So i've been engaging in PvP for a while now, and I like it. However, improvements could be made, and I feel i've gotten enough experience on the subject to throw down my two cubits. So here's the issues souring it for me, in no particular order:
Issue 1: Class Movement Speed is Inconsistent
This is a pretty subtle but still nasty one. I feel all classes should move at the same base movement speed during PvP - I have had times where i'm trying to chase down a flag carrier, but my plodding Revenant can't do anything as the Lunar Lancer vanishes off into the distance with my flag. Even as ranged classes, this is an issue due to the distance they can put on you due to you slowing down while firing, as well as them weaving all over the place makes anything but AOE shots very difficult to land.
Running the flag should be a challenge - you're stealing a valuable thing from the deepest part of enemy territory and have to get it out, and CTF is a team-based mode so you should have difficulty doing this alone. The move speed inconsistency basically makes your choice of class (and not your skill with it) nullify a lot of the threat of extricating the flag.
It's also an issue outside of flag running - defenders can't respond to incursions into their territory as quickly if they're using a slow class, and sometimes they're just flat out not able to make certain jumps - Dopesheet doing some hub PvP on today's dev stream showed that a Chloromancer just can't make the jump on the two sky castles map without veering to the side - i've had trouble with this one myself as a Revenant.
To fix this one, just make move speed consistent across the board. Buffs and debuffs can go untouched (with some exceptions), though I think a flag runner should receive a mild slowdown to encourage their team to do some teamwork and defend them.
Issue 2: Class Power is Imbalanced
This is a big one and I know a lot of folks have been vocal about this one already. You'll see a lot of Ice Sages and Lunar Lancers in PvP - because they have a very broad range of advantages and few counters compared to other classes. I can do a class by class breakdown in a later post because I want the OP to be more about general issues, but those are the big two. I did an experiment this week where I went Ice Sage and used only my freeze and shield, no firing any kind of damaging shot at anyone - I was still able to run the flag far too easily by myself.
On the reverse side, you'll also see very few Gunslingers or Candy Barbarians. Gunslinger is just not worth using whatsoever, and while Candy Barbarian can be useful to have around it is much harder to play one to your team's benefit compared to other classes.
The fix for this one isn't easy. You'll have to modify the numbers and functions of certain skills so they work differently in PvP than they do in PvE to really put a good fix on this one, if you ask me. As I said, I can do a class-by-class breakdown later.
Issue 3: Flow of Information could use some Improvement
I'm mainly talking about the UI here - while it does its job and functions well enough, it can sometimes be fairly tricky to get a picture of what's going on at a glance. Considering you only get five minutes, this can be an issue sometimes.
I think the text that pops up between the two teams' scores may be bugged - I get told PREPARE FOR BATTLE at the beginning of the first match I play of a given session, but i've never seen it say anything else unless I get disconnected in the middle of a match and reconnect - and even then, it'll only give me one message and then not show up again. I did notice it informing me someone had took a flag at one point so I think this feature may be broken.
Besides that, I think the event text scroll could be improved a little. I can't tell at a glance whether what happened is good or bad. MurderKiller2051X explodinated ImADopeySchmo? Great. Who was on which team again? I know I can press tab to find out but at-a-glance is much better.
I'd also appreciate two new HUD elements - flag location indicators and the status of my teammates. I know the compass indicates where the flag is, but having a dedicated thing to locate the core objective would be far better. I also love running with Team Player banners so knowing who I can run and deliver a heal to would be great, or an energy boost since I cant tell my teammates' energy levels at all. I can do a mockup later of how I think this should go.
Issue 4: Map Imbalances
A smaller gripe, but two maps in particular seem to favor one side - the more well-known one is the one with two boxes, two plateaus and a fissure running through the middle of the map. One team can climb the plateau as an alternate way to get to their flag (flag turn-in point camping is a strong strategy on this map) but the other side can't.
The other is the indoor map, which is a vertical spiral staircase with mostly gold walls. Blue seems to be heavily favored on this map due to being at the top, while Red is at the bottom of the map - the jump chutes tend to be trickier to operate going down than up, which puts Red at a disadvantage when trying to escape with Blue's flag.
Also a very small pet gripe - some of these maps have tiled glass blocks, which players can't manufacture or place. C'mon devs!
Issue 5: Idlers and Quitters
This is a pretty big one with the community. You only get five players, so being a man down because some schmuck is standing at spawn staring off into space gets really aggravating. I've also been seeing more ragequits lately - this gets really disheartening when most of the enemy team quits because I don't want to just sit spawn-stomping one dude over and over. There's no sport in it.
There's also the types who will join a match, score one point, then sit idle for the rest of the match to avoid the xp loss.
Fixes for this are tricky because you don't want to put in a system that would end up punishing legit players. I have seen players who are legit competing in the match but just aren't very good at it and don't end up scoring points or kills - I don't feel they should be left out of rewards since regardless of the results they were actually trying.
I do remember one game did actually compare your matches played vs your actual stats, and if they were far too low over a long period of time it'd flag them for an admin to keep an eye on them to make sure they weren't idling. If they turned out to be idling, the game would put them in a separate bracket where they'd only enter matchmaking games vs players who had been caught doing the same thing.
That's all I can think of for the moment. I'm sure I can think of more later. =v
Issue 1: Class Movement Speed is Inconsistent
This is a pretty subtle but still nasty one. I feel all classes should move at the same base movement speed during PvP - I have had times where i'm trying to chase down a flag carrier, but my plodding Revenant can't do anything as the Lunar Lancer vanishes off into the distance with my flag. Even as ranged classes, this is an issue due to the distance they can put on you due to you slowing down while firing, as well as them weaving all over the place makes anything but AOE shots very difficult to land.
Running the flag should be a challenge - you're stealing a valuable thing from the deepest part of enemy territory and have to get it out, and CTF is a team-based mode so you should have difficulty doing this alone. The move speed inconsistency basically makes your choice of class (and not your skill with it) nullify a lot of the threat of extricating the flag.
It's also an issue outside of flag running - defenders can't respond to incursions into their territory as quickly if they're using a slow class, and sometimes they're just flat out not able to make certain jumps - Dopesheet doing some hub PvP on today's dev stream showed that a Chloromancer just can't make the jump on the two sky castles map without veering to the side - i've had trouble with this one myself as a Revenant.
To fix this one, just make move speed consistent across the board. Buffs and debuffs can go untouched (with some exceptions), though I think a flag runner should receive a mild slowdown to encourage their team to do some teamwork and defend them.
Issue 2: Class Power is Imbalanced
This is a big one and I know a lot of folks have been vocal about this one already. You'll see a lot of Ice Sages and Lunar Lancers in PvP - because they have a very broad range of advantages and few counters compared to other classes. I can do a class by class breakdown in a later post because I want the OP to be more about general issues, but those are the big two. I did an experiment this week where I went Ice Sage and used only my freeze and shield, no firing any kind of damaging shot at anyone - I was still able to run the flag far too easily by myself.
On the reverse side, you'll also see very few Gunslingers or Candy Barbarians. Gunslinger is just not worth using whatsoever, and while Candy Barbarian can be useful to have around it is much harder to play one to your team's benefit compared to other classes.
The fix for this one isn't easy. You'll have to modify the numbers and functions of certain skills so they work differently in PvP than they do in PvE to really put a good fix on this one, if you ask me. As I said, I can do a class-by-class breakdown later.
Issue 3: Flow of Information could use some Improvement
I'm mainly talking about the UI here - while it does its job and functions well enough, it can sometimes be fairly tricky to get a picture of what's going on at a glance. Considering you only get five minutes, this can be an issue sometimes.
I think the text that pops up between the two teams' scores may be bugged - I get told PREPARE FOR BATTLE at the beginning of the first match I play of a given session, but i've never seen it say anything else unless I get disconnected in the middle of a match and reconnect - and even then, it'll only give me one message and then not show up again. I did notice it informing me someone had took a flag at one point so I think this feature may be broken.
Besides that, I think the event text scroll could be improved a little. I can't tell at a glance whether what happened is good or bad. MurderKiller2051X explodinated ImADopeySchmo? Great. Who was on which team again? I know I can press tab to find out but at-a-glance is much better.
I'd also appreciate two new HUD elements - flag location indicators and the status of my teammates. I know the compass indicates where the flag is, but having a dedicated thing to locate the core objective would be far better. I also love running with Team Player banners so knowing who I can run and deliver a heal to would be great, or an energy boost since I cant tell my teammates' energy levels at all. I can do a mockup later of how I think this should go.
Issue 4: Map Imbalances
A smaller gripe, but two maps in particular seem to favor one side - the more well-known one is the one with two boxes, two plateaus and a fissure running through the middle of the map. One team can climb the plateau as an alternate way to get to their flag (flag turn-in point camping is a strong strategy on this map) but the other side can't.
The other is the indoor map, which is a vertical spiral staircase with mostly gold walls. Blue seems to be heavily favored on this map due to being at the top, while Red is at the bottom of the map - the jump chutes tend to be trickier to operate going down than up, which puts Red at a disadvantage when trying to escape with Blue's flag.
Also a very small pet gripe - some of these maps have tiled glass blocks, which players can't manufacture or place. C'mon devs!
Issue 5: Idlers and Quitters
This is a pretty big one with the community. You only get five players, so being a man down because some schmuck is standing at spawn staring off into space gets really aggravating. I've also been seeing more ragequits lately - this gets really disheartening when most of the enemy team quits because I don't want to just sit spawn-stomping one dude over and over. There's no sport in it.
There's also the types who will join a match, score one point, then sit idle for the rest of the match to avoid the xp loss.
Fixes for this are tricky because you don't want to put in a system that would end up punishing legit players. I have seen players who are legit competing in the match but just aren't very good at it and don't end up scoring points or kills - I don't feel they should be left out of rewards since regardless of the results they were actually trying.
I do remember one game did actually compare your matches played vs your actual stats, and if they were far too low over a long period of time it'd flag them for an admin to keep an eye on them to make sure they weren't idling. If they turned out to be idling, the game would put them in a separate bracket where they'd only enter matchmaking games vs players who had been caught doing the same thing.
That's all I can think of for the moment. I'm sure I can think of more later. =v
