I've read this entire thread, and keep coming back to see new posts as they appear. Because there's actually a good conversation going on... Mostly. Well, sometimes, anyway.
But commenting on the topics being discussed is a huge minefield for somebody in my position. I'm just gonna let you folks keep talking about it, and reading along.
And the sowing of neglect, the utter abyssmal treatment of PvP and the constant influx of new pay console+ships to unbalance the game further, to every single PvP players dismay has earned you exactly that hostility.
So please you two, don't act suprised or even DARE play victim in this.
Co-founder of The Spanish Inquisition TSI - Cause no one expects it!
PaxOttomana: gawd mirror event is like fighting a tsi premade, they keep comin and comin!
And the sowing of neglect, the utter abyssmal treatment of PvP and the constant influx of new pay console+ships to unbalance the game further, to every single PvP players dismay has earned you exactly that hostility.
So please you two, don't act suprised or even DARE play victim in this.
I agree with this... but let me put it a little more civilly.
So we've been talking about how we, the PvP community, need to do our part to communicate without anger and bile. I've seen comments that say we don't deserve dev attention if we spit bile every time one shows up. Now that's a fair position, that's how any communication works - except, that position is under the assumption of everyone (or at least a majority) taking part in said bile spitting. Today, that may be true, that our community is represented accurately by those just on the forum. But you have to ask yourself, how did it get to that point?
Let me skip straight to the point: It's unfair to blame us for burning the bridges. Years of neglect, disappointment, and Geko - yes, I said Captain Geko - have shrunken the community down to what you see here. We've been told since forever that we'll get something new, maybe a map, maybe a game mode, we've been told that we're getting a dev to work with us, Gozer, Hawk, we've been told that we just have to wait a little longer. Instead, we've seen next to nothing new, no maps, no modes, we've seen our assigned devs leave the company, we've seen PvP improvements never follow throuh for five years. And on top of that, after five years of neglect and disappointment, after five years of waiting and hoping, after five years of offering our help and knowledge, after five years of enduring ridicule from the rest of the forums, and after being bad mouthed on live podcast by Al, who openly insulted us with the 14 year old min-maxer thing, after all that... we are told that we burned the bridges.
We did not shrink our community down to a tiny, vitriolic stew. We did not break the communication. We, those who have persevered when all others gave up in frustration, do not deserve to be shut out further because members of the community have been soured and embittered by five years of neglect. Please, Bort, we want to help, but you have to help us help you. We can all be friends.
I've read this entire thread, and keep coming back to see new posts as they appear. Because there's actually a good conversation going on... Mostly. Well, sometimes, anyway.
But commenting on the topics being discussed is a huge minefield for somebody in my position. I'm just gonna let you folks keep talking about it, and reading along.
I'll say this it goes both ways, instead of either side blame and name calling we need to pull together and be constructive if you feel the current system for pvp, pve or any other item we must respectfully point it out with constructive supportive reasoning as to what is broke and how we hope it could be fixed.
if we just say it is stupid becuase Dev A is also stupid, that does no good. But if we say it is broke and how and why and when. then once you have done that, it is in the Dev's and EP's hands to review it. Simply bullying them into the fix we want is not a splution. Heck may even get us kicked off the ship.
Also if a dev finds our post to be drivvle then simply read it and move on, but coming in and posting a belittling or dismissive post, or mentioning it during an interview on a podcast is just as wrong as a player bashing the dev.
A certain dev has shown contempt for the player base even when we are nice to him. I'll point back to when an error was made in the code that allowed an over abundance of Dilithium to be gianed in game. Instead of fixing it and moving on he went on a rampage on one of my favorite Podcasts calling all of the player base theives.
Not saying milking the loop hole was right by those who did but not saying the response was correct. As federation officers and citizens we suck when we come in and result to name calling.
One simple thing to do is to make all weapons and gear levelless when the player enters a PvP zone or map. This ensures that there's no power imbalance between the players, no paywall for upgrading and bringing the ship up to PvP standards: the once good mk XII is now pointless if we speak of weapons. Only thing that would matter would be quality.
Additionally, it eliminates the issue of having "just one build". Means that if people upgrade a certain set of items, they won't use un-upgraded ones because they're worse, thus locking people up with a limited amount of mix and matching.
Then change the Plasma Explosion in a DoT, in order to be clearable through Hazard Emitters or WCE doff. Add vs. Players a lockout timer to avoid stacking. This would eliminate straight away the issue, or at least reduce it by a lot as vapers wouldn't be able to exploit it, nor faw boats.
These simple things would go a long way, do not need particular effort and would make PvP playable once again. Especially the levelless gear would make PvP alt-friendly as it always had been pre-DR.
This would not "fix" PvP in my mind. As other people far more smarter than me have said. There is an insanely large skill gap between players and this gap in my mind is bigger than the power gap caused by "p2w" consoles/traits/ships/the like.
This would not "fix" PvP in my mind. As other people far more smarter than me have said. There is an insanely large skill gap between players and this gap in my mind is bigger than the power gap caused by "p2w" consoles/traits/ships/the like.
git gud? the skill gap doesn't need to be fixed, skill should be the only major wall in play. skill only takes time and practice and a little guidance to overcome. and its a fun 'grind' unlike every other.
/snip
a pvp build is expensive, MULTIPLE pvp builds are even more expensive... A pve build? CHEAP vs a pvp build
put that into the calculations for the bottom line when your looking at profits
/snip
I'd say they have...after having disagreed with it. Cause, why do you think a PvE build is cheap compared to a PvP build?
The cost of a top end PvE build is far from cheap and is likely to cost more than a top end PvP build...just because of the increased demand for the various parts.
Sure, one can run most of the content in the game with a T5 9 console boat with Mk X mission rewards/loot drops...but how many folks actually do that and how many folks can actually do that?
There are folks in the same boats doing less than 10k and more than 80k. This isn't a game for gamers...so there's a bunch of folks that just don't have all that much experience with various things a gamer might.
Then you get into the "marketing" of things, yeah?
PvP? Organized PvP? Hilbert's Leaderboard?
PvE? How many DPS channels? Combat Log Reader? DPS League Table?
PvP? Complaints about cheese and overpowered stuff? Continued use of it?
PvE? This stuff can help you.
The PvP folks drop out a video and...how many folks can relate?
The DPS folks drop out a video and...how many folks want to do better?
The PvP folks suggest everybody leave this Hellhole of a game.
The DPS folks are basically advertising all of Cryptic's goodies for them.
Have you even noticed some of the change in attitudes of some of the DPS folks? Man, used to be a case of wanting to slap them about with a large trout for being such elitist douche nozzles. They went proactive - being a little less blunt - being a whole bunch more helpful...and bam...look at how that area of the game has grown, eh?
PvP on the other hand? Sure, no doubt at all Cryptic has played their big ol' part in it - but the attitudes of PvP folks in general (not on the whole)...don't bother.
* * * * *
One group is driving revenue for Cryptic.
One group is killing revenue for Cryptic.
See, if back during the PvP Bootcamp stuff that was going on...Cryptic had done some more...
They had the new business being driven.
They had the return business coming.
They just dropped the ball on the business retention.
Which in turn just soured a bunch of folks even more than they had been...meh.
Kind of reminds me of LoR and redoing the KDF early stuff. Awesome! Great! Get new KDF players in there! Course, they didn't do a push of KDF ships. So just like the PvP stuff, they had the short new/return but failed on the retention. Somebody could look at the Fed/Rom boats compared to the KDF stuff...and...well, why would one want to take KDF seriously in the long run when Cryptic wasn't?
* * * * *
It's not an easy thing...and...timing tends not to work and the ball gets dropped. /shrug
Do something about the [PvP Dmg]/[PvP Res] mods. Something to ease up some of the antagonism out there. Just to get that particular rabid monkey off of everybody's back, eh?
Perhaps make those available as a reward for a device. A [PvP Dmg] and a [PvP Res] device. Cause the underlying idea is one of those funny things, yeah? Cause on the one hand, a player can be much tougher than a mob but on the other hand the player can do far much more damage than a mob. It's a little something extra that could help a player customize what they want to do. Slapping them on as a weapon mod though...hrmm...just didn't flow with folks, eh?
Maybe make them consumables...they're doing the voucher thing now, yeah? We even had those Dil Vouchers that were restricted. What if there was a PvP Store that used vouchers? Where the store offered items folks might want for doing PvP that they could earn from doing PvP, eh?
But still, it kind of gets back to that fine line with TTL. It doesn't take much to take it from an arcade game of near one-shots to it being nobody dies...and back and forth. With that, it even gets into folks wanting different things, no?
There are folks that probably wished Cryptic had the Pilot Maneuvers from the start - so they could have their zippity dog fights. Some folks don't want zippity dog fights...they're thinking more epic tallship type fights, eh?
Which will cause most things to break down as the squabbles over what's good or not erupt, yeah? As well as the way any suggestions...er...end up meeting some pretty hostile replies, yeah?
Like the thing mentioned earlier about the scale of gear, eh?
What if pug PvP scaled down to 50 (or even lower) while premade PvP scaled up to 60?
There are all sorts of things...where if folks could provide constructive positive and negative feedback on things, things could actually get discussed instead of turning into antagonistic flamewars.
Hypothesis: Staff that work with PvP inevitably seem to lose their job at Cryptic unless they're willing to abandon it.
The meltdown post Virus mentions wrt Borticus, was basically his freakout when members of the community (both gently and somewhat...less gently) told him that bumping up Hitpoints in PvP matches the way they have with NPC's wasn't going to work well or have the positive impact he'd proposed.
after that, he stopped coming in here at all. that was February, a few days before D'angelo was replaced at EP by Salamiinferno.
AdjudicatorHawk... He gave me hope they would be looking at abilities balance, with possibility of every ability becoming useful ... -sigh- I knew it was just wishful thinking, there has always been a lot of negativity, due to frustration, some of which I don't think cryptic created themselves, though I will say a lot of it has been. I'm not sure what is more frustrating for a dev, being told by the public how bad they are doing or being told by a boss that they need to focus their attention else were and leave it as is.
AdjudicatorHawk... He gave me hope they would be looking at abilities balance, with possibility of every ability becoming useful ... -sigh- I knew it was just wishful thinking, there has always been a lot of negativity, due to frustration, some of which I don't think cryptic created themselves, though I will say a lot of it has been. I'm not sure what is more frustrating for a dev, being told by the public how bad they are doing or being told by a boss that they need to focus their attention else were and leave it as is.
And the sowing of neglect, the utter abyssmal treatment of PvP and the constant influx of new pay console+ships to unbalance the game further, to every single PvP players dismay has earned you exactly that hostility.
So please you two, don't act suprised or even DARE play victim in this.
You should not pretend that you have lost your free will and can no longer choose to act civil and participate in a constructive discussion just because of somethnig the developers did or wrote or failed to do or failed to write.
It won't win your any points, and it will not further the cause of PvP. So you could just as well cut it and try to go for the constructive discussion.
----
There is no denying that PvP has been neglected, and I don't know if it's coincidence that developers that started working on PvP also happened to leave the company.
If we want for PvP to get improved, I think we nee a dev (team) that focuses on PvP issues , and the PvP effects of any change or addition be considered just as they are for other aspects of the game.
We will probably not have that before Cryptic figures out a good way to achieve business goals with PvP. Something that boosts stuff like player retention or outright sales - and the way we want PvP to develop must be the most efficient way to do it.
