Frosticus

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So the question is should the Devs:

- 1.Leave PvP in it's current state, but try to attract more people by adding new features
- 2.Try to make it more casual friendly and similar to PvE to increase the number of players
- 3.Try to make it more hardcore and fun for the hardcore players to lure them back
- 4.Leave the mechanics alone and try to get the players to change how they approach it via PvP lessons and events and such?

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Amazingly they killed options 2 and 3 in the same issue. DR, suppression and all that made it so no real advantage can be netted through build tweaking, or playing specialized roles. So bye bye hardcores. And by making every power have new rules in pvp compared to pve they effectively made it anti-casual.

Option 1 is the road they are taking. Option 4 is almost the same as 1, so they might do that, but historically the devs don't organize or attend pvp events.

I don't enjoy always being right and in this case I really didn't want to be as I was mostly just pointing out the weaknesses of the rating system.

But I think that "pay for star" service just got a lot more attractive, or wait for slot(s) @ $9.99.

I'm sorry they canned multi-DC, I certainly never asked for that, but it does make a lot of sense to lead into microtransactions as some of the most notable authors that would have likely earned multi-DC will gobble up slots for real cash.

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We just got an SDK for a game that no developer in their right mind would even commit to having an SDK in and people are already complaining because they cannot do the things that weren't even the intended focus of the FIRST VERSION of the tool?!

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*please note that I think MA is pretty decent for a first attempt.

but just to offer up another perspective on your statement:

why would no developer in their right mind offer a modding tool in a game like this? everything about MA is instanced so it isn't really all that different than say counterstrike maps that anyone can join except in this case the brunt of the load is server side.

As to the version they were going to offer in i13, could it be possible that they just grossly missed the mark? What they "thought" was going to be good was pretty sad and made me personally question how "in touch" they are with the consumer. Thankfully they went back to the drawing boards and we now have a decent MA.

It is still missing a lot of no-brainer features though that will hopefully be added sooner rather than later.

Overall it is decent though in its current form. A solid "double" if you will compared to the original offering being a "strike out". Ideally they would be building up from a triple or even a home run, but it is what it is.

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I do understand the initial shock factor if one was expecting a more robust tool, something like what you have seen in other non-MMORPG's. Its coming probably a year or more from now.



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this.

The fact that everything is instanced means that hopefully one day it will match up to the expectations of those of us familiar with other well-received modding tools.

For now it is fun to play around with, and fun to see what others are doing.

Searching for things is a mess with it already having over 250 pages of results, but hopefully that will be improved in the second version.

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The Devs have to be smirking somewhat.

I take a week to build up a two mish arc. I place some custom mobs.
I ran a test with a Scrapper. Hmmm...they seem too easy.
I ran a test with a Defender. Hmmm...they seem too hard.
I ran a test with a Controller. Hmmm...they seem about right.

So I got a few people to help me test it.
They said it was a little too easy. I changed it around a little. Added a few bosses.

Now I publish it on live.
Got two tells yesterday saying it was way too hard to solo. (one was a lvl 22 Scrapper, one was a Defender) So I dialed the bosses back slightly. (Very cool that one of them said he didn't rate it because it would have been a "1" to give me a chance to work on it.)

So I'm at a loss. I still think it won't be a problem for a team. But it might be too much to solo. (Or not...my Scrapper still laughs at it.)

The Devs have to be smirking somewhat. "Have fun balancing your missions guys! Enjoy the feedback you get!"

(plug: arc #2649)

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Well the easy answer and the one the dev's use for almost every mission and enemy type is to downgrade it to be really easy.

Seriously, balance it around an ice/ff controller solo'ing it and you will be doing what the devs pretty much do.

If you want to make something harder then do what they do and put a big disclaimer - "this needs a team" or w/e.

*note I don't think you should actually do this, but if it makes you feel better if the devs dropped most of the existing missions they have done into MA they'd be 1 star material...The ones that would score well would mostly have the - need a team - disclaimer.

All I every hear is people whining about trying to solo the vanguard mobs in vanilla and custom critters can smoke them...

Tru w4RRI0rz Fite

fightclubz?

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I think the changes were Yes to make PvP more popular (it could hardly be less) but also to give everyone a fighting chance.

One of the big problems PvP had CoH is that some ATs/sets were totally worthless except with friends to protect/buffer them.

