Devs honestly what is your vision for pvp?

Please, on bended knee, no more feats in PvP. As you said here the majority of us don't PvP and you'll only make us "feel" like you're forcing us to do something we don't like. TY

Having a teired progression in pvp is really bad and it turns it into a big grind fest especially when multiple pieces cost 5k marks. Having just one tier of gear and multiple styles like back when we had checkmate operative and checkmate informative where these were 2 different top tier gear sets that had the same stats but looked different.

People complained about not being able to compete before season 3 hit and you guys added buffing and clamping which basically put a temporary bandage over a wound and made things worse. If there was just one tier of gear everyone could compete from the get go and there would be no need for buffs and clamps

Very casual PVP'er here....never tried b4 season 1

Season 1, I loved - would get weekly boxes in everything, on many toons..and wait for next week. Would play maps I didn't like just to make sure I got those boxes.

Season 2 + no lockouts...hmmm all premade, all day long...got better things to do....

Your posted made me log in to answer.

With several friends we started some months ago a strictly PVP league named Penthouse. This small project started with an amazing Main team, looking to train people for competitive scrims. Like a pvp school. We have done this back our HOB league days, and did it now, helping along the way several other leagues to train.

Almost threw the towel several times, but we need to understand the factors that affect the pvp gameplay experience.

#1.- External Factors. Sadly, most of the pvp community just rather complain than giving a solid feedback, or try to learn. This, you can just not control it. Yet you can motivate it for good. This is a direct result of #2.

#2.- This one is directly attached to you, devs as a team. And is everything that affects the external factors.

1st and foremost, i would say the balance among weapons and powersets are a must. I can pose myself as an example for it. Some time ago, we lost several 5s matches, once new AMs were introduced in game. We weren´t able to keep up. It was just no longer enough with WM. To the point i switched my always fire char, finally, to Nature.

And just for the record, this was not to get an edge, but just to fight on even terms. You have no clue how i would like to go back to fire and stay competitive dpsing with it. Now, that is just out of the equation. Same happens to other powersets in pvp (earth, etc).

While the result was positive for us, we are no longer entitled to "Play our way". Because the disparity between powersets, particularly in pvp, is the reason why people who like pvp, rather stay away from arenas. (Not the case of my league btw, but i see this happening).

Same case with ranged attacks. Several pvpers have asked to balance this.

This is why, when i see people saying no one q´s at least in USPC, no wonder why you can see lots of people in open world but no one motivated to put a team together and compete.

Secondly, i´ll use an analogy to express myself. English is not my 1st language, so i apologize in advance if the way i type feels messy.

Let´s say there is this little kid, that likes to play football. Is what he wants to do, and is excited about it. He doesn´t matter if there are bigger or more prepared guys, he wants to learn and become a champion.

But, oh well, he has homework to do. He knows he needs to make his homework otherwise he won´t be able to play football. So he makes his homework, and when he finally has time to play, more homework is waiting for him. Eventually, he forgets about the football.

This is a drive away that happens in pvp too. As an example. could you point me who had the GREAT IDEA of releasing PVP S3, and soon after release Survival mode. Sadly s3 felt alive only during the start, when people was driven away to survival mode.

On the other hands, feats and progression. Long story short, i want to pvp, not to pve. Yet, our league has to do it in order to compete. Yes, we enjoy pve, at a certain extent. Some of us more, others like me, just not.

Why not promote open world pvp and arenas pvp with this. Give us feats/skill points only obtainable through pvp, and that only work in PVP Phase open world and in arenas.

Kill 5000 reapers in central city?
Give us an option to win as a team in 4s/5s 10-25-50-75-100-250-500-100 ... matches and been able to progress - in pvp -.

PVE bounties?
Give us PVP only bounties, not the outdated ones, but ones that can farm as we farm pve dailies, and obtain new styles/feats.
Options are limitless.

Maps
Oh god.
How many threads i´ve seen for new maps. Come on!
You have some amazing places for new maps. The other day we talked about this in league chat, of how the place where you fight Hades would be great for deatmatch. Or more 8v8 nodes maps. Those are fun. (please not carry the rock or safehouses style maps plllllllllz). Heck, remove the 2nd part of WT 8v8, the node part is extremely fun. Running the rock, not so.


Leaderboards
PVP players are competitive by nature. I think this is self explanatory. Give us a motivation so everyone push themselves for that 1st place.

Promote team player, promote open world. Remember how back in the day there was this DCUO trailer showing a fight between Doomsday vs Superman, and ou fighting by their side?

Stuff like that could really improve the game. Maybe some people disagree with my point of view, that is respectable. This comes from someone who loves PVP, and whenever am asked to raid or do LPVE, i just say to myself.. "iwwwww". Sadly has to be done.

I totally disagree. First I disagree with making arena like legends there's no reward in legends I pick a character and I fight I put absolutely no work in building that character. Secondly I believe that the reward is grinding for gear and mods. What's the challenge in playing on an even playing field with buffs. I understand that there's new comers and all that but we need something to grind and get rewarded. We need to balance the pvp powers to make all powers and weapons as close to even as possible this way there is a bigger range of what we see.

There's a way to help newcomers get into pvp. You have the normal pvp arenas you grind them and you get your marks and you buy better gear and mods. Now it's not fair to a newcomer with no gear going against a fully modded and geared player with no buff. Well you make a new arena for pvp CR whatever the first tier is and below. So now the new guys can play eachother while grinding their gear then the rest of the players play in the arenas.

WM and AM shouldn't be in pvp. Pvp needs to go back to the old mechanics basically just add balance and bring back gear tiers it'll get fun. And start the tiers over I get people will be mad but in the long run it'll be worth it

As he says we wanna play football it doesn't matter if the people we are playing are over prepared or better we just want to play. We want pvp to be balanced and the advantages to come from the gear we grind and work for

I've thought about it for some time now....

• Crossplay will add a lot of fun with just a higher population (good thing it is already planned ^^)
• public rankings (there are large screens in both HQs - can't you make those display a list of the top pvper of the other faction? - ok, might be tough to make ^^)
• PvP event that are fun...(currently they are not!) I have an idea for that, but it is inspired by Planetside 2 - the question is, if you can ask the PS 2 team about the stuff in their game.... that would make it easier for you to estimate how difficult it would be to make it, I think
• league hall PvP arenas
• league wars (could be part of public rankings...)

There really shouldn't even be a grind in pvp

Part of me likes having gear progression and part of me hates it. If the devs are going to try to get rid of that grind though they need to introduce other things into the game to keep people busy with it as opposed to just getting higher stats.

Give a reason why.

Everything seems worse. Maybe it's just me or the time of day I've been on, but going by what friends, league mates and doing a few matches today, crowd control seems to be worse due to breakouts being non-responsive at times and something just feels off with counters. I'll go in later on and try to do a couple scrims against Brice and Venge to record them to try and call stuff out where we see them.

Simply because like another person mentioned the sole purpose of pvp is competition and when there are higher tiers of pvp gear it means players that have lower gear tiers will have a harder time competing. Also with the way the devs are doing the tiers each season (increasing stats and mark cost) it will not be too long untill we have gear that cost 15k+ marks for one pice just like how some pve peices cost 30k triumph. People complain about there not being enoguh pvp feats well if they just stop adding pvp gear sets with higher stats but instead removing the stats and having them just for styles ( at a reasonable mark price) then pvp style feats along with other pvp feats they may add can give people more of a reason to pvp

PvP isn't PvE. In PvE at end game you aren't going to have people who are drastically undergeared trying to do the same content. Content is designed around players having specific stats. PvP doesn't divide queue's based on CR which in turn makes it, as Leveilleur said, more difficult to compete. The devs have said time and time again that they want PvP to be skill based. If they really want that to be true they're going to need to find another thing for people to grind for in PvP at some point.

Why shouldn't there be a progression grind in PvP? Simple: it's nothing like PvE. In PvE the devs can regulate the difficulty of the enemies to ensure that complete newbies have content to grind... In PvP? Your enemies are other players, it's way too hard for the devs to regulate the challenge presented by other human beings because they can't control how we play, who's progressed, how many have maxed out their gear... It's like expecting a T1 PvE player to earn his gear from trying and failing to complete T6+ content...

So yeah, I'm for removing stat progression from gear. That said do not underestimate a persons desire to complete style sets and collections of stuff. Progression doesn't have to contribute to future success. In fact my opinion is that balance would be so much easier to achieve if gear progression was removed as a variable... PvP progression can be achieved without it affecting once chances of being successful at PvP.

