Hi all,
I was thinking about some missions were played VS other players heroes vs villians, villians vs villians and so...
Something like the system they use in APB Reloaded. It would be really cool if we had other options to level up/progress on our characters instead of grinding or making endless missions.
Make some mission PVP Areas, like the ones in Archeage, some areas that are always in tension PVP on all the time, after some time the zone goes to WAR and then huge groups or heroes fight villians whoever side comes victorious wins a prize.
Archeage is a good example of all of the side activities you can do for leveling instead of just missions...
Please make leveling fun, instead of tedious and grindly...
Forcing players to PvP, or even to enter PvP zones when they don't want to, is generally a bad idea.
Contrary to popular belief it is a minority of players that enjoys PvP. There are some more that dabble in it, but given that PvP tends to be highly competitive it tends not to work well with more casual players (and then only if the game is designed for PvP matches to be quick and painless so to speak. The kind of game where players spawn, rush into the arena and start shooting everything that moves for the next minute or so until they are defeated and forced to respawn).
It takes only one bad experience with forced PvP and you lose a player forever. This far outweighs the number of players who try PvP once and decide they like it enough to keep doing it. (If they voluntarily enter a PvP arena and find they don't like it or can't compete against the specialists in that play style there, you lose them for PvP but not for the game entirely).
I agree with Nadira. I think the devs have already said they're not going to force anyone to PVP that doesn't want to. They have talked about having multiple instances of the outdoor areas (like Atlas Park 1, 2, 3, etc in CoX) and allowing some of those to be open-world PVP-able as an option, IIRC.
Requests by PVPers to please FORCE the PVE-ers to enter PVP zones is, to me, the sharks demanding to be fed more chum. Even avoidable things like CoX had, such as PVP zones which have some form of "bait" to try to get those not terribly interested in PVP to enter are a bad idea, to me. If CoX had been a game where you A) really needed those Warburg Nukes to complete TFs and B) ALWAYS had PVPers to deal with in Warburg, I would have quit. I would have said "apparently the devs want everyone to play competitively, because they're using it to gate the cooperative play I love the most in a way, so screw that, I'm out."
Note that I'm well aware of the argument that PVPers give that what we did have was the opposite problem, using PVE content as a way to get gear you want for PVP. I hear PVPers complain about that in like every game there is. I can't help that that's the way these things tend to work. It happens to work out to be a better deal for me, the cooperative PVEer I guess, but that's that way it is. I think trying to have the best of both worlds will end in failure, and if I had to choose just one, I would choose PVE in a heartbeat.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
I'll start this post by clearly stating that I'm not a hardcore PvPer. I best I'm sort of a part-time dabbler in it. I'll also state that CoT should never FORCE anyone to have to PvP. It should always be 100% optional.
Having said those things I wouldn't be totally opposed to the kind of hybrid PvE/PvP system that a game like ESO offers. It bases its main character progression on what it calls "skill points" that you earn at a minimum of one per level (1-50). There are several other ways to earn skill points besides traditional leveling, some of which include completing tough PvE dungeon challenges and exploring the zones collecting skyshards.
Turns out you can develop a completely workable character skill-wise without having earned every potential skill point in the game. The key idea here is that the game makes it very flexible on exactly what kinds of activity you can focus on to build your character. Being a level 50 character doesn't guarantee the best character build - depending on your build planning you could easily have a fully functional, totally optimized character by say level 35 or 40. Any extra skill points after that would just be icing on the cake.
In addition to the standard PvE levels in ESO you can also earn "PvP levels" which you only get via PvP. Like the standard PvE levels you get a skill point per PvP level. This means you could potentially have a level 10 PvE character also be a level 50 PvP character. Remember the character level numbers don't really matter - all that really matters is how many skill points you've accumulated via the several different methods to earn them. Now to be fair the level 50 PvP character would still be considered level 10 as far as any PvE is concerned (especially when it comes to loot levels) and if you're an obsessive completionist it means you technically have 100 levels (50 PvE and 50 PvP) to earn before you're strictly considered "maxed" out in a literal sense.
Again the key is that you have several different ways to build your character without having to be locked 100% into all PvE and/or all PvP.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
My biggest beef with CoX Pvp was that I was bad at it. That said, I am ok with pvp and pvpve being included due to people thinking coh's main flaw was mission repetitiveness.
I have NO problem with there being PvP orientated missions. I would however put them in as optional side story content rather than "main line" content; just to make sure that you can still progress/level up easily enough without having to do them.
One thing I never liked about CoH PvP was the need for a second build. I don't like any idea that one needs a different build for PvP and PvE. It's made even worse with superhero mmos...Oh this epic power set is better so I should spec out of the laser beam eye concept power into fire mastery!
Or when you see someone say "I have to alt to pvp version of my character who has the same name but totally different powersets because my concept is terrible in pvp" :p
I have no problem with having a PvP build, just so long as it was quick and easy to flick between the two builds... CoX slipped a bit here by having you have to go to a trainer to change the builds.... and on top of that then putting in a timer restriction on the change.
Of course, there was the whole issue of having to get the enhancements for the 2nd (or 3rd) build as well.