What they are really hoping for is that the new IO Sets get a lot of people to turn out if for no other reason than to get some sweet IOs. THAT could actually add to PvP popularity if there are a balance of Villains and Heros anyway. Camping zone entry is a big turn off for non-PvPers.

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The thing is even an ar/ice blaster could contribute and do fine in zone pvp in i12 as long as they were part of a team.

Inorite teaming in a team based game, wtf?

The problem was people want to be solo-viable on their ar/ice/munitions blaster and have a chance against that spines/sr stalker in elude.

The devs listened when pve'ers cried about it in pve and made it so a emp/psy can solo missions easily and they listened to the same people that came into pvp and complained about not being able to herd and solo the content.

Here's the kicker though, I actually have always prefered to solo while pvp'ing, generally on squshies too. But it was way better solo'ing in an environment designed for teaming because it was a challenge. Now that they made the pvp game solo friendly it feels like typing /godmode in Fallout 3 for someone like me.

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Most of us expected at least some ratings griefing to occur. I'm just impressed with how fast it's happened. I had a mission 1 starred less than 2 minutes after I published it, far too quickly for anyone to have actually played it.

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If what you have created is truly good content it will rise up above and through all of this...

ya I don't believe it either.

unpub then repub, also report it and maybe they can track down the person who griefed. If they are spam griefing maybe they'll get penalized.

PvP at its core is anti-casual, so attempting to make it enjoyable for the vast majority of the populace in this game (casuals) was going to have obvious results to anyone with common sense.

but we know the saying about common sense.

That isn't to excuse griefers or trashtalkers, but they sort of go hand in hand with pvp. I mean people don't honestly think that players of sports are "nice" to each other on the field right? that stops shortly after teams start keeping score, so around grade 2-3 lol.

Besides, trashtalking in this game is about 1/100th of what it is on games that use xbox live and such.

If trash talking is seriously driving people away then in all honestly pvp probably isn't for them. That said, the devs could do more to protect the delicates. IIRC enemy tells are default off, and have to be enabled? They could do the same thing for enemy broadcast. Pretty hard to get upset over something someone said if you never hear it...

As for griefing, well 8 people attacking 1 is NOT griefing. Teleporting someone so they are stuck in the geometry IS griefing and the GM's help out with the latter sometimes.

8vs1 is as much the player's fault as it is the dev's, but because the players lack the ability to affect widespread policy change the responsibility is on the devs if they want to fix it.

The scary thing is that they tried with ANTI-GANK, which thank god didn't make it to live due to a bug.

A more sensible solution that doesn't further crush teaming in a team based game would be to put up display monitors outside of the arena's and other spots that show current counts for the zones. If I log in a hero and the board says 15H's and 7 V's, I'll immediate switch sides and holler for a few friends and then suddenly just like that we have an hr or two of crazy good pvp.

As it stands now I log a Hero and pop into one of the zones it may be dead, so I zone multiple times and hop into another zone, do a /whoall and it says 7H vs 10V. I think "sweet" only to step out and be hammered by about 20V cause all of them were in /hide. At that point I go run an ITF...

A display monitor in some of the pve zones showing the player counts regardless of hide would have saved me 10 min or so of traveling between zones and would have attracted a few more heroes as it would have said 20 v 7, unlike the /whoall that said 10 v 7 and could only be done from within the specific zone.

Plus LS kinda sucks balls now that if fires half the speed. It was a potent sapping tool before, but now you "need" two of them out and attacking and/or powerboost and/or pair it with other sapping abilities.

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Castle works for CO and is trying to run CoX as far into the ground as possible before revealing his true colors.

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hmm that would explain it, you couldn't possibly do what he has done if you are working for the betterment.

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Ever hear the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good"? In software development you have to balance the desire to create something with an enormous feature set with the need to actually deliver something to customers.

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I can assure you that is not unique to software development lol but rather every single business has to do a balancing act. Companies that focus are able to do it much better than companies that take a "shotgun approach"

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They already delayed the MA several months because what they were originally going to offer wasn't feature rich enough. And if you check out Hero 1's interview on Massively.com today, you'll note that MA already took 8 months, and that was seriously blazingly fast for the size project it was.

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I know, what they thought was going to be good enough was pretty sad, I'm glad they took it back to the drawing board, but it is still a pretty weak modding tool (at this point) that hasn't changed.

One correction though: 8 months was blazingly fast given the size of the project team and all their other responsibilities. Imagine for a second if the dev team didn't have to work on a thousand different things, but rather only 250 because they weren't trying to be all things to all people.

