Gearless PVP tier

pjz99

I've been thinking about this for a long time now: Please consider adding a tier of PVP that completely normalizes numbers from gear and disables any special statistical advantages or effects on things like set pieces, and disables devices entirely. This means, e.g., a player with empty primary and secondary equipment slots would perform statistically the same as a character with full Justice/DUC/Rank 9 mods. I would certainly play this mode fairly often, with a bunch of my characters. I realize it's not very likely such a thing would be done at this stage of the game's life cycle but here's my suggestion at any rate. Thanks.

markhawkman

Sounds like a lot of dev work, and little pay off.

xcelsior41

markhawkman wrote: »

Sounds like a lot of dev work, and little pay off.

Thing is this is used for almost every dev suggestion in this thread. Kinda makes me wonder why this sub thread exist at times.

pantagruel01

xcelsior41 wrote: »

markhawkman wrote: »

Sounds like a lot of dev work, and little pay off.

Thing is this is used for almost every dev suggestion in this thread. Kinda makes me wonder why this sub thread exist at times.

It's true for most suggestions, but such comments are also fairly irrelevant, since the people who are responding are not the people who would make the decision.

pjz99

I'm not going to try to judge what the dev effort would be but the payoff would be, a whole bunch of very cool content would see more use, and it might (probably would) attract new players. If you, the reader, are not interested in PVP or don't think it's valuable, thanks for reading, please find another thread you're more interested in.

pantagruel01

I consider it unlikely that it would significantly increase the number of people interested in PvP. The single biggest thing that would increase PvP in CO is fixing the queues. There are also other forms of auto-balancers possible (King of the Hill has one, the team that's behind gets a buff), but in the end, PvP has never attracted more than a couple percent of the player base.

shadowolf505

I wouldnt say it cannot happen but I'd rather them focus on what they have planned already before this

spinnytop

Oof, apparently PvP suggestions are non-response fodder!

pjz99 wrote: »

Please consider adding a tier of PVP

This is probably the biggest issue with this idea. By adding another tier it would be dividing up the already small pvp population. Everyone might eventually all gravitate to the equalized tier, but then people would realize that things haven't been equalized as much as they hoped since builds and premades would still rule the day.​​

pjz99

The small PVP population that prefers gear to affect the outcome of PVP matches is not really the audience of this suggestion either. People reject MMO pvp in general because of the unbalancing effect gear has.

e: I mean there are zero people in the queues at any given time, so I think "dividing the small pvp population" should not be a very big concern. Something is blatantly, severely wrong with our PVP in general and imo it's really obviously that it is dominated by gear.

spinnytop

pjz99 wrote: »

Something is blatantly, severely wrong with our PVP in general and imo it's really obviously that it is dominated by gear.

Well no, the thing that is blatantly wrong is the queue bug which randomly and frequently kicks players out of matches. The only one that it doesn't effect is BASH, and even with equalized gear BASH is basically just a salt farm.​​

pantagruel01

pjz99 wrote: »

Something is blatantly, severely wrong with our PVP in general and imo it's really obviously that it is dominated by gear.

BITE is a pre-existing PvP mode that is not dominated by gear (you're using a become, so gear is utterly irrelevant). No large groups of people were flocking to it. Onslaught is a PvP mode where gear doesn't matter to the OVs (again, because they're a become). Most people don't even try to PvP as OVs. The reason most people don't engage in CO PvP is because most people don't actually want to PvP. Bugs and balance issues (gear is by no means the only source of imbalance in PvP) don't help, so there's room to improve, but PvP is never going to be amazingly popular.

pjz99

I dunno, I remember a fair number of people actually playing BITE, and not just to farm up the power unlock. I think people aren't that keen on it because it is utterly inflexible due to the nature of becomes, you either get happy being the become and using those powers or you don't play it. It doesn't get more interesting once you've done it a few times.

Onslaught has its own design problems unrelated to gear, it requires a lot of buy-in for people willing to be cannon fodder and killed repeatedly by a single powerful enemy and it's much too rewarding to ignore the entire intended design and farm the rewards.

pantagruel01 wrote: »

Most people don't even try to PvP as OVs. The reason most people don't engage in CO PvP is because most people don't actually want to PvP.

I don't agree with this at all, practically all games in human history have been competitive in nature (pvp) and it's only in gear-oriented MMOs where pvp is available and yet people almost unanimously reject it. I don't think it's likely that MMOs somehow attract fundamentally different humans, it seems much more likely that something is wrong with MMO pvp that causes us to reject it and imo the blatant unfairness due to mismatched gear is the obvious cause. If it were just about Build X being better than Build Y then I'd expect everyone to be all in favor of a gearless mode, but ...

pantagruel01

pjz99 wrote: »

I don't agree with this at all, practically all games in human history have been competitive in nature (pvp) and it's only in gear-oriented MMOs where pvp is available and yet people almost unanimously reject it.