For example, the lockbox / C-Store console uber ships and what not that we occassionally got - they don't really help the quality of the PvP experience - but both PvE and PvP minded players buy them for their power, so the investment pays off.
Any investment made into PvP will need to beat that kind of "pay-off". But it's hard to come up with a type of investment we players would actually like and have that pay-off, since a lot of the demans probaby are based around either restricting imbalanced items, or avoiding them. The first means less sales of such items (PvP minded players suddenly don't need to bother with them), or increasing the development time on them. But how many more players will Cryptic get that, and how will that pay off?
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
IDK Do you hamstring yourself becuase you have a better left cross or right hook than your oponent.
PVP's biggest challenges come from lack of interest on both sides of the player and dev lines.
including but not limited to low amount of pvp types and maps.
at the risk of bringing up an od dead mmo's name Star Wars Galaxies, Their pvp was open you hit a power button that made you overt or covert. this then either said hey i wanna pvp or go away i'm rping or solo playing today. then the system included per zone/planet/system/quadrant wich pvp faction was winning. Some places you went auto matically switced you to overt.
this was a more natural approach to pvp and it worked. As to levleless gear once gear is out of the equation then we'd hear about how only people with the same skills should play each other. then it's not pvp at that point atleast not fun enjoyable pvp.
The real bottom line is people feel hurt when their pvp build is blown up after 2 seconds into a match.
the real solution may be to set the certain powers and mega weapons to a cool down so player a can't launch the super torp of his dreams so often. or increase player b's chance to deflect the damage. thus leaving it's pve ability the same. but making pvp less player a always wins.
Also perhaps a security shield around the spawn points team a can't cross into spawn point b and vice versa nor can anyone sit in the spawn zone and blast away. this would end spawn camping.
Heh, you've got videos hitting things from all angles. :P
True true.
And I have a truckload of data on my audience.
Did you know I'm pretty big in UK and Germany!
And one lonely viewer on the Isle of Man.
No, really. One guy. Or girl. But if it was a girl she wouldn't be lonely. I mean, it is the Isle of Man. Or maybe she's the only girl on the Isle of Man and she's in hiding and all she can do is watch my videos. Pur wee thing.
well, it was kind of an indicator, and then I started looking into the history on the forums.
Based on observed behaviours, devs that work with PvP get fired-that's the hypothesis. We have had one (1) Dev that hasn't "left Cryptic for other opportunities in an amicable fashion-nevermind that he was in the middle of a major task when he left". That's Borticus, and there's no guarantee he's sticking around.
thus the joke where I asked if Borticus was trying to get fired by posting something civil and non-inflammatory on a thread in the PvP area-the secret being it's only half a joke.
the other half, is actual concern, because if I'm right about the climate down there in Cryptic-land, either the environment turns hostile, or the management do, if a Dev steps too far from the marching line and starts associating too freely with 'those people' in PvP.
I don't see it. My general impression is not that Cryptic hates PvP. They simply don't care. Aside from frustration at the demands PvPers make I just don't see how they have any REASON to care.
I don't see it. My general impression is not that Cryptic hates PvP. They simply don't care. Aside from frustration at the demands PvPers make I just don't see how they have any REASON to care.
Because we've proven time and time again that we will (and do) spend money?
And that introducing something as simple as a few maps and/or just one additional game time will give them a much greater return on investment than something like a costume* or spending the cash on a voice actor (I mean, it was nice having Miral Paris come back, but she was in a single episode. Come on now. Same with Jet'Laya, but to a lesser extent, since there was a huge Kobali arc) - people can, will, and do play the same PvP 'content' over and over again far more than other parts of the same, simply because it's never the same thing twice.
*Yes, I know the people that do content creation are not the same as the artists that do costumes. It's just an example.
And that introducing something as simple as a few maps and/or just one additional game time will give them a much greater return on investment than something like a costume* or spending the cash on a voice actor (I mean, it was nice having Miral Paris come back, but she was in a single episode. Come on now. Same with Jet'Laya, but to a lesser extent, since there was a huge Kobali arc) - people can, will, and do play the same PvP 'content' over and over again far more than other parts of the same, simply because it's never the same thing twice.