This is why I have no problem with what wildstar does. You can have (up to) 4 "AMP setups", and change the abilities linked to each "amp setup" whenever you want without having to go to a trainer. There is no cool down either, so if you accidentally choose the wrong one (or you have to change plans quickly) you are not penalised for this.
Yeah alternate builds in CoH did sort of ruin the general idea of "superhero character concepts". If Captain Wonderful's main deal are his energy blasts he got from being bitten by a radioactive ferret it doesn't really make sense for him to suddenly (and/or temporarily) switch the fundamental nature of his powers just because he decides to fight a different kind of foe. Technically a good argument could be made to not allow players in a game like this to have an alternate build system at all.
But as we all know in "MMO PvP world" it's become pretty much expected for most games to allow features like this regardless of those considerations. Obviously the way CoT handles it may be different from CoH's system. But I suspect even if CoT doesn't launch with some kind of alternate build system that they'll eventually offer something to fill that need even if they have to shoehorn it in like CoH did.
I haven't played Wildstar so I have no direct experience with how the "AMP setups" work.
But I do know the very legitimate reason why CoH made you jump through loops to make build changes relatively hard to accomplish. In CoH's case the alternate build system let you establish very significant differences between say a "PvE" build and a "PvP" build (or between alternate PvP builds for that matter). If CoH had allowed people to switch builds on the fly then they could effectively play as overpowered "tankmages" because it would've been easy to switch back-n-forth between a "tank" build and a "mage" build.
I suspect if you compared CoH's alternate build system to Wildstar's what you probably have with Wildstar is a much more restricted/structured system where the actual differences between the "AMP setups" are likely much less drastic than what CoH allowed for. I suspect this explains why Wildstar can get away with giving you more freedom in changing AMP setups because the possibility for tankmagery is likely limited.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I really hope - though cannot promise - that we will manage to have all of our powers be symmetric and impact only things which impact the enemies' abilities themselves, not the A.I. In so doing, I hope we can design our system such that there is no reason to have to change mechanics for fighting against A.I. vs. human players.
The key to such a design will be ensuring that the effects of powers do not rely in any way on manipulating the controller of the character in question. That way, an A.I. controller and a human controller are transparent differences insofar as how powers impact enemies.
Again, I can make no promises; this kind of thing is...controversial...as a philosophy. But it is what I would like to see.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I wasn't a huge PvPer in CoH - I dabbled here and there. But I think what a hardcore CoH PvPer would tell you is that it wasn't just a matter of having alternate builds to better handle human vs. AI tactics.
The main reason people switched builds was that many individual powers ultimately worked differently whether you were using them in PvE or PvP. The actual in-game stats (things like recharge, damage, range, etc.) were is some cases radically different and in order to fully take advantage of those differences it made sense to use different enhancement load-outs to min/max the situation.
The real ideal (which may or may not be achievable in CoT) is for powers to work absolutely identically regardless if you're using them in PvE or PvP. If you can count on your main blast or crowd-control power to work the same way in any situation then the need to have alternate PvE vs PvP builds would be reduced and/or mitigated. Hopefully CoT will take that to heart and figure out ways to keep from having to make powers work differently depending on the venue in question.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The ability to swap builds for PVE and PVP is one thing. If you could lock people into ONE PVP build "slot" and ONE PVE build "slot" in the sense that you can't use both slots for PVP, etc, I'd be okay with it, if the differences between PVP and PVE were so large as to warrant different builds for each.
I don't want infinite free respeccing, I don't want multiple quick-swap-able PVP builds, and I do not want the PVP build selection to be so fluid as to allow people to pick their build based on the opponent, or if they are going to do that, they should at least need to switch toons to an alt instead of just making one toon and having multiple builds for it.
The RPG aspect of this game requires variations among different toons. One guy has a magic sword, another gal has a lasergun, someone else can shoot lightning out of their eyes, etc. In competitive sports, everyone has the SAME equipment and the SAME moves available to them to ensure fairness under the rules. These two paradigms are are polar opposites, I feel, and they mix about as well as oil and water.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
While I might agree the type of builds in CoH that were typically geared for PvE could be very different than those geared for PvP the actual differences could be very subjective. How could you really judge whether a player clearly had two PvP builds versus one of each? The key here is the player having the choice when to switch or not switch. Maybe if the game went to the extreme of literally requiring you to have a specific PvE and PvP build and automatically switched you from one to the other depending on when you entered a PvE or PvP zone then you could be certain that people are only using a build you expect them to be using.
For what it's worth there are games out there that have systems that don't force you into strict, binary all-or-nothing build swaps that work very well. Some of them allow characters to build up multiple skills yet only allow you to access a fixed number of them at any time during combat. If you want to "switch builds" under those systems all you need to do is swap out individual powers from your active tray. Basically there are many ways to solve the "multiple build" issue that include other ways than the relatively rigid way CoH did it.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I would go with the "when in PVP mode, you always get set up with your chosen PVP build, no switching, when in PVE you use your PVE build, no switching. That is, the game would auto-switch you for whatever you;re currently engaged in. Frankly I dislike the idea of letting people switch between multiple different builds in PVE too. I hate the "I'll bring my Destructo ray against Dr. Doomsday and the Freeze ray against Prof. Pyro, I'm a GENIUS!" kind of thinking that enables. I would rather force people to make decisions on a build ("Hmmmm, Destructo ray or Freeze ray at level 20? Let me see...") and be stuck with that build (for the most part) because that way your build needs to be versatile in the first place. Allowing faster/more convenient switching and respeccing between different build options only encourages more "tailoring" of builds to different missions, TFs, etc and I'd rather that not happen. I want players (including me) to needs to build "a toon for all seasons" not a bunch of specialized builds.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
That was rather my point.
The reasons for having to have powers work differently in PvP than PvE are twofold:
1) The design of NPCs/monsters and PCs is asymmetric, such that (in an extreme example) a Final Fantasy X, say, character could overwhelmingly one-shot another FFX character, but hacks slowly through monster hp. Meanwhile, an FFX monster would never do appreciable damage to another FFX monster. The scaling of hit points to damage was balanced ONLY for PC v NPC/monster. You had to redesign PCs if they became NPCs and vice-versa. The same can be true of a lot of different mechanics.
2) A lot of games - most MMOs amongst them - utilize mechanics which directly interact with the A.I. of enemies in their PvE powers. "Taunt" powers are particularly clear examples of this: A.I. has an aggro stat which tracks who it wants to hit. It may normally be based on some sort of heuristic which might resemble good strategy, or might resemble how we imagine a human would make such control decisions, but it is still ultimtely a stat. A PC might have a "Taunt" power which directly targets that aggro stat, inflating it wrt the PC in question. Another might have a "Placate" power which artificially lowers it wrt him, despite having done things which would cause the heuristic to make him a high-aggro target.
Things which directly target A.I. decision-making stats cannot work in PvP, because we cannot have a power which makes a PLAYER change his mind based on no other effect about who he's going to attack.
There are ways to simulate it, mostly involving reducing player options, but I would prefer to avoid it altogether. The A.I. may have an aggro stat, but no power will directly target it. Instead, design powers such that manipulating the aggro stat would also likely manipulate player choices similiarly.
Perhaps the tank, instead of Taunting, has a power that does more damage if the enemy attacked somebody other than said Tank last. Or based on how many times they've attacked somebody other than that Tank since the last time they attacked the Tank. Maybe the guy with the Placate power actually causes his attack to seem to have come from another character, both in any logging and in visual effect on screen.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I understand there can be many reasons why powers have to work differently in PvE and PvP based on overall game balance. The actual Holy Grail I'm talking about (which I really don't know if ANY game has adequately achieved yet) is that if a game is designed/balanced correctly from the beginning then there shouldn't be any need for powers work differently in PVE versus PvP at all. It's sort of like in The Matrix when the kid convinces Neo he doesn't have to worry about bending the spoon with his mind because the greater truth is that there is no spoon.
I still think the situation has much more to do with what any given power can do to PCs versus NPCs than it has with AI decision making algorithms. For instance no one gets too upset if a crowd control power can perma-hold a NPC but you try to have the same power do the same thing to a PC in PvP and you'll get people screaming bloody murder about it. Now there's no actual mechanical reason why the CC power shouldn't be allowed to perma-hold any target - the only "problem" is one of perception and fairness. In that case the CC power usually gets uniquely "modified" for PvP so that it can no longer perma-hold PCs or worse yet it gets universally nerfed so that it can no longer perma-hold any target at any time which then screws over the solo crowd controller in PvE.
Again I realize that games tend to establish different sets of power rules for PvE versus PvP, but they usually do that only because they can't figure out any better way to mesh the two systems together into one workable whole. Don't start off assuming powers must be divided into separate PvE and PvP versions - start off by trying to eliminate the need for that division in the first place.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
The AMP setups in Wildstar can change how a character plays *WILDLY* and what roles they do. Sure, you could take all the amps so you can DPS, and the abilities for that... and then swap the abilities over to a Tank setup if you so desired.
Sure, you could tank... barely. Just like I *could* use healing abilities on my spellslinger when I have a DPS setup.
But you would have been far more better suited to go for an AMP set that for Tanking (or healing) if you wanted to do it properly.
The AMP tree also locks 3 abilities that can be seen as "focal" for a role (healing/Tanking, DPS and PVP). So whilst you *could* do DPS on a slinger without the Assassinate ability, the ability is really one that fits into so many setups, that it is strange NOT to take it (there are setups that don't use it, but they appear to be more "edge" cases than anything else, where you are trying to do 2 roles at the same time).
In Wildstar though, I cannot change abilities whilst in combat. I have to be fully out of combat to be able to change my build/spec for the upcoming encounter. Which is handy when I am not needed to go "all out damage" and instead have to help interrupt/control mobs instead.
So to an extent, this can also allow for a greater variety of encounters within a dungeon/taskforce/raid. And being able to change it, can mean that you are more likely to be able to *overcome* the encounter, because you can change your build to help push you over, instead of hitting that brick wall which your current build prevents you from achieving.
which would have helped me (in the early days) a lot, instead of waiting for long periods of time for friends to free up to help me out (zone chat was helpless in this case).
Then again, it also means that players would be more inclined to *tweak* and play with their build, instead of asking for the "cookie cutter" builds on forums. Sure, it wont stop that from happening, but I know that I have been more inclined to tweak what I am currently using just to see if it was better, because there was no actual penalty (apart from it being worse) to doing so.
Not everyone is inclined or is able to have the test server installed on their machine (either due to download limits/storage available), so penalising those players is not always a good idea.
Hell even in CoX I had "solo build" and "team build" (originally) but I never actually finished my "team build" properly, mainly due to a lack of influence.
Yes the AMP setups let you "wildly" change your "build" in Wildstar. But as I suspected the system locks you into specific roles that strictly prevents/minimizes any "tankmagery" especially since as you say the AMPs can't be changed while in combat. Had CoH allowed us to switch back-n-forth between its builds without limitation the consquences would have easily led to far more overpowered scenarios than what your AMP setups would allow. There was really no way the CoH Devs could allow their system to do that and maintain game balance.
As you pointed out CoH solved that by letting players be smart enough to team with balanced teams that could overcome any situation. If you were soloing and actually found yourself totally unable to overcome a specific encounter you could always go change your build. But really it's not like that kind of scenario happened all the time - frankly I don't recall ever actually needing to do that while soloing anything in CoH. It's always possible that CoH was simply a far easier game than Wildstar is but I never made "team" versus "solo" builds - I only ever needed the feature for "PvE" versus "PvP" builds.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Lothic, I think you're misreading what I'm saying.
I agree with you. I said exactly what you said here is what I would LIKE, though I am unable to make promises that it WILL BE.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Ah I see. You kept mentioning how AI implementation would have to react to being involved in either PvE or PvP situations and that was throwing me off of what you were otherwise trying to say. As far as I could tell issues concerning AI implementation have essentially nothing to do with PvP power mechanics, at least directly at any rate. Afterall PvP is by definition "human player" vs. "human player". Any involvment of AI (and its particular use of powers) when it finds itself around players fighting each other would presumably react the same way it would regardless if it was in a PvE zone or a PvP zone. *shrugs*
For what it's worth I continue to trust you guys will figure out workable solutions to all these things eventually. :)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I'm probably (still) in the minority when saying this, but ...
I believe that having an alternate build for every character [b][i]as a Civilian[/i][/b] would enable Secret Identity gameplay, as opposed to "just" superpowered gameplay. Yes, the build changes would be radical between them ... but a "Civilian" build would follow rules different enough to inherently prevent anything akin to tankmagery.
Think about it.
Also, having a Secret ID build would enable different types of storytelling ... including the "sneak in using Secret ID" followed by "fight your way out in Super ID" once you swipe the McGuffin.
[img]http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090110195732/indianajones/images/b/b1/Golden_Idol_grab.jpg[/img]
That way the challenge of getting IN is different from the one of getting OUT ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The reason A.I. is of consideration is because part of the reason why PvP and PvE wind up with different mechanics is a design decision on how certain PvE powers work: They directly manipulate the enemy A.I.
To have the same powers work in PvP and PvE with no change requires that no powers be designed to directly manipulate enemy A.I. Instead, any powers must be designed to influence [i]players[/i] of enemy characters. That is, designed with the idea that they must be useful in PvP.
Then, the A.I. gets designed such that it operates based on what's been done to mainpulate player perceptions, so that the A.I. is indirectly affected in the same way that human players are.
Thus, I bring A.I. up because the A.I. needs to be no different, from the perspective of the powers used on targets, from a human player.
No power, for instance, can operate by directly changing the "aggro" that an enemy has towards the user of the power. This is because humans don't have an "aggro" rating that can be directly adjusted, so any such power used on a human-controlled character would fail. This would necessitate a difference between PvP and PvE effects of the power.
Instead, the power that is meant to affect aggro needs to be designed with the idea that it would affect a human's desire to attack a given target. Then, the A.I. is designed to have similar priorities, and thus be similarly affected.
It goes to the core of the design considerations that must be made when deciding that you want no difference between PvP and PvE powers.
[color=#ff0000]Business Manager[/color]
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
And this 'symmetric' thing already does not make me optimistic for CoT. I know you probably don't mean it like that, but it kind of smacks me of the powers design from SW:TOR, where both sides of the intergalactic are basically differently coloured identical twins. The names of the attacks, and the animations are different, but in timing and effect they are identical. Trooper is identical to Bounty Hunter, Sith Juggernaut is identical to Jedi Knight, Smuggler is identical down to the last detail to Imperial Agent, and Sith Sorceror has the exact same powers as a Jedi Consular. (and yet players still manage to grip about perceived differences of 0.02 seconds difference in animation lengths)
There also is nothing -interesting- in these powersets. They all are just ... bland. They're all just DPS with a bit of tanky, controllery or healery flavour over them. No pet classes, no actual controllers, no shapechangers, no summoners, nothing creative, because that would be too difficult to balance in PvP.
I dunno about whether it's a minority opinion or not, but every time the idea of making changing builds clumsy and annoying as a way to convince powersuit dudes not to bother with their Hulkbuster suits, my only thought is "but what if they just want to take their regular powersuit off?"