That's because you can't see people rejecting PvP in other games, and it's hard to even get statistics. It's also because it's hard to make a game that is good in both PvP and PvE modes.

spinnytop

Hero Games are a dumpster fire. The dumpster has some fireworks in it meaning it's more fun to watch from a distance than it is to participate in it.​​

markhawkman

pjz99 wrote: »

I dunno, I remember a fair number of people actually playing BITE, and not just to farm up the power unlock. I think people aren't that keen on it because it is utterly inflexible due to the nature of becomes, you either get happy being the become and using those powers or you don't play it. It doesn't get more interesting once you've done it a few times.

BITE's rewards suck. It's a token amount of Turakian Coins... and a daily.

Onslaught has its own design problems unrelated to gear, it requires a lot of buy-in for people willing to be cannon fodder and killed repeatedly by a single powerful enemy and it's much too rewarding to ignore the entire intended design and farm the rewards.

OVs have a very real reward for massacring all the puny fools who dare to oppose them. You get VT per kill. A hero gets 50 normally, but a villain get 5 per kill(with a lockout timer). If you're REALLY farming VT then you want to massacre as many heroes as you can.

The basic flaw in the suggestion in the Op is that it assumes that the builds are equal. yeah, no.

pantagruel01

markhawkman wrote: »

BITE's rewards suck. It's a token amount of Turakian Coins... and a daily.

PvP rewards mostly need to suck, because if they don't people just exploit (they might exploit anyway, but there's much less incentive for mutual farming pacts if the rewards suck).

pjz99

People should not be motivated to pvp because of rewards, they should be motivated by fun gameplay - which ZA certainly has in spades, Stronghold is also pretty good. Rewards should be token and cosmetic, with a focus on fun gameplay. People showing up to farm rewards and get phat lootz is what is wrong with the entire pvp culture.

pantagruel01 wrote: »

That's because you can't see people rejecting PvP in other games, and it's hard to even get statistics. It's also because it's hard to make a game that is good in both PvP and PvE modes.

You literally can see it in games that have queueing systems like ours, when their queues are empty and you have to wait a long time to fill a match (or it never fills).

markhawkman wrote: »

The basic flaw in the suggestion in the Op is that it assumes that the builds are equal. yeah, no.

Uh no. But if you're one of those guys who say "Your build is everything" then you should be super enthusiastic about making that actually be the truth and removing gear from the equation.

pantagruel01

pjz99 wrote: »

You literally can see it in games that have queueing systems like ours, when their queues are empty and you have to wait a long time to fill a match (or it never fills).

Yes, you can see it in MMOs. You can't see it in games that have a single-player campaign and a multiplayer.

pjz99

I see your point, but I don't really see how that impacts this conversation - humans obviously really like pvp games, from checkers to soccer to FPS to Fortnite, so our specific case of a sizable number of humans utterly rejecting the pvp we have available tells me something is wrong with the pvp offered, not the humans in our selection.

pantagruel01

pjz99 wrote: »

I see your point, but I don't really see how that impacts this conversation - humans obviously really like pvp games, from checkers to soccer to FPS to Fortnite, so our specific case of a sizable number of humans utterly rejecting the pvp we have available tells me something is wrong with the pvp offered, not the humans in our selection.

Yes, PvP games exist, though it seems to be extremely topheavy (there are some very popular titles, but a lot fewer), but most people who PvP do so in games designed for it. For games that are primarily PvE but have a PvP mode, how many people ever even log in to the PvP servers, as opposed to just playing the campaign and being done with it?

In any case, not disagreeing that there is something wrong with the PvP offered in MMOs, I just doubt that gear is a major component of it.

pjz99

Well I'm not suggesting a drastic redesign, but something that is likely pretty simple - again I'm not going to try to judge the amount of effort, but there is no way the labor required for what I'm suggesting would be on part with things like, an entirely new playfield with brand new pvp mechanics. I enjoyed the hell out of ZA and Stronghold and would love to see them active again.

spinnytop

Basically this is putting the cart before the horse. The main thing that's wrong with PvP, aside from the queue bug, is powers. They're currently working on that with the powerset reviews. Only after that's done is it even worth looking at pvp.

Now in regards to normalizing gear we kind of need to explore what that really means. Fact is how you set up your gear is just as much a part of your build as anything else. So how do you determine what stats to give people via normalization? Different people have different ideas on how they'd like to stat their character - some want to be tanky as all getout, others want to play the glass cannon, and others something inbetween. Since a lot of that is determined by our gear how do we accommodate all of these people?

When it comes to disabling devices that might be as simple as just disabling device slots in PvP. It might also not be simple. Hell it might be impossible, who knows. I'm fine with it if it's feasible personally. Of course it's not as if devices in pvp are as big of a problem as they used to be in the days when you could have 5 Ice Grenades slotted.

