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What to do about PvP
sirsitsalot
Member Posts: 2,803 Arc User
PvP is really needed at this point. I personally hate PvP with a passion, but that does not stop me from recognizing that others love it, and I believe they deserve a strong PvP experience.
However, the game as it is currently designed, is not suited for traditional PvP. Originally this was supposed to be a game with two COMPLETE factions, with PvP being half of the endgame experience. However, as it is now, PvE has taken center stage, and content is essentially a one story fits all experience.
There is another MMO out there whose central focus is a single story for all, regardless of race: Lord of the Rings Online. It has PvP as well. But it is not traditional PvP. In fact, it's PvP is exactly what Cryptic promised us that STO's PvP would not be: Player vs. Monster Player. In LotRO, the monster characters only exist FOR PvP. There is no Servants of Mordor PvE aspect. So no leveling a monster character from 1 to max with an epic storyline to follow.
With STO now embracing the one story fits all approach, with the third faction ultimately divided between the UFP and KDF factions, and those two factions ultimately on the same side, aside from wargames simulations, it doesn't make sense from a story position for the UFP and the KDF to continue fighting each other, any more than it made sense for the NRR to be divided against itself while assisting their respective UFP/KDF allies in battle against each other.
I would like to point out that while the UFP and KDF are now allies, just as they were in ST:TNG, they are sovereign civilizations unto themselves. The Klingons are not members of the Federation, and they don't want to be. And the Federation is not a member of the Klingon Empire, and they don't want to be. Even if peace exists between these civilizations, it does not make them into one big galactic village.
So what to do about PvP? It would seem that the only logical step is to implement something akin to LotRO's model, where the servitor races of the Iconians are playable for the purpose of Ground and Space PvP against the UFP/KDF/NRR alliance.
I have more to say on this, but it will have to wait until my lunch break
However, the game as it is currently designed, is not suited for traditional PvP. Originally this was supposed to be a game with two COMPLETE factions, with PvP being half of the endgame experience. However, as it is now, PvE has taken center stage, and content is essentially a one story fits all experience.
There is another MMO out there whose central focus is a single story for all, regardless of race: Lord of the Rings Online. It has PvP as well. But it is not traditional PvP. In fact, it's PvP is exactly what Cryptic promised us that STO's PvP would not be: Player vs. Monster Player. In LotRO, the monster characters only exist FOR PvP. There is no Servants of Mordor PvE aspect. So no leveling a monster character from 1 to max with an epic storyline to follow.
With STO now embracing the one story fits all approach, with the third faction ultimately divided between the UFP and KDF factions, and those two factions ultimately on the same side, aside from wargames simulations, it doesn't make sense from a story position for the UFP and the KDF to continue fighting each other, any more than it made sense for the NRR to be divided against itself while assisting their respective UFP/KDF allies in battle against each other.
I would like to point out that while the UFP and KDF are now allies, just as they were in ST:TNG, they are sovereign civilizations unto themselves. The Klingons are not members of the Federation, and they don't want to be. And the Federation is not a member of the Klingon Empire, and they don't want to be. Even if peace exists between these civilizations, it does not make them into one big galactic village.
So what to do about PvP? It would seem that the only logical step is to implement something akin to LotRO's model, where the servitor races of the Iconians are playable for the purpose of Ground and Space PvP against the UFP/KDF/NRR alliance.
I have more to say on this, but it will have to wait until my lunch break
"There can be no meeting of the minds between two parties
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
if both parties are not willing to meet in the middle."
-Ambassador Samuel J. Stone
Post edited by sirsitsalot on
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Comments
Honestly their are many things you can do to fix pvp that doesn't break game story.
One is not have groups. Have everyone flag when you cross the border into kerrat like in neverwinter. It is caused by a virus that affects subsystems.
But alas, I won't not will anyone pvp. It is hard to rp getting blown to bits by a theory crafter when they should be explorers.
One thing I would like in sto is to not be blown up. To be disabled and need to limp back? Sure.
Without a serious reworking and rebalancing of the core game, PvP will remain dead. The only real way to revive PvP is if the devs just assigned a large xp or dil reward to every match. Then even my fleet would organize regular PvP matches, where one side throws the match for expedient grinding.
Time vs reward is how you get PvE players to PvP.
I'm talking players flying in ISA strenght tactical cubes and stuff! :P
Sure thats only part of the problem, so in addition I would suggest an "account wide" reputation system. That allows people to unlock perks and gear for their main account as well, and maybe even a few unique ones for playing as "monsters" as an incentive.
That only works if Cryptic hires a bunch of devs to make the Redshirt server viable and adds more PvP content to it since chat didn't work for Rebirth, there are numerous bugs that need to be taken care of, and static MMOs defeat the purpose of being a MMO. The resources would be better used to hire a dedicated PvP team which is the only way to save PvP in this game since it is on life support praying for someone to finally pull the plug.
Dismantle it as us make it a separate grind with macro and script free zones.
Giving extra rewards won't help cuz then u get people who will lose on purpose just for the reward
...which is why they should play games that are designed for & around PvP, not the half-baked pvp systems that keep getting duct-taped onto the side of mostly-PvE MMOs
Inevitably leading to arguments over balance, hostility back and forth between PvPers and PvEers ("carebears!" "griefers!"), tweaks to one side TRIBBLE up the other, etc.... I've lived through this in too many MMOs to ever believe that having both playstyles in one game will ever be a good idea.
A: Nothing. Dead horse is so dead, its already rotting.
As was mentioned in another thread, "Hogger raids" only go so far...
Any sort of additions to PvP will not revitalize it. The only people to return is the small number of players that are still lingering. But the PvP community will never return to what it was before.
It would seriously be a waste of resources at this point in time in the games development. I hate to compare it but it would be like Cryptic continuing to develop Romulan or Klingon specific content. The monetary return would never eclipse the initial investment.
Someone mentioned Red Vs. Blue, and I think that would work if the the scale of the battles were increased and opposing forces were added (think old school AV in WOW) as NPC's, now that they can actually bite again, to help each side towards the particular PvP mode's goal (defend, assault, gather, control, etc.) In doing this they could theme various types of PvP play scenarios to include PvP and PvE content together, and produce epic battles many enjoy on the PvE side, but are absent in PvP. I also think that it would eventually help to contain some of the rampant FAWing, by providing situational NPC's (fodder) to hide in for some players while completing reputation goals and match objectives which helps make it a "newbie" friendlier experience.
The game "Defiance" (on console & PC) does PvP in a different way, by creating the PvP playground in the same space as the PvE playground. Once que'd the user doesn't get warped to a separate instance, instead, a PvP boundary is formed in the PvE area, where the objectives are placed and participants become valid PvP targets to each other for the duration, no matter where they go, right next to the non-participant PvE player, all in the same PvE sandbox area.
If the opening of sector space is as they say, this could also work to open PvP options the future.
I was hoping that with the announced opening of sector space, eventually we'd get some form of open combat (PvE/PvP) in sector space as well. One can hope.
I agree with most of your post, but the not on the stupidly easy AI. That one is not Cryptic's fault. They have tried to put in more challenging AI from time to time.
It's players that have consistently asked for the AI to be nerfed. Because a very vocal part of the players don't like challenges, they don't want to learn how things work and they especially don't like to lose.
This is why a PvP revamp is doomed from the start. Cryptic listens too much to the part of their player base that hates anything challenging, so by extension PvP.
Yeah, it's not just PvP that's been doomed in this game...lol, doom. Shhhhh!
I am just tired of reading the same question every once in a while for the last 4 years (after f2p). Cryptic wont (be able to) change anything which would cater pvp exclusively, if anything, pvp gets collateral enhanced. Usually, pvp is collateral damage, since I cant imagine the devs thinking about pvp when introducing new powers. Else they would make several balance runs beforhand, and we all know that this is not the case.
So, to "save" pvp, the people who play it must form a community, and cater to themselves. I often here vanilla pvp, and laughed a bit when I read the rules (to be fair: The rules are perfectly valid. I just dont think a virtual game would need rules outside of cheating and exploiting), but that is basically the way:
Make your own community
Make your own rooms
Recruit new members from forums, chats and fleets
Teach them how to play pvp (PvP Bootcamp if anyone remembers)
Thus you will create your own "hatchery" of pvp-players, who in turn recruit new players etc. and all have a similar mindset.
That is the way pvp has to go, since the pvp-community cant hope to get help from the devs. But it is very interesting that they still cling to that hope instead of accepting reality and adopting that idea. And it is very amusing the players "who just go up against mindless npcs" came up with this idea a few years ago, and its a great success for the community.
I say remove PVP from the game completely. Why? Cause its confusing to new players.
And Open PVP will not help this game it will destroy it. There are a lot of us PvEers who don't like PVP and don't play it. You add in open season and I would lay money that most of em leave the game, I would, and have done it before for the same reason.
As for the Neutral zone server, I agree that separating the PVPers is a great idea. But they would need to add in a fourth server. Red shirt is Cryptics Test server where they test new content. Tribble is called a terst server but all it is is a preview server of what is coming to holodeck. Its been said before that by the time content hits tribble its about 90 percent to late to change/fix bugs reported.
Fleet leader Nova Elite
Fleet Leader House of Nova elite
@ren_larreck
My-first-flight-sim isn't a popular format for PvP.
They could launch a ground PvP system, and it would be more active.
Did you just call STO a flight sim?
against the fed/kdf and allies then maybe we can see something along the lines of fighting for sector blocks by way of taking planets and other systems by way of PvP.
this would be a fun way to have large scale PvP in the game while letting the players decide how the galaxy is going to look whether it will be controlled by the dominion or the fed/kdf alliance.
It doesn't appeal to flight sim enthusiasts, because it's nowhere near what a dedicated flight sim would offer.
It doesn't appeal to many pvp enthusiasts, because it's too much of a flight sim.
PvP may be large niche game play, but STO PvP is like a niche in a niche in a niche. And horribly broken thanks to the PvE-driven powercreep, though PvE ironically ignores most of the toys thanks to the effect of fuzzy maths.
You'd be hard pressed to design a less conducive PvP environment if you explicitly tried.
I've learned a lot from the Pvpers some great folks in there.
Keep PvP just fix it not today but tomorrow.. Hell hold off season 10 and do a season of fix the bugs that are in the game now would be totally awesome. Then no Dec reads these do yeah right.
What are you talking about
Star Citizen
Elite Dangerous
War Thunder
World of Warplanes
All much more dedicated flight sims than STO and all PvP-centric games.
STO had a great engine for PvP. The science class, as originally designed, was made for PvP. Remove all the junk, clutter and grind and it's a tremendously fun PvP game.
That is why a lot of PvP'ers stuck with STO despite being unwelcomed by the devs. The thing is, there's a limit to everything and since Cryptic added grinds to everything in the game and added more and more unbalanced abilities most PvP'ers gave up.
Unless someone at Cryptic is willing to do a complete overhaul of the game (separate server or not) PvP will remain dead.
And before you tell me about how many people play them, compare the number to how many people play all of the ground-based PvP games out there, from MMOs to FPSs, RTSs, etc.
Personally I feel that a few well placed tweaks to the basic operation of the game should be sufficient to make PvP 'viable' again:
#1: Equipment balancing, there seems to be some imbalance in many pieces of equipment when compared to others of 'simmilar' function ie. Neutronic Torps vs. any other torpedo really lol
#2: Class balancing, I'm sure we are all aware that Tacs suck on ground where Engs rule, vice versa in space and Scis can be useful in either environment with a relatively steep leraning curve... this needs to be adjusted to all classes have equal performance* in ground and space.
#3: Faction balancing, there are many items/ships/boffs/etc which are restricted to specific factions, allowing them to have distinct advantages over others... I"m looking at you KDF-Romulans...
#4: 'Ranked' PvP matchmaking, giving players a score based on their wins/losses should help to keep Veteran PvPers from stomping casuals in horribly unbalanced matches.
#5: Additional 'scenarios' for PvP matches, giving opposing teams actual objectives in matches and different locations to compete would keep players engaged in the matches and would be much more interesting than just kill X players or hold this spot for X minutes to win.
I am aware that this is much easier said than done, so I hold no expectations on PvP improvements in the forseeable future, luckily I don't PvP often so it doesn't bother me much.:P
*By performance I mean a 1v1 match between different classes with same levels of (properly chosen) equipment should be based more on player skill and not class advantages/disadvantages.
Cryptic chose to ignore PvP and added more and more grind, making the PvP entry level higher. They kept adding more and more unbalanced stuff, making PvP unplayable and not fun.
Now the PvP community is dead. The knowledgeable veterans are gone. The grind and unbalanced abilities only get more and more numerous as time passes.
Season 10 will only bring more grind and more new unbalanced abilities and there's nothing that tells me that any other expectations is mere wishful thinking.
I think PvP needs:
For Cryptic, it also needs something that montizes it. Balance and "grind-advoidance" would stand directly against their current model of power creep and make it even more difficult to add new abilities to the game, so it is a hard thing to get right so that it really works out.
I think what Cryptic could try - but it would all be difficult:
Better Balance
The game is really complex, and there are a lot of powers in the game. I think for the purposes of PvP, Cryptic will need to cut back there, without needing to cut it out from PvE.
All those Universal Consoles should probably just not work in PvP. Maybe they could be replaced with some useful skill bonus console in "PvP" mode. (That would still give incentive to buy ships, if only to turn your Ablative Armour generator into a Mark XIV Epic Phaser Console during PvP only)
Cryptic may have to remove specializations powers entirely from PvP, or commit to balancing them for PvP. Most of the time, if something is imbalanced for PvP, it's imbalanced for PvE, but not always. Stun, Hold and Dispel effects for example are much less of a deal for PvE targets than for players, for example.
Other imbalances affect both equally - if one power buffs your damage output much more than all the alternative damage buffs, it is a problem in PvE, because anyone not using that power is implicitly gimping himself and the team, and then we have discussions like "OMG, Galaxy Class sucks, we need a Lt.Cmdr Tac or the ship is the worst ever, why do you hate Galaxy Class Ships, oh Cryptic, why always this slap in the face blalbalblabla." We went through all this before, we will run through it again with the next OP power.
Allowing to "Grind" inside PvP
Specializations in the form the spec trees may also be suppressed in PvP, or in PvP you get access to full trees, or at the minimum, earning skill points via PvP must be as easy or difficult as in PvE. Otherwise, it forces people to stop PvPing and PvE instead. That's one of the (many) problems PvP is facing now.
Without these specialization abilities, you're still weaker off, but if you can still PvP and gain them, even all the time you may fight at disadvantage is not lost. You earn rewards.
Same thing for Dilithium. Maybe there even needs to be a way to earn Marks in PvP. Even if it is not as efficient as doing the dedicated queued content, it can help making it more attractive.
Leaderboards
I think this is really the only remaining way to go. Territory Control is something for factions, and PvP would need to be much bigger than it is now to warrant such an addition in the first place.
Leaderboards is one aspect only, however. There also need to be "PvP" seasons at which end people can earn rewards based on their standing. THat can be a huge lump sum of Dilithium and Marks and some special reward (Title, Trophy, Item) for something like the Top 1/5th, and the Top 1/2, this will be a great thing to motivate and reward PvP.