The PvP forums are constantly buzzing about threads lamenting the current state of PvP and the bleak future of PvP in the game. Some of the threads do not necessarily hold much merit, others do. For example, in recent months there was an outbreak of pet usage in arenas. The marketplace toys were everywhere, and having a large negative impact on PvP. The forums exploded with cries to fix the pets and end the exploitation of these items to bring some semblance of balance back to PvP. Our cries were heard and answered and the pets’ health decreased to the point that they were no longer a viable means of gaining an advantage in arenas. PvP returned to a workable state, for a while. Now with the Home Turf DLC, SOE turns around and slaps PvPers in the face with sidekicks and henchmen. PvPers did not want PvE in PvP and allowing each player to spawn 3 or 4 “adds” with 3 or 4 trinkets was having a huge negative impact on PvP. So the devs answered by giving the players 1 trinket that summoned three “adds” that all did damage. Now you get to have your pets and your breakouts and damage trinkets. For PvE that is fine, they can serve a purpose, but in PvP it destroys the spirit of the entire thing. Not to mention it removes a lot of skill from PvP. A good player with full t4, and no Home Turf trinkets, fighting a worse player with all of his new Home Turf trinkets and t3 gear will likely lose. There is only so much one player can do against 4-5 enemies, especially when those enemies can be restored full health and power just before they die. And that is NOT a learn-to-play issue, that’s a learn-to-pay issue. That transitions into alts and, more importantly, new players. This game has become unfriendly to alts and downright cruel to new players. Gearing up an alt to be viable in PvP requires a time investment to get gear and skill points, which is entirely understandable and rightfully so. However, that gap has increased immensely, considering that each player has to devote a significant amount of time to both PvP and PvE on all characters to get the mods and gear, at least, in order to survive in PvP. That is a significant time investment to people who know what to do, considering they are vets with geared main characters already. Coupled with the CR restrictions on pve gear, the vets have to devote as much time to the alt as they do the main just to get the alt the mods, let alone higher tier gear. Sadly, I don’t know many people who can play an hour out of every 30 minutes. New players might as well give up before they’ve started. This game already provides very little in the means of tutorials and training for new players, now those new players have to buy two DLCs, and struggle through the low tier PvP gear with no mods (Home Turf and otherwise)/trinkets and little understanding of game mechanics (no tutorials). Only the most devout players will actually stay and play long enough to compete, if they are lucky. The majority will be so outmatched by the rest of the population that the draw to PvP, which is a huge sticking point (granted, not the only one), will diminish considerably. So, look at the financial consequences of that change. I have a fully geared, pvp and pve, main with all the skill points I could ever want. I play that character only because it is immensely fun to play that character. I want to play my alts, but in order to make them viable, at all, in PvP I have to devote more time to the one alt than I do to my main. It has made it a huge chore to have a second character. My friends can’t carry him through raids to get gear (CR limitations), to get marks, to get mods, to effectively PvP. New players will have less worry about the chore, as the game mechanics are entertaining enough to keep them active. However, any players who, normally, would have come for the PvE and stayed for the PvP are going to come for the PvE, get stomped consistently in PvP, and leave. And any who came for the PvP are going to face the same issue, unless they were lucky enough to see the potential of PvP and fight through the drudgery of being constantly at the bottom of the rung until they pay for the possibility of a win, or quit. Deterring new players and attempting to mechanically force money out of vets is an unfriendly business solution.
1 word ? CRAP , and thx soe , pvp is horrible now . They said change with matchmaking ? NOthing is changed , still the same pugs with no heal or no troll , sometimes 3vs4 , and a players has declined the arena all 5mn
What I hate most about this update is that it furthers the gap between players AGAIN. The gear mods aren't just small bonus stats. Some of them make or break a match. I'm all for advances in PVP, but not when they make an already small community smaller and even more distant from everyone else. It is an MMO right--so why am I fighting the same 5-10 teams and most vets have abandoned PVP and soon the game. It is really depressing tbh and I wish that we could get the devs to realize many of the players suggestions are to help increase an aspect of the game, which can increase revenue. I would hate to be a new player trying to go up against all of this stuff and gear--ALL of the cards are stacked against them, not just the learning curve.
When I enter an Arena match, I am expecting at minimum 5 pets for myself and groupmates to wade through before we can actually attack players...most pets are meh, but the pet I cannot stand is Mr./Mrs. Boo, they are the only pet that panics, stuns, and even encases PvP= Pet vs Pet Kind of sad that the measuring stick for skill in PvP is Legends, with exception to queuing 5's for a legit match
You don't know how frustrating PVP is for me now; whenever I pug for 2v2s, 4v4s, and heck even 5v5s, I know there will be an average of 4-6 pets lunging, juggling, panicking, and blocking my line of sight.
Im a legendary for two years.. but now i see nothing new.. i dont pay for that "home turf" stupid ideas anymore. I only hope, they dont add any more ******** pets and i hope they dont add pets for legends (this will kill this game...) a lot of my friends leave this game, they are really good pvp players, but the home turf idea is the worst what i see in this game... pets, sims homes... what idiot want ****** homes in this game? and a lot of lags, (disconectings in 11 MB connection) I buy home turf dlc but i think this is the worst dlc on this game... nothing new, ace, stell works, that same mops... no new raids, instances storyline... only more pay for win.. ( sorry autobots are new... -.- ) this game die this year (pvp die a month ago..) if they dont do any new storyline, missions, open worlds, legends, characters, maps etc.. THAT WHAT PLAYERS REALY WANT
I agree with most of the OP's sentiments. I would like to say a few things in return though. There actually is a small tutorial on the Brainiac ship that teaches the combat mechanics, and also many enemies a player encounters while leveling up provides practice using the mechanics. Could the tutorial and mechanics be better? I suppose, but it's still there and it is up to the player to learn at that point. Your friends actually still can carry you through Raids, just use the walk-in teleporters. You won't get armor drops, but you will still get the marks... I'm not sure if you get the Monthly award boxes though. As for the subject of Alts, well that's the price one pays for having an alt. When one decides to make alternate characters, they are already choosing to divide up their limited playtime amongst those characters. It is not the Devs fault on this one, you are choosing quantity over quality. Could the game be more alt friendly, especially for PvP? Sure, but I'm not sure how that would be implemented at this point. As for the Pets, they are annoying and do take away a bit of the skill required in PvP. What I propose is a Power or Trinket that would essentially be a "Pet Nuke/AoE" that would severely cripple Pet health or possibly kill them entirely. I think that would give players that hate dealing with Pets something to counter them with. By the way, this is not an original idea from me, I got it from Gwalir from the old PS3 forums.
Of all DLCs i think this the biggest pay to win, nothing until now have the weight of tactical mods multiple pets supply drops and orbital strike, especially because they are rent so whoever have more time playing or have lot of money to burn replay badges in the shortest instances can access to them easy, all the work on sp is waste still we don't have too many uses after main role, 15 extra health is not increase considering the next piece of gear usually increase a lot of stats, even mods IV in gear don't add more survival and damage than those new white mods. I'm still waiting orbital strike is change to a power who destroy every pet in area, rather than do damage so is less lag overall and no much problem of target.
Zizzi, you are right. The tutorials on the Braniac ship and throughout the leveling process are present. But, they don’t go far beyond teaching the very basics of the mechanic. Taking that, then applying it to PvP is a pretty big step. Sure, people could come to the forums and read about it, but, and I could be wrong on this, the forum activity usually makes up a very small portion of the game population. Even with the added tutorial, going into legends or fighting brand-new 30s in arenas, it is painful to see how little of that gets applied. The rewards for getting counters and punishments for not, in PvE, are too small to make people really think about it. It’s more of an annoyance. I’ve fought and defeated countless new 30s by doing nothing but blocking, or only using my tap block breakers (the goal being that maybe they’ll figure out that there is a way to beat it). They could all be oblivious, but it would be nice to have a few more detailed tooltips in the game. I was unaware that you still get marks when under-CR for walk-ins. At least there is that. Thanks for the tip. And with alts, I understand that having an alt is a second time sink. But, it can be made a little bit easier. I was mostly trying to point out that if it is that time consuming for a person who has the game mechanics, raids, etc. down-pat then new players will have an even harder time advancing. Plus, most of SOEs marketing decisions seem to be focused towards the hardest of the hardcore players. Players who don’t mind dropping $100 a week on raid/pvp resets to get their characters up to snuff. For the less hardcore (I’d assume the larger percent of the population), it’s a money and time sink that is becoming increasingly worse. There are alternatives that could cater to that crowd, make the game more alt friendly, and, maybe, incentivize new players to continue playing. For instance, to sell alongside replay badges, a “mark boost token.” Players could buy the mark boost token, for a marginally less fee than replay badges, and use that during a raid. For the rest of that raid, the player receives 150-200% marks, depending on what tier of boost was purchased. Now instead of gearing up an alt by continuously running raids etc. you can run the raid once and get double the rewards. PvE is quite boring to me (especially healing. I can hardly finish a raid as a healer without drop-kicking a puppy, my alt is electric), but if I could do each raid once a week and gear up twice as fast, I’d be all over that. It’s no different than replay badges; you just don’t do more work. People would complain that is decreases the amount of time a person plays and thus players aren’t as good at top CR, but that comes with the territory of MMOs. There are already plenty of bad CR 89 players, there will always be bad CR 89 players, it’s just something you have to deal with. Either way, those are all issues with the game. Some solutions might make it more manageable to gear yourself/alts up to deal with the Home Turf additions, but that solution is hardly even a Band-Aid over a compound fracture. Home Turf has been extremely detrimental to PvP, and no minor solution to cope with its changes will fix anything. The Devs need to step back, look at PvP, and listen to the input of those who know the situation, the PvP community.
It is easily the worst DLC in terms of PvP. If this game's PvP is not fixed and we look back at the "DCUO history". This DLC will be one of the highlighted main factors in the PvP downfall. Maybe not the worst for everyone, but definitely in the top in general.
Honestly I'd rather be on the receiving end of the pre-mega server pistol glitch than the current state of Home Turf PvP. I'm still playing, since I came back for the housing. That said, this game can't even hurt my feelings anymore. It's the ex that cheated on you that you decide to have a fling with. Fun at the time with zero expectations.