The same thing applies to changing costumes. Someone suggested that all supers should be required to put their tights on one leg at a time for the sake of verisimilitude, but some characters change their appearance with just one magic word. Not to mention getting their trenchcoats tattered or dirty in a fight. Supers shouldn't have to leave combat and find a phone booth if they want to show the battle-damaged version of their outfit.
Costume Change is not the same as Build Loadout Change.
I have no problem with making Costume Changes situationally agnostic, since costume design has no bearing or impact on game mechanics or "combat" per se.
The same cannot be said for Builds and Loadouts.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I am fine with PvP, but as long as it 100% optional... no... not 100%, but 200% optional... this means that when you are going into PvP zone your flag won't change to PvP because you are in this zone, but you will be asked will you like to change your flag to PvP... or you receive a mission which clearly states that you have to do something, but never hints that you have to kill a Player.. (I've seen plenty of such quests)... just NO! Right on top and next to the name of the Quest should have these >[ ]< Clearly stating that this is [PvP]... no exceptions or anything... because i will hate to take a quest and find out that I have to do PvP, or I want to get to that zone, and the fastest way to get there is by flying over the PvP zone and then ending up being killed even thought I didn't want to fight with another player, just because the other wants to be troll.... just no... PvP 200% optional only then I will be fine with having it in game... I've quit probably over 10 games, because of PvP being forced... it's not that I don't enjoy it from time to time, but definitely I don't want to be included all the time in it, or whenever the game desires so...
I definitely agree with you about the blandness of games like SWTOR that balance PvE and PvP in that way. When Segev first starts talking about not manipulating NPC AI, I start thinking, "Damn, that's controllers nerfed to run-of-the-mill MMO status already."
But further reading of Segev's posts assuages my fears somewhat. If I understand him correctly, I think he's suggesting a solution that can still give us cool crowd control powers as well as avoid the "watering down" effect we have seen in games like SWTOR. I think it's still a footpath through a minefield, but hopefully MWM will be able to navigate it. Fingers crossed!
Spurn all ye kindle.
Again, and I cannot stress this enough, I cannot promise that any of this is what will happen. The AI-manipulation-by-PC-powers thing is done because it's easy to implement, and gives PCs a sense of control over enemy actions. It is a lot harder to create powers which one player can willfully execute which has even mildly predictable impact on another player's choices.
I was not a huge fan of D&D 4e. I say this not to start an edition war, but just to head off any "don't make this like that game" comments. However, 4e did something very, very smart: it created ways of having human-controlled combatants on both sides while still having crowd control, tanking, and aggro-manipulation. It did this by creating consequences for choices that encouraged behaviors the player wanted.
e.g. fighter-types had powers that let them "mark" enemies such that the foe had a penalty to hit anybody OTHER THAN the fighter-type. Or, if they DID attack anybody other than the fighter-type, that fighter character got to deal bonus damage to them with his own attacks.
That kind of thing demonstrates how it is best to think about it: Create powers which leave the choice of how to respond in the hands of the target, but which create clear situations of, "do things the way I want you to, or pay the price." Alternatively, "do things the way I want you to, because everything else is too hard."
I'd love to see the "tank" classes be actually some of the biggest damage-dealers out there...if the targets try to ignore them. You don't see the bad guys ignoring Superman just because he's hard to hurt; he's also a hugely heavy hitter, so they HAVE to pay attention to him. Unfortunately, that leaves other, blastier types free to attack withotu being overwhelmed.
The tricky part would be balancing all of this so that those NOT serving as "tanks" would still be more dps than the tanks, provided the tanks were absorbing enemy hits properly.
Having the "tank" be also a "defense buffer" for the party is also an option for a certain style of play, but fluffing that can be tricky.
So, to answer some of the specific concerns raised, if we could implement what I would like to see, controllers would absolutely have things they could do. The effects they'd have would be direct on the performance of enemies' capabilities. They'd either interfere with enemies' actions or they would punish enemies who didn't play the controller's preferred form of "simon says." Controllers would therefore be as effective against player-controlled enemies as A.I.-controlled ones, because they wouldn't be interfering with the "mind" behind the enemy; they'd be impacting the enemy's actions in the game.
As to symmetry meaning mirrors...no. That's not what I mean at all.
All symmetry means is that the scale of damage output and capacity to take damage is similar, and that anything that player-controlled characters do to A.I.-controlled enemies would be the same thing they'd do to player-controlled enemies. If we handed an interface for an NPC over to a human player, he could play that NPC as effectively as you'd expect that NPC to play against other NPCs. He would, effectively, be a PC.
That doesn't mean there won't be unique, AI-enemy-only powers. But it means they'll be built on the same scale as PC-available powers. If an elite boss has massive amounts of HP, it won't be because everything computer-controlled does, and PC powers do so much damage that they'd one-shot any PC they hit. It'll be because that elite boss has taht many more hp in comparison to anything else. ...and I'm nto sure that makes sense. I know what I'm trying to say, but I am not thinking of a good way to say it.
Ah well. I'll close by saying that I have no way of promising that this is even how it will go. I would even wager - were I a betting man - that it would not be how things were from release. But it's what I would personally LIKE to see.
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OK, that's what I thought you were saying after I read it more carefully. Sounds very interesting!
Spurn all ye kindle.
