So I stop scaring people with my PvP-oriented ideas, I’ve decided to start opening discussions that specifically target the PvP aspect in City of Titans.
[i]There are few MMOs available that offer attractive Player vs. Player content.
There are even less that offer Open-World Player vs. Player.
There are few MMOs that offer skill-based Player vs. Player content.
There are almost no attractive, Open-World, skill-based, Player vs. Player MMOs available.[/i]
I, among a legion of others, have been searching for an MMO that features attractive, Open-World, skill-based Player vs Player content. One that can do that, in the Super Hero theme should have potential of becoming one of the greatest MMOs around.
Let’s get started.
How many of you are even interested in Open-World Player vs. Player? What would you like to see, and wouldn’t like to see, implemented in an Open-World Player vs. Player game? Would you fellow PvE players be interested in trying it out?
[b]What is Open-World Player vs. Player?[/b] Chaotic Fighting.
A world bound by (almost) no rules. Players may fight anywhere, at any time, with any group composition, with any numbers, with any play-style. You can play dirty, you can challenge yourself and take on larger numbers than your own, you can flee, you can add fights, and you can even zerg! It’s the unknown factor that makes this such a thrilling experience.
[b]How is it any different from an Arena?[/b] Arranged Fighting.
Arenas are bound by rules players create before engaging in combat with the key factors being: fairness and equality. Fights can be customized by factors such as numbers, classes, group composition, and maps of preference. Once the requirements are met, players are teleported into a secluded area to have their brawl. Sometimes there are objectives. There is no such thing as breaking rules, outnumbering enemies, and adding fights – you always know who you are up against and you can choose your battles.
Arena PvP may sound like a paradise, but it can become quite repetitive after a while. Open-World PvP allows for infinite possibilities and challenges.
These are a list of topics that should probably be discussed to get an idea of what players would want to see in the Open-World Player vs. Player aspect for City of Titans. I may add links to each topic later on so this could be used as a reference sheet.
[b]Topics for Discussion:[/b]
1. Balance
2. Commands
3. Crowd Control & Immunity
4. Death
5. Entering/Leaving PvP
6. Fluff Content
7. Griefing
8. Guilds
9. Instanced Areas
10. Incentive
11. Interaction
12. Interruption
13. Leveling
14. Maps
15. Mechanics
16. Objectives
17. Pets
18. PvE Content
19. Ranking
20. Recovery
21. Requirements
22. Rewards
23. Rules
24. Safety Flags
25. Safe Areas
26. Skillful-Gameplay
27. Switching Sides
28. Travel-Powers
29. User-Interface
30. Weaknesses
31. Zoning
What topics would you like to see discussed? Don’t delve too heavily into them as there should be a separate topic opened to thoroughly discuss the matter as, simply put, it’s easier for developers to read and interpret if topics are separated.
If this topic already fits better into something above, or is outside the scope of what you'd like this thread to address, then please set it aside.
PvEvP (or "Indirect PvP", or whatever we want to call it)
This could include anything from arena matches where players face off as invisible masterminds of a team of NPCs collected from PvE content (CoH's Gladiator event, a sort of Pokemon concept), to full scale open-world permanent battleground areas or brief zone events where the opposing players assist NPCs in accomplishing objectives, while trying to hinder the opposing force's NPCs. The goals might include accumulating the most points during a given phase of the event, or being the first to win a decisive victory via flag capture / destruction of base's defenses / running out of NPC-spawning tokens. "Fight for control of Moonbase Q7" or "EnVi Corporation versus the Triads versus the FBI" are rudimentary examples of this more extreme large-scale event, and could hopefully connect into the multi-axis alignment system.
I am not planning to participate in direct PvP (being pathologically cooperative in my MMO play), but indirect PvP is something I'd like to try.
Your points are valid, and they fall under a few of the above mentioned topics.
Open-World PvP is not always just about brawls between players. Objectives could include capturing certain PvE objects such as a building, an item, or NPC for strategic advantage. Giving "something to fight for" allows everyone to make contributing impacts in PvP gameplay, which can be done indirectly. These are important aspects of Open-World PvP as it welcomes more play-styles.
Are you familiar with the PvP server framework?
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Do enlighten us; I have no idea what that is :p
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
There appears to be little information about PvP in general, it also appears to be the least popular topic here.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/639751
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/626654
I'm quite interested in the idea being presented, of having instances of every map available for PvP gameplay.
