Developers: Ideas on how to Revitalize PvP

Like I referenced earlier, pve changes should absoutely not be mixed into pvp. That may be the utopic ideology, but you are right, it is not realistic. They don't have the time and an adequate number of staff members devoted to pvp in order to make weapon damage in pvp completely seperate from pve weapon damage adjustments. It is tolerable, but only tolerable and acceptable if they assure balance to the weapon combos.

They have a LOT of work to do to provide balance amongst the weapons. The weapon damage for almost all weapon combos in the game are completely disproportionate to eachother. The 5 different combos I mentioned in a previous post earlier today create an even larger and more corrupt gap when it comes to the fraction time/damage. For example, it would be laughable to say that one handeds 2 tap hold damage is around 3/5 the damage potential of 4 tap hold. Sure, I get it more risk = a higher reward. The reward in this case is 5/3 the damage. hypothetically, If 2 tap hold does ~1000 damage on average then 4 tap hold should do ~1667 damage on average. 1 tap hold does 1k damage, 4 tap hold should do 2.5k damage. That is once again using the proportional model.

1 tap hold - 2 inputs (2 clicks)
2 tap hold - 3 inputs (3 clicks)
3 tap hold - 4 inputs (4 clicks)
4 tap hold - 5 inputs (5 clicks)

1 tap hold should do exactly 1/2 the damage as 3 tap hold (using nothing but a proportional model).

Now to give players more of an incentive to risk... incorporate some steady growth into that bland proportional damage model. Let's say 1 tap hold has a hypothetical base damage of 2,000, proportionally 2 tap hold should do 3k damage since it requires just 1 extra input from the player, lets promote risk. Instead of 2 tap hold doing 3k damage allow it to do 3.25k damage (250 growth in damage to pay off for risk). The growth in damage between 2 tap hold and 3 tap hold should be 500 damage, and the growth between 3 tap hold and 4 tap should should be 750 damage, growth between 4 tap hold and 5 tap hold 1k damage, a very basic model.

If 1 tap hold did 1k damage, using this model, 3 tap hold would do 2000 damage + a growth of 250+500 = 2750 damage.
1 tap hold = 1k damage then a 4 tap hold would be 5/2(1000) + a growth of 250+500+750 = 4,000 damage.
1 tap hold = 1k damage then a 7 tap hold would be 8/2(1000) + a growth of 250 + 500 + 750 + 1000 + 1250 + 1500 = 9500 damage
^ Overpowered.... so revision below.

All 6 tap holds and 7 tap holds would be op, so to make a slight adjustment, just lower the variance between 5 tap hold and 6 tap hold to be a consistent 250 damage

Revised 6 tap hold and 7 tap hold.

1 tap hold = 1k damage then a 6 tap hold would be 7/2(1000) + a growth of 250 + 500 + 750 + 1000 + 250 = 6250 damage
1 tap hold = 1k damage then a 7 tap hold would be 8/2(1000) + a growth of 250 + 500 + 750 + 1000 + 250 + 250 = 6500 damage

Too make all weapon combos consistent with AM damage, keep scaling the 1 tap hold damage on all weapon sets until each seperate weapon can keep up with the damage of any overpowered AM. Bare in mind all weapons have a variance in speed, so they would have to do seperate tests and adjustments for each weapon. All combos would need to be reworked, and if this system that I presented above does not work, they need to devise a better system where combos of each weapon, are at the very least, somewhat proportionate, not extreme outliers that are not even comparable. You know something is wrong with the current system they have in place, just for example, many cases for other weapons as well, when martial arts 3 tap hold ALWAYS has a higher base damage and crit damage then martial arts 4 tap hold in arenas and open world. Too many inconsistencies among many weapon combos.

An effective health of only 60k would be the bare minimum after they adjusted all the weapon combos. Shields 7 tap has already been adjusted, and like I said earlier, I've been one shot numerous times by shields 7 tap hold. A crit by someone in another forum thread who had precision in the mid or lower 2ks (~2200-2500) with 137 skillpoints hit 36k with a shield against another player in arena with 7 tap hold. Just today, I've been one shot by shields 7 tap hold a few times. Someone hit a 19k on me a few days ago with 1handeds 4 tap hold. If people are going to be hitting that high, 75k-90k effective health would not be out of the question. However, facing a fire tank when that happens..... well, let's just say fire tanks health buff would need an adjustment lol .

I was thinking NPC arenas with legends would be cool for pvp were you q for matches and fight corresponding NPC AI groups. I know it's not true PvP. But it would give you practice in pvp arena tactics with your character and with players as a team. If u do it by yourself then you play an NPC in whatever role you are in. If you q for 4s with 2 dps, a healer, and a troll then you would face something like Black Adam as dps, Lex as dps, Circe as healer, and Sinestro as troll. The difficulty could be bummed up beyond your pvp cr.

So basically Legends PvE with roles?

Blink, what are your thoughts about how the developers should go about balancing weapon combos in pvp? What would be the best strategy from your perspective, interested in your thoughts on that subject, thanks.

No you would use your own char and face Legend AI opponents in corresponding roles in arenas because with the dwindling pvp population at least you will be able to have some type of competitive combat and practice in arenas.

I'm not Sabs, but I only see 3 options.

1. Nerf over performing combos to bring them in line with combos in general. While this would be an ideal quicker fix to the problem, the debs have made clear that they are balancing some powers in PvP around these hard hitting combos, so unless they figure out how to adjust them separately for PvE and PvP it is likely not going to happen.

2. Decrease Precision and/or weapon Dps from gear. While this does have the nice added side effect of nerfing HL and Rage it has two things keeping it from being ideal. One is Celestial. Unlike Rage and HL it has horrible Might based damage so nerfing Precision and/or weapon Dps too much would make Celestial Dps borderline useless. The second is that this doesn't balance weapons in relation to each other. Everyone would be forced to use the same few combos from the same few weapons to be competitive. Any new players that don't immediately figure this out will likely get lose motivation to do PvP.

3. Buff nonOP combos then institute a PvP nerf to weapons either through Precision and/or weapon decrease or something like the DoT nerf in arenas. While this is ideal in that it would, at least in theory, make more weapons viable while balancing the OP combos it has the downside of likely being horribly time and resource consuming. The amount of time needed for this would likely take another GU just for weapons to get right, and while I wouldn't be against it, it likely isn't in DCUO's business plan.

I'm hoping 2 is done as a quick fix, and then they start working on 3 and actually put as much time into fixing PvP as they did digging the hole for PvP in the first place.

So basically PvE where the enemy has roles. Doesn't the HoP II duo already have that?

I concur with this point the most.... they would probably save more time by making pve and pvp seperate, every change they make in pve seems to negatively impact pvp... it is a viscious circle. Once they make the change in pve they have to go off track and try to make changes/balance pvp after the pve changes make pvp gameplay all the more broke. It would be more efficient to make changes soely for pve and changes made exclusively for pvp, letting the two mix is just creating many more imbalances... and many more things on their list to fix, if they have hopes of ever rebalancing pvp... they need to treat it as a seperate entity, that is just the blunt truth, too many inconsistencies like Chun described in one of his previous posts on this thread, he is completely right. Future pve changes will only continue to hinder the stability of pvp further beyond the point of repair. Am's should of stayed in pve, Weapon mastery should of stayed in pve, and these recent weapon combo adjustments should of stayed in pve, they don't belong in pvp, at least this is my own honest opinion.

Balance should solely depend on Risk vs Reward. How hard is it something to pull something [Or it's vulnerabilities] vs it's reward [damage].
Damage should depend on how many points of vulnerabilities there are for that combo.
MA which typically only has one point of vulnerability should not hit the same as something like Dual Pistols or Two-Handed which have many points of vulnerabilities or How dual wield's Tap [4] Hold [2] deals less damage than Wolf's Tap [4] Hold [1].
I really do not understand how a weapon like staff which has a lot of vulnerabilities in its combo deals less damage than something like HB.

There is no arena like this... This is an idea I have because the pvp community is low and it would give away to team up with players and face a team of Legend NPC AI chars that have roles that or equal to what my group has. Kind of like the safehouse arena match has NPCs that you fight except these would have roles comparable to the team you are on.

Except that is fundamentally not PvP. PvP is Player versus player. Both sides need to consist of players, not one side of players and another of AIs. What you are describing is a PvE instance where bosses have role-like mechanics, not PvP.

Yea a death match or king of the hill is not pve in the formal since. But I've already said that this is for scrimmaging not traditional pvp more for combat purposes.

Except it is by definition not PvP. You could put the suggestion in General discussion as a suggestion for PvE, but it is by definition not PvP and thus is not relevant for a disuscion about PvP in the PvP section of the forums.

No what I am talking about might not be pvp but it would effect this community more than the pve community because it is a PvP simulator with Legend characters with roles as opponents for arenas so we can practice pvp or have some type of combat in the game when there is no pvp left... But I don't want to argue about it. It's just an idea I had for the pvp community not the pve community they already get enough as it is.

The devs would never realistically be able to get AIs to behave anything like a group of players. The amount of minimal programming to create such an instance would take far to many resources, and result in something that does nothing for helping PvP. It would be another PvE instance as frankly people would figure out the AIs fairly quickly and win 100% of the time. There's no real way of practicing using something that has an easily reached skill cap. There isn't a real demand for an AI practice instance, and frankly there's good reasons as to why.

Good morning,

I wanted to start off today talking about promotions to get more people to pvp. I will start off with one idea, and if you want to think of others, please feel free and reply, great to see feedback from you guys, many minds are always better than one mind .

So, my idea was simple, in fact, they already have this idea for pve I believe. Once you kick off the new season, or even before the new season it does not matter, please find ways to promote pvp to get more people to try out pvp, I'm sure there will be people who will find pvp enjoyable that have not tried it before, promotions would be a great way to pull in new faces into the pvp scene.

Weekend pvp promotions: Just like you guys sometimes have double loot chance for base drops in pve instances, I thought it would be nice to include it in pvp as well. I know you also have some days where you increase the promethium lockbox drop chance. For pvp, it would be nice to see weekends where you would see a double drop chance of pvp boxes, which was discussed earlier in the thread. The pvp boxes are dropped two ways: Through daily completion of each arenas/legends map and also rarely through pvp openworld, pvp minigames, and very seldomly for pvp arenas and legends matches.

Perhaps completing player bounties would increase your chance to receive the win by chance pvp boxes by 10-15%, in order to promote players to do open world bounties and arena bounties. Maybe completing pvp open world minigames also increases your chance to earn a box by 10-15%. I Would also like to see some variety in your weekend pvp promotions, maybe one weekend you increase the chance for pvp boxes to be dropped, another weekend you increase the valor award by 3/2 for each arena, or one weekend you increase the chance by 2x for base items to be dropped in arenas/legends, or maybe to promote some open world, give the players a good chance of earning exobit clusters or promo boxes through doing open world pvp and completing open world bounties.

Increasing the amount of Prestige earned through pvp:This is something quite essential that would increase the amount of players that actively participate in pvp. The amount of prestige earned through winning/losing arenas is extremely miniscule when compared to the amount of prestige earned through pve instances. There needs to be a lot more prestige earned per arena/legends win in dcuo.

Ways to earn prestige:

• Defeating final bosses in level 30+ PvE instances
• Completing PvP arenas/legends matches
• Placing decorations and amenities in your personal base
• Activating power cells
• Purchasing Mainframe traits
• Installing Generator Mods
• Donating items to the League in your League Hall

Prestige earned in pvp versus pve

PvE Instance Completion

• Solo – 100
• Duo – 125
• 4-Man – 300 <-- Nice!
• 8-Man - 400

PvP

• Wins - 7 <-- What?
• Losses - 3

The time spent/prestige earned when comparing pve to pvp: well they are currently not even comparable, the gap is tremendously large, anyone would realize that if they have ever ran an arena. Also, all pvp wins and losses are universally 7 prestige earned per win and 3 prestige earned per loss regardless of the player size of the arena? This needs a drastic improvement.

Arenas do vary in time spent within the arena, this is true, however, I'm pretty confident, at least from my own perception, that any arena 1v1 - 8v8 almost always lasts longer than a pve solo, there are only a few exceptions, the person you are fighting: 1. Does not know how to fight properly/ new to pvp, 2. gives up, 3. Never even battles you and lets you stand on the node the whole time. Pvp can be extremely tedious. I don't even understand the potential reasoning behind have prestige earned through pvp is as low as it is, it would have to be some excellent rationale to make those miniscule prestige earned through pvp numbers even make sense.

I would like some more opinions on this below from you guys, I would appreciate it. I believe a comfortable amount of prestige earned per pvp win should be at least 120, and a loss should be 60 prestige. You also have to calculate the absurdly long pvp matches that people fight when it is premade versus premade, or when each team has excellent healers/trolls on their team and it elongates the match to be so much longer. Average time spent in arena is certainly comparable to average time spent in solos for sure, I'm not sure if average time spent in arena is comparable to time spent in duos though, some pvers that pvp often would have to enlighten me about that as a response below, are they similar in time spent?

Had a random thought, pvp in the open world is dull almost nonexistent. What about legends open world combined with a leveling aspect. Maybe 15 levels per character. In this open world would have a coexistence of legends pve leveling through various missions separated by the big 3 subsections meta, magic and tech. Starting with the first mentor mission Grodd, Faust, Scarecrow, of course I can't remember the first 3 villain bosses lol. Then onto Queen Bee, Bane and Trigon/Raven maybe throw in the Brainiac side mission. Ending with Luthor, Robot Batman and Circe vise versa villains. Of course leveling your legends characters only has affect in the open world and legends pve not legends pvp. I don't know, it just gives open world something new and sounds interesting. Maybe have legends version of hiest and ring war? Legends regular, cc and ht bounties awarding loot boxes dropping styles consumables or Marks etc.

If people would enjoy that, I don't see why not, it is a good idea. Bring some diversity to the game. All the role players that wanted to level as a legend would have a choice to do that, neat concept for all them role players or legends enthusiasts. Perhaps the noob alerts you unlock as you are leveling could also be lowered in difficulty for players that are leveling via legends instead of their own character, pretty much like a legends pve instance during the leveling process. I'm sure it may attract enough people to be worth the effort of creating this legends leveling system, not sure how much of an effort it would take from the developers, but it's a good idea none the less .

I think so, I mean look how many characters we can attain either with marks or MP. Yes leveling will be the same for each tech, meta or magic legends but at least you'll have the thrill of open worlds battles during the outside lead up missions. Plus random bounties to group and and defeat with no fear of a villain keeping said bounty alive because legends have no heal capabilities. Then there opens the window for a spin off for leveling set for lanterns by maybe using current and past lantern content as missions. It just has a lot of potential and especially for roleplaying and legends enthusiasts. I like your addition of gorilla island etc as leveling in a mini version of lpve. I'd also like duo versions of lpve but that's for another place and time. Maybe have a warzone where players can go and do wager fights like dueling. DCUO can be more than a custom hero/villain game.