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And as far as being "spread thin", the devs can't work on only one thing at a time. They have to have parts of the team working on different overlapping projects so they can deliver several updates a year. Do you honestly think players would prefer one big expansion per year instead of a few smaller ones?

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I certainly never implied that. Again, imagine a team working on only 250 aspects instead of 1000 everyday. Imagine your "todo list" was suddenly much smaller, would you have more or less time/resources left at the end of the day to devote to projects? You are stuck examining what I'm saying based on exactly how the current company/team operates.


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PLUS, what if the devs did throw the entire team at MA and took many more months to deliver the ultimate version and it flopped? Then people would be flaming them mercilessly. By delivering it incrementally the other big benefit is that the devs get to see it actually used by the players, and they can take their 25 PAGES worth of enhancement ideas and prioritize them accordingly.

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Disagree completely. They have basically said "here is an alpha build, we'll finish it later while taking some of your suggestions into consideration" compared to "here is a finished product (or dam close to it) and we'll be looking for ways to improve it and add more features, so we'll be taking your suggestions into consideration"

Considering most of the suggestions already being thrown at MA are no-brainers I'm pretty confident they could have come up with them on their own and didn't need our help. Same goes for almost every feature they add to the game.

I'm just asking your for a moment to close your eyes and put aside everything that has been established about how the company currently operates. Now pretend the original team took an approach of specialization and focus instead of trying to be all things to all people. And now imagine the follow up (new team) did the same thing. Now that you are in the right frame of mind reread my original statement that you responded too.

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I dissagree completely. Are the issues a little slow? sure, I wont really argue that. But cathedral of pain and pvp?

The vast vast vast majority of the CoH playerbase this is such a non-issue I seriously dont know how people can say thing like that with a straight face.

Death sentence of the game? Please. EQ is still running its servers and hasnt been "competitive" in many many years.

Is CoH competitive? I think so. Their not Bleeding Edge and i'm ok with that. I find the "Bleeding Edge" type games draw a certain type of player who is only interested in whats hot and whats new and then moves on when the next hot new game comes along.

I think the vast majority of the CoH playerbase loves the game, likes new updates, but isnt rabid about constant new upgrades and updates. They may check out the new games they might even like them enough to quit here, such is the life of MMO's. But the majority play CoH because they like CoH, alot. And they arent really going anyplace.

The hard core type A's gotta have it my way or else i'll quit already left over the last pvp changes, the majority of the ones remaining arent going anyplace anytime soon.

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time will tell. I believe the majority of people in this game play it because they like/love the super hero genre, through which they have built up a comfortable position here.

The pve experience in this game is replicated and improved in other titles, while offering better perks during playtime. But none of them let you be a super hero/villain.

I don't think either of the new titles will mean doom to this game, but I would not be surprised that in 1 to 2 years CoX was 4 servers, which really isn't as bad as it sounds because it could already be cut in half to 6 servers.

Just FYI too, the hardcore pvp'ers that Castle ran out of town w/ i13 were some of the most dedicated players in the game across all aspects of it. I'd imagine the hardcore badgers would quit too if they removed all the badges or put DR on them heh. Would the hardcore base builders hang around if you could only build a one room base? dunno.

Anyway, people are saying "step up your game" to the devs because they want CoX to remain good and they don't want to play in a ghost town (ie 6-7 of the live servers now ). Lots of people will stay with CoX because they have settled in nicely and major change is scary and for the most part (pvp not withstanding) the game has hopefully gone through all of its aggressive change cycles, which the new titles will be smack dab in the middle of.

[/ QUOTE ]I just can't imagine why, if so many folk complain about something (paying customers) why wouldnt you as a business model try to accommodate as many as possible. I myself left for three months over i13 and havent decided whether i'm a stay or not as of yet. I came back to give io's to a buddy, but just think 15 bucks multiplied times three, that's over 45buck lost just from me not much you say?

Now take that same projection and multiply that by one hundred people or even one thousand, and the loss model greatly increases. The main problem is it was totally avoidable the changes didn't add pvp'rs as it was intended, it instead drove them away. So a normal company would either cut their losses and revert it back, or make it so people could still play the old way and give it's player base an option.

That way all sides are happy, but they refuse to admit the mistake, and we are where we are now.

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Very few companies would admit the mistake and revert it, too much time/resource/money was dumped into the project to just scrap it. Not to mention admitting the mistake and reverting widescale would strike a black mark they could never be rid of compared to currently being able to spin it as a "minor setback".

A good company would try to rectify the errors as best as possible and as quickly as possible without blowing the budget. I believe they are trying to do that, but of course will only get so far with the wrong person calling the pvp shots.

CoX already does attempt to cater to as many as possible, which is something that has always bothered me because they are so small the result is spreading everything thin and most stuff coming across as half complete.

One need look no further than MA. A great idea, huge opportunity to gain first mover advantage, but they only went half way with it. In terms of a modding tool it is a C or C-. Sure they will likely keep improving it, but if they weren't spread so thin trying to do so many things it would have been launched with map editing abilities, custom spawn points, and much more indepth critter customization to name a few. And then from there it would be improved.

One thing you often see small companies attempting is to "be all things to all people" because they are small they figure a small piece of each pie is the best way to go. This of course stretches resources to the limit and results in a mediocre performance in every aspect. Of course convincing management to turn away the low hanging fruit (easy potential customers) to look at the bigger picture is a pretty daunting task.

As to what areas CoX should have specialized, well that is debatable. But w/ only 150-200k subs (which is fine) as the ONLY entrant in their corner of the market I doubt they would have seen smaller numbers than that. I mean the higher level of polish would pretty much ensure it imo along with being able to do more focused marketing and creating much stronger word of mouth (or viral marketing if you will).

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I dissagree completely. Are the issues a little slow? sure, I wont really argue that. But cathedral of pain and pvp?

The vast vast vast majority of the CoH playerbase this is such a non-issue I seriously dont know how people can say thing like that with a straight face.

Death sentence of the game? Please. EQ is still running its servers and hasnt been "competitive" in many many years.

Is CoH competitive? I think so. Their not Bleeding Edge and i'm ok with that. I find the "Bleeding Edge" type games draw a certain type of player who is only interested in whats hot and whats new and then moves on when the next hot new game comes along.

I think the vast majority of the CoH playerbase loves the game, likes new updates, but isnt rabid about constant new upgrades and updates. They may check out the new games they might even like them enough to quit here, such is the life of MMO's. But the majority play CoH because they like CoH, alot. And they arent really going anyplace.

The hard core type A's gotta have it my way or else i'll quit already left over the last pvp changes, the majority of the ones remaining arent going anyplace anytime soon.

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time will tell. I believe the majority of people in this game play it because they like/love the super hero genre, through which they have built up a comfortable position here.

The pve experience in this game is replicated and improved in other titles, while offering better perks during playtime. But none of them let you be a super hero/villain.

I don't think either of the new titles will mean doom to this game, but I would not be surprised that in 1 to 2 years CoX was 4 servers, which really isn't as bad as it sounds because it could already be cut in half to 6 servers.

Just FYI too, the hardcore pvp'ers that Castle ran out of town w/ i13 were some of the most dedicated players in the game across all aspects of it. I'd imagine the hardcore badgers would quit too if they removed all the badges or put DR on them heh. Would the hardcore base builders hang around if you could only build a one room base? dunno.

Anyway, people are saying "step up your game" to the devs because they want CoX to remain good and they don't want to play in a ghost town (ie 6-7 of the live servers now ). Lots of people will stay with CoX because they have settled in nicely and major change is scary and for the most part (pvp not withstanding) the game has hopefully gone through all of its aggressive change cycles, which the new titles will be smack dab in the middle of.

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Then there's that group of people who tought CoX's PvP sucked before, and it still sucks now... But hey, it beats fighting NPCs I guess.

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Yep. I think they were going after those people though and failed, though it was pretty easy to point out that it was a lost cause to begin with

people that disdain pvp probably won't suddenly start liking it.
people that don't play this game for pvp probably won't suddenly start just because pvp now has completely different rules than pve

And if they were actually serious about expanding pvp in this game then they would have incorporated it as a feature into some instanced pve missions ie safeguard/mayhem to give people a taste of the experience without the negatives.

And we'd be able to make MA arcs that have pvp enabled

Except by making pvp 100% different set of rules from pve in i13 these things are never going to be possible, or they will suck if they try.

But you have the blind (pve focused devs) leading the blind (listening to pve'ers for pvp ideas and game balance mechanics) and we end up with them spending vast amounts of time/effort on pvp only to produce a steaming pile.

hard work != good work, it just means they wasted a ton of resources and pvp likely won't see anything major again as this was the final strike.
i4 arena's didn't take off
i7 zones didn't take off
i13 pve'ers didn't flood pvp zones.

We'll get small nuggets I'm sure, like the new pvp IO's and small balance changes as seen in i14, but to think they'll dedicate the majority of an issue to pvp again is doubtful.

You can't blame them for not investing further, it is a failed venture. Of course it has failed due to their inability, but in the end a fail is a fail.

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Well, I just hope he hears it from a lot of people. He needs to. So you are saying there are a lot of people out there like me voicing their pleasure at the new system? Because all I see on here is griping by old schoolers.

I just hope they are concentrated on getting the word out to the player base on how cool they've made PvP.

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I can assure you that isn't what I was saying.

The vast majority of pvp'ers did not like the changes and either left the game entirely, or shifted much of their focus away from pvp (I'm in the latter group, though I did leave for a few months). The entire high end pvp league pretty much went extinct and while it wasn't a large group of people they were some of the most dedicated players in this game.

Imagine if they killed off badge collecting, not everyone has 42,000+ badges, but the ones that do are intensely dedicated to this game, which wasn't so different from the pvper's, except pvp'ers were also the best players in the game too.

the main group that is singing the praised of Castle's changes are the pve'ers that in all honesty, Castle could show up at their house and kick their puppy across the room and they'd thank him because he can do no wrong in their eyes. The pve'ers that said "oh these changes are teh awesomesauce", but then never showed up again.

That isn't to say that i13 was all bad, there was actually some really good elements added, just every idea the dev team came up with on their own was horrible and overshadowed any positive aspects.

Post deleted by Moderator 08

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Dumok I thought you quit.

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I did. Went to Warhammer to get my PvP fix. Played Fallout 3 for a bit as well.
Came back to check out the MA.
Also want to see how long Castle can hold his breath by keeping his head up his...(ahem) with his PvP vision.

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a long time. At this point I think he may have just adapted and can now breathe while in that position.

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Methane?

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the truth is stranger than fiction

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Dumok I thought you quit.

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I did. Went to Warhammer to get my PvP fix. Played Fallout 3 for a bit as well.
Came back to check out the MA.
Also want to see how long Castle can hold his breath by keeping his head up his...(ahem) with his PvP vision.

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a long time. At this point I think he may have just adapted and can now breathe while in that position.

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I see no reason why a defenders hold is so strong he can consistently drop RTTC, sit in the tanks face and whittle his 3k hp down, not in that fashion toe to toe.


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you see more reason to see a tank being able to 2 shot squishy at ease while 2 heavies are targeting him?

more reason why a blaster can still ignore almost any defense you can come with and drop a brute like if it was a squishy?

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what you're saying is only true if they use flurry+kick.

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Yes, yes, and kind of.

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Kind of?

And on the first two...wth is the point of all the different kinds of mez then? Considering almost anyone can pick up a hold power what would make using a sleep > hold? Both same base duration yet..? wtf... I'm so confused.

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so is everyone that pvp's. Ask Castle wtf you are supposed to do, he's the man with the plan.

Mac said kind of for kb protection because unless your kb protection is generated through kb IO's and/or click mez protection then it is susceptible to being suppressed by mez and then you can be knocked.

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just thought of this...what if DR was only applied to inspirations and team buffs?

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where would that leave the free buffs everyone was given cause if you turn dr off squishies can self cap res pretty easy.

the pvp in this game is still faster than WoW, except kinda not. It takes longer to get to a fight in Wow in that you move slower than this game, but in both games the advantage gained by in-combat movement isn't huge. Sadly in CoH it used to be a tremendous and very fun advantage, whether it was on a small scale of ducking behind/around/through obstacles to disrupt an opponent's attacks, or on a large scale of jumping from rooftop to rooftop chasing someone around a zone.

The dev focus is for us all to stand in a circle and duke it out because that's how they made the pve game. Static enemies in static locations. The person in charge of making the pvp decisions is a pve'er through and through.

but I'd rate it a 2 with almost no variance and like super, about a 7 before with moments of 4's and moments of 9.5's before.

I see nothing wrong with flurry being better than most melee attacks.

Dammit the pve'ers always cried about not having a street fighting set and all Castle did was try to make them happy with flurry, kick, airsup etc being strong and you pvp'ers have the audacity to come down on him.

shame on you.