*Yes, I know the people that do content creation are not the same as the artists that do costumes. It's just an example.
True story. The best thing of PvP is that it's repeatable, you never, ever get to have the same match twice, and it is why you enjoy it. Every moment is unique, and that's the same in every other game.
In Watch Dogs if you're TRIBBLE or you hack another player, every time it sorts out in a different way.
In NFS Rivals if you challenge another player on the road it's never the same thing again.
In Battlefield 4... well, you name it. At best you stick with your current groove but every match plays out differently.
In STO PvE... you know what happens. In Infected Space or Ground, Cure space or ground, Azure Nebula, Starbase Defense, Gateway to Gre'thor, Bug Hunt + every other queue always plays out the same way.
Yeah, it can fail, but you still know exactly what should have happened. And it's why PvE is repetitive.
Because we've proven time and time again that we will (and do) spend money?
I didn't. I'm a rich freeloader :P
Well, rich... not EC wise. lol.
I need to get to him. I can't just leave him out there alone. - Sometimes you've got to makes sacrifices, Lara. You can't save everyone. - I know about sacrifices. - No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you. - I can't choose to let him die, Roth.
We're working on changes right now that will remove these [Mod]s from future crafted items. After examining their effectiveness, their intended audience, and their intended use-cases, we decided that rolling these in as random equipment suffixes is not a great idea. And that, if we ever return to this idea of PvP-centric gear, we need to more closely examine what it's intended to do, how effective it needs to be, and how it is obtained.
In other words, consider it an experiment that didn't work out.
We're still examining options on what to do about existing items that have these mods attached.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
We're working on changes right now that will remove these [Mod]s from future crafted items. After examining their effectiveness, their intended audience, and their intended use-cases, we decided that rolling these in as random equipment suffixes is not a great idea. And that, if we ever return to this idea of PvP-centric gear, we need to more closely examine what it's intended to do, how effective it needs to be, and how it is obtained.
In other words, consider it an experiment that didn't work out.
We're still examining options on what to do about existing items that have these mods attached.
a mod choice token would be nice tbh so we can swap these mods for ones we want so we don't get something we don't and then have to re craft everything again :-)
Because we've proven time and time again that we will (and do) spend money?
And that introducing something as simple as a few maps and/or just one additional game time will give them a much greater return on investment than something like a costume* or spending the cash on a voice actor (I mean, it was nice having Miral Paris come back, but she was in a single episode. Come on now. Same with Jet'Laya, but to a lesser extent, since there was a huge Kobali arc) - people can, will, and do play the same PvP 'content' over and over again far more than other parts of the same, simply because it's never the same thing twice.
*Yes, I know the people that do content creation are not the same as the artists that do costumes. It's just an example.
Yeah I don't think that statements like "but we spend money" have a lot of value without metrics to quantify how much money.
Comments
I think he's real!
well, you're welcome
i'd say, more important than that is that he keeps it "that" way
Bort and Gecko:
"You reap what you sow"
And the sowing of neglect, the utter abyssmal treatment of PvP and the constant influx of new pay console+ships to unbalance the game further, to every single PvP players dismay has earned you exactly that hostility.
So please you two, don't act suprised or even DARE play victim in this.
PaxOttomana: gawd mirror event is like fighting a tsi premade, they keep comin and comin!
I agree with this... but let me put it a little more civilly.
So we've been talking about how we, the PvP community, need to do our part to communicate without anger and bile. I've seen comments that say we don't deserve dev attention if we spit bile every time one shows up. Now that's a fair position, that's how any communication works - except, that position is under the assumption of everyone (or at least a majority) taking part in said bile spitting. Today, that may be true, that our community is represented accurately by those just on the forum. But you have to ask yourself, how did it get to that point?
