Work In Progress: What's Next for Arena PvP

I love it. Personally i think this all great for PvP.Here are my thoughts and a few specific things you asked for feedback on. My feedback is in Orange, devs quotes are White.

"All PvE gear will be disabled in PvP arenas."

Finally! Thank you so much.

"PvP damage consumables, buff consumables and trinkets remain up in the air. We're interested in knowing if you'd rather have these in PvP or not."

I think buff consumables should be removed entirely, and there should be PvP only trinkets that buff stats for us like the Central City Trinkets and Fortress of Solitude Trinkets. I also feel that Home Turf trinkets should be allowed as they add depth to PvP. since we all be better balanced against one another. I also feel Home Turf Turf upgrades should be obtainable with PvP marks as well, since you said that was coming at SOE Live 2013.

"If your stats don't meet minimum requirements for PvP participation, all your stats will be automatically set to the equivalent of entry level PvP gear."

Great idea, this is a perfect solution.

"Instead of role-specific gear sets, we will create one single set of role-agnostic PvP gear for each of the four PvP CR levels.

• This gear will have a balanced stat package.
• You will be able to choose mods to specialize your gear toward your preferred role.
• Mod availability will be on par with what's available in PvE.
• We're currently considering still allowing Home Turf Tactical mods. We'd like know what you think about this idea."

Great idea. I think you should continue to allow all Home Turf items in PvP, otherwise you will have another useless DLC like the Last Laugh. The best way to do this is to ensure that Home Turf upgrades can be purchased with both PvE AND PvP marks.

"We will remove the damage penalties for non-damage roles.

• We will consider buffing the damage of non-damage roles, probably to the equivalent of having "confidence buff" without having to attack your counter role."

This is a great idea. Something needs to be done to discourage everyone from playing the selfish DPS role and playing the support roles again. By making our damage on par or close to a DPS' damage, it will certainly discourage people from rolling into PvP a DPS all day everyday.

"We will remove role debuffs and confidence damage buffs.

• These are only necessary today as a way to break a fully functioning group engine to (sometimes) allow players to be KOd.
• This includes Tank immunity to Controller effects but Tanks retain their ability to cleanse regular Controller specific debuffing effects."

I am all for this as long as no one role benefits too much from these changes. For example, tanks who can solo a node in star labs because of their endless shields. Healers who never die because they can heal double the amount of damage coming in.


"We will look to adjust other role benefits as needed to make sure we maintain reasonable class deltas.

• For example, this could include toning down powerful mechanics such as Rage damage deference and other specific effects and mechanics that are too powerful in PvP specifically."

You guys need to take a hard look at Rage already. It is clearly the most superior set in terms of damage compared to any role. Rage is a NO risk HIGH reward set. The only one of its kind. When it comes to Rage, I think you guys should do what you did to Ice in the DPS role, make Rages healing almost nothing in the DPS role, and seriously look into re-balancing berserk and Outrage.

TL;DR

All in all, these are great changes. I think they will vastly improve PvP. Just removing PvE from PvP alone is a huge step forward, the rest is icing on the cake. I want to reiterate again, that Home Turf should be the only trinkets allowed in PvP, unless you create some PvP role boosting trinkets to go along with them as well.

I also strongly feel you guys should make Home Turf upgrades purchaseable with PvP marks as well, like you guys said you would last year at SOE Live 2013. This way there is no question that Home Turf is a part of both PvE and PvP, and that everyone has a way to earn those upgrades. I am a firm believer in that Home Turf adds depth AND strategy in PvP. I don't think it would be smart for you guys to remove Home Turf from PvP as it would make the Home Turf DLC much less attractive going forward. We don't want another Last Laugh.

Keep up the great work.

That's only one or two powers (depending on powerset). Unless they remove (or at least shorten) the cooldown timers on them it really makes us somewhat worthless for anything other than being the anti-troller.

I am excited about hearing that changes are coming to improve the PVP experience. That being I have some concerns that I would like to address in this feedback:

This I see as bad. There are combat tactics and PI's that are part of the combat experience overall, regardless of PVP or PVE sides. PI consumables being one, healing soders being another important and inventory-inclusive aspect (who wants to carry around stacks of mutually exclusive healing soders that won't work for half of your gaming experience?), and Home Turf Mainframe trinkets are already disallowed in Death Match arenas- removing these entirely from PVP play means you're essentially removing an entire DLC from PVP play. This is a bad idea.

This is a must-have. The Tactical Mods brought a fun sense of VARIETY back to PVPing. This holds especially true for those who chose deliberately NOT to play a cookie-cutter top-tier powerset loadout. I'm going to be blunt on this one, there are a handful of power-build permutations that purely dominate everything else out-of-the-box. The only way to play something hobby-flavored is through the use of the extra options provided outside of the starting box. If you remove these Mods, you're essentially condemning everyone who doesn't play top-tier powers and rotations to lose forever against an equally skilled, equally geared opponent. As Spytle and Liberty have both said that the Top-Tier pyramid is not going away, there's no getting around this. Creativity through the variety of options NEEDS to continue as a viable choice.

Migraine brings up a important point. If you remove the role debuffs, the movement debuffs, and debuff grenades, you've essentially made Controllers the uber-role they used to be in PVP, which was the SUCK period that I never want to see a return to. Trollers have no damage penalties, they can debuff everything (damage, healing, power, you name it), they CC better than tanks do, they have the best shields, and they regen power. Add that to the common practice of Trollers now wearing DPS armor (or post-revision as you illustrated- wearing universal armor modded for pure damage) and guess what? IT's a throwback to old-school imbalance again.

I for one am going to state I HATED the way PVP was managed Pre-Seasonal Revisions, particularly in the days just before Last Laugh and Home Turf. It was the most elitist, newb-unfriendly, casual-unfriendly, and broken method of PVP I've ever played ...and I have been into MMORPG's since 1995.

People have rose-colored glasses, and so they only remember the good things about the past. I'm not against trying to make the PVP experience better, but I do caution about thinking that the past was better just because of hazy nostalgia. I like change when it's well-thought-out and doesn't just listen to a nonrepresentational small-sample like the hard-core PVP-ers. I like PVP but I am a casual PVP-er and I am a casual player. The old grind and unbridgeable gaps of the old armor tiers was stupid and discouraged new blood from trying PVP. The current Seasonal approach is the BEST thing to have come about, and in the changes to come, it shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater.

That being said, kudos on finally making the split and disabling PVE armor and weapons from PVP. That was badly needed.

Trying to give the support roles more ability to stand-alone is something I applaud, as even when I play PVP I always make the choice to play support and not DPS, which handicaps me in most any 1v1, or even 2v2 match. I hope you can figure out how to do this however without emphasizing the damage-dealing philosophy even more though.

I dunno,. this disturbs me. It sounds like Support Classes are essentially second class citizens in this vision you're painting. We'll 'contribute' by doing our role, we'll still suck at doing damage cause we're not DPS, and we'll die even easier than before cause we won't have any boosts for being a support player at all.

This does not sound attractive to me at all.

I agree with this statement so much. The new vision for tanks in this revamp is somewhat lackluster. I want more meaningful change for support roles. In addition to removing the damage penalties, I feel that you should allow support roles to benefit from the Damage Percent Boosts just like DPS do. Then we'll see more Support players, instead of the 50-1 ratio that we're currently sitting at.

So you think it is O.K. for a Healer or a Tank to hit just as hard as a DPS does........... You see absolutely nothing wrong with something like that?

Awesome. Thanks for the quick answer!

Where does all our existing pvp gear go? Does it turn unusable? does its stats ( and roles ) get reset?

It all sounds lovely. It will be nice to be more than a **** dps with some shields in troll role. Breakout immunities are obnoxious though. Immunities should be restricted to powers and trinkets only. Also, casting an immunity power or trinket should negate the BB and interrupt windows, it'd be nice to use them as a preemptive measure instead of a reactive one.

I'm more concerned with the actual realities of role-representation in a practical sense. Right now, you can play for five hours in Arena and never see a tank. It's marginally better when encountering healers. The only roles you see a LOT of is trollers and DPS.

The Devs vision is based on an idea world that doesn't practically exist, where there are proportional numbers of support players to damage players; but in the real world, a tank won't be there to provide cleanses. A healer may or may not be there and will still be the focus-fire target the moment the timer counts down.

Now that support roles' previous survivability boosts are being removed, a marginal increase in damage dealt is not going to see any increase at all in support roles being played, I predict in fact the exact opposite. The ONLY way to bring back balanced groups of support roles is to make the DPS role redundant. That *will* make it more attractive to play support.

So yes, in answer to your question, I see no problem with Tanks or Healers hitting every bit as hard as a DPS. It's still faced with the choice of economy of actions. A support player can damage, or he can heal/cleanse/regen. The amount of time he has to do either is exactly the same. But now this way, the support player is not PENALIZED for choosing to play team-support.

I like these changes and all, but I gotta ask, will any of these necessities spill over to PvE?

I'm not trying to derail your thread in anyway, but these changes are a much needed adjustment to PvE as well.
From your example of a well oiled machine, you are simplifying the roles to where they are essentially the same, but with focus towards 1/4th of the group makeup. This is great and definitely an amazing aspect to PvP. (Though I'm not a fan of the consumables changes. Can't we just have a permanent soder, like legends?)

This same issues are much needed in PvE. Where you aren't simply ignoring a class because they aren't needed.

Currently in PvP:
Controllers are needed for debufs, power feed, and healer harassment.
Healers are needed to stay alive and attack tanks.
DPS are need to kill.
Tanks aren't really needed other than nodes and harass controllers. (DPS geared tanks...)

But there is a balance, though more towards the DPS centric part, it has a balance.

Currently in PvE:
You only need one healer.
You don't need a tank unless you are in a raid, then one.
You need TONS of power, because of the power consumption increase. So 2-3 trolls are required, but there is nothing to crowd control or debuf. As neither of those aspects of the class scale with content or useful.
But you can ALWAYS use a DPS.

This creates a DPS centric game, where in your model of PvP is actually a better choice, since it actually evens the playing field, but in PvE, the holy group engine breaks. The roles are abused and the only class that benefits from anything is DPS.

Edit: There was a good old days for PvE players too that ended with T3. PvE players want to have this kind of changes too.

Will a controllers debuff capacity be scaled to any stats? I'm all for a more tactical approach with cross class power combos and pi's. It might be too much to ask to have the control role manage the whole of the debilitation mechanic by allowing only their debuffs and pi's to give a greater magnitude to non troll specific pi's.

I would suggest that PVP consumables be limited to vendor purchased or as bonus (for the DLC 4 boxes) drops. As for the purchase marks, I think that this would be a good option for the extra MoL (in addition to MoV) that are built up by so many players after they acquire the legends toons that they want.

Regarding the second question, I would like to see the ability to purchase different types advantageous to specific PIs for your, or your partner's, power set(s).

So troll now will be able to do more damage than they already can. All dps's are getting is damage boost. Now most groups will be just running 2 trolls and tank and healer

Awesome, and good to know! Thank you

This is excellent news. PLEASE exclude Tactical Mods from PvP as well, though. (Enough with the finisher spam everywhere.)

Some of my friends spend most of their time in open world, PvPing there, and have expressed concerns that this may change things there for worse. Have you considered open world PvP when coming up with these changes?

Still, I look forward to these changes.

I don't really see any reason to not include all elements of HT in PvP. Everyone has the option to access them and it's a major part of the HT DLC content that was paid for. Just like access to extra PvP maps was part of the Last Laugh DLC and was taken away from us when Seasons began with the map rotation system that only benefits low population servers which isn't needed on USPS.

I like the idea of balancing things out and leaving it up to mods for role specific stats along with the removal of PvE trinkets and colas. Given that PCR is going to be a factor can we assume that it's going to be set up a little more like PvE in relation to queueing, thus eliminating one of the major complaints of a PCR86 group going against a PCR90 group? Will this affect player bounties in any way to, perhaps, reduce the amount of open world ganking? Would a retooling of the scoreboard algorithm ever be considered to give the ability to top the board to all roles, further evening out the reason to play support roles?

This sounds great and all, but you haven't addressed a large source of PVP headaches: the lag. The counter mechanics are too prone to latency issues, causing immunities when they aren't deserved.

Also, the good old days of PVP were fast. The inability to breakout (from being countered or R1 not working) on a regular basis slows combat down.

Can you guys, please keep the home turf mods, and pvp consumables? They help alot in scrimmages, with power interactions and stuff. But i really dont know, if this may happen with the pvp part i read, i might quit pvping..

The lag and slower mechanics are definitely one part... things like not being taken out of combat mode once all enemies have been cleared too.