, duplicate zones or an opt-in system (maybe a player who has not opted in is straight up phase shifted or invis to a hostile player or vise versa--no duplicate zone required!). 

 

The only primary reason I could see for doing this is RP purposes, affiliated infiltration based missions, and bragging rights that you withstood an entire zone of angry enemies for all of 30 seconds before you got KO'ed.

 

I'd love to see this--and I'm not even any good at PvP! 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, SpookTheHerd said:

Something I would love to see which I can already see the backlash over

So, your suggestion is make every zone except Atlas & Mercy a PvP zone, or duplicate every zone?    And how would this react to rogues & vigilantes?  Would they suddenly be attackable by teammates that are the other alignment?

 

Level differences would be a problem, unless you put in a bunch more code.

 

I'm pretty sure this idea would a) not be wanted by most people b) be a nightmare to code since the alignment stuff is already a bit twitchy

[Glacier Peak]

What's the incentive for the rest of the player base? Right now this suggestion appears to appease your desires for fun, but misses the rest of the discussion. PvP has no unique rewards. Defeating another player provides no tangible unique in game rewards. The player might get some dopamine, but that's outside the game's rewards. There are PvE rewards in PvP zones, like temp pet summons or Nukes, maybe a PvP invention recipe, but that's it for rewards. 

[Frozen Burn]

If I recall correctly, back on live, they had a PVP Server where the Co-op Zones (RWZ, Cim, DA) were PVP zones.  I also seem to recall the long-time ask from the PVP community for all zones to be opened as PVP for that server, but it would have been a coding nightmare.  I hate PVP and generally ignore whatever when it's mentioned, so I may be misremembering. 

 

But I think it would still hold true for now that it would be horrendous to code such a thing.  And yeah, I don't see a huge request / need for this as the PVP community seems very tiny currently.  I do see a value in the request only for Heroes and Villains finally being able to get those explore and history badges.  But again the potential coding nightmare I think outweighs this.

[SeraphimKensai]

As a retired PvPer, I have to say no to the idea here.  Do you have any idea how much opposition we've had over the years even having the existing PvP zones? I can picture LFG, General, Help, the Forums, Discord talking about people ganking and griefing them.

 

There's already some missions that send you to a version of an opposing zone and that's fine as is.

 

*I recall a bug maybe 15 years or so ago that a villain was able to get to Atlas Park, and they couldn't do anything. Couldn't PvP, couldn't do missions, couldn't get back to the Rogue Isles. It took a GM to boot him back to Mercy.

[Luminara]

5 minutes ago, Frozen Burn said:

If I recall correctly, back on live, they had a PVP Server where the Co-op Zones (RWZ, Cim, DA) were PVP zones.

 

There wasn't a "PvP server" and none of the co-op zones ever allowed PvP.  You're misremembering.

[Frozen Burn]

Just now, Luminara said:

 

There wasn't a "PvP server" and none of the co-op zones ever allowed PvP.  You're misremembering.

 

Thank you!  It must be another game I am thinking of.  

[SeraphimKensai]

Just now, Frozen Burn said:

 

Thank you!  It must be another game I am thinking of.  

WoW had PvP servers with open world PvP.

[TheZag]

10 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

*I recall a bug maybe 15 years or so ago that a villain was able to get to Atlas Park, and they couldn't do anything. Couldn't PvP, couldn't do missions, couldn't get back to the Rogue Isles. It took a GM to boot him back to Mercy.

 

Its been fixed in my experience.  I managed to get my full villain into skyway city several months ago and it immediately booted me to mercy island.  Unless the bug was getting around that alignment check,  that is.

 

Another fun but patched bug was when players went to a pvp zone and used confuse powers on each other.  Upon returning to atlas,  they were still confused and kept casting confuse on themselves and their friends.  They coordinated this effort with a costume contest and slaughtered everyone in atlas park since they were under the confuse effect.  It was hotfix patched that same day where changing zones will remove your debuffs.

 

[Techwright]

9 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

WoW had PvP servers with open world PvP.

WoW also had/has flagged PvP, which sounds like the way to go if the OP's concept were to be carried out.

 

The only other way I could see would be if there were instanced zones for the opposing side to ramble around in.  We've got splinters of this already in the vault robbery paper contact missions, but it's always a fraction of a zone, and with a specific setup.

[Rudra]

My reasons against the OP:

 

1) We already have infiltration missions where our heroes go into the Rogue Isles and villains go into Paragon City. They are all over the place, given out by contacts. As well as the Mayhem/Safeguard missions.