After reading that, my worries about PvP are fairly rested, seems like they're going the right direction
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
If they can do a form of PvP that I enjoy, I'll try it. However most of the time I'm a more casual player and the frenetic pace of PvP is a turn-off for me.
If you can somehow keep the players from being total jerks, that'd be a really good start.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
I'm sort of torn on the subject of open-world PvP.
On the one hand I kind of like the concept of open-world PvP if for no other reason that it invokes the idea of "realism" to a very full degree. It sort of makes sense that fighting should be allowable among any players anywhere at any time. Admittedly that sort of thing does seem to happen a lot in the comics.
On the other hand when that kind of paradigm is translated to a MMO setting it almost always leads to a bunch of elitist ass-hattery and a large number of people who get thoroughly annoyed with it for all sorts of reasons. The sad fact of the matter is that although there are plenty of people who would love to see an open-world PvP superhero game I suspect that number is always going to be a small minority compared to the overall total number of players interested in superhero MMOs in general.
Therefore while it might be hypothetically interesting to see a fully-dedicated open-world PvP server of CoT at some point I don't think the main baseline (only?) version of CoT should allow it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I agree with that sentiment.
Personally, I feel like the compromise is best. It shouldn't be hard to fit a fully open zone offering unstructured PvP into a superhero MMO either mechanically or logically. If there will be a "hero vs. villain" atmosphere in place, it would be easy to place these PvP zones in between the Hero-dominated and Villain-dominated side of the game world. It would simply be frontlines where Heroes and Villains would most likely meet, complete with NPC law-enforcement/gangs battling it out over objectives with the help of their player-controlled Hero/Villain benefactors.
Though PvEers might object to this, I would enjoy a setup like that. Especially if the developers could provide a [b]healthy[/b] interdependence between PvE and PvP players. If either side dominated certain PvE and PvP objectives simultaneously, those heroes won access to a specially designed zone in which temporary PvP is available (as in sweeping and clearing the other side after taking access from the opposing faction) as well as a unique offering to the PvE players for as long as that side continued to outperform the other. It's a hefty balancing act in such a situation, however. It probably won't attract massive followings in today's MMO paradigm, but I think it would be a unique offering to players that could bolster community.
You got me thinking, what if a certain AV or Monster or whatever, appeared in a PvP zone, and the Heroes/Villans Teams try and fight over who gets to take down the Av for the badge... and they try to balance the act of figting the AV while trying to fend off the opposing PvP team. ;D hehehehhe.. heeee. :)
Of course, it might be possible they both make a temporary truce for the sole purpose of fighting the AV. But of course, you know SOMEONE will hit the squishy on the opposite team and tempers will start to flare... and just as the AV's health is more than half way down, a Fight breaks out between 2 of the PvP'ers on opposing sides. Before you know it... the Whole Team joins in to backup their teammate and the AV wipes the Floor with both of the PvP teams. :D Teee heee heee heeee.. ;D
Alright so there is an issue we do have to discuss when it comes to an open pvp world with levels, I don't know if this has been brought up before but if you ever played DCUO on the pvp server you know what I'm talking about. High level payers ganking low level players for fun. How are we going to keep this from happening? This shouldn't be a case of "get off the pvp server if you don't want to pvp". in DCUO I saw the pvp video of players around the same level fighting over mission objectives that SOE showed off when they where announcing the game, and I wanted something like that. What I got instead? a level 30 going around the starter mission killing every lowbie he saw. I liked the idea of doing an outdoor mission and a hero trying to stop me as we battle all over gotham, and I liked that the few times that it happened. It was fun and I want that to be a thing that happens on the PvP server for this game. But most of the time whenever I was on the PvP server I was hounded down by jerks who where punishing me for playing a game I was paying $12 a month for. I don't want that to happen with this game, and I'm sure other people will agree with me. Another game has already solved this. Age of Wushu has it so you can't attack or be attacked by other players unless your level 15, but since we're going to have a PvP server we can't have that because that server was made exclusively for people who want to pvp and the mechanics are different in wushu to a point where a level 15 can take out a level 30 while the same wasn't true in CoX. We need to solve this. My idea is that pvpers can only attack players that are within two levels of them.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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In addition to the option notears mentions, as used in Age of Wushu, this could also be an area in which to apply the auto-exemplar to the zone's maximum level (as people have described from Guild Wars 2).
My understanding is that one reason people desire open world PvP, and enjoy it, is because it is largely an 'anything goes' scenario. Obviously this makes open world PvP fairly open to griefing. For better or worse, that really is part and parcel of the experience. I think there is little that can be done to prevent such activities without removing open world PvP and turning it into a kind of open world semi-arena event.
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Wait, I thought there was going to be only one server...(?)
Spurn all ye kindle.
Yup. The plan, as currently posited, is one server with separate instances for PvP and RP.
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Hmmm... Now that you mention it, I think I've heard someone mention multiple shards even for PvE. So from our point of view as players, how does one server with separate instances/shards look any different from 2 servers? Doesn't that make it just a behind-the-scenes design?
[Sorry for the tangent -- just trying to get my head round this.]
Spurn all ye kindle.
New instances are typically spawned when one instances hits a certain population. People in different instances cannot see or interact with each other, but they can still communicate (ideally), invite to groups, and so on. So long as a given instance is not full, you can go to that instance to join a group, friends, activity, etc. Whoever you meet, whenever you meet them, you can be certain that you will be able to play with them. None of this, "This is just an alt. All my main characters and my SG are on Justice."
A number of games use this approach. I believe Champions Online was one of the first to do so.
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Ah ok, ty. Like AP33 then. Separate, but not *as* separate as multiple servers.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Auto exemplaring could work. After all the only reason I can think of for a player who's way above the zone's level coming to said zone other than him having a mission there would be to grief, and this would prevent that from happening while still giving off an air of anything can happen.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Easy way to avoid the high-level ganking: If one character is more than 2 levels above the target PvP becomes optional and a challenge must be issued. Target has right of refusal.
Auto-leveling or exempting won't work because a 50 exempted to 30 will still destroy a natural 30. And I don't mean 'will have a significant advantage over' I mean destroy as in it'll be as unfair as a lvl 30 going after a lvl 20.
You can still do the auto-exempt, but if the natural levels are more than say 5 apart then it's back to optional challenge.
Otherwise it's just more ganking
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
More than likely, yes. It is not an ideal solution, but then there are no ideal solutions. This isn't even meant to eliminate ganking, merely to mitigate it.
The fact remains that it is a player versus player scenario, and there is very little any developer can do to control or influence player behavior. I am not even certain that MWM could do anything to make open world PvP compelling. They can make it available, but whether or not people engage in it will be up to the players. Certainly it is less likely that open world PvP will be popular if the players promote a culture of ganking, taunting, and disrespect in general.
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I take it you've never seen it happen then. I didn't bring this up because it's something that might happen, I brought this up because it's something that did happen. The majority of the players didn't support this culture, in fact they hated it. It became such a problem that right know it's accepted, not as something that's good, but something that people believe is a problem that can't be solved. It only takes one level 30 to ruin everyone's day, and even when other 30s come along to keep him out or if he gets banned for that behavior there is always another one because there are always going to be people who are like that. Even when people like that are only 1% of the player base, 1% of 1 million is still a big number to deal with and more than enough to ruin it for everyone. If we are going to have open world pvp then we need something to prevent this from happening because it will, and while it may try to mitigate or control player behavior there needs to be at least some of that in all aspects of an MMO if it's going to be a success. If we allow people to make their own costume pieces then there will be people who will make costumes that look like genitals, if we allow all words to be usable for names than there will always be people who will put swear words in them, and in the same way we can't have a situation where anyone can attack anyone or else this very thing might happen. Their needs to be some compromise between anything can happen and not being ganked or the few will ruin it for the many. Something needs to happen!!!
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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I read some of these comments and I'm not even clear on what people mean by "ganking." When I first heard the word used in the course of playing MMOs, ganking meant a group of people pouncing on one player to take them out quickly. More recently, I hear it used a lot simply to mean "killing someone else decisively." Both of these situations occur frequently in pvp and the place you can expect them to happen the most is open world pvp. This has nothing to do with gaming culture. This relates to the type of gameplay in question--unrestricted player versus player combat. You are SUPPOSED to kill other players. And since people like to win, they will gravitate towards the strategies and builds that are most likely to give them good results.
The issue of exemping down (or up) is a problem in terms of game balance. The implementation in coh was horrible. But again, this isn't some sort of gamer culture deviant behavior issue. The developers of a game set up what type of user interactions are permissible in their game. It's idiotic to then moralize about some pimped out lvl 50 going into Siren's Call and completely destroying the lower lvl unexemped characters when this is an outcome that the developers have engineered themselves.
Ganking doesn't mean "killing decisively" it means using an unfair advantage that your target can't possibly overcome like being a level 30 and going over to a zone where there are only level 1's. I have no problem with a group of 1's, 2's or even 3's going up against my level 1 because I have a chance to win against that, if not with pure force of my powers and stats then by outwitting them. If my level 1 goes up against a level 30 however, that's no fun for me because there's nothing I can do about that. It's like going into a fist fight with a sniper that 100 miles away. There's no way I can win against that, there's no strategy, no challenge of any kind, all I can do is try to stay out of his sight or wait until he gets bored and leaves. You do have a point with exemplaring, it may be an advantage but it's not a ganking level advantage so exemplaring may still work. But not doing anything about is like not having a rule in baseball that prevents you from taking the bat with you and using it to beat the opposing team unconscious. If it's going to be fun for everyone and not just for that 1% that take their level 30s into level 1 zones we need something to prevent this.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
Like if there's a -/+ 5 level difference, then your attacks dont connect? or A PvP Police Drone comes and arrests the Ganker!? Sends him to a Holding Area for a full minute! ;)
All I'm saying is there should something preventing a level 50 from coming over to learners cove and gank 1's. I don't care if that thing is as simple as exemplaring down or as complex as those attacks not doing any damage. I just don't want the PVP shard to be utterly ruined like it was in DCUO. I don't want to be constantly hounded by level 30 griefers for 90% of the time and I certainly don't want it to get to a situation where we can't do anything about it.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
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Depending on how they plan to set it up then there are several ways to do it.
If they go for the "open PvP game world" route (ie there is a PvP "instance" of the PvE zone), then auto exemping down to the zone could be a sensible way to do it. However, that would also make the PvE way of playing that zone more interesting as well. It would be like Guild Wars 2, where each zone has a maximum level that you can be, and if you exceed that level of the zone, you get auto-exemped down to the maximum level of the zone. This means that a level capped character; whilst still having all the skills and a *slight* stat advantage compared to a "natural" character at that level, they are more or less equal. And hopefully this means that the level difference is between "maximum" and "minimum* should be within an acceptable difference.
However, it wont stop the Level 1 toon from running to a level 50 zone (for example). they *chose* to be there, so they would indeed be viewed as a "valid target" for the level 50 characters.
If they do the PvP zone (similar to CoX with Siren's Call, Bloody Bay etc) then you can set it up so that there is a *maximum* and *minimum* level requirement for that zone. If you exceed it, you get dropped down to the level cap for the zone, if you *don't* meet the minimum, you cannot get in. Prevents less picking on the lower levels, because are not there, and it is up to the player to be there.
PvP "arena" style setups are easier to manage as well.... for that, you can do it in level tiers (or set it up so that all non level 50's are level jumped up to 50. However, power enhancement slotting then comes into play, which means that the "natural" 50, could indeed be a LOT more powerful than the Level 10 jumped up to 50.
Hell, for all we know, the developers could instead do it so that instead of attacks doing 500 points of damage, it would do 30% damage. This just jumped into my head so I am still thinking it all the way through, but it is a possible option (PvE play does xxx points of damage, PvP play does a % damage instead... and you can balance it that way.)
if go have Open-World PvP add Bounty Hunting http://www.eveonline.com/retribution/bounty-hunting/
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
That is one thing that actually *hasn't* been as successful as people thought it would be. Hell, I had a bounty on my head in Eve Online for about 5 months, and not once got podded so no one claimed it.
I will say this though, it was a corp member who put the bounty on my head, so we used to mess around and start putting bounties on ALL the corp members heads (not a lot, but enough to possibly make it worthwhile to try to pod the person).
My experience? 56million SP (so roughly 4.5 years of playing Eve Online, 3 of which were in 0.0 space)
*shrugs* I can see it *possibly* working, but first of all I would go for a "Enemy" system, where you can "tag" people who have killed you in the past, so you are aware if they are nearby... and work on that system first of all before you through it in full time.
Hmm... that might give other players the idea to tag someone they hate.
An alert pops up every time they are near.. and Spams start to flood in.. after they totally "Forgot" about you after you were bullied for the past 6 to 8 months... it all starts up again. :/
i see your point i like say "if" we have Open-World PvP somehelp to care be...grrr mean newbs
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
Extra Credits - Open World Design - How to Build Open World Games > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udF7XX_vTUE
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
of course, this huge monster MUST have the power to clone look-a-likes of those around it to attack those near it.
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
In open world PvP, most experienced players would have their characters at max level, and min maxed for combat before they would enter an open world. And most would go in as a team. Solo players would not have much of a chance against a team, and a team would not have as much of a chance against a large super group. And here is where you would have an interesting dynamic...Super Group VS Super Group. "Get ready to rumble!"
*Copy and pasted from my comment I posted on a different thread*
That is why PvP in all these other games is horrible, imo.
CoH is the only game that I have played that had open zone PvP and it was amazing. We could go in and have 30 vs. 30 running around wreaking havoc on each other... or everyone sit around the block under Atlas or in the train station and have 1v1s all day.
Or in WoW, DCUO, SWTOR, you can Que and go play capture the flag or some other game.... what's the point?
If we wanted to play in groups the PvP community got together and went to arena to play kickball matches and other things.
I think that PvP should be based on individual competition/skill and not just Ques with the smarter players
@TheMega
CoH had a bounty system in pvp zones. In RV at least. That's where I spent all of my time if I wasn't doing TFs or farming. I can't remember about the lower level zones though.
So hopefully they add that too.
@TheMega
Well, you shouldn't have to worry about that if they bring back the pvp zones like In CoH.
10-15/15-20/35-40/45-50
I think that was the level ranges for each zone. But I can't remember. I only PvPd in RV.
And of course if the player is over the level cap they should be scaled down just like in CoH.
That game really had the best PvP out of all the games out now.
@TheMega
i would recognize people in pvp. to be recognized in pvp, and have all these people come to get you, was a honor. no badge can match that. to face a legend you would hear about for weeks, and there he was, in front of you. i never got this facet from any other game.
but open world pvp is misleading. i want to see the game for at least a week before saying the pve is "doing it wrong".
What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather indicates, his fate. - Henry David Thoreau
I love flagging for open world PvP.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
I've been playing Aion (f2p as I will never give NCSoft another penny) until I can give MWM my money for a subscription here. They have a "duel" process which allows two players to do combat in the open world. Any level against any level, but it's done as an invite/accept contact.
Keep in mind that I'm completely against PvP (for myself) as a matter of principal so my thoughts here are based purely on an unfamiliar conjecture. Would it be feasible to have anyone in the world make themselves available to PvP, have only people within a certain level range from them be seen by/able to see- them, and offer incentives to maintaining one's availability such as better drops, slightly increased xp, etc.?
As I said, I have never and will never willingly PvP (except over a chess board or some such) so I don't know if that kind of scenario would interest the PvPers. What do you think of it?
CoyoteShaman
Edit: And Jay, is that what you mean by "flagging"?
Wildstar has two distinct factions. On the PvE server you can flag your character to react as though they were in a PvP server when approached by players from the opposing faction that are also flagged for PvP.
With the factions in CoT being fluid (not necessarily Hero/Villain) I don't know how any open world PvP flagging would work.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
PvP in MMO's have always been my favorite thing. I love true competition. And I even don't mind getting ganked by someone a billion levels higher than me because I know one day, I will plow my fists into their face and watch as they log off sobbing. Ideally, I hope there are PvP/PvE servers.
I love going into low level towns and just destroying them. And this is where I think PvE/PvP players should be completely separated by servers. PvP servers should be completely open world and all fair game. Cities should have incredibly strong NPC's that can be overrun by enough heroes and players should be able to kill the NPC's. Which includes quest givers and what not.
With proper flagging I think the fluid nature of "factions" would actually be an advantage to open world PvP. Flag for PvP/PvE but whenever you target a particular player (or near them if you have AOEs... whatever) you get a 2d indicator over their head showing their current reputation. Your attacks would then modify your reputation. Villain attacks villain? They become more violent, more dishonorable, more unlawful. Hero attacks villain? They become more violent, more honorable, less lawful.
Obviously those changes are simply examples and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't apply in that way, but the point is that I think it would actually make the system more fun as you'd have to be careful about which powers you used in open world combat and you couldn't just go around blasting anyone who was flagged unless you wanted your reputation to change in that way. You'd also be able to check if those others standing nearby were of the same alignment so you'd know if they outnumbered you. Another advantage would be that teaming with opposing reputations wouldn't be any kind of a problem since you would know their reputation and, therefore, if teaming with them would change your reputation.
Heck, with that kind of a system I might even try PvP. Probably not, but it would be tempting.
CoyoteShaman
Edit to add:
PS: to prevent the kind of unfair behavior the last poster is suggesting, you could have pc's outside a certain level difference show and be effected as if they were flagged PvE only. My thought would be that they'd color code the same as npc's and you wouldn't be able to launch any powers at them; any AOEs that would include them would have no effect on them.
Surprise attacked or accidentally attacked.. Not to mention buffs/support/heals need a distinct binary system of who to attack.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Used "Quick Reply" but this will be Psypunk length...
Open World PvP should exist. If you guys follow through with your idea of a pvp server, it should happen from the getgo. As soon as the character is "mature" (level 6-10 generally) and able to travel and throw attacks they should be able to engage other players. I tried a PvP server in Star Wars but it wasn't as good as I expected. I thought I'd be fighting from the very start and combat was rare as people just went to their pve objectives. Star Wars had awesome pvp games though, but that's neither here nor there.
You should always have full movement, or at least unsuppressed movement, when in a pvp area. If range starts overcoming melee then you can give melee the ability to "tag" someone with Taunt to reduce their range or simply some form of slowdown attack like a web grenande or whatever. Holds should work, but there should also be a cooldown so that the same hold can't be instantly re-applied forever. Hold durations would be amplified by your build and gear and could potentially be lowered by your opponent's build or "inspirations". Dominators were pretty silly at one point in PvP, you'd run out of Break Free inspirations quickly and just die.
Objectives in the PvP world should exist, such as defense of an area, capturing said area, culminating iin a big mashup where players would receive a badge or maybe currency to be used at pvp gear vendors. Speaking of pvp gear...making it scaleable with level would be a great idea, but if you want "purple" level gear usable at level cap, totally fine. In this case though you might want it usable only at high levels so the tricked out player doesn't completely obliterate a newer one just out of the training area.
Respawn points should exist, they shouldn't be camped though. Either give players a "safe timer" when leaving respawn or mark it as a safe zone of sorts, only for respawn purposes so that you don't have people hightailing it back to the safe zone when injured or attacked. If there are contacts for missions, it goes without saying they should have their own safe bubble so people can turn in their tasks.
Leaderboards...not too sure about. Fewest Defeats/Most Kils would be nice, maybe with a reset per day or week or month. Players consistently on a leaderboard should get a title or badge or something to denote their consistently high level of play. Of course then you get into farming others for badges, so that should definitely be pondered if implementing such a system.
Experience gains are a must on a pvp server. Assign a base x[p modifier to players equal to that of fighting an LT class mob. Boss XP might be too much and make players level faster than envisaged by the developers. A "throttle" can be put in if players start farming each other to level. Ideally, you would want a player to defeat X player entites before advancing. That could be one to three at low levels to many more (20? 30? 50?) at the higher levels, as player skill improves and player gear improves kills may be harder to come by, someting to consider.
Oh...something very, very important on the PvP side: RESPECS. With patches and power changes come the need to drop old powers for better ones. Having a respec option ingame (through the store or a one respec per X months of game time) is absolutely invaluable. Having to start from scratch would be just heartbreaking.
Keep in mind that in CoX, any time a patch affected powers or fundamental stats a freespec was always given to all characters on all accounts. I would hope that would also be implemented in CoT as it is, as you say, very important. Not just for PvPers but for anyone.
CoyoteShaman
Its worth noting that these freespec's didn't always stack either... but making sure that the character has at least one available would be ideal.
But then again, it all depends as to how easily a character can respec as well. City of Heroes was very "limited respec" orientated (at least in mechanics, unless you were a vet player who built them up via vet rewards). Whilst other games like Wildstar allows you to respec *everything* to do with your character for just a in game cash fee (50Gold at level cap for AMP respec., which is about a days worth of dailies, not counting vendoring stuff...). Power choice/points spent on them is free anytime out of combat...
I am not a fan of open world PVP in general
1 thing I would have loved to see while I was playing City of Heroes was that when the City of Villians came out, that the villains be able to "cross over into the Hero side" and would be able to be "rob a bank" and while there, they attacked or vice a versa... A Hero may cross to villain side to "fight crime"
"8 years.... What a ride"
I enjoy pvp but open world to me becomes a gankfest . I love a good fight as much as the next guy but open world just doesn't work. I like pvp to have some sort of purpose protecting something achieving a goal or to have some personal meaning that ties into the story of lore of the game or character example having to stop a villain or some other reason or because I went into an area know for being rough. Open world pvp ends up having people who just go around attacking people and for no other reason then because they can which gets old to me.It also attracts people who I really do not like dealing with the ones that think just because they are good at it they have the right to be ***hats about it.
I love the idea they had of having quest in game that are pvp related personally think this would be the way to go not sure how hard it would be to do through.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Simple model to follow, imo: Vanilla WoW.
Open world pvp in contested zones was SO fun. Certain zones were un-pvp-able unless anyone attacked the "invader" first, in which case only the attacker could be pvped by the invader. NPCs were killable in starter cities.
But really, the main thing was contested zone pvp. No level or ability limits, no scaling, totally gankable. But so exciting.
Also, Alterac Valley was fun - some map of that style could be great, too. But the open pvp servers of the original WoW style would be enough. To begin with.
In regards to issues with PvP I will point to one thing that is Elite Dangerous and Open, If you don't have a good enough crime and punishment and distractions for people a larger chunk of the community just starts actively murdering other players no matter how experienced they are.
Now I would like open pvp to exist in the game if it was balanced but you can't exactly run it without people ganking new players unless you make level not increase health etc but rather increase your pool of avaliable powers.
I think any PvP that does happen will be in addition to the PvE, but the PvE will be "driving", so to speak. That is, I don't think they're going to try to design the game to be as PvP-able as possible and make decisions in PvE character design, etc that are solely for the purposes of solving PvP problems they see coming down the pike. What I mean, is, if you're telling me "Look we need to completely rethink the way we level our toons in PvE, because PvP will be improved by that" then I think the answer is going to be "No, we're doing PvE for PvE's sake first, then adding what PvP we can on top, not letting PvP dictate the whole game and thus limit what PvE gets."
As such, I don't think you can rewrite the rules of how levering up works just to try to make open-world PvP more palatable to people or more fair to everyone.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
The emphasis on PVE in COT is going to be the same as it was in COH. The difference is that COH was not designed to have PVP, it was introduced later. In COT my understanding is that while PVP may not exist at launch they are at the very least planning on it and are designing powers accordingly. With a game like COT it's going to be really hard if not impossible to balance as there will frequently be pairings and matchups that just do not balance well at all.
Second Chance: https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/CityOfTitans/SecondChance/
Dev Tracker: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/fixing-dev-digest
Dev Comments: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/dev-comments
To be absolutely fair the idea for having PvP in CoH was there from the very beginning. They talked about how it was going to be introduced to the game at the launch of CoV even before CoH launched.
Now it may be fair to argue that the CoH Devs may not have handled the rollout of PvP very well and were forced to do a lot of "do-over" engineering to make it work. We all know they at least never managed to get SG base raiding working the way they intended. We can only hope that any pre-planning they're doing for PvP in CoT will lead to a smoother implementation in the long run.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I've been consistant in my analysis of combat mechanics and their implications in PvP. One of my goals is to reduce the possibility of powers or enitre mechanics needing to be changed in order to work properly in pvp. This is to reduce the barrier of entry where new players used to pve won't have to relearn how stuff works because they entered pvp.
We anticipate tweaks of course, between pve and pvp operations, but nothing drastic to make game play feel wholly different. In fact some of our metrics for pve uses player character analogs to reduce the possibility of those tweaks.
That's just powers. We have known there to be desire for pvp in at least, a general setting, and know one of our map phases will be for pvp. Basically, we designed with pvp in mind, are testing with pvp in mind, and aim to have working pvp for the game.
Then there are plans for noncombat, compentative pvp like races and sport-like events. Those however will probably wait until after launch.
[hr]I don't use a nerf bat, I have a magic crowbar!
- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
If you're going to do stuff like this, I suggest taking a look at what GW2 has. There are a lot of things like that there. One thing I've mentioned in the past is that having the ability to have objects in the game that toons can pick up, carry, drop, throw, etc, is a very powerful tool for stuff like this. I mean, even if ALL you can do is pick an object up, carry it, then drop it, you could, theoretically have two PCs playing chess against each other in park with a life-sized chessboard made of patio tiles or something with chess pieces that are the size of a garbage can.
Edit: Some examples of games like this from GW2. In the prelim events leading upto the Octovine event in Auric Basin, which is popular due to being exploitable for massive treasure rewards, you can earn a special "Golden Armor" temp power from the Exalted Sages. There are 4 areas for the event and 4 different games to get an armor from. In the South area, you have to race other players to the top of a cliff by hopping on mushrooms and rocks, etc. All travel powers are suppressed in the race area, so it's fair for everyone. In the North Area, you are in a small room with a large moving King Mushroom. Other, smaller mushrooms (which also move) spawn and you have to kick the small mushrooms at, and hit, the King Mushroom. First person to hit the King three times wins. All other powers are suppressed, you can only kick, but you can kick other players to hinder them, so you can play defense, to some extent. In the West area, you bid on the armors using a currency you can accumulate in the zone (Aurillium, which you get for doing the Octovine, so doing previous Octovines allows you to bid higher if you want to).
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
In CoHhpowers did have different stats depending who or what was hit with them. other games had PVE and PVP modifier stats.
But you could put in an equalizing mechanic which could involve by keeping track of individual defeats and individualize plus group victories that could impose advantage and disadvantage
the better you do in PvP the harder you must fight and the worse you do the easier it is succeed. If done right this would balance PVP and would impose itself its own checks and balances,
conga line s of death becoming harder to produce viable results and griefers getting less of a ability to grief with each successful gank.
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I loved the PVP in COH. It was open, you could risk going out there and just hanging out with the other people, or hide at the base. Or float up in the sky and take out people. Or help a hero that is being ganked by healing them or giving them a boost. That is why I loved PVP. Yeah I was ganked sometimes, but you just find a way to pick them off one by one, or come back later.
I don't think we should dismiss open world PVP just because you had some bad experiences.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
CoH had "open" PvP but only in specially designated PvP zones/arenas. There's a huge difference between having "open world" PvP anywhere in a game versus having it only in reserved areas. The term "open world" is usually reserved for a game where you can PvP anywhere. By that strict definition CoH was NOT an open world PvP game.
I liked PvP in CoH and I hope CoT eventually will have it as well. But I would never want CoT to be a fully open world PvP game because there are times when I simply don't want to play in a PvP environment. The vast majority of the original CoH playerbase were either causal PvPers or strict PvEers. Making CoT an open world PvP game would be a complete turn-off to just about everyone MWM hopes will want to play their game. There are plenty of other games out there that make PvP their Number One priority... CoT will never be one of those games.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Agree with Lothic. You don't see Superman and The Flash constantly trying to gank each other for kicks like 24/7. PvP has a place in this genre, but not all the time everywhere. There were PvPers who didn't like CoX's version of PvP though. I couldn't tell you why or what the fix is that would make them as happy as the PvEers, because I wasn't one of them, but they existed. As far as I can tell, most of the complaints about PvP were "Egads, they nerfed my build!" which was a complaint people had about PvE too, actually. When someone finds a degenerate, environment-warping combo, or some exploit that the devs hadn't intended, I think it's incumbent on the devs to fix it, and that means ignoring the whine of "BUT THAT WAS MY WHOLE TOON!" that you'll inevitably get.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I see what you mean. I do agree I would not like a open world PVP game at all. What COH had was just right in terms of pvp areas.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
When the PvP areas in CoX first rolled out, people who liked ganking unsuspecting carebears loved the PvP, and people who just wanted to get badges hated it. Personally I was not and am not a PvPer nor a Badge Hunter, so I didn't really care one way or the other, it was optional enough for me. I only ventured into the PvP areas for specific things I wanted, and by 2011 those places were totally empty on my server like all the time, so you could just go and reload your Shivans any time you wanted, as long as you could solo a turret base.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Just to throw in, I wasn't a PvPer or a Badge Hunter either--but I still enjoyed PvP in CoH FAR more than in any game I've played, and so I did PvP once in a while in CoH just for a change and for kicks. It also helped that my mains were mostly speced for high-level solo, so they were decent for PvP.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
The problem with world wide pvp, is that someone will attack and kill you in for example city hall, which lets be honest will be brimming with armed police or npc heros, who will then fail to stop the other player before they have killed you. Unless you place areas which the Police/Security make it to "impossible" to pvp/take down another player which then at the end of the day makes it the same as no-pvp in certain zones.
Which is why the preference is for Open World PvE and PvP only in explicitly designated spaces.
I don't want to have to worry about whether it's safe to walk the streets, or how close I am to a safe-zone. It's easier to make the choice to enter the danger-zone.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I don't remember this so well that I could point at a thread, but I BELIEVE it was stated someplace that they (MWM) were against the idea of putting bait in the PvP zones to lure unsuspecting PvEer in for the PvPers to gank. So there would be no badges to be had that couldn;t be gotten in other ways, not temp powers or better Augments to get in PvP zones or from PvP combat, etc.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising