Developers: Ideas on how to Revitalize PvP

Again, it was because they tried to do it through replay badges. I am sure it counts as a sin to be creative in the marketing department to the Developers.
"Thou shalt only use replay badges as monetizezation"

Still, its hard to experiment on something thats already gone so poorly before. Its a hard gamble to take as it either takes hold to an already small population, or it backfires again and they're left with an even smaller population.

There are easier ways to market something then screwing over the entire population.
Add in PvP reward boxes which you can earn once a day, and make it so you can unlock them through replay badges. You can still earn regular marks without a lockout. The boxes could simply have something like styles, exobits or extra marks.
It's simple and easy to implement and goes for the idea of "Replay badges for everything!".

PvP needs to be re-evaluated.

Give up on Balancing PvP Gear versus PvE Gear for Open World
They pretty much already did, however stop attempting to make PvP Gear equivalent to PvE Gear. The power-creep is too high. PvE Gear is designed to be powerful for Boss Killing. Players are doing 30,000+ damage. It's no longer feasible to balance that for PvP.

No More Tiers or CR
Just sell one full set of standard PvP Gear for $1500. Now everyone can get gear, go into Arenas, and play. Boost Gear if you have to, but let the player know that the gear is temporary. I want gear to be forever consistent. It's always a shock when 4000 damage is amazing, now I'm getting wrecked by a 11k dual wield combo.

I don't want new players to go into PvP Arenas and think they're losing only based on "combat rating." I want them to believe it's just a skill-based loss and they can eventually get better.

Sell Mods as Incentives to Keep Playing
Instead of going through Tiers of Gear, have new vendors selling specific Mods. For example, one Vendors sells only "Healer Mods" which would boost your standard gear's stats to what would be "Healer Gear." Another Vendor has "Might DPS Mods" and "Precision DPS Mods."

Make sure the Mods are inexpensive enough to buy, just so players can mix/max if they want. If there really has to be some sort of superiority complex for paying players, then have the Mods in Tiers (but not a lot of tiers) or "rare" mods that drop for rewards.

If you want, buy another set of Standard Gear and mod that, so you can use your armory to switch back and forth. Ideally, people like the idea of "modding" their characters to their liking, at least I do. Players are different, powersets are different, they should be able to mod their gear to how they play.

I'd be open to bringing some of the HT-type mods back too, as long as they don't break the combat-mechanics like they used to.

Vendors for PvP Styles
We really don't need new armor, just the styles. So sell them separately.

Fully Convert PvP Open World to Only PvP Gear
Give up on the idea that new players are ever going to be in PvP Open World to do Quests. Give up on the idea that PvP Gear will ever be as dominating as PvE Gear in a short fight.

Make PvP Open World just a place where everyone can easily join and just beat the crap out of each other. Make it a giant Joker's Funhouse that presents drop from the skies every once in a while. Just do something different with it.
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PvP needs consistency. It also needs new players believing they aren't going to be blasted the first time they play against a four-year Veteran with Max-Gear, Mods, and SP.

You keep the gear/mods at consistent numbers, it'll make it slightly easier to balance. Then concentrate on incentives (rare styles, rewards) to keep players in Arenas.

Season 3's failures can be attributed to a lot of things, but mostly because it's been inconsistent. A lot of changes happened at first: No HT, Boosted Gear, all maps released. Then a slew of weapon and powerset imbalances: WM-range too powerful, Gadgets had some OP AM, then another powerset's AM was OP, then Nature's Dog was OP. Add the Crowd Control problems to the mix, it's no surprise PvP was losing population.

Geez, it was just an idea, not something to be taken too seriously without properly exploring other avenues.

Chun,

I would like to commend you for all that feedback you provided in your most recent post, you demonstrate thinking outside of the box, a view from a totally different vantage point, it was unique, thank you. I would like to maybe add on to the whole mod based concept that you had devised, it is rather unique.

So, instead of a new season with new gear, the new season would include new styles + new mods instead of new styles + new gear. Erase the whole equalizing pvp gear with pve gear model, admitingly, after I saw your post, I admire this idea quite a bit.

Could you elaborate further about this idea? Instead of tiers of gear, their would be tiers of mods to progress through? If so, would the stat disparity between tiers of mods grow exponentially as you reach higher tiers of mods? Would the disparity in general cause a noticeable difference in performance whether it would be healing more, restoring power better, dpsing better etc. In other words, would veterans and people who put in more time and effort into pvp be rewarded by performing much better than someone who has only pvped for 2 or 3 days?

Maybe the rare mods you mentioned would have a slot for 2 other mods or an extra mod and a unique affinity bonus. There should certainly be tiers of mods that are accessible to universally everyone f2p-p2p. Becoming more powerful through progression and effort feels so satisfying, would dislike to see that trend dissipate. I would certainly like to perform better/ have superior stats in comparison to someone who has only been pvping for a couple of days. With effort comes great rewards. It would also be nice to be more distinctive stat wise than other people, more variety in builds always makes the game more enjoyable.

You are absolutely correct, completely slice the connection between pve and pvp, they should have never implemented changes to mechanics/powers that were meant for pve into pvp in the first place. I would like to see them make pvp and pve two seperate entities where pve buffs/debuffs stay completely away from pvp, Donald trump needs to build a wall between pve and pvp and reassure us with his stellar negotiation skills that the two permanently have seperate updates and adjustments.

The "basic arena pvp gear" you speak of, before it is installed into the game, it would need an astronomical adjustment to health and tougness, tired of one counter, one am, one 4 tap hold, 6 tap hold, or 7 tap hold be the deciding factor of a match. Not sure how you guys feel about this, but I also believe they should rid the stat caps in arena if they do devise a whole new set for pvp that has no correlation with the current pvp armor that we have now. Lower that absurd weapon damage that we have on the current pvp gear, increase toughness and health by a large margin, and rid stat caps to provide greater diversity + superior performance for those that have spent years accumulating high increments of skillpoints.

-Applaud- Yes sir, well written.

Whether or not they choose to monetize pvp or not, right now its a ghost town. If it stays this way there will be no population. If they add new MP map packs and it fails there will be no population. But if they add map packs to MP and they are well designed and they flourish then now they can start making bigger better steps to really improving pvp in a whole. Risk vs reward they been bs'n us with for months during these power revamps and buffs.

For the most part, DCUO-players are used to progression = better stats. In PvE, better stats is essential to proceed to the next mission, and hopefully it will afford an actual challenge.

PvP, I believe, should have a different meta-game or philosophy. Your challenge should be based on your opponents' skills, experience, and teamwork. It shouldn't be based on "I have more stuff than you."

As far as the Standard PvP Gear + Mods go, I would prefer the Mods not be unrealistically more powerful, but have a sense of Risk+Reward. For example, in FPS games, weapons are relatively balanced by ease-of-use and damage-per-second: I could just pray-and-spray 20 bullets with an assault rifle vs. be accurate with a sniper rifle headshot and have a long reload.

So you have Mods for every piece of armor/weapon, like right now for White Mods. Categorize the mods into specific Roles (DPS Precision, DPS-Might, Tank, Healer, Controller). A full set of Role Mods would be like the Role Specific Gear we used to have: boosting particular stats and decreasing other stats. That creates the Risk+Reward. Mix and match Role Mods depending on how you like to play (role, powerset, tactics), you can basically create a unique character even though most likely there will be FOTM-Modding. Sell these mods from Vendors.

Have Rare Mods that drop as rewards that give very specific stat boost/decreases, or Home Turf-like bonuses. Or somehow incorporate R&D by combining Mods to make them more powerful, something I liked from the Warframe game. That gives the incentive to keep playing Arenas if players want to experiment with different Mod setups.

All this really settles is an imbalanced gear-progression and that sense of "It's not fair a T4 beat my T1." or "It's not fair the T1 outskilled my T4." The gear is the same, the way everyone mods it can be good or bad depending how they play.
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This might solve getting more players into PvP, but it doesn't particularly solve keeping them in PvP. That, I believe, comes with more networking. People stay in the game because they have friends that are still in the game. Players created their own tournaments because they were in leagues/teams willing to challenge other leagues/teams [make League Halls an 8v8 Map]. There's something really wrong when HQs and Open Worlds are almost empty so new willing PvPers don't get a chance to meet/train with veteran PvPers.

Incentive to play should not be based on tangible rewards alone. PvP is competition, and that relies on the will to win, recognized as a winner, and hopefully remain one.

Thank you for responding so quickly Chun, I like this concept the most out of your previous thread, the whole thread was full of articulate ideas, but this specifc portion of the thread sparked my interest the most. The idea with the R&D combination of mods to make them more potent is exciting and different. Great work today Chun, I may have more to add tommorow.

P.S - another highlight was the networking component of your response, so true.
I'm logging for the night but great progress today everyone, tons of great feedback today, thank you.

Revitalize aye? How about fix HL, Nature and CATWOMAN FIRST and FOREMOST. It's ridiculous... now all you see is a bunch of pugs running around with CW, spamming tap, hold>whiplash for what seems to be more powerful than tapx4 hold, MA. It's the most annoying thing in legends PvP. You would think the reason I cut my hours is because of the server lag, the Queue times, the lack of new Legends characters, and the lack of attention to PvP in general. But no... it's Catwoman, every time I log on and see a CW, it makes happy that I cut my hours to this game significantly. In fact, time for some more Agar.io... at least you don't have to wait 10-15 minutes for Queues.

Man if you are getting beat by a character using a move that has 2 vunerabilies I don't even know what to say. I could understand if you got hit by the 243 combo but a tap hold whip?

I'm just saying it does excess damage than it should... like Batmans tap, hold> power, isn't nearly as effective as Cat's. And with Cat's you get that "Kneel before Zod", effect. On top of that, her BB hits way too hard, knocks back, and most times when you break out to lunge the Cat, it's already too late . She also has that unnecessary, god awful shield... like WTF, what is a none-super powered HUMAN doing with what looks like a meta-magic shield . And the server lag isn't making it any easier to beat a cat...pug or not. Most of my counters are ignored anyway. I have noticed when I first lunge a cat when she BBs it does nothing most of the time, happens even if she combos to her second BB move, and it's only if she goes into the third that it works. Log on once in a while and you'll see what I mean.

Yea they need to lower the damage buff they gave Modified Martial Arts. Luckily only 2 Legends were affected by it.

I'm more concerned about someone tapping one to break out of COUNTERS than someone spamming bb's and tap hold > whiplash.

At least whip is blockable and isn't usable while controlled. Catwoman is more op the more skill you have with her. Shazam and Shazam 2.0, Luthor, skill doesn't matter. Why people single out Catwoman is beyond me.

And I read that last bit. Catwoman is Blink's favorite Legend and one of my faves, and you know that I log in from time to time. Noob Catwomen aren't much of a threat.

Hello everyone,

Today, I look forward to compiling a complete list of weapon combos that are dealing far too much damage and are an issue/outlier in comparison to other weapon combos. Personally, I believe that the more efficient route would be to nerf the small list of weapon combos that are overpowered and nerf AM damage then it would be to sustain AM damage and rebalance many other weapon combos to be in line with the current weapon combos that are overpowered. Besides, we need AM's and some of these weapon combos to be dealing less damage, not feeding fuel to the fire by not touching broken AM's and strengthening other weapon combinations to keep up with the broken AM's. I know for a fact I will be missing some combinations, so, if anyone is confident and you know I missed a combo that is obviously overpowered, I will add it to the list.

1. Handspring kick (shield)
2. Downward Smash (staff)
3. Dual flurry (Dual Wield)
4. Smoke bomb (martial arts)
5. Flip slash (One Handed)

*Very Important Issue In arenas/open world that needs Managed quickly*: This happens 100% of the time for Dual flurry and smoke bomb, I have not personally tested the other 3 combinations, but I imagine they are bugged too because I have been hit 14k through block with flip slash and one shot while blocking with handspring kick in arena and open world. *Block is not mitigating any of the damage from these combos, you still get the block counter, but the damage completely ignores the mitigating effects of block.* This issue is isolated to only open world and arenas, these moves are being completely mitigated by block in legends matches.

Most of the combos you mentioned were just buffed upwards in order to balance out PVE powers like Sorcery, where you have Fury out so the WM crit attacks aren't the preferred ones. Sore's big tread on Tunso testing has gone over the whole thing in detail. I'd handicap this game's future at almost zero chance that will be reverted just to improve PvP. And since it's pretty clear now that PvP weapon damage is not separate from the PvE damage the way damage from powers is different in the two modes, we're stuck with the balance of weapon damage to AM damage these big hitters deliver.

Once you accept that high weapon and AM damage numbers are not going anywhere, the most efficient fix for the one-bang fights it has created is to scale Toughness and/or health upward until they aren't anymore. If the big DW attack is going to do 16K and I can take 30K from the strongest AM attacks, I'd say effective health needs to be at least 60K in the arenas.

If anything, the way to make things more fair for PvP is to then buff shorter combos to compete better. The Tunso testing uses things like Doom Spin as the 2H attack to optimize around. That's clearly not oriented at the attacks you can really pull off in a PvP match against good players. If the damage from its shorter combos went up though, you could make weapons stronger for PvP while not impacting the PvE results at all. Brawling makes for a good example here. Haymaker is the PvE attack they're balancing around. Using Backfist as the reference for PvP balance would orient on an attack you can actually pull off. As long as it didn't get stronger than Haymaker, that wouldn't impact the broader PvE balance work.

1)new set of gear with increased health/toughness
2)extend titles to pvp
3)crossplay
I dont think DBG is capable or willing to do anything else than 1) and 2).
3) will be needed to keep the game going for PC-players in the long run anyways and would help with queue-times and groups.

Another idea regarding monetization/incentive to participate im not too sure about could be to make gear that offers a very!!! slight advantage in stats droppable from pvp with a low chance. Make said gear only dropable as a sub-perk or some kind of DLC- pass (for premiums per season/cycle). Attach a really desirable unique skin to it.

Still no green name.

Okay so maybe you guys didn't get my point. It's not just the tap, hold>whiplash, and her BBs. I mean yea they do other stuff, but its just those in particular gets on my nerves, was just pointing out how absurd it is. I've stopped using her completely because I find it an advantage to less experienced players, and quite often they leave the match after the first round because of how easy it is to KO any other legend with her. I really want to use cat but she's just a mess right about now.

I know that Shazam and Shazam 2.0 are peoples worst nightmares. But to me... handling a Shazam(2.0) is way easier than a cat, probably because his weapon is standard brawling and does no extra damage, and most times when inexperienced players click the immunity power, they lunge back at you, so two-way free immunity. Experienced players might just JC it altogether to avoid getting off the node and having to walk back.

So I say fix cat, then the twins soon after.

@ Chungweishan
I really like the idea of the paid gear. I think they should have role specific gear because it will generate more revenue into pvp and give the devs a reason to give it the attention that it so desperately needs. But players will still need an insensitive to play so the mods through marks is a good idea as well, along with the drop boxes of rare mods, add a few maps, and maybe that can bring back some of the pvp glory that once was.