(no subject)

[demiurgent]

So, a City of Heroes player group called the PvP Event Committee has launched a PvP awareness campaign, to increase player involvement in PvP. And to that end they've announced a series of public events. and the development team was happy to give them advertising -- they've put a ton of money into PvP and most people don't... um... actually play it.

Well! They've announced their summer season, with both arena events and live PvP zone events taking place on "a server wide event' schedule called Uprising.

All of which is plenty cool... but I can't help but notice that the first event is an information seminar on all the different servers, and then all the PvP is on the test server.

Which is to say... they need to gather all the potentially interested players on all the different servers onto the one common server we have, in hopes of gathering a large enough crowd to really make these things really feel like events.

There's nothing wrong with any of this, of course. I can see the Test Server becoming kind of the home of PvP. But it really underscores how little the PvP strategy has paid off for City of Heroes in the end. I check the arenas every so often, and I never, ever see actual fights in progress. I've even taken to creating events now and again, to see if anyone's out there and wants to beat me like a four year old (I'm terrible at PvP). There are never any takers.

I'm willing to believe that dedicated PvPers have a schedule they follow, and some folks likely stalk the live PvP zones just waiting for the chance to bring their ultraviolence. But I can believe that casual PvP won't really take root except maybe on Test, where anyone with some interest can find anyone else who's thinking of giving it a spin.

Of course, if that's where the chumps like me end up going to try PvP on for size, it will eventually be the stalking ground for the ganker crowd, who want that sweet unskilled crowd to beat into painful paste.

Man, sometimes the only way to win really is not to play.

Comments

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

"But it's huge in Korea!"

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

needs moar zerg rush kekekekeke

[cavalorn.livejournal.com]

The point of using the test server isn't that it's the only way to make the event large enough, it's that the test server is the only place where someone on Freedom can meet someone on Virtue and have a match. Until they implement character transfers or a cross-server Arena, Test is the only place to go for inter-server fights.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Which is my point, more or less. The population isn't high enough on any of the individual servers to be pushing these things on live servers. The only way to get a critical mass is to draw off all the servers and do it on Test.

Which doesn't change the need for interserver transfers or a cross-server arena. ;)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in trying PvP. Recently resubscribed to CoH/CoV, finally got a character up to level 14 where the sweet transporation powers wait...

But in my case, the catch is that I don't know how to do it. The basic game they explain in the tutorial, and a lot of the finer points they introduce along the way. But PvP? No contact ever gives me a chance to choose a quest involving PvP, or says "Oh, by the way, if you want to lay the smack down on those villains, go to the arena here and do this." I still haven't managed to try the battlegrounds on WoW for much the same reason: while I don't mind losing, I don't want to try if I haven't even gotten enough in-game instruction first to not look like an idiot in the process.

[masonk.livejournal.com]

Actually, you *will* get told to go see such-and-such when you're the right level to go into one of the PvP zones, and you'll be told the basics then. I think it's 15 or 16, but my mind is a disorganized mess.

But yeah. There's no tutorial thingie that sends you to the arena that I'm aware of.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's encouraging. I really enjoy CoH, but I'm really miserable at leveling, so...well. I just got a character to level 14 a few days ago, and it's the highest I've ever gotten. This with playing off and on since City of Villains came out.

[caraig.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that after I fled from FFXI, most of my PvP experience was with World of Warcraft, then later EVE Online. My opinions on PvP are probably biased. =) Then again, I can play dozens of rounds of CounterStrike -- PvP reduced to it's essence -- and not bat an eye or get frustrated when I'm Boom-Headshotted every round.

I tried out some PvP in CoH. My second foray into Siren's Call, I was repeatedly bushwhacked by a stalker. After that... I didn't get into it. Which is fine with me, I'm still enjoying the game!

If someone wants PvP, that's fine with me; they're getting that much more out of the game than I am, and that's cool. I might actually go back to some PvP in City of Whatever. I don't have to whail on other players to 'play the game!' =) One thing I like about CoH is that the PvP crowd is not trying to strut their codpieces and telling non-PvPers that they're not playing the REAL game, or, as they put it in WoW, 'lol cry mor noob.'

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

One thing I like about CoH is that the PvP crowd is not trying to strut their codpieces and telling non-PvPers that they're not playing the REAL game, or, as they put it in WoW, 'lol cry mor noob.'

... They're not? What, do you play on the Europe servers? :)

[caraig.livejournal.com]

You mean they are? Oh. I see! That must be on the forums, which I've not really spent time on. I shall have to correct that immediately! Uhm, or not. ^_^