For me the question is how much of the player base would want pvp to be developed and improved, if it is a small group of players it is not worth the time an resources to improve an area that only a small population would use. Now if it were a larger population of people wanting to pvp or have a form of pvp in the game, than I could see a sort of exile/renegade faction type situation in which you create a character an can either start out in this faction of break faction into it like disserting wiht your ship/s, Than this faction would be made up of pirates an free-lance renegade captains that can work with or raid/pvp-against other factions if they wish. This would kinda be like the KDF before the devs made the change to them, but with less of a faction lock on them, and could have more missions on attacking an raiding the different factions via story an pvp missions. A battlezone type free-for-all pvp area that the new faction would use an had access to some missions an gear would be nice to entice players to do the zone.
Bloody hell! ITS TOGGLE OPEN PVP MODE!!! That's the OPs idea. If you want to do it, you turn your flag on. If you don't turn it off. NO ONE IS FORCING YOU SO STOP ACTING LIKE IT AND PAY ATTENTION BEFORE YOU COMMENT.
P.S. I made a thread a few years back with a similar idea. Once again people thought it would force everyone to PvP. It's if as soon as they see the letters PvP they stop reading and accuse you of wanting to faceroll everyone and noob-stomp. Guess what, PvPers have been fighting for balance so that people can't do those things for half a decade! You're only just catching up.
Bloody hell! ITS TOGGLE OPEN PVP MODE!!! That's the OPs idea. If you want to do it, you turn your flag on. If you don't turn it off.
NO ONE IS FORCING YOU SO STOP ACTING LIKE IT AND PAY ATTENTION BEFORE YOU COMMENT.
P.S. I made a thread a few years back with a similar idea. Once again people thought it would force everyone to PvP. It's if as soon as they see the letters PvP they stop reading and accuse you of wanting to faceroll everyone and noob-stomp.
Guess what, PvPers have been fighting for balance so that people can't do those things for half a decade! You're only just catching up.
And yet it's not something that would be easy to implement, nor is anything that actually provides a solution to any of the problems PvP has. It's completely useless.
It doesn't increase the number of people that want to PvP - those already can use challenges or queues to get into PvP. It doesn't fix the imbalances in PvP, the incredibly gear and trait wall that needs to be scaled before you can hope to partake in PvP with any success, nor the possible experience differences for PvP players, nor the lack of meaningful PvP rewards.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
You wouldn't have many people with the flags turned "on".
You can barely get an Arena pvp match to pop during the week as it is.
And lets say a casual wants to try it out, and they turn it on....they're going to get one shotted. Annnnnd never turn it on again. It would be a griefer paradise.
If pvp wasn't the mess it was today with all the power creep cheese, and one Shotting, sheild bypass BS, Yeah it might work in some areas of the game.
But what will happen is no one will turn their flag on, ever. So why even bother.
Just go to Ker'rat if you want that type of experience. Its all we've got.
This is Star Trek. We're supposed to be high-ranking officers in the military of advanced civilizations, not a rampaging horde of barbarians. Not even the Klingons.
There are words for randomly attacking fellow officers and allied ships. Murder, treason, mutiny...things that would net your toon a death sentence or at least life in prison.
Imho, the "only" way to make PVP interesting for the broader audience would be a story based reinactment on the holodeck, where you do not use your own ship, but a prebuild faction specific ship. That way a player could play as a Borg, dominion, etc. in famous battles from the series and movies.
Example: Wolf 359. As part of the Borg group, you are flying drone ships and your goal is to protect the assimilation cube reaching specific locations while federation group using a mix of NPC ships and player controled mirandas either attack the assimilation cube directly or protect their "heavy hitters" from the other groups drone ships.
There are many other possible scenarios for various group sizes. It's even possible to monetize some of the content, by allowing subscribers to use different prebuild ships on both sides.
I don't think it's the only way, but it might be an attractive idea. Maybe even a route to monetize PvP, which is one of the stumbling blocks in getting more PvP support in the first lace.
The imbalances and problems with the mechanics for the purposes of PvP could for example be lessened by limiting build options and basically giving players pre-defined ships, that avoid all the imbalances and power creep. It wouldn't make everyone happy - creating your own builds is fun. But the stumbling block is - someone would need to create these designs, implement a way for players to choose from them and many other things, and that costs dev resources. But is there any promise of generating revenue yet? One could sell these "archetypical" ship configurations - but that would mean people would buy ships they already have, just for PvP. That won't get all that many players.
But if you could buy a PvP Borg Cube or what ever? Maybe that would be a chance for revenue. Of course, it might be way too late for this - since many NPC faction ships are already part of lockboxes and can be used anywhere.
So... "Fixing" PvP is really a difficult task that requires managing many requirements and expectations, and comes with many risks for failure.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
Bloody hell! ITS TOGGLE OPEN PVP MODE!!! That's the OPs idea. If you want to do it, you turn your flag on. If you don't turn it off.
NO ONE IS FORCING YOU SO STOP ACTING LIKE IT AND PAY ATTENTION BEFORE YOU COMMENT.
One could ask the same of you ("pay attention before you comment") because several people had already adressed this before you chimed in.
So anyway..... There's a lot of basic map issues, beyond the technical ones. Like, how many map zones in the game even have lots of players standing around & combat enabled? In orbit around DS9/Risa/Defera? Inside the sphere? A handful of similar spots? And some number of those make no sense for PvP at all - in the sphere, we're all allies fighting a common enemy. Why would people fight? There's also the part where there's no objectives to fight over - why flag up around DS9, there's nothing there except DOFF missions and flying to the station to board it. Battlegrounds? Yes, buried under lots of respawning enemies is a great spot to pvp, while people are trying to achieve the battleground objectives (well, ok, it'd be a great spot to pvp for griefers who'd only be there to make sure people failed the battleground objectives. That's certainly no argument in favor.) And there's no combat ability in galaxy-map-space, so that's out.
Meanwhile, in MMOs that do have real "open worlds" for people to flag up and pvp in - there's example after example of how "pvp fans" do their best to try to force people to pvp.
Dedicated PvP game > instanced PvP > open world faction pvp > getting hit by a car > open world "free for all"/anarchy pvp
Another little problem highlighted in this thread. "We are all allies". People played as Klingons so that they could oppose the federation.
Make Klingons the enemy again and incorporate territory control around the neutral zone with rewards and bonus for number of systems owned. After a serious rebalance of the game.
I'm frankly embarrassed to see how the player base here has no interest in any additional challenge and forces Cryptic's hand so as not to advance PVP in this game.
All of the suggestions I see here have been done successfully elsewhere and, guess what, it was fun.
Yeah... because I don't regard PvP as fun (in no Game) I am against "additional Challenge"...
Comments
NO ONE IS FORCING YOU SO STOP ACTING LIKE IT AND PAY ATTENTION BEFORE YOU COMMENT.
P.S. I made a thread a few years back with a similar idea. Once again people thought it would force everyone to PvP. It's if as soon as they see the letters PvP they stop reading and accuse you of wanting to faceroll everyone and noob-stomp.
Guess what, PvPers have been fighting for balance so that people can't do those things for half a decade! You're only just catching up.
It doesn't increase the number of people that want to PvP - those already can use challenges or queues to get into PvP. It doesn't fix the imbalances in PvP, the incredibly gear and trait wall that needs to be scaled before you can hope to partake in PvP with any success, nor the possible experience differences for PvP players, nor the lack of meaningful PvP rewards.
You can barely get an Arena pvp match to pop during the week as it is.
And lets say a casual wants to try it out, and they turn it on....they're going to get one shotted.
Annnnnd never turn it on again.
It would be a griefer paradise.
If pvp wasn't the mess it was today with all the power creep cheese, and one Shotting, sheild bypass BS, Yeah it might work in some areas of the game.
But what will happen is no one will turn their flag on, ever. So why even bother.
Just go to Ker'rat if you want that type of experience.
Its all we've got.
There are words for randomly attacking fellow officers and allied ships. Murder, treason, mutiny...things that would net your toon a death sentence or at least life in prison.
Open PvP is not appropriate to the setting.
Example: Wolf 359. As part of the Borg group, you are flying drone ships and your goal is to protect the assimilation cube reaching specific locations while federation group using a mix of NPC ships and player controled mirandas either attack the assimilation cube directly or protect their "heavy hitters" from the other groups drone ships.
There are many other possible scenarios for various group sizes. It's even possible to monetize some of the content, by allowing subscribers to use different prebuild ships on both sides.
The imbalances and problems with the mechanics for the purposes of PvP could for example be lessened by limiting build options and basically giving players pre-defined ships, that avoid all the imbalances and power creep. It wouldn't make everyone happy - creating your own builds is fun. But the stumbling block is - someone would need to create these designs, implement a way for players to choose from them and many other things, and that costs dev resources. But is there any promise of generating revenue yet? One could sell these "archetypical" ship configurations - but that would mean people would buy ships they already have, just for PvP. That won't get all that many players.
But if you could buy a PvP Borg Cube or what ever? Maybe that would be a chance for revenue. Of course, it might be way too late for this - since many NPC faction ships are already part of lockboxes and can be used anywhere.
So... "Fixing" PvP is really a difficult task that requires managing many requirements and expectations, and comes with many risks for failure.
One could ask the same of you ("pay attention before you comment") because several people had already adressed this before you chimed in.
So anyway..... There's a lot of basic map issues, beyond the technical ones. Like, how many map zones in the game even have lots of players standing around & combat enabled? In orbit around DS9/Risa/Defera? Inside the sphere? A handful of similar spots? And some number of those make no sense for PvP at all - in the sphere, we're all allies fighting a common enemy. Why would people fight? There's also the part where there's no objectives to fight over - why flag up around DS9, there's nothing there except DOFF missions and flying to the station to board it. Battlegrounds? Yes, buried under lots of respawning enemies is a great spot to pvp, while people are trying to achieve the battleground objectives (well, ok, it'd be a great spot to pvp for griefers who'd only be there to make sure people failed the battleground objectives. That's certainly no argument in favor.) And there's no combat ability in galaxy-map-space, so that's out.
Meanwhile, in MMOs that do have real "open worlds" for people to flag up and pvp in - there's example after example of how "pvp fans" do their best to try to force people to pvp.
Dedicated PvP game > instanced PvP > open world faction pvp > getting hit by a car > open world "free for all"/anarchy pvp
People played as Klingons so that they could oppose the federation.
Make Klingons the enemy again and incorporate territory control around the neutral zone with rewards and bonus for number of systems owned. After a serious rebalance of the game.
Yeah... because I don't regard PvP as fun (in no Game) I am against "additional Challenge"...