....I probably should not be reading this thread, let alone leaving a comment, but here I go anyway. Living dangerously is kind of what I do.
Everything I have read about PvP in CoT has struck me as somewhat muddled. Well, when it comes right down to it, almost everything the development team has published so far has been somewhat muddled. I understand that they are still learning the ins and outs of their chosen platform, and I understand that computers are implacably stupid, making some really cool concepts totally impossible to implement. Still, a bit more clarity would be a good thing. Perhaps an update or two about, "well, we wanted to do this but it was impossible so we're doing this instead."
I don't PvP in online games. Period. I did, back in the beginning, but I quickly learned that because computers are binary everything about PvP is numbers. The player who takes down the most numbers at the fastest rate wins. Strategy, tactics, all of the things that make real life so challenging and rewarding fly right out the window because on the computer nothing matters except the numbers. Even in fighting games when one player faces another and the only point of the game is for them to fight one another, the real key to winning is to get off that super-bang-you're-dead-combo before the other player does. This does not take strategy. It only takes fast reflexes and good coordination in your fingers.
There are many things that can be done to introduce tactical and strategic thinking into PvE. This is because the enemy AI is always predictable, it might be really complex, but it is still predictable. As a result, slows, holds, DoT, power recharge times, power consumption rates, accuracy buffs/debuffs, can all be precisely manipulated in ways that encourage players to use their intellect to combine the different effects in unique and interesting ways. The moment you pass control of the enemy from the computer to another player, all of that tactical and strategic pre-staging goes right out the window. No one, absolutely no one, wants to be on the receiving end of a DoT they cannot counter, a Hold they cannot break, or a Slow they cannot escape. Debuffs remove their control over their gameplay in ways that are impossible to anticipate ahead of time, making such powers particularly loathsome in PvP.
Consider for example in CoX the vicious, callous, unconscionable combination of Teleport Foe and Caltrops + Hold. There is no way possible to counter this. Even Inspirations that counter Hold had a mathematical potential to fail, a potential that always seems to strike at the worst possible moment. This combination led to endless rounds of heated forum discussions and finally the removal of travel powers in PvP zones. Unsurprisingly, that was almost immediately followed by PvP fans abandoning the game in droves.
Games that cater to PvP players must reduce all power down to attack/defense. There is no other method to insure fairness. This minimization is not because balancing control powers is too expensive, it is because balancing control powers is mathematically impossible. It CANNOT be done. Hold-DoT-Finish Attack makes for some pretty nice PvE play because the NPC cannot feel cheated. It makes for completely horrifying PvP play because whoever in on the receiving end has NO choice and NO counter. The moment you try to give them some form of counter, the player who likes the Hold-DoT-Finish attack tactic is perfectly justified in screaming in fury at the inability of their character to compete because now they are forced into the same mindless all-out attack tactic as everyone else and their character has no ability to counter it.
Chess is a game of skill. Although some will argue against it, Poker is also a game of skill despite the randomization. Chess and Poker both involve a high level of complex strategic and tactical thinking that even modern computers can barely mimic. There is no possible way to put that level of conceptualization into a MMORPG AI nor can it be put into the kinds of powersets that MMORPG players love. The reason is twofold: the server lag would make the game unplayable, most of the players don't want to spend their entire lifetime learning how to play to the game competitively.
Therefore, I contend that no MMORPG should waste time and resources trying to create "balanced" PvP. It is mathematically impossible, so don't even bother trying. The only realistic approach for a MMORPG is to keep the PvP and PvE games completely separated, balance everything for entertaining PvE encounters that involve some degree of low-level strategic preparation and tactical execution, then ignore the PvP players when they complain the same skills are worthless in PvP, because the fact of the matter is they are absolutely right and there is no way to change this situation as long as we are restricted to binary computers.
That's my opinion and until science perfects ternary or quantum computers I'm not changing it. So if you want to destroy your ability to produce a commercially viable MMORPG by spending endless time and money attempting the impossible, well, it's your budget and your game, but I'm telling you right now it will not work.
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The enemy has no duty or responsibility to follow your plan. That's why they're called the enemy.
Tactics and strategy don't go out the window in PVP. Counter tactics just get introduced making your strategy obsolete. Shrug
If that was intended for me, you completely and wholly missed my point.
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I got it. I just took away "hey the facts of enemy players on a binary battlefield invalidates my standard play style.
To me it was like French knights complaining about English longbow men or German infntry complaining about allied bombers.
The battlefield is the battlefield and over time it changes.
Um, no. That was kind of the opposite of what I said.
Just for starters, it was not about me or my playstyle at all.
My point is "balanced" PvP is impossible because sooner or later everything devolves back to the core and the core is simply binary substitution. The only way to have "balanced" PvP is limit PvP programming to two fundamentals: attack/defense
Not even attack/defense/parry is achievable because mathematically, "parry" simply functions as an additional aspect of defense.
Dedicated PvP players rant endlessly about "balance" in the same way people argue over taxes. For Dedicated PvP players "balance" actually means "I totally dominate my opposition" just as in tax debates the only fair tax is a tax on you and not on me.
They discuss "skill" endlessly as well, but the only real "skills" are the ability to create a character with better mathematics or the ability to push a few buttons more rapidly.
