Cryptic, make PvP more inviting

borgresearcher

After today's endeavor the queues got filled for once, and with some matches i could realize the pain on the pugs. so lets check what needs to be done apart from fixing the scoreboard. There are 2 major different aspects between casual pugs and pvper's:

1- Gear, Build, Timings and Skill - this could be resolved by adding another type of queue in the PvP area, the (Competitive) queues, with this, the dedicated pvper's could have a room to play without pug stomping, and if you win three consecutive matches on the normal Queue, you will be automatically placed on the Competitive Queue, this would also help those who want to fight random people, or try builds without wrecking someone's game, or try to find someone for hours for a private match.

2- Map placement, Piloting, and Spawncamping - Mainly on Ground PvP, its very easy to be spawncamped, after you team starts losing in the beginning, its a snowball process, the team that starts winning, will probably end the match soon due to spawnkilling, i sugest the implementation of a new Respawn system, where you will always be respawned 40km on space and 50m on ground far from the nearest enemy or ally ( only includes players ). This will give time for pugs to use gambling device, change gear or doffs, in order to adapt to that same match.

It's just a suggestion, id like to know what you guys think, not even sure if the Devs still read the PvP Feedback anymore, but well, its worth the try

Prime

orondis

To be honest the best way to make PvP more inviting is to make it virtually a separate game.

Those new pugs in the queues. The ones using little to no broken BS. That's how PvP should be played. The only reason we don't is because of the PvP arms race.

So, have a seperate tab for an alternate build for your ship. The gear there is generic. No traits, no universal/rep consoles, no intel/pilot/MW/etc boff powers, no specializations, no rep abilities, no rep equipment, no doffs (bye bye A2B builds).

Then the game is far more balanced, far less P2W, much more accessible and much more more skill based.

That would make PvP more inviting.

warpangel

As the endeavor proves, all it takes is some better rewards and people will play it.

orondis

No, the endeavor proves people will queue up for a one time reward. They'll queue up for the breach for a one time reward.

This game has a very casual playerbase. PvP is not casual. It's not cheap either.

usskentucky

They need to offer two types of PVP, one where anything goes, another where the player has to choose one in a set number of premade builds.

It would probably take a F2Per a year or two to have enough rep and fleet gear to compete in the current environment. And after all that work it is likely they would get one-shotted for the first few months while they are learning how to do things like drop shields, heal themselves, and are play as part of a team.

In contrast, an option to play a queue where everyone picks from pre established builds would put everyone on an equal playing field and the only difference would be skill.

Others have already pointed out that the barrier to entry is too high.

They should also alter the maps to make spawn points inaccessible to the opposing team like they did on core assault.

borgresearcher

So, the option would be to introduce a Gear Score, ( or make the one they released actually work ) and create separated PvP queues based on that ? Also, i agree PvP is expensive, i would suggest bigger rewards for PvP matches too.

As i see it, PvP is more or less balanced again, Exotic Damage builds are back to normal, drains can be countered, its a bit worse on ground, since most people dont even use a dodge shield or nakuhl 2p, so they die fast to the burst, ground PvP needs a bit more balance work, anyway, easy fixes, like, module abilties cant be dodged, thats why no matter how tanky you are, you will still die to a module crit, some abilities are not working as intended, or at least as they should, electric pylons have almost 1k base damage to players, that plus a crit ... control effect immunity traits dont seem to be working, at least not against holds, crystal projector from last years cca event is dealing way too much damage... etc etc

usskentucky

Sometimes, now that my gear has all been gold for two years, and now that I have grinded out every rep set in the game, I have to remind myself how long it took me to accomplish those feats. I mean, I run a fleet, and often I’m helping players who know the basic mechanics of the game, but who are a long way off from maxing. Some people don’t want to invest the amount of time and resources into a single ship’s build that I did. They’d rather build a second ship or toon. PVP viability is an abstraction to these players, and though their basic knowledge of the game would take them a long way, getting pug stomped does little to motivate them to keep at it.

dracounguis

Just like when we play Battletech we don't allow custom builds; they can get very cheezy! They can do 2x the damage and cost half the points of an Official design.

If STO wants to even out the playing field to get non-pvpers to show up now and again, each ship should have 2-3 builds you choose from and you play that. They could also have a Open Arena where people's custom builds go to fight.

Now ground might be a bit harder to make builds for; the idea I'd have is... You'd have to remove all your gear, grab approved gear from the 'PvP armory' from some tab on the Dil Store (for 0 cost), then queue up. Any equipped non-approved gear would be non-functional in the match.

borgresearcher

say what you want, but the last balance fixes were great, and shows that they still care, we just need to point them in the right direction, the problem is that they dont want to hear us ...

borgresearcher

Patrick, i dont think its about investment, my idea is that they dont know what they are doing because they dont play the game, i mean, they launch those fkin op electric pylons that have a super slow, super aoe, and 1k+ base damage against players ( yes its doubled against players, the damage and the slow, not halved lol) while the ground weapon mod dot3 only deals like 5damage per second at mkxiv epic and has a low chance, its bad to the point where you are crafting some weapons, if you get dot3 you will discard the weapon... i dont know who is making this stuff but come on... lol, the lack of balance is the biggest problem, the difference between pros and noobs is that the pros know the op's, and the noobs dont...

borgresearcher

but come on, that doesnt mean they have to launch something useless, and another thing that kills one person alone ... they can balance things by thinking at first, the same person, you dont really need more staff, you need better staff

a4653

I think that in order to improve PvP there needs to be more incentive to que and in turn improve. Maybe add 200 marks of any rep of the players choosing to the winning team and 100 marks to the loosing team. This may cause the teams to become vastly unbalanced but to fix the problem maybe implement a ranking system to calculate the skill level of each player and then implement an algorithm to divide the high ranking players and mix them with the low ranking players. I don’t know how difficult it would be to make this but in my opinion it would make pvp more enjoyable and more worth while.

rothnang

If they want to make PvP more inviting they have to reign in the idiotic DPS meta that infests this game and makes so much of the game a pain for people who don't just want to run the same old cookie cutter builds. PvP in this game just has nothing to do with Star Trek. It's a bunch of tiny ships going at insane speeds blowing each other up in single attack runs. It's just really poorly implemented fighter combat, and there are games like Star Conflict that simply do that way better. Nothing about it is a faithful implementation of Star Trek space battles the way we see them in the movies.

leemwatson

patrickngo wrote: »

rothnang wrote: »

If they want to make PvP more inviting they have to reign in the idiotic DPS meta that infests this game and makes so much of the game a pain for people who don't just want to run the same old cookie cutter builds. PvP in this game just has nothing to do with Star Trek. It's a bunch of tiny ships going at insane speeds blowing each other up in single attack runs. It's just really poorly implemented fighter combat, and there are games like Star Conflict that simply do that way better. Nothing about it is a faithful implementation of Star Trek space battles the way we see them in the movies.

without the ability to sell power, what would they have beyond the Star Trek name to pay the bills? (answer: not much).

simply put, the business model doesn't allow for PvP to be a functional, engaging, viable part of the game, but the mechanics ar something it's stuck with until they can get the greenlight for STO 2.0 (which won't include either PvP, or factions, because those don't fit the artistic vision of the management staff.)

the existence of PvP in this game is an artifact of late 2000's game design standards. it's an artifact of a development environment where it was believed no game could be profitable without PvP. That environment no longer exists, but the legacy coding is too deeply ingrained to be completely removed from the current version.

PvP kills games faster than anything. Very, very few games survive that are pure PvP. One game I played had 30 servers within two years of opening, a year later this had dropped by 75%. After 7 years, I know very, very few who actually want to PvP in this game, and it's not because of lack of rewards.

There is alot wrong with STO's space combat and Rothnang is correct. DPS is still out of whack, Ships don't make engineering or tactical sense and there is very little to challenge players because Cryptic bowed to pressure and made things so easy because a small vocal group of players want things yesterday.

leemwatson

a4653 wrote: »

I think that in order to improve PvP there needs to be more incentive to que and in turn improve. Maybe add 200 marks of any rep of the players choosing to the winning team and 100 marks to the loosing team. This may cause the teams to become vastly unbalanced but to fix the problem maybe implement a ranking system to calculate the skill level of each player and then implement an algorithm to divide the high ranking players and mix them with the low ranking players. I don’t know how difficult it would be to make this but in my opinion it would make pvp more enjoyable and more worth while.