Let me skip straight to the point: It's unfair to blame us for burning the bridges. Years of neglect, disappointment, and Geko - yes, I said Captain Geko - have shrunken the community down to what you see here. We've been told since forever that we'll get something new, maybe a map, maybe a game mode, we've been told that we're getting a dev to work with us, Gozer, Hawk, we've been told that we just have to wait a little longer. Instead, we've seen next to nothing new, no maps, no modes, we've seen our assigned devs leave the company, we've seen PvP improvements never follow throuh for five years. And on top of that, after five years of neglect and disappointment, after five years of waiting and hoping, after five years of offering our help and knowledge, after five years of enduring ridicule from the rest of the forums, and after being bad mouthed on live podcast by Al, who openly insulted us with the 14 year old min-maxer thing, after all that... we are told that we burned the bridges.
We did not shrink our community down to a tiny, vitriolic stew. We did not break the communication. We, those who have persevered when all others gave up in frustration, do not deserve to be shut out further because members of the community have been soured and embittered by five years of neglect. Please, Bort, we want to help, but you have to help us help you. We can all be friends.
Oh, the bear is awake! :eek:
if we just say it is stupid becuase Dev A is also stupid, that does no good. But if we say it is broke and how and why and when. then once you have done that, it is in the Dev's and EP's hands to review it. Simply bullying them into the fix we want is not a splution. Heck may even get us kicked off the ship.
Also if a dev finds our post to be drivvle then simply read it and move on, but coming in and posting a belittling or dismissive post, or mentioning it during an interview on a podcast is just as wrong as a player bashing the dev.
A certain dev has shown contempt for the player base even when we are nice to him. I'll point back to when an error was made in the code that allowed an over abundance of Dilithium to be gianed in game. Instead of fixing it and moving on he went on a rampage on one of my favorite Podcasts calling all of the player base theives.
Not saying milking the loop hole was right by those who did but not saying the response was correct. As federation officers and citizens we suck when we come in and result to name calling.
galacticguards.enjin.com/
Formerly Jewkesman Member from Nov 2009!
This would not "fix" PvP in my mind. As other people far more smarter than me have said. There is an insanely large skill gap between players and this gap in my mind is bigger than the power gap caused by "p2w" consoles/traits/ships/the like.
git gud? the skill gap doesn't need to be fixed, skill should be the only major wall in play. skill only takes time and practice and a little guidance to overcome. and its a fun 'grind' unlike every other.
I'd say they have...after having disagreed with it. Cause, why do you think a PvE build is cheap compared to a PvP build?
The cost of a top end PvE build is far from cheap and is likely to cost more than a top end PvP build...just because of the increased demand for the various parts.
Sure, one can run most of the content in the game with a T5 9 console boat with Mk X mission rewards/loot drops...but how many folks actually do that and how many folks can actually do that?
There are folks in the same boats doing less than 10k and more than 80k. This isn't a game for gamers...so there's a bunch of folks that just don't have all that much experience with various things a gamer might.
Then you get into the "marketing" of things, yeah?
PvP? Organized PvP? Hilbert's Leaderboard?
PvE? How many DPS channels? Combat Log Reader? DPS League Table?
PvP? Complaints about cheese and overpowered stuff? Continued use of it?
PvE? This stuff can help you.
The PvP folks drop out a video and...how many folks can relate?
The DPS folks drop out a video and...how many folks want to do better?
The PvP folks suggest everybody leave this Hellhole of a game.
The DPS folks are basically advertising all of Cryptic's goodies for them.
Have you even noticed some of the change in attitudes of some of the DPS folks? Man, used to be a case of wanting to slap them about with a large trout for being such elitist douche nozzles. They went proactive - being a little less blunt - being a whole bunch more helpful...and bam...look at how that area of the game has grown, eh?
PvP on the other hand? Sure, no doubt at all Cryptic has played their big ol' part in it - but the attitudes of PvP folks in general (not on the whole)...don't bother.
* * * * *
One group is driving revenue for Cryptic.
One group is killing revenue for Cryptic.
See, if back during the PvP Bootcamp stuff that was going on...Cryptic had done some more...
They had the new business being driven.
They had the return business coming.
They just dropped the ball on the business retention.
Which in turn just soured a bunch of folks even more than they had been...meh.
Kind of reminds me of LoR and redoing the KDF early stuff. Awesome! Great! Get new KDF players in there! Course, they didn't do a push of KDF ships. So just like the PvP stuff, they had the short new/return but failed on the retention. Somebody could look at the Fed/Rom boats compared to the KDF stuff...and...well, why would one want to take KDF seriously in the long run when Cryptic wasn't?
* * * * *
It's not an easy thing...and...timing tends not to work and the ball gets dropped. /shrug
Perhaps make those available as a reward for a device. A [PvP Dmg] and a [PvP Res] device. Cause the underlying idea is one of those funny things, yeah? Cause on the one hand, a player can be much tougher than a mob but on the other hand the player can do far much more damage than a mob. It's a little something extra that could help a player customize what they want to do. Slapping them on as a weapon mod though...hrmm...just didn't flow with folks, eh?
Maybe make them consumables...they're doing the voucher thing now, yeah? We even had those Dil Vouchers that were restricted. What if there was a PvP Store that used vouchers? Where the store offered items folks might want for doing PvP that they could earn from doing PvP, eh?
But still, it kind of gets back to that fine line with TTL. It doesn't take much to take it from an arcade game of near one-shots to it being nobody dies...and back and forth. With that, it even gets into folks wanting different things, no?
There are folks that probably wished Cryptic had the Pilot Maneuvers from the start - so they could have their zippity dog fights. Some folks don't want zippity dog fights...they're thinking more epic tallship type fights, eh?
Which will cause most things to break down as the squabbles over what's good or not erupt, yeah? As well as the way any suggestions...er...end up meeting some pretty hostile replies, yeah?
Like the thing mentioned earlier about the scale of gear, eh?
What if pug PvP scaled down to 50 (or even lower) while premade PvP scaled up to 60?
There are all sorts of things...where if folks could provide constructive positive and negative feedback on things, things could actually get discussed instead of turning into antagonistic flamewars.
AdjudicatorHawk... He gave me hope they would be looking at abilities balance, with possibility of every ability becoming useful
http://forums.riftgame.com/game-discussions/classes-telara/mage-discussion/461233-mage-update-3-2-a.html#post5046906
You should not pretend that you have lost your free will and can no longer choose to act civil and participate in a constructive discussion just because of somethnig the developers did or wrote or failed to do or failed to write.
It won't win your any points, and it will not further the cause of PvP. So you could just as well cut it and try to go for the constructive discussion.
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There is no denying that PvP has been neglected, and I don't know if it's coincidence that developers that started working on PvP also happened to leave the company.
If we want for PvP to get improved, I think we nee a dev (team) that focuses on PvP issues , and the PvP effects of any change or addition be considered just as they are for other aspects of the game.
We will probably not have that before Cryptic figures out a good way to achieve business goals with PvP. Something that boosts stuff like player retention or outright sales - and the way we want PvP to develop must be the most efficient way to do it.
For example, the lockbox / C-Store console uber ships and what not that we occassionally got - they don't really help the quality of the PvP experience - but both PvE and PvP minded players buy them for their power, so the investment pays off.
Any investment made into PvP will need to beat that kind of "pay-off". But it's hard to come up with a type of investment we players would actually like and have that pay-off, since a lot of the demans probaby are based around either restricting imbalanced items, or avoiding them. The first means less sales of such items (PvP minded players suddenly don't need to bother with them), or increasing the development time on them. But how many more players will Cryptic get that, and how will that pay off?
Not commenting is even worse. People start wildly speculating and assuming the worst. And right now it seems they are correct to do so.
PVP's biggest challenges come from lack of interest on both sides of the player and dev lines.
including but not limited to low amount of pvp types and maps.
at the risk of bringing up an od dead mmo's name Star Wars Galaxies, Their pvp was open you hit a power button that made you overt or covert. this then either said hey i wanna pvp or go away i'm rping or solo playing today. then the system included per zone/planet/system/quadrant wich pvp faction was winning. Some places you went auto matically switced you to overt.
this was a more natural approach to pvp and it worked. As to levleless gear once gear is out of the equation then we'd hear about how only people with the same skills should play each other. then it's not pvp at that point atleast not fun enjoyable pvp.
The real bottom line is people feel hurt when their pvp build is blown up after 2 seconds into a match.
the real solution may be to set the certain powers and mega weapons to a cool down so player a can't launch the super torp of his dreams so often. or increase player b's chance to deflect the damage. thus leaving it's pve ability the same. but making pvp less player a always wins.
Also perhaps a security shield around the spawn points team a can't cross into spawn point b and vice versa nor can anyone sit in the spawn zone and blast away. this would end spawn camping.
galacticguards.enjin.com/
Formerly Jewkesman Member from Nov 2009!
Nobody ever asks, but it just so happens I have a LOT of information on this topic.
On a side note, I really don't see the change in PVE personalities that you speak of. They flat out remind me of the old PVP fleets.
Heh, you've got videos hitting things from all angles. :P
True true.
And I have a truckload of data on my audience.
Did you know I'm pretty big in UK and Germany!
And one lonely viewer on the Isle of Man.
No, really. One guy. Or girl. But if it was a girl she wouldn't be lonely. I mean, it is the Isle of Man. Or maybe she's the only girl on the Isle of Man and she's in hiding and all she can do is watch my videos. Pur wee thing.
As for PVP? That's too hard. Fun to watch though!
My character Tsin'xing
Because we've proven time and time again that we will (and do) spend money?
And that introducing something as simple as a few maps and/or just one additional game time will give them a much greater return on investment than something like a costume* or spending the cash on a voice actor (I mean, it was nice having Miral Paris come back, but she was in a single episode. Come on now. Same with Jet'Laya, but to a lesser extent, since there was a huge Kobali arc) - people can, will, and do play the same PvP 'content' over and over again far more than other parts of the same, simply because it's never the same thing twice.
*Yes, I know the people that do content creation are not the same as the artists that do costumes. It's just an example.
True story. The best thing of PvP is that it's repeatable, you never, ever get to have the same match twice, and it is why you enjoy it. Every moment is unique, and that's the same in every other game.
In Watch Dogs if you're TRIBBLE or you hack another player, every time it sorts out in a different way.
In NFS Rivals if you challenge another player on the road it's never the same thing again.
In Battlefield 4... well, you name it. At best you stick with your current groove but every match plays out differently.
In STO PvE... you know what happens. In Infected Space or Ground, Cure space or ground, Azure Nebula, Starbase Defense, Gateway to Gre'thor, Bug Hunt + every other queue always plays out the same way.
Yeah, it can fail, but you still know exactly what should have happened. And it's why PvE is repetitive.
And repeatable =/= repetitive.
I didn't. I'm a rich freeloader :P
Well, rich... not EC wise. lol.
This one, I can comment on.
We're working on changes right now that will remove these [Mod]s from future crafted items. After examining their effectiveness, their intended audience, and their intended use-cases, we decided that rolling these in as random equipment suffixes is not a great idea. And that, if we ever return to this idea of PvP-centric gear, we need to more closely examine what it's intended to do, how effective it needs to be, and how it is obtained.
In other words, consider it an experiment that didn't work out.
We're still examining options on what to do about existing items that have these mods attached.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
a mod choice token would be nice tbh so we can swap these mods for ones we want so we don't get something we don't and then have to re craft everything again :-)
My character Tsin'xing
Thank you