CoH PvP Possibilities

PvP needs to be designed from the ground up: With one’s priorities made very very clear.

In the case of Starcraft, it was that all three sides must have equal chances of winning (enough choice of strategic options to counteract various strategies – provided you spotted it fast enough.) They achieved this amazingly well, stats show like a 33/33/34 percentile wins for all three races.

In the case of Guild Wars, they are going for M:tG style profusion of strategic options to choose from, nevermind individual balance as long as the option to change tactics/characters/skills is always there. Your characters and their chosen skills are your deck of cards.

So what is CoH’s priority when it comes to PvP?

Possibility The First: Team-based PvP
This would support their stress on teams even in PvE. Everyone is a superhero, but the game shines when you work as a superteam. In which case, the checks and balances need to be built in at the level of ATs.

Part of the problem is that the superteam concept works well on PvE enemies. The powersets are built to support this strategy. Tanker runs in, taunts everything to focus on him. Controller locksdown. Defenders debuff and support. Scrappers take out big bosses. Blasters go badaboom and maul minions and lieutenants.

Sure there are alternate strategies, more than one way to cook an egg, but undeniably, this is one of the most efficient strats when you have a pentad team. Specialist teams use different strats.

But um…you’re facing a team of heroes. There are not really any Boss, Lt. Minion equivalents.

It would be insanely boring if the tanker taunts and everyone had to hit him ad nauseam. Even more boring for perma-lockdown by a controller. Defenders are built to support, not to fight on their own. Blasters are the poor man, imbalanced, glass cannons in the first place.

Oh dear. Now what?

Well, one option is to give ATs special damage/control options on their AT-to-nullify. Controllers are made to specially pop open tanker toggles but need to stay relatively immobile while doing so. Tankers can only taunt blasters to land their insignifcant damage on their tough hides. Blaster snipes and ranged damage slice right through scrapper defenses. Scrappers are controller hunter specialists. And defenders can provide limited time invulnerability to these nullifiers?

Nah. It’s too simplistic. Stuff would devolve to “hunt the defender aka priest down first”. And people would whine about their personal private powersets not being used.

Possibility The Second: Lump it all in, GW style
Seems like they are almost going this way, with their varied PvP options. Except because they can’t add excess skill choices, they run into the problem of trying to bug-fix the existing skills. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t.

But you know, I seriously wouldn’t mind this option with a few neat twists. Allow PvP respecs. And add some more pool powers and/or epic options and temp powers.

Suddenly your choices open up. You are not limited to using your precious PvE respecs to permanently alter your character. Part of the fun of respecs is changing the concept of your character, after all. You can change to be a flyer and a superspeeder at the cost of one or two skills, for added mobility. Maybe you think you need a control hold or a fear for this PvP combat. Maybe swinging more often with less end usage is better than hitting harder more seldom for this round. Why not?

You’re given the option to switch around, have fun, experiment with the character, try different builds…Variety. And you can practice counter versus counter this way too. It fits the “danger room” theme of trying out new strategies in a “safe” environment, practising versus other heroes.

PvP respecs also allow for later mission objectives in PvP, be they capture the flag, defuse the bomb, etc.

Powersets fixed in stone become terribly boring. I know I’m getting sick and tired of swinging mallet, heavy mallet, stone first, mallet, jumpkick etc. I’d like to play with fault and hurl boulder. Except my PvE build will not allow me to take them. Not efficient to withstand damage without my armours – which is the main reason Ragnarl exists.

Meh. I dunno.

Enough ranting, I’ll just play GW for the PvE and mess about in pre-searing Ascalon doing quests and earning gold and wondering what to do with this silver dye, when I’m currently in red and blue.

P.S. I even think you can redistribute your attributes in GW. You earn one redistribution point per 250 xp gained. And you have max 24 at one time. So logically, if you wanted, you could slowly rearrange every attribute point to wherever you wanted. Just need to go kill mobs, ie. play more.