So as of now, one of the most requested things to be added to the game is an arena, or in other words, organized pvp. Objectives, even playing field / gun fight opportunities, etc. I am not opposed to this, because even I would like some pvp without rogue liabilities. One thing people might not remember or even notice, is something I heard in a video about the game pre-release, which has been featured in nearly every Call of Duty game, because it works so well, and most likely others (Even in Destiny, not so much Battlefield, maybe Overwatch?), and that's the three laned map design. The design appear most in missions, but again, I guess no one really notices. Next time you run Lexington, take a look.
Three laned maps in Call of Duty allow you to manage information much more easily, or some might say make the matches more predictable. I for one prefer Call of Duty maps to be predictable, because of how TTK works in it. But, I want to go into a couple of topics that could really make organized PVP in this game great.
- Map design
- TTA / TTK
- Weapons
- Skills
- Game modes
- Rewards
Of course, Call of Duty games aren't perfect, but what people are most vocal about when it comes to Call of Duty are the time period and TTK, and maybe spawns. Not so much gun play, health (We'll get into that), or referring to Black Ops 3 and Infinite Warfare, abilities. Black Ops 3 and Infinite Warfare took the hero shooter route, believe it or not, so did Overwatch, but I haven't played that, so I'm unaware of what it makes much more team oriented compared to CoD. Mercