you're all right in my book, too :)

I <3 u.

I'll be blunt, as I see it.

I find it sad the game's PvP is falling apart, and it is, in part, Cryptic's lack of attention..

..but that lack of attention is, sadly enough, a symptom.

You see, what I see doing it in is two things.. clinging to the past, and more especially, attrition. Two examples.

You know the fruit crops were rotting down in Florida with "no one there to pick them" (due to illegal immigration crackdowns and thus, no cheap migrant labor -- and that's the cause they listed, let's leave that hot button alone otherwise)? despite unemployment rates in the low double digits/mid-teens a lot of places? No one was there... yeah, because the companies didn't want to pay a fair wage and thus adapt to the changes because they disliked said changes and wanted things back the way they were.

Face facts? Not going to happen. Saying its broken, saying its dead.. that's self-defeatism. Its changed, and since the "hardcore" set was up in arms over it, they chose to protest rather than adapt. Instead of working harder to get around the death of old, used, and in some folks' views abused standards and staples.. they just tossed in the towel and ebgan the crying game instead of the PvPing one. Things evolve, things change, not always for the better but if you give up, the only one to blame for "killing" PvP is yourself.

I see a healthy number of dueling types all over the place.. streetfights outside the hospital, especially the middle of Ren-Cen. Like to go watch the fights now and again, even participate now and again, which is more than I could say for most active PvP before -- which gets into the second point, and the one a lot of the PvP Elite argue, disregard, and generally don't want to fess up to and call out hatefully when it's raised.

I'm from a small town. In said small town there is a small town game shop, and there has been, in one incarnation or another, since around 1995, mostly sells MtG and the like. A few years back now.. '5, '07, somewhere in there, the owner started hosting tourneys, small buy-in, modest reward in packs and boxes, so forth. Due to the nature of said venue, most of the players were pretty competent, but playing their own competent, personalized decks.

..then one of them shells out some $600 or so or whatever and brings a monstrosity of a "net deck" copied from the pro-tour players to this little bi-weekly competition, and unsurprisingly, does pretty well for himself. Starts winning pretty regularly. Pretty much turns the tourney nto a race for 2nd place outside a few flukes. Was he entitled to do this? Certainly. Was he entitled to his winnings from said action? Surely so.

But after about two, three times of this.. the turnout started getting poorer, and poorer, and with him (and a few others after trying to fight fire with fire) perched there, the majority of the "more casual" set decided they'd rather not waste their time or resources and just quit showing up. I warned the owner it was going to happen, but of course he couldn't rightly tell the guy he couldn't play his perfectly legal deck -- or more accurately some pro-tour player's perfectly legal deck he copied...

..but people kept leaving, by frustration or simple real life side-effects, and as both new players found out how it was going and gave up in disgust and even more damning, spread the word around... eventually there weren't enough people for the buy-ins to cover the lowest-tier prizes or enough people to make a tournament even feasibly-arranged, and they shut down.

...sound familiar? No one's doing anything wrong (well, a few swaggering arses were here and there I suspect but as has been stated elsewhere that's any PvP game for you, more's the pity) -- and the ones saying the trollish behaviour isn't what's killing PvP are not entirely wrong, as no it has existed since the start and always will...

..what killed / is killing it? Attrition. Loss of players over time -- and due to the high bar of entry, the sort of insufferable elitism a sad number of PvPers can fall into (using the term "carebear" for non-PvPers? Yeah, probably, tradition be damned, ought to cut that out -- its not really endearing anyone to you, even if t is traditional), and the unfortunate bad behaviour of a small handful, coupled with PvP's not-stellar but at least serviceable design and the fact Champs is a "small town" MMO... those players lost to time and circumstance began getting fewer and fewer and fewer replacements...

..until only those small handful of "net deckers" are left.. and thus, the whole exercise stops being sustainable.

You may want to deny it, but that, my friends, is what played the biggest role in the sad state of affairs of PvP right now, at least that it seems from the end of one of those who has a moderate, non-devoted fondness for PvP and who stopped touching anything other than ZA after said behavior from above.

Deny it and call me an interloper and blame Cryptic exclusively a little more if you msut, but if PvP dies its because you lot let it by not trying hard enough to adjust, adapt, and survive.

Cheers, and all that.

How did players not adapt ? I would dearly love to see an example. Every change that has occurred here since the launch of the game has seen the PvP community adapt and overcome.

But removing rewards from one aspect of the game while simultaneously breaking the queuing system to an even greater deal than was already the case is a shot to the head. I am sorry but telling the guy who has been shot in the head that his death is his own fault for not adapting to the damage done by the .45 as it removed most of the contents of his skull, is more than a bit off.

If Cryptic were to remove the rewards from the PvE game, delete all costumes other than the default yellow and blue, and remove the ability to learn any powers beyond your starting options, would it be the player bases' fault that PvE subsequently died ?

For what its worth, those abusive PvP builds are not some sort of magic bullet. They are builds, much like any other. They are of course customized and refined for a given purpose, but its not as if they are some bizarre arcane secret that bypass the normal capacities of the system

You know what one of the most common failings of a PvEer entering a CO PvP match is ? He treats human players as if they were PvE NPCs. When his target does the unthinkable, you know like moving out of a maintained AoE or something evil like that, and doesnt just roll over and play dead like a henchman at the first sign of a player's hostile intentions, he complains about PvP uber builds. Of course, it couldnt be that maybe he needed to up his game a bit. The other guy had to be either cheating, using an exploit, or relying on broken power combinations. You know, the same exact combinations being used throughout the PvE game.

The real difference, beyond a couple of things that I completely agree should be changed (Crippling Challenge and Nailed to the Ground as implemented are just bad game design IMO), between the veteran PvPers and the people trying it out is player skill. The veteran has potentially hundreds of hours of practicing CO's brand of PvP while the new or casual player does not. But it is ludicrous, for a competitive endeavor, to ask one competitor to just not try. Telling someone that PvP's decline is his fault for not taking a fall, because the opponent's ego can't handle a loss, is way off.

The failing here, again, is Cryptic's, for a lack of an effective tier system. Level based tiers have their place, but a complex PvP system all but requires separation of the beginner from the veteran so that the beginner has the opportunity to learn to play (not meant in any derogatory manner, everyone has to L2P at some point).



This message brought to you by the letter F (the grade given to the implementation of PvP in CO) and a PvEer who considers himself a casual (at best) PvPer as well.

I'm just hearing a lot of defeatist rhetoric, is all. Lot of "the reason why PvP is dead" about some new powers, spec trees etc. tht thwart commonly accepted strategies...

But on to the other point -- you're not wrong, and as I said Cryptic is far from blameless.. but not completely to blame.

And it may sound ludicrous, but no one, outside tiny exceptions, likes to be stomped into the ground. Farming noobs has happened -- I've seen it, and as has been observed there's been some titanically bad sportsmanship win and lose n cases -- and that has an effect. CHampions is not the booming MMO we might want it to be, so attrtion is bad to begin with, but in ts case? Driving off rookies who try 1-2 times and do nothing but feed monster builds that make my tweaking and optimizing habits look mild in comparison -- coupled with low rewards.. have conspired to put PvP in its sad place now.

So yes, polishing your e-peen with curbstomps may feel good short-term, but taking a fall now and again or even just toying a bit, drawing it out and letting the noobs think, even if its not so, that they might have won, had a chance? If your pride s such you can't do that to help bring in new blood and keep them interested, you don't love the game as much as one claims. Eventually you're on top of the mountain -- and completely alone.

Is e-peen ride worth that?

I don't think so, but that's just me.

However yes, a "rookie" tier would be a godsend I think....

PvP is dead.

Don't try to blame the victim.

Small, brief statements are defensive and elusive.

Both make guilt look probable.

The answer is 3.

U Mad Bro?

*queues for any match other than BASH or ZA (since ZA has always been, by far, the most imbalanced map available, and now it's randomly dropping multiple player zombies into the mix in addition to those that suicide by default - not that there's anything wrong with that)*

*waits for an hour for a match to pop. it doesn't because of the new restrictions placed on the queue supposedly requiring 2 full teams to be queued for the match, which rarely, rarely ever happens, partly due to (imo) the monumentally stupid idea implemented that has the alerts and pvp matches sharing the same queue, among other things, like ppl saying 'screw it' and queue'n for bash*

*duels a whole bunch of times, despite not being fond of dueling, 'cause, hey, you take what you can get when you can't get it anywhere else*

*finally goes ahead and queues for bash as a last resort (extreme dislike for any map that forces you to respawn in an area exposed to other players; yet Another example of devs making things that they don't use). rly wishes for a UTC match or a SH, oh well, repeats the above steps with similar success between nemcons or other lairs here and there despite the repitition*

*contemplates the above...*

yea, not seeing where the "it's may fault" part figures in here.

hmm, perhaps I should review your posts again... hang on a sec... brb...

you know what? upon further review, you're sounding a lot like your sphincter is far more irritated than mine. I have a standard go-to for this; now, show us on the kent doll where the bad PvPr touched you.

I have to admit I find the gloating over the current state of PVP to be... well, a lot more petty than humorous. Maybe I'm being oversensitive, but as someone who really enjoyed PVP in this game, warts and all, what's been done to it saddens me. I'm not completely without a sense of humor, but to come into a PVP forum and dance on PVP's grave seems to me to be a bit tasteless.

In any case, count me among the mourners. I miss when I could log in and queue up for a match or two between having to do other things. The PVP community, in my experience, has always included some of the friendliest, most inclusive, downright fun people to play with of any MMO I've ever played, and I've played a lot of them. I'm not even a big-time PVPer, normally, but what always kept me coming back to this game over the years was how much fun I've had slapping around my fellow heroes, and occasionally just getting my butt ROFLstomped by said heroes.

I wouldn't really expect people to remember Gearbox, or Motherlode, or any of the bazillion other PVP alts that are now either sitting around in the Powerhouse contemplating PVE retcons or just sitting on the login screen twiddling their thumbs, but I'd like nothing better than for PVP to claw its way back out of its freshly-dug grave. It was a huge disappointment to me, after a couple months away from the game, to find that it's basically gone.

With alerts having taken the place of the PVP queues for those looking for a quicky, I wonder if anything can bring it back. I really think the lack of rewards has little to do with it -- I mean, how many people who PVP'd ever really cared about those? Certainly not the ones in the formerly-healthy lower tiers.

So, if it's Alerts that have killed off PVP, why not a PVP alert? I'm sure it's been suggested before, but I think it could give the system a real shot in the arm.