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I still play. Sometimes. Getting increasingly fed up with some aspects of the game, though... Beginning to wish the whole PvP community would take a long walk off a short pier.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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I never did the PVP aspect, as I quit just before CoV came out. What parts of it do you like, vs the parts you don't?
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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How do I put this without it sounding like sour grapes...?
There are real advantages to be had outside the PvP zones from gaining things that are only to be had inside the PvP zones. In particular, the "Shivan Shard" power, which enables the player to summon a powerful pet to assist in combat five times.
Gaining this power involves visiting a series of asteroids, defeating the stationary defenses of a "firebase" to process the asteroid fragments into a sample, and returning the sample to a contact. If at any time in the process you are defeated by an enemy player, you lose all the progress you've made in that progression.
So, basically, you have a power that the most physically vulnerable characters would love to have (it's extremely valuable, especially for doing many missions solo)... And then you force them to deal with players who see PvP as an extension of their extracurricular "pulling the wings off of butterflies" activities to get it.
Most character types simply aren't well suited to PvP unless they travel in large groups. They get hit by *one* power that stuns, sleeps, holds, or immobilizes, they become sitting ducks. It doesn't feel like "real" PvP in a lot of ways; it feels like "whoever shoots first, wins."
Worsening the problem is the villain class "Stalkers", whose emphasis is on stealth and assassination. If they hit from concealment, they do enough damage in a single hit to immediately kill many players. Worsening the problem is that the designers, apparently bowing to a vocal Stalker contingent, recently modified the Stalker class so a) if they *miss* with an Assassination Strike, they don't become visible and b) it is virtually impossible to see a hidden Stalker, no matter what Perception-boosting powers one has, from a distance of more than 10 feet. Try finding a Stalker in a couple of cubic miles of space (remembering the three dimensional aspect), and you begin to see the problem. Stalker players have complained, with some reason, that Stalkers are a one-trick pony and taking that trick away from them isn't fair. But in the meantime, you read absolutely ludicrous message board exchanges where people in all seriousness suggest that players wouldn't be as vulnerable to Stalkers if they simply spent every single moment they spend in PvP zones leaning on the jump key.
PvP has become completely inaccesable to characters who aren't designed from the get-go with PvP in mind, and both players and characters who have the audacity to visit such zones without such a build are often treated with contempt. (And I say this as someone who *has* designed characters that have achieved 3-1 or better ratios of kills to deaths in PvP.) Or players who hope to glean benefits like the Shivan shard end up doing so only when there are no other players in PvP, which seems to be defeating the purpose.
I wish they would either make PvP less hostile and unforgiving to newcomers or take away virtually all the benefits that can only be accrued in PvP. Because right now, the "hardcore" PvP players are mostly a bunch of griefers and lowlifes. I get really tired of seeing someone "hold" or assassinate some poor Controller over and over who never has a chance to respond like it actually says bupkus about their own abilities.
There are "arena" matches in which teams of players can fight other teams of players, including heroes vs. heroes, and that's great. There are also people who volunteer to fight other characters one-on-one in a prearranged location, and that's great, too. (You don't gain XP debt for being defeated by another player, but if you're attacked by a player in a zone with environmental enemies, it's entirely possible and even likely that you'll actually be taken down by an environment enemy despite the enemy player doing the majority of the damage, which does cause XP penalty.) But there are players who will "camp" in areas where people need to go to get benefits like the Shivan Shard, killing the same players over and over, and that's... Just... Lame.
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