Spend some time reading the Wildstar PvP forums. Wildstar has one of the most innovative combat systems a MMORPG has ever offered. In PvE it works exactly as designed. PvP players hate it. A few of them enjoy it, but most of the posts I've read have been completely negative with all the same old complaints about the leveling grind, builds that dominate too easily, and lack of community participation.
PvP in a MMORPG cannot be "balanced". It is impossible. The binary platform will not support a mathematical balance between two players because in the end, it is nothing more than simple substitution. Granted, the substitution system can produce some very elaborate equations, but because it is binary, it cannot produce ternary logics, fuzzy equations, or genuine randomness. Until computers can achieve those, PvP will only be enjoyable when it is between two combatants with identical builds who are restricted to variations on attack and defense.
PvP in an online game is nothing more than a really elaborate game of Tic-Tac-Toe. It's time MMORPG developers acknowledged this and stopped wasting resources trying to do the impossible.
My opinion. I do realize others disagree.
However, I've been watching digital games for over four decades now and everything I have seen points to the same conclusion: the binary platform cannot support balanced PvP encounters based on skill, intellect, or even randomness. It is impossible and it is time people admitted it and started focusing on the strengths of the platform: branching and binary logic.
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Agreed Hawk. Get a FPS, all is equal, since you're playing the same character against each other, whoever reacts faster wins. People will cry over it. It's never about balance, it's about people not being able to handle losing. :p
"I can't react fast I have a condition! This makes PvP unfair to me!" Oh well. Can't be helped and not a problem with the game!
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I (try to) dislike absolute statements, but this is what it does indeed boil down to in my opinion as well.
If you try to combine PvE and PvP in the same game (or at least try too hard) then either or both games will suffer because the underlying mechanics are too different.
I disagree with the assertion that the hitpoint attrition is the core of PvP and not of PvE. The limitations of computers are such that it always boils down to an attrition race.
PvE gameplay though, at its heart is about controlling your opponent's actions (assuming you don't go in capable of simply overpowering them, which in and of itself is also a form of control). Even level opponents are (or should be) designed so they can out-dps a player. The puzzle is then for the player to interupt the DPS of the mob in some way or form, be it remaining hidden, interupting, controlling, healing damage or mitigating it, distracting with pets, debuffing, buffing, and so on.
The mob uses a limited AI (at least at the higher levels) to return the favour to the player to keep the players on their collective toes.
In PvP almost none of this works because players will not be distracted by taunts or pets, will pre-empt attempts to control or debuff them and, as already mentioned, take a dim view to the more absolute forms of control. As a result a PvP based game will gravitate towards speed, or twitch, because that is ultimately the deciding factor between two players. Starcraft is a good example, it is in essence a finely tuned game of rock-paper-scissors, which gets decided almost always by the player capable of performing the most actions per minute.
The ideas that Segev presented here that may, or may not, make it into the final game are intrigueing in the sense that they offer a different approach to this problem. I don't know if it will work (and willl not personally try to find out anyway) but at least they are an attempt to do something different from the usual of either 'let's pretende there's no difference between PvP and PvE' or 'let's balance the entire gameplay around the needs of PvP and add a lot of eyecandy to distract the PvE players with'.
On top of that, there is also the difference in psychology between predominantly PvE players and PvP players. The two don't fit together well in the same environment, even if you dismiss the stereotypes as being largely baseless. PvP players must of necessity see other players primarily as opponents and no matter how careful you are with it some of that attitude carries over into the PvE gameplay. PvE players either see other players as supporters, or as irrelevant (for their solo playstyle). Again, this attitude would carry over into a PvP match, making it that much harder to shrug off a defeat.
This is also expressed well in the typical matches of games.
In games designed for PvP the ideal match is short, players can jump right in and can shrug off a defeat as inconsequential (because it is just that).
In games designed for PvE the ideal match is much more elaborate (though the time for 8 hour raids or taskforces has long since passed) and failing is intended to have real, even if temporary, consequences for the next attempt. Where for PvP games failure is a certainty for one of two players, and consequently the cost of that failure must be non-existent (or there soon would be no PvP capable players left), in PvE defeat is the result of relatively rare failure to solve the 'puzzle' of the encounter, and because of its rarity the consequence of that failure must be real. It doesn't have to be huge or permanent (e.g. the time for permanent XP loss after a defeat is also long past, but equipment damage, XP debt or time loss to regroup are all common costs associated with failure). If the cost associated with failure are too low you encourage 'once is always' issues and zerging an encounter and players not taking teaming up too seriously. If the cost is too high then the difficulty of teaming up and of retaining players becomes a real issue. This is typically seen in PvE games on the transition from solo content to (hard) group content. I don't think there is a real solution possible, but at any rate this is beside the point of this comment, which is about PvE versus PvP and the issues that creates in a game. The issues created by grouping versus solo play within the same game are a separate discussion.
So, in summary, or in rewording a wall of text, combining PvE and PvP in the same game has some real problems associated with it for both playstyles and it is debatable if the approach favoured by Segev will manage to overcome that.
