General PvP thoughts seems less messy than making a post for each idea unless they're super fleshed out.


1. I really liked how the late game PvP in CoX worked. The ability to capture points and have the zone slowly change to reflect the controlling party was really cool and I always had fun in that zone.

Something similar to that would be awesome. Really you could copy and paste it as far as I care.

2. The ability to sign up to randomly raid a Superhero base would be great too. Allow a strike team to go in and attack a base and fight people from the opposing superteam. You could even adapt it for NPC teams and allow the purchase of "Tips" about a villain/hero base to be purchased and used to attack NPC super teams and have an announcement sent all over the world when you successfully raid them for PvE.

3. Random Battle Queues including Free-4-All, Teams F-4-A, Hot Potato (have an item that damages people but the longer your team has it in their possession the higher their score, highest score wins), 1v1 , team v team. All queues would allow random or preset teams.

How weird is it for a dev to participate in one of these discussions? I dunno since I am literally part of the process, but I just want to talk as a person who plays games if that's okay with you guys. I spent far more time looking at this post debating whether or not to hit the submit button than actually writing it. I mean, I could just make another forum account and bypass all this, but that wouldn't sit well with me. For someone working on a super-powered MMO, I don't like wearing a mask when I can be myself.

Anyway, onto the actual substance of the post.

When playing other MMOs, I've never been much for PvP. That's more of Jax's scene since he loves numbers so much and looking at how one can work within a system. I enjoy playing what my vision for the character is, not what gets the optimal result. I've always valued choosing what is thematic with my character and is fun to use, not necessarily what in a flavor of the month that is going to win in straight competitions. If it happens to work when put against other players, that is fine by me, but I am more interested in a character's story than their effectiveness.

Not to say that I can't Min/Max. Lord knows I've spent lots of time ensuring a build's effectiveness. I also don't make decision I know will gimp my character for the sake of theme. If it's a bad choice with no redeeming value, I'm not gonna do it. In the same vein though, I never, ever compromise my character's core identity by doing something they wouldn't. I have a happy balance of making sub-optimal decisions because I find them more fun or it fits my character better and making them work for me. I strive to make it work for my playstyle rather than fitting a mold and I really hate it when I am looked down upon by other players for making uncommon or unpopular choices.

To be fair, it's not such a hassle in games where everything is based on getting the best gear with big numbers, but ones that allow more freedom for deeper customization have the whole build problem. So, since most MMO PvP works like an interactive math problem, I might have a good build, but it isn't going to stand a chance against the tasty "flavorful" one.

So, in that mindset, I want to look at the question of PvP variety from a different angle: making things competitive with other players while not necessarily favoring one certain playstyle. Speed runner type competitions come to mind, like two teams racing to complete a task force or a boss rush. Maybe have PvP race to kills as many mobs as possible like a Dynasty Warriors situation while being able to "attack" your opponents with debuffs or RNG items ala Mario Kart. Opening up the competitive spirit of PvP to other avenues of facing off against your friends, foes, and rivals while not fighting to the death or trying to hold territory.

I'd go for crazy ideas like, just off the top of my head, a Support Stand-off where support classes face off against each other to see who can maintain a failing system the fastest like two nameless titans going at it and you need to keep them alive or there is a hospital that you need to heal as many people as possible. Not sure if that'd be fun, but how weird would it feel to be at the that of the top of the leaderboards in a PvP match based around a supportive game mode?

Penitence wrote:
Just to isolate this one section. That was essentially my mindset with Hot Potato. This is the only PvP where you'd really want a Healer, you could make the Hot Potato some sort of shield (Think Stargate Atlantis where Rodney got stuck inside a super shield and couldn't deactivate it but he also couldn't eat because of it). You could even increase Damage Resistance so that the best way to win is either with a bunch of Debuffers or Healers on a team.

I've always preferred PvP when it had goals where brains and strategy could win in spite of build.

There's something to be said about the framing device of the PvP instance goal as well. The harmful hot potato is negative reinforcement by using something that the player wants to throw away. There's a somewhat obscure ATLAS RPG board game called Dokapon Kingdom where the goal of the game is to get the most money to win. A player can receive a cursed item through a random event called Blackmail, a hot potato item that you have to pay half of your money to send to another player or risk it being set off and killing your character as it will randomly go off after a certain amount of turns. Earlier on this isn't too much of a problem, but in the later game, you could easily lose millions. I don't remember a time anyone had fun with that item being in play unless the person just enjoyed the suffering of others.

It's annoying to hold onto the hot potato in this instance like a nuclear reactor rod or something that kills your team with radiation. If you change it to something that you want to keep that either empowers them or needs to be maintained to achieve victory through your efforts rather than specifically trying to get rid of it, then the experience may be more fun in the end simply because the McGuffin of the situation is a positive one.

Yeah I think you'd almost have to make the carrier nearly invulnerable and maybe a Damage boost too to make people want it. This would encourage teams with one damage dealer and a bunch of healers who are constantly healing him so he wipes the floor with the enemy.

Or provide XP and rewards based on points gained in PvP (to prevent AFKing) and in this case the team that wins rewards are based on either how long you held it or how much health you healed.

It could be a DoT effect but also part of a larger goal like the villains have to exit with the item to wreak havoc or the heros have to get it back to containment.

Also, if you could give to an enemy you could sacrifice a point total win for the chance to heavily debuff or damage an otherwise tough opponent, especially if it's a DoT that remains X amount after you get rid of it.

I'm basically trying to think of PvP that doesn't make having an entire team of Defense and Damage the best because it seems like in every PvP I've played that's the case because most teams have only 1 or 2 control and support people and they're targeted first by both sides.

EDIT: You could also add a berserker rage or random damage component such that you use one of your single target attacks or in general lose control randomly. Sorry I keep thinking of ways to punish the carrier But if rewards were based on how long you hold it in addition to other metrics could still work.

I like the idea of having competitions that are not actual fighting as it gives more pve based people the ability to participate, but I like the old arena system where you can take out temp powers travel ect. I liked the rock paper scissor effect coh had in which a dom/troller could perma hold and kill the scrapper, while the blaster could quickly decimate the dom/troller with high dps and the scrapper, cough regen could kill blaster, or at least stand a chance. pre i13 before the crazy nerfs and blaster buffs. The game wasn't made to be pvp from the start but it didn't have an auto win arch type(some powers didn't work very well ar/cold blaster vs fire/em)and it worked

I always felt that pvp has never been done correctly in any of the MMO's that I have played simply because it always falls in the category of fighting some random battle against other character with no other objectives in mind. While this can be fun, I have always wanted to see a game incorporate pvp in a way that would encouraged a type of friendly competition between players be they factions like good vs evil, hero vs villain or simply hero vs hero.These friendly competitions would take the form of anything from complex quest that had a player/group trying to accomplish a goal while another player/group attempts to stop them to simple challenges that the players would have to complete in order to be considered the victor. They could fall into categories like destroying things, rescuing people,finding an item ect.

I think having pvp like this something that has some kind of or impact on your character and meaning to the game beyond the bragging rights would not only make it more fun but it would also make the world like this much more interesting.

it would be nice to have a pvp variant of the CoH/CoV bank job.

a bank job where villians team load in fight way to vault then when they break vault and grab loot heroes(who have been siting in lobby looking at villian teams char profiles making a plan/allocating targets) spawn at bank entrance and try to stop them getting loot to a getaway point you could have loot bag spawn npc power armour cops every 30 secs or something along lines of hot potato idea

it would also be interesting to have uniforms/com badges for open world that you could put on and flag for pvp.
the best pvp systems ive seen use uniforms/pins/badges with multiple factions, some task's extra to unlock a factions badge and that badge has a nemisis faction so there's some work in getting all the different faction reps sorted. preferably with a honour system of sorts so if you hit someone say 10 levels lower then you or theirs 4 of you 1 of them you have no chance at a reward

zones like recluse victory wouldn't be bad but they can have pop issues badges and putting recluse victory style objectives on a regular map though and you can have high pop with full opt in using badges/uniforms. take off badge and just walk away from fight(10sec delay to take off badge or something) people can wander past chose to opt in if they have gotten that factions rep/badge/uniform and they have time/looks like a good fight. definitely have things like npcs to heal and stuff to cc and such to give all classes a chance(CC a big bit of a satellite dish into place or something)

give events participation rank rewards unlock so if for eg 5+ ppl fighting someone dies everyone that hit them has a chance at max rank reward random pvp IO reward drop 3 fighting medium level IO drop chance extra