 

2) There are players, like me, that want nothing to do with PvP. And making it possible for villains to go to the Paragon City zones (rather than the instance maps the missions use) or heroes to go to the Rogue Isles zones (rather than the instance maps the missions use) is just asking for higher level characters to murder lower level characters. And there is only one type of player I can think of that would find that fun. (And it isn't most PvP'ers.) Leave the PvP in the PvP zones.

 

3) Making a duplicate zone of every zone in the game outside of Praetoria or the 2 starter zones is a phenomenally massive task. And still has the problem of having mobs correctly identify players on the fly as enemy or friend. All enemies and allies in the zones are that way because they don't need to check what alignment a player character is. So if a hero, vigilante, or rogue runs into some Longbow or PPD blue side? Those mobs are not hostile to players, so those mobs even ignore the rogue. They would do the same to the villains for being able to access that zone.

 

Edit: If you want to infiltrate enemy territory in the game, then you need to make them think you aren't an enemy. Have your villain change alignment to something else or your hero change alignment to something else. Now you can enter those other zones and plot out your nefarious/heroic schemes, and the natives will think you are on their side. (Edit again: Everyone will be so taken by your claims of changing heart that they will never realize you are still actually a hero/villain, and so never see your plan coming.) Infiltration successful.

 

Edited July 22 by Rudra

[Greycat]

31 minutes ago, Frozen Burn said:

If I recall correctly, back on live, they had a PVP Server where the Co-op Zones (RWZ, Cim, DA) were PVP zones.  I also seem to recall the long-time ask from the PVP community for all zones to be opened as PVP for that server, but it would have been a coding nightmare.  I hate PVP and generally ignore whatever when it's mentioned, so I may be misremembering.

 

 

Never happened on live. Maybe as some other independent server. The closest thing to a PVP server we had was - well, similar to Virtue being the RP server. Just an unofficial designation.  Live, the only PVP zones we had were the same ones we have now - Bloody Bay, Siren's Call, Warburg and Recluse's VIctory (as well as the arena of course.)

 

As far as the OP? As small as the PVP ... I'm even going to include "PVP friendly if not active" to get the most people ... population is, I can't see this being not just "not on the table" or "not on the roadmap" but "not even in the same galaxy." Even with the "do a mirror version of each zone," you've now made development and testing much, much more difficult as everything would have to be tested against both versions.

 

If there wer a huge "I want to PVP!" population? Well, it'd probably already be baked in more. 🙂

[Glacier Peak]

This reminds me of one of my first suggestion threads I posted here. I remember someone responded with (I'm paraphrasing) - are the current zones full on even one server? Why do you need more zones? 

[UltraAlt]

20 hours ago, SpookTheHerd said:

Something I would love to see which I can already see the backlash over

Would be the ability to swap to villain zones as a hero and hero zones as a villain. 

 

You mean like by changing alightments?

May like being a sorta hero or sora villain that can travel to both hero and villain zones?

 

20 hours ago, SpookTheHerd said:

How it would work:

A hero or villain could swap sides freely, but nearly everything is hostile to them, including vigilantees and rogues, for these purposes they side with the native faction.

Certain groups like Longbow to heroes and Arachnos to villains might actually be set as non-hostile.

 

Err... Arachnos attack villains by default.

If you go over to the villain side as a vigilante the Longbow will see you as being an enemy as much as the villains or rogues. 

 

The way the game is built you can't do PvP in PvE zones. The mechanics work completely differently in PvP than they do in PvE.

 

20 hours ago, SpookTheHerd said:

The only primary reason I could see for doing this is RP purposes, affiliated infiltration based missions, and bragging rights that you withstood an entire zone of angry enemies for all of 30 seconds before you got KO'ed.

 

uh ... okay ...

Or you could sneak around and avoid detection if it is about "infiltration" but I guess we have different definitions of things...

 

20 hours ago, SpookTheHerd said:

I'd love to see this--and I'm not even any good at PvP! 

 

... er... okay...

Have you ever gone into a PVP zone?

[srmalloy]

22 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

What's the incentive for the rest of the player base? Right now this suggestion appears to appease your desires for fun, but misses the rest of the discussion. PvP has no unique rewards. Defeating another player provides no tangible unique in game rewards.

You mean besides open-world nonconsensual PvP attracting the sort of players whose sole measure of their "leet skillz" as a gamer is how fast their level-capped combat monster in BiS gear can gank newbies fresh out of the tutorial zone? Because that's what I've seen happen in other games with that 'feature', and it's soured me badly on PvP as a whole.

[Riverdusk]

From the thread title I thought this was going to be a suggestion on changing the Infiltration power.  I was click baited. 😀