Another big issue I see here is that this idea heavily favors tanks since what you're effectively nerfing the most here is damage output. Favoring tankiness is a sure one way street to people finding pvp is boring and pointless, just like a tank vs tank duel.​​

beezeeze

Take off yer gear and duel me...but tell me first and I will take off my gear as well. Don't worry you can trust me. No really you can. Ask anybody.

pjz99

spinnytop wrote: »

Now in regards to normalizing gear we kind of need to explore what that really means. Fact is how you set up your gear is just as much a part of your build as anything else. So how do you determine what stats to give people via normalization? Different people have different ideas on how they'd like to stat their character - some want to be tanky as all getout, others want to play the glass cannon, and others something inbetween. Since a lot of that is determined by our gear how do we accommodate all of these people?

If gear having a strong statistical impact is such an important thing to some players, the existing PVP queues are certainly available to them. Pantagruel has maintained before that a big problem with CO's power balance in general is the existence of toggled forms, and to an extent I agree with that, but imo that is greatly exaggerated by players stacking huge amounts of one stat that their form depends upon - this suggestion would at least partly address that problem, by making that impact predictable and consistent.

E: as to the specific number fiddling I'm suggesting, I said it pretty plainly in the first post, a character with empty gear slots should perform exactly the same as a character with full Justice R9/DUC and disable devices while in the match.

​​

Another big issue I see here is that this idea heavily favors tanks since what you're effectively nerfing the most here is damage output. Favoring tankiness is a sure one way street to people finding pvp is boring and pointless, just like a tank vs tank duel.​​

If you can't stack 600 Constitution, or other strategies like Dex/Dodge spec perks for LR, this isn't especially true.

pantagruel01

pjz99 wrote: »

Pantagruel has maintained before that a big problem with CO's power balance in general is the existence of toggled forms.

Toggle forms broke PvE. They aren't a particularly big contributor to PvP being broken.

spinnytop

pjz99 wrote: »

E: as to the specific number fiddling I'm suggesting, I said it pretty plainly in the first post, a character with empty gear slots should perform exactly the same as a character with full Justice R9/DUC and disable devices while in the match.

R9 what? How are you going to determine which R9 mods this gear simulates, and how are you going to avoid favoring certain builds and completely invalidating others with a static setup like this?​​

markhawkman

spinnytop wrote: »

Now in regards to normalizing gear we kind of need to explore what that really means. Fact is how you set up your gear is just as much a part of your build as anything else. So how do you determine what stats to give people via normalization? Different people have different ideas on how they'd like to stat their character - some want to be tanky as all getout, others want to play the glass cannon, and others something inbetween. Since a lot of that is determined by our gear how do we accommodate all of these people?

Yeah, your mods in your gear aren't just stacking SSs. Sure, you have lots of SS in your gear, but you don't always have JUST SS, and your build might call for a lot more of one SS than the other two.

pantagruel01 wrote: »

pjz99 wrote: »

I see your point, but I don't really see how that impacts this conversation - humans obviously really like pvp games, from checkers to soccer to FPS to Fortnite, so our specific case of a sizable number of humans utterly rejecting the pvp we have available tells me something is wrong with the pvp offered, not the humans in our selection.

Yes, PvP games exist, though it seems to be extremely topheavy (there are some very popular titles, but a lot fewer), but most people who PvP do so in games designed for it. For games that are primarily PvE but have a PvP mode, how many people ever even log in to the PvP servers, as opposed to just playing the campaign and being done with it?

In any case, not disagreeing that there is something wrong with the PvP offered in MMOs, I just doubt that gear is a major component of it.

Yeah Overwatch is highly popular, but has nothing but PvP, and a lot of Overwatch fans apparently DISLIKE the lack of PvE in the game. O_O'

The only game I've ever been serious about PvP in was Avengers Alliance and in the game's last days I had a gear setup that was pretty ridiculous.

Seriously, my agent's list of powers was so long it scrolls off the bottom of the screen! Thing is, gear and powers were inextricably linked in AA, so you couldn't separate one from the other. AA's PvP had a mechanic for tweaking stats based on assorted factors. But just stats, not powers. "But wait!" you might be thinking, "that's what the OP wants!" Well, stats were only rarely the decider in PvP. Also, while I could use my PvP team for PvE successfully, it was tedious and boring. Why? Because enemy stats in PvP were calculated differently, and also because you needed to play PvP far more defensively, 'cause otherwise you got ganked like a scrub. PvE enemies tended to have high HP but relatively low other stats. And some of them were just wimps in general.

pjz99 wrote: »

markhawkman wrote: »

The basic flaw in the suggestion in the Op is that it assumes that the builds are equal. yeah, no.

Uh no. But if you're one of those guys who say "Your build is everything" then you should be super enthusiastic about making that actually be the truth and removing gear from the equation.

There are three aspects of PvP: Build, gear, and skill. Builds designed for PvP can work adequately well outside PvP, but the reverse is often not true. Skill is something you have to build up over time.