It is also a given that not just publishers but also players nowadays expect a PvP environment in their MMO games. World of Warcraft has polluted the genres to that extend that this is now as expected in games as is e.g. levels and a skill tree.
If this was an Arena setting, then i guess one way to balance teams out is to Have Matching AT's on each team.
If one team has a Troller, The Other team has to have a 'Troller as well.. but can be any powerset.
As long as the teams have a similar structure to them, one PvP team wont dominate in the ring. It will instead turn into a drawn out battle which I like more.
I think of it like pitting comic book characters with similar kinda simmilar atributes/powers to face off.
Decent Match up: - Batman Vs. Iron Man (bot can use all their toys, and they BOTH have money for them)
Decent Match up: - Wonder Woman Vs. She Hulk .....
Not a Decent Match Up: - Dr. Strange Vs. Green Lantern
But if Wonder Woman and Zatana were faced off against She Hulk and Dr. Strange.. Thats SUPER! ;)
Izzy, if that's what people want, there's Team Fortress 2 over dat'away ...
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Some of that just makes for some boring PvP.
Before the great CoH PvP Nerf of OH NINE (totally making up a date, as I don't recall it :p) I was maining an EM/WP Tanker (because you couldn't have EM on a scrapper!) and doing great damage and surviving! So I spent quite a few team PvP matches being taunted all the time towards the tank who could take the hits, if not just run away just long enough before dying but keeping me taunted.
We both agreed that made for a boring PvP match for the both of us :p
That is an interesting point on PvE design being about taking on a core-mechanically superior opponent with deliberately poor A.I. that can be exploited, and thus is a puzzle.
I don't think I agree that having "unbeatable" combos of powers which exploit the limitations of the A.I. or transform the challenge to a question of whether you have this winning combo and know how to use it or not is inherently good design for the PvE game. I will say that it is almost certainly harder to design and balance a PvE encounter with interesting puzzle elements to the power suites given to the computer-controlled foes that does not require Artificial Stupidity to make it exploitable. I'm sure we've all seen games wherein bosses have elaborate attack patterns and impregnable defenses until they take the one move which exposes their weakness(es). And the strategy - the puzzle - is learning the pattern of attack and other actions to convince them to expose that weakness.
That is, if you were playing that boss, you probably would [i]never[/i] expose that weakness. You know better. But the foe's A.I. calls for that behavior as a puzzle boss.
If, instead, the boss was designed to use all of its powers as intelligently as possible, it would be required to balance it without the possible game-breaker defensive (or offensive) powers. Which...could be a lot harder.
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Yep... it would get very boring, if there arent tactics you can use.
When i think of Tactics, it involves the best position/spacing from a foe, countering-hits/attacks that are almost twitchy, and the like.
But then it becomes more like Street Fighter. :{
Then I have to wonder, does PvP need a bit of twich play to be more fun? :P
Ohhh well, im still just a B rank on Ultra Street Fighter 4, so don't ask me. :(
Looking at the responses to the OP, I think there was some confusion. It sounds to me like the idea wasn't to ever "force players to PVP." It sounds more to me like the idea would be to have PVP zones like Warburg or Recluse' Victory, and in THOSE ZONES, have PVP-based missions.
No one's being forced to do anything. If you don't want to do PVP-based missions, you don't have to ever enter PVP zones.
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One thing I could see doing, is to have something to offer the PVPers besides just open world and arena. Like, maybe have a "mission" that would be accessible from a NPC contact or slash command popup window that's PVP oriented but requires the two competing toons to perform some tasks aside from just defeating each other repeatedly.
So for example:
You have a finite amount of time to collect a set of widgets. There are 4 types and you need one of each type. They're randomly (or maybe not so randomly) scattered around the map, and there might be multiple copies of some of them and only ONE of a certain type, etc. When you defeat a toon you get to take ONE of their widgets, any one you want, or maybe that's random too but a special temp power you can get in the mission map gives you the ability to choose (and/or maybe when YOU get defeated, if you have the special temp power, you get to decide what your opponent gets when they defeat you, etc).
This would give people something to tryt to do besides just rack up frags. Some of the some rules they had in CoX worked like this, like getting Warburg Nukes and jellomen, etc. All we're talking about here is doing in on an indoor map and maybe getting it from a contact. You'd have to have ques of heroes and villains waiting to do that mission though, and the game would have to match them up against each other in some "fair" way.
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Ok here's another thing I just thought up:
Two toons start the mission in different maps. ON those maps are PVE mobs to deal with which stand between you and the portal that takes you tot he NEXT map, where you square off against eachother in a "first defeat wins" PVP fight to the first defeat. While in the "preliminary" map, you can't leave until you defeat ALL of the mobs on that map, and while you're doing that you might click on some glowwies that give you some temp powers or buffs, etc. Then while on the "phase two" map, if you got there first, you can run around collecting more/better temp powers from glowwies, some of which might combo up with the ones you got from your preliminary map in cool ways. So You want to cut through the prelim as fast as possible, but you might need those temp powers too, and they take time to collect. Then if you got the second map first, you have time to collect some MORE temp powers before the opponent can. So there's a push-pull of wanting to go fast and wanting to collect every possible advantage at the same time, and those goals are somewhat at odds. Plus you've got the opponent to deal with.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising