What happened?!?

TheLastSuperman · Nov 20, 2019

Brit said: ↑

“The fact is, Open World PvP didn't die because of balance issues or PvP changes or whatnot. Open World PvP died because the Open World died. When the game first launched, the vast majority of players were in the open world. The majority of the content was the leveling arcs, along with hunting for Collections and whatnot. There was very little instanced endgame content then. Just Khandaq and Outer Caverns for raids, and barely a handful of duos and alerts. Because the Open World was where the players were, you would see players all over the place. People leveling, people searching for collections, people just hanging out at the Superman statue to chat. So if you wanted to PvP, you could. That was the beauty of the "not good" open world PvP system. If you saw somebody and you wanted to PvP, they didn't have a choice. They made that decision when they chose a PvP server.

As additional content was added, the game became increasingly more instanced. As it became more instanced, the open world died. Not the Open World PvP; the Open World EVERYTHING. Today I have no doubt there are more players on USPCPS server than there was on one single server of the pre-Megaservers. But fly around Gotham or Metropolis and you will barely see anyone. Instead, everybody is crowded into the Watchtower, or running instanced content. The game's playerbase shifted to hubs so that players could more easily build groups. And when there stopped being sufficient numbers of people in the open world, there were no longer the victims for people to hunt.”

GU47 started the decline of Open World PVP also coupled with players starting the game in pve phase when all the time prior they came off Brainiac's ship in pvp phase. I see how you're thinking about this but I'm seeing it differently, I do see your line of thinking and would be inclined to believe it if I hadn't witnessed GU47 turn a fun circus into a **** show and nothing has been the same since (nor "an improvement").

Soul · Nov 21, 2019

Brit said: ↑

“I was also on the old Death & Glory server and I remember those days. When I say Open World PvP was not good, I mean that. It wasn't good. It was fun, yes. I did it. A lot of did on Death & Glory, because it was a PvP server and everyone who made characters on it, to some extent or another, really enjoyed PvP. When I say it wasn't "good", I mean exactly that. It was not well designed.”

Unbalanced does not equal "Not well designed" once you consider its purpose. It was an open field never meant to be balanced, but it could still be played in a balanced fashion where the participants wanted it. A lot of people chose to be fair about their PvP interactions and a lot chose not to - It's the freedom of open world that made it great.

“As you yourself pointed out, open world PvP had nothing to do with skill. It was assymetrical teams fighting with level and gear differentials that made the fights entirely one-sided and predetermined before they even began. Again, I'm not saying that can't be fun; but the fact remains that it was never remotely balanced. So then, if it wasn't balanced in it's inception, then the cries of "PvP is broken" because of a lack of balance is suddenly placed into a different light. No PvP patches or changes would actually affect that, because that was never an important part of what open world PvP meant.”

Literally every single change to PvP in instances, and even many PvE updates affected Open World. They gradually ruined it mostly with the removal of basic systems like the introduction of the Immunity System with GU13, and later on the removal of RPS with season 3 in 2013. And that's before the fiasco of WM/AM - which basically drove it to extinction on the USPC side.

“The fact is, Open World PvP didn't die because of balance issues or PvP changes or whatnot. Open World PvP died because the Open World died.”

This couldn't be more wrong. Like I stated before - Open world was affected by pretty much every single update and gradually became so unstable, so bad of an interaction that players couldn't enjoy it anymore. People who never before even bothered with Arenas queued into them just to enjoy the stat capping or the different capping measures introduced to instances because in open world the interaction was no longer enjoyable.

“When the game first launched, the vast majority of players were in the open world. The majority of the content was the leveling arcs, along with hunting for Collections and whatnot. There was very little instanced endgame content then. Just Khandaq and Outer Caverns for raids, and barely a handful of duos and alerts. Because the Open World was where the players were, you would see players all over the place. People leveling, people searching for collections, people just hanging out at the Superman statue to chat. So if you wanted to PvP, you could. That was the beauty of the "not good" open world PvP system. If you saw somebody and you wanted to PvP, they didn't have a choice. They made that decision when they chose a PvP server.”

This kind of mentality isn't gone on the player side - it was removed on the management side. By ignoring this side of the game, by completely REMOVING the option to start your character in the PvP phase. By presenting a front to their PvP community because it had differing opinions. (Which every single community - especially PvP communities have on every game)

“As additional content was added, the game became increasingly more instanced. As it became more instanced, the open world died. Not the Open World PvP; the Open World EVERYTHING. Today I have no doubt there are more players on USPCPS server than there was on one single server of the pre-Megaservers. But fly around Gotham or Metropolis and you will barely see anyone. Instead, everybody is crowded into the Watchtower, or running instanced content. The game's playerbase shifted to hubs so that players could more easily build groups. And when there stopped being sufficient numbers of people in the open world, there were no longer the victims for people to hunt.”

Open world PvP did not die due to more content. Like in every game if the interaction is enjoyable you'd have people participating.
Also, US Server Open World on the PvE side is extremely healthy due to many new players coming in - none of which even know a PvP option exists because it's unlisted and they can't access it until they visit the Watchtower/HoD and physically locate the phaser - which still informs them of nothing.

“PvP players who were interested in skill or competition were primarily interested in the Arenas and Legends. Players who cared about rewards and character progression similarly pushed to instanced PvP because that was incentivized, while Open World PvP gave trivial amounts of influence and no Marks. So the only people left who were interested in the Open World PvP were the people who didn't want fair fights, and didn't care about rewards, but only wanted to have those massive brujahs "just for fun". And they couldn't have those brawls anymore, because there were no longer people in the Open World for them to target. Turns out, nobody wanted to just fly around Metropolis for 20 minutes to look for one victim. And if you did find and kill someone, then they could just port back to the Watchtower with their quicktravel, shift to the PvE shard, and then return to their leveling without having to allow any ongoing conflict or back and forth.”

This categorization is once again false. The same players to completely dominate the competitive PvP scene come Megaserver always enjoyed spending their off time in between matches or PvEing (mostly to catch up on SP) running around the open world and looking for fun interactions. Slob and Buzz (SOE Live Champions) spent their time messing around in open world. Famigliadythrl, Defection, HouseofBatiatus, TapHoldClip, Public Enemies, Link, CryForBlood ..etc leagues who dominated the PvP scene spent their off time creating massive wars like in the videos I linked.

You can't separate the Open World and the Instanced PvP by skill. Just because Open World wasn't about skill or balance - doesn't mean those with the skill didn't primarily show interest in it, infact, that's just blatantly wrong.

At one point Open World was so damaged that those with real interest in fun and competitive PvP just didn't bother with it anymore - as Instances were getting capped. That came way later and after the damage was done.

“My point was not that Open World PvP was a bad thing when it existed. I didn't say that it was bad. I said that it was not good. And therein lies the difference. It never had a purpose. It never had an incentive. It only existed because players were forced to do it, forced to enter an open world to level, and forced to be PvP status full-time on PvP servers without an option to toggle safety in. It was fun, but it was never good enough to stand on it's own, and so the second the sandbox element to the game started to empty out, Open World PvP absolutely failed to provide anybody with a reason to actually go back into the open world.”

The majority of players weren't forced to do anything, those who came with Megaserver had an option and back then Open World was still plenty lively.

And again, I have no idea what you're talking about - there were specialized events for PvP like Ring War and Diamond Heist.
And even without them, MOSTLY without them, people chose to fool around in open world because it was just fun - the real incentive when you enjoy PvP. This isn't some philosophical debate over purpose - the purpose was PvP, the medium was freedom.

“And even that is only peripheral to the thread discussion. The point the original poster made was that they believed PvP was in bad shape because of a lack of Open World PvP. I see zero correlation. PvE players are also not in the open world, but that does not mean that people have stopped raiding. There is still PvP going on. I've been banging out a minimum of 10 matches a day since I finished with Metal and had time to kill. And yes, there are areas of PvP that do feel imbalanced to me. But the pulse of the PvP community seems to be more in line with people who actual want balance and want skill to matter.”

It should be clear at this point that Open World PvP not being a direct option to new players anymore is affecting (and have already affected) the PvP scene as a whole, but somehow you keep overlooking it. I don't think at this point it carries the majority of the weight of responsibility towards why PvP is where it is, because Arenas aren't PvP anymore they are just PvE against a player. I have no idea what you're queuing but if you are measuring by that standard you should switch to Legends where things are at-least somewhat balanced.

Which brings me to my personal experience lately, on the EU server there are some players still playing at a high level but on the US most don't even bother queuing Legends and those that do, usually perform like this:

I rarely get more than 1 or 2 matches a night, usually with long 10-20 minutes pause in between queue pops on the US, and on EU there will literally be no matches popping unless known players log in to have their fix (which is at-least challenging when happens.)
Legends are underrepresented for a reason - people who PvP these days don't even know what balance in this game looked like.

“If you want to slaughter people in a one-sided and unfair PvP exchange these days, you don't have to bring your level 30 character to hunt their level 5s. Instead, you just bring your Atomic Tank into an arena and melt everybody else who cannot out-damage your healing.”

Almost no one I know on the competitive scene of PvP ever addressed the Open World as you appear to do. Even when they wanted to gank, or have unfair interactions as you put it - the targets were always others they considered worth it in this way or another. And everyone knew it would escalate into all out PvP wars. Some spent most of their time just trying to get there because it was that much fun.

Samantha Christiano · Nov 27, 2019

Chia Death said: ↑

“Yeah, I mean hell, not like I expect people to do their job that they applied for and are employed at for pay if their feelings are getting hurt. /s”

That is indeed true.
It's a known thing in "DC" the characters and heroes and villains about letting emotions ruin their lives.
Intellect over intelligence. Put feelings aside. Just do the job lol.

Mentaldope40 · Dec 5, 2019

VariableFire said: ↑

“Oh please, show me where PVP (besides Legends) generates money, I dare you. All you can point to is some nebulous "subbing" which you don't actually need to do to play PVP at all. Everything that you had to pay money for to PVP became free because of the PVP community if it wasn't free from the outset.

And your memory is suspect when you "forget" that WM melee damage was destroyed because the risk/reward factors are reversed between PVP and PVE.

Oh, and I forgot the gimping of backups and sidekicks damage-wise. They were barely out before they got gimped because of PVP abuse. That gimping affected PVE long after they were removed from PVP.”

It's common sense tbh, if you play pvp and then sub for sp's, gear, replay badges etc. to run pve just so your character will have more sp's than a pvper who doesn't sub etc.

What happened?!?

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