There have, no doubt, been a number of topics decrying player versus player combat in Champion Online, a recurring theme likely -- and arguably for a reason (or a few, as I will attempt to argue). So as not to beguile you, this is one of those topics. But I am not here to denounce it entirely; PvP is indeed what keeps drawing me back in, and a lot of the time it succeeds in being fun. I want it to succeed in that more often, and for more people.

I cannot help, however, noticing the apparent and often frustration inducing shortcomings that plague the "Hero Games", and I think it would be in all our interests if some of them were given attention so that more people would come to enjoy PvP instead of accepting it as the sort of red-headed stepchild of an otherwise nice family.

A lot of people seem to think, indeed, that CO is a brilliantly fun universe otherwise but for certain reasons does not translate well into pitting these heroic creations of ours against eachother. The underlying reasoning, mostly, is that the sheer adaptability of freeform makes it inherently impossible to balance -- and to some extent this is absolutely true. However there are a few faults with this line of reasoning that, I think, merit closer examination:

1. Difficult does not equal impossible

A lot of times when something appears complicated or difficult, people proclaim it to be impossible. That is indeed an easy mistake to make, especially if one expends little time to understand the problem in question and the factors related. It may well be that something is impossible, but this conclusion cannot be drawn from only the apparent difficulty faced.

The problem with proclaiming balancing freeform impossible is twofold: one, it is a surrender -- like a mountain climber looking at the mountain saying that thing looks so high I'm not even gonna try; two, it makes the assumption that there can only be improvement through a complete and perfect solution and this, in my opinion, is the biggest problem and brings us to the second point:

2. Progress is gradual

Perfect balance is surely a myth that will never be achieved. But it should not be held before our eyes as a phantom that eludes us, compelling us to anemy. We should, instead, recognize that balance is a gradual scale -- that is, while it is never perfect, we can have situations that are more balanced and situations that are less balanced.

To put it in simpler terms, you can't make your Prius into a Ferrari. But that doesn't mean you can't switch parts that are broken or install upgrades, making it a better Prius.

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While freeform no doubt provides ample ways of combining skills, those ways are finite. And curiously, it's the same skills and synergies between skills that seem to pop up time and again. Sometimes these individual skills are at fault (like Dragon's Wrath), sometimes it's synergies that defy the basic principle of strengths and weaknesses. We'll get to that, but first let's turn out attention to something else.

PvP is not all about builds

Where discussion is usually focused on specific skills and builds, other factors that matter are easily given less attention (or blame). For anyone trying out PvP they become quickly apparent, however. These are just as important as the skills are, for obvious reasons.

Team balance is perhaps the most important system of balance there is. Sadly, it doesn't do its job very well. For this reason, it's a wild factor that can create both incredibly inbalanced situations as well as veil other balance issues through "fixing it with the numbers" (although this happens less often).

I can appreciate the difficulty of creating a good team balancing system, but the end result is what we all see (and that difficulty should, of course, never be an excuse not to improve it). The simplest problem, obviously, is uneven teams which is a problem first created by the system and amplified by players reacting to the situation by leaving. Laying blame on the players is pointless: no amount of pleading will change this behaviour.

One very simple factor in this process is how the scoreboard / player list updates (or rather doesn't). A team of 5 may, for instance, believe they are fighting a team of 6 whereas in reality it's a team of 2 but 4 people have left over the course of the match (this is a rather common occurrence in Hero Games). That is something I believe even without any programming expertise I can claim should take little to address.

The other main problem with the balancing system is its complete inability to switch people from one team to the other to balance them. A process like that which automatically checks once every 60 seconds, for instance, would improve the situation immensely.

A third problem that is sometimes very disruptive is how premade groups can join one side and completely unbalance the teams ot only through their coordination but also simply the numbers. There was an instance this morning where it was 2v1 at first and then the 1 got a premade of 4 turning it into a 2v5. The fix literally made things worse in this case.

Speaking of the other problem with premades, numerical balance is obviously not enough to guarantee actual balance. Imagine you had 1, 2 and 3 cent coins in a jar (ignoring the fact that 3 cent coins don't really exist, as far as I know anyway) and you randomly draw coins from that jar and put them into two piles with an equal amount on each. Tally the amount of cents you have on each pile and they are obviously rarely equal. This is just to demonstrate that some builds are more powerful than others, and not only in a vacuum but in a rock-paper-scissory way. We'll get to that in a bit.

How could the balance of builds be evaluated by the system, though? The simple answer is, it can't. A better question is, could it do a better job than it currently is doing? To that the answer is: quite possibly. Much as the power of builds cannot be accurately measured, there is one simple measure that provides some direction: the scores. Kills, deaths and the ratio can be used to determine which players are more powerful. And, like the scrambling system in online shooters such as Team Fortress 2, it would serve balance to have something similar in CO. As long as that system was automatic, it would fix the problem with premades. You could then add a separate queue for purely premades to accommodate that need to fight with friends (you just couldn't ruin it for others in the process any longer; no flame intended!).

Twin Peaks

The balance in CO is one of many peaks: there are several ways to build a strong tank, a strong offense or to fill a niche function through support, control etc. Having many effective ways of doing things is overall a good system that fits well into a game like CO that empowers the player as a superhero. It's a system that can achieve reasonable balance, so long as the peaks are roughly equivalent.

The tiers behave somewhat differently in this regard. I find that Tier 2 (11-20) has a fairly good spread of peaks because the low number of skills available demand specialization to achieve effectiveness. Tier 3 begins to fall apart in this respect because where people had clear strengths and weaknesses in their builds, this is where they plug those weaknesses and become versatile and free of the balancing constraints.

And some builds can do this better than others, which becomes painfully evident at Tier 4 where you can have your cake and eat it, too (by the way, what would be the point of having a cake and not eating it, anyway?) And where T3 is the domain of very resilient superdamagers against which more specialized builds can neither tank the damage nor outdamage through the resilience to overcome, T4 is the domain of the invincitanks that beat on eachother for eternity (but occasionally someone dies, which makes it a little more balanced I guess)

Too much versatility allows this to happen. Singular skills that are too useful as one-offs in any build, synergies that fill your weaknesses and then some. Freedom and versatility is good, don't get me wrong, but unbalanced peaks (Iif you will) will only pigeonhole us into the same builds to adapt.

There's more to be said (so part 2 might follow) but for now, I need a shower and some coffee so thanks for taking the time and interest. I'm writing this because I care and want the game to prosper, to keep drawing me back in and not pushing me out whenever I do because there are many things it does so well and PVE alone cannot sustain my interest (not because the PVE isn't great, but because that's just not why I enjoy playing).

//Shmn

I saw the thread title, and came here expecting a "A PvP mode where we play our Nemeses" suggestion.

...I cannot see anything in this thread that have anything significant to do with the title name.

Did you accidentally write a different thread title?

I believe the point is that, if you eat your cake, you no longer have it. Maybe it was a pretty cake.

I agree the queues need fixing.

I had a thought on connecting the title to the content but I forgot what it was. I added a subtitle of kinds to make it a little clearer now. If it gave you ideas, then it partly did its job I guess :)

Good read. Nothing I really deem incorrect enough to argue with.

Hope part two comes. I want to change my mind about sentence #1 :P

I am torn on the premade que thing. On one hand, people should be able to team with their friends and have fun in PvP maps. On the other, when premades totaly dominate a map all night long, over and over, well. It just gets ridiculous and frustrating for everyone else. There has to be a middle ground somewhere. Seperate que for premades or the option to que for 'random' rolled matches only?? Either way I am sure it is low on the dev totem pole, so it is what it is.

How about a "determination" buff for PUG groups if a premade is present?