They sort of tried this with Competitive queues, and it failed.....very quickly, and very badly.

arionisa

IIRC PvP use to have a very decent reward system, until players started started exploiting it. Something along the lines of one team deliberately losing badly so the other team would get great rewards, then they would run it again, doing the opposite. They basically turned PvP into nothing more than an easy rewards jackpot. Cryptics solution ? Remove the rewards.

bobs1111

If your pvping for rewards your not really pvping... your just grinding rewards.

Unless this game is going to let me kill people and take their stuff... I don't care what the rewards are. I grind pve for stuff... I play PvP for actual fun.

It would be nice if Cryptic would realize they don't have to tie the two together. But after 8 years clearly we aren't getting a proper PvE/PvP separation like you find in games from better developers. PvP in this game could be extremely good fun if Cryptic would spend the time and money to properly separate the two game modes. You can create a balanced PvP game and still sell people PvE grind... of all the IPs that could support that Trek is no doubt one of them. 99% of the population isn't going to stop grinding PvE cause they don't need to for PvP. Their $ stream would be uneffected... and they could open new revenue streams with PvP only cosmetics ect. Create a PvP system where any level 60 player has equally powerful options if they are playing a one day old toon or a 8 year old one. Skill should be the deciding factor in PvP... not months of Rep and gear grinding and upgrading and billions of EC worth of ship traits. Making PvP accessible to new players would grow the base... and the core of STO is good enough that STO could feature actual legit quasi Esport level game play and all the BS and $$ that can come with that. lol

where2r1

One thing I give PvP players...even when the "chips are down" you are always looking for and seeing the potential.

bobs1111

patrickngo wrote: »

bobs1111 wrote: »

If your pvping for rewards your not really pvping... your just grinding rewards.

Unless this game is going to let me kill people and take their stuff... I don't care what the rewards are. I grind pve for stuff... I play PvP for actual fun.

It would be nice if Cryptic would realize they don't have to tie the two together. But after 8 years clearly we aren't getting a proper PvE/PvP separation like you find in games from better developers. PvP in this game could be extremely good fun if Cryptic would spend the time and money to properly separate the two game modes. You can create a balanced PvP game and still sell people PvE grind... of all the IPs that could support that Trek is no doubt one of them. 99% of the population isn't going to stop grinding PvE cause they don't need to for PvP. Their $ stream would be uneffected... and they could open new revenue streams with PvP only cosmetics ect. Create a PvP system where any level 60 player has equally powerful options if they are playing a one day old toon or a 8 year old one. Skill should be the deciding factor in PvP... not months of Rep and gear grinding and upgrading and billions of EC worth of ship traits. Making PvP accessible to new players would grow the base... and the core of STO is good enough that STO could feature actual legit quasi Esport level game play and all the BS and $$ that can come with that. lol

they have some actual technical problems that have to be accounted for to do that-and anything too complicated is something that costs too much for too little return.

I would argue this is exactly how they fix the "technical' issues. The entire scoreboard thing doesn't work is easily fixed by... deleting the current PvP maps (including kerrat) and creating new ones.

Look at core assault. It works just fine... it has PvP it even has a score board of sorts. There is NOTHING stopping them from creating a brand new PvP map. They could simply delete the entire old system that is beyond broken and clearly undocumented for anyone to fix. Create a Copy of Core Assault delete everything make it a big box, and its no different then what we have now.

As for seperating the 2... the tech for that is already in game as well. Shuttle maps (pvp). Its a second ship doll you have on your toon... that is only allowed in a specific map and specific skills, gear and even sets are already programmed to act differently when on a shuttle.

So the tech is already in their engine to create a PvP ship doll. The tech is already in game to create new PvP maps... the tech is already in game to adjust everything including Hull/shield mods in a specfic map.

So the truth is very little actual work is required. Its the lack of will that is the issue.

bobs1111

patrickngo wrote: »

bobs1111 wrote: »

patrickngo wrote: »

bobs1111 wrote: »

If your pvping for rewards your not really pvping... your just grinding rewards.

Unless this game is going to let me kill people and take their stuff... I don't care what the rewards are. I grind pve for stuff... I play PvP for actual fun.

It would be nice if Cryptic would realize they don't have to tie the two together. But after 8 years clearly we aren't getting a proper PvE/PvP separation like you find in games from better developers. PvP in this game could be extremely good fun if Cryptic would spend the time and money to properly separate the two game modes. You can create a balanced PvP game and still sell people PvE grind... of all the IPs that could support that Trek is no doubt one of them. 99% of the population isn't going to stop grinding PvE cause they don't need to for PvP. Their $ stream would be uneffected... and they could open new revenue streams with PvP only cosmetics ect. Create a PvP system where any level 60 player has equally powerful options if they are playing a one day old toon or a 8 year old one. Skill should be the deciding factor in PvP... not months of Rep and gear grinding and upgrading and billions of EC worth of ship traits. Making PvP accessible to new players would grow the base... and the core of STO is good enough that STO could feature actual legit quasi Esport level game play and all the BS and $$ that can come with that. lol

they have some actual technical problems that have to be accounted for to do that-and anything too complicated is something that costs too much for too little return.

I would argue this is exactly how they fix the "technical' issues. The entire scoreboard thing doesn't work is easily fixed by... deleting the current PvP maps (including kerrat) and creating new ones.

Look at core assault. It works just fine... it has PvP it even has a score board of sorts. There is NOTHING stopping them from creating a brand new PvP map. They could simply delete the entire old system that is beyond broken and clearly undocumented for anyone to fix. Create a Copy of Core Assault delete everything make it a big box, and its no different then what we have now.

As for seperating the 2... the tech for that is already in game as well. Shuttle maps (pvp). Its a second ship doll you have on your toon... that is only allowed in a specific map and specific skills, gear and even sets are already programmed to act differently when on a shuttle.

So the tech is already in their engine to create a PvP ship doll. The tech is already in game to create new PvP maps... the tech is already in game to adjust everything including Hull/shield mods in a specfic map.

So the truth is very little actual work is required. Its the lack of will that is the issue.

well...yeah, from the outside it's obvious. but you might maybe ask why the wanna doesn't exist.

and that goes back to effort/rewards-but on Cryptic's side of the house.

The concept of "takes more work than we want to do with this."

to understand how we got here, you have to pay attention to what's going on at Cryptic, and once you've paid enough attention, you realize something;

Geko doesn't want it done, period.

I agree... its a will issue. I am simply saying it isn't a ton of work as some claim. The work has already been done if you look at the newer systems they have added the last few years. Fixing PVP by deleting the old and creating a new system is simple. So yes no doubt its that they have no intention of supporting PvP in any real way.

What tops it all off though... is logging in today and realizing the ques are full to bursting because PvP is the days endevor mission. You know all those poor Non-PvPing PvE players are quing today seeing all the bugs all the blemishes and getting blasted over and over by a small group of PvPers that love a good Pug Slaughter. I didn't even bother queing up I knew what I would find... PvE kids that would pop after one volley and make me feel sad, and vets doing the popping 2s after they respawn.

Yawn... Thanks for promoting PvP Cryptic.

dracounguis

And don't forget that us poor PvEers have to WIN to get the Endeavor. After 1 pvp match and a terrible 4/15 loss I just decided the Endeavor wasn't worth the hassle. I could conceivably play for 2 days straight and NOT win a match unless it was fixed "I win 1 you win one" type of thing.

daviddxx

warpangel wrote: »

As the endeavor proves, all it takes is some better rewards and people will play it.

True that.

I meet some new Guys i never meet befor and got some really nice Fights & Conversations after the Matches. A Lot of Guys would play PvP more often if the Reward is ok. OFC every 20h just 1200 Dil is nothing.


Biggest Prob. for most Guys was just that.. they come in a PvE Build, this will not work like a PvP Build in a DPS Challance.

I understand it ofc,.. nobody buy Gear or chance Build for just 1 Match.

Anyway.. i like this Endever PvP.. meet new Guys.. have some Fun.. at least PvP is not dead for 2 Days. Thx for it. Take care Guys and see you in 3 Month again ( i hope so ) .


PS. To Bad the Scoreboard is still down.. a lot of Guys ask for it.