It's not about building characters; it's about competing. If you don't want to be competitive and compete then (future) PvP is not for you. Who said anything about being rewarded? Where is the correlation between our rewards and competitive PvP? How does this correlate to my post? We are already rewarded with lose and win states.

Why do you have the inclination that you must always win against new comers? Just because you have grinded for gear in the past and have more experience does not mean you should win against anyone or everyone who has not grinded as much as you or have equal or approximate experience.

What should matter in regards to gaining the win state is if one has skill. Skill is acquired in many ways- not just grinding or experience obtained from grinding. Why should we exclude those with skill who are on the lower end of the tiered gear from an equal chance of winning?

If we are to continue with (y)our current philosophy we are throwing away progress and vision for competitive PvP. Daybreak has said that they want PvP to be competitive.

I agree that powers must be balanced. However, I would think on these questions:

• How many work-arounds and compensations will we have to create until we reach the ultimate solution? If work-arounds and compensation is not as efficient, how can we be more efficient and speed up the process?

• Does the powers link between PvE and Open World help balance in Arenas PvP? If it does or doesn't explain. If it doesn't then what can be done?

In addition, how does this, in particular, support your argument? Assume I'm just dumb, how does it help your argument?

This work-around is not efficient unfortunately. Creating a new Arenas mode for lower levels is a bit silly. You're trying to avoid the problem in regards to tiered gear by creating an environment that probably won't help the new comers as much as a training room would. Just because one grinds does not mean one will become skilled.

I agree. AM's and WM should not exist in Arenas PvP. "Just adding balance" is not going to help. We need to be specific with what ww have observed and help our fellow producers at Daybreak if we want balance. WHAT!? Bring back tiered gear- are you crazy!? You have argued about why tiered gear needs to stay for Arenas PvP, and now you "want tiered gear back!?" *Sheesh!* I shouldn't have hit the reply button!

Why do you want people to have their gear taken away or reset? That's practically the same thing as having only one tier of gear and mods. That idea can be used against your argument. Unfortunately, your idea of fun is not what the people at Daybreak are chasing after. They're chasing after competitive PvP. If that is not your idea of fun then perhaps (future) PvP is not for you...

I agree with most people here so far, from what I've read:

1. Rock, Paper, Scissors > DPS fest (no need to explain again others have done a good job promoting this)

2. AM & WM, find a way to balance things, so people stop standing in the far back spamming, or get rid of it (Yes WM and AM have counters and etc but if a full team is doing it you get one shotted)

3. More TDM mixed with Objectives in new maps. I still think the Last Laugh was a great pop DLC, just ahead of its time, ps3 just couldn't handle it, the objectives and TDM style map was amazing, 8v8 is just too many players to try to find to queue in, make them 4v4 - 5v5 (this is solely my OP and Im not sure if many agree) No Buffs either

4. Was okay with the mark breakdown for PvP gear until I hit the last set, 5000 compared to 2000 for the most expensive piece? That just made me not care about the minimal stat upgrade and feat all together, i'll just get the set next season. But that needs to change, have the gear worth a the same through out. The amount of marks was just the perfect grind. And I play both roles so it would encourage me to grind for a role set as well.

5. This is a universal change that doesn't only help PvP but PvE as well, Weapon animation times, The first Hold Melee(Interrupt) and First Hold Range(Block Break) should be universal in animation time throughout all weapons. Block breaks were corrected and fixed so they all have a cast bar and 1 second animation time but HB, MA, Staff, Two Handed all have longer than normal animation times, and they are essential to PvP and PvE. Not asking for all attacks to be universal in time(that would ruin the diversity) but the Lunge needs to be the same through out all weapons.

6. Counter windows, they were increased way back due to block spamming and lag issues, but nothing is more frustrating when you block break, don't get the block break and already two melee swings into your combo and still get interrupted. I quick fix for this, if the windows are going to be kept to help with lag issues and the learning curve, increase animation times to match the window times, meaning we can't start doing something different until after the animation(unclipped). Obviously if you clip a block break or and interrupt and start doing something else your window doesn't change and shouldn't be that frustrated.

7. Juggles and stuns, way too much of this going on and being used as a cheap strategy, not going to call it a glitch or cheating because it is smart, but on the receiving end, its frustrating needing to break out twice when you already have immunity, and when you have to hold block just to break out for the 3rd time within 2 seconds and your character blocks, exposing you to a block break when you didn't mean to block.

TLDR:
1. RPS system (role debuffs)
2. Balance WM & AM, or remove them
3. More maps with objectives and TDM and no buffs
4. No long grind for pvp gear but still small grind
5. Weapon balancing
6. Counter Windows matching animation times
7. Fix breakout issues

I feel like balancing roles needs to take into account 2 main aspects.

1. Balance in a 1v1 situation. Right now trols and tank with powersets not called Fire struggle in 1v1s.

Tanks need to be balanced such that the damage they mitigate and/or heal plus the damage they put out should be equal damage a balanced Dps puts out.

Trols need to be able to hamper an enemies abilities in such a way that they can bring their combined healing, damage mitigation, and damage out is equal to the trol's damage mitigation, shields, etc, and damage out. The easiest way to do this would to be to adjust trol debuffs, but depending on how they need to be balanced for a group setting, trol shields, and other damage mitigation, like Holographic Decoy, can be adjusted for 1v1 situations.

2. Balance in the primary competitive format. Right now the choice seems to be between 4v4 and 5v5, with 5v5 being used most often at the moment. At this point role imbalances become even greater. Healers are flat out the best role, and only OP Dps powers, like Nature and HL, come close to being as useful.

Trols are currently only there to power the healer. Using any debuff is a waste of power that could be spent powering the more powerful role. Trol debuffs seem like they could be the counter to the strongest role if they weren't currently so weak. Making debuffs stronger would help bring the two roles closer together, while also making trolling a little less boring in PvP.

Tanks suffer the most in group environments. The only aspect a Tank brings to the rest of the group is cleanses, and since noone even uses debuffs there's not much use for a tank. There might need to be some slight adjustments how long cleanses last to insure Tanks bring enough to a group to warrant a spot, if debuffs are strengthened.



I do feel like there need to be more than one update per season. Its starting to get depressing with all the HL and Nature Dps the much more of the PvP population than they should, and it shouldn't have to take so long to adjust them. Between seasons there's bound to be one or two imbalances introduce when powers are adjusted for PvE, and it seems unreasonable to restrict the time to fix those changes.

Overall, I like the changes to role debuffs as well as roleless gear. I hope they stay.

I'd actually argue the reverse. Right now lunges (by design) don't interrupt at the start of the lunge. Delaying the interrupt even more would just make them feel less responsive and lead to situations wherein you need to guess a lot of the time as per when to interrupt. Also increasing the animation times to match windows would result in slower paced combat in general.

This actually is a bug and one in particular has been reproduced. Have you been experiencing this since this last update hit today? If you could give as much detail here as possible that'd be helpful as I am working with a developer to try to solve these issues and me and him are probably going to be logging on late tonight to try and check on server performance.

Great post, then Legends and Arenas things has somewhat of a disagreement with but valid points made, my character should feel like my own and should not be Exactly like legends but legends is the most balanced right now and I would like for that balance in arenas for competitive pvp.

In terms of Open World PvP, the most fun i've ever had in pvp was before mega servers and the bounty grind feat, and Ring War/Diamond Heist feat. Fighting other players in the open world having a set team everyone playing their part is fun, and then we had an objective on top of that as well(grabbing diamonds or batteries). Arenas definitely need to be looked at and redone before those two things/open world gets looked at but I do think that Open world pvp needs to be worked on as well

The Devs have done an amazing job so far on AM for each power and yes not all of them are completely in line and balanced but there is a sense of uniqueness in each power set, but this is strictly in PvE, carrying this work they have done into pvp is just a huge nuisance, there's too many balancing issues with AM and WM in general. And in no way am I calling for nerfs in Nature and HL but those two right now are the only two that have functioning AM in PvP thats viable, if all power could be that viable that would be great but that's a lot of work.

not increasing lunge times, but block break times for animation to match windows of interrupt, I believe lunges should be decreased in time to be matched throughout the board. Reason for this is because yes, the interrupt starts before the animation really even starts but, that damage window where you want to get your counter reward damage in is hindered due to animation. Like if I lunge with HB and want to go into uppercut I have less time compared to other weapons.

I'll check tonight to see if they have been fixed but I was speaking prior to this update, wasn't aware they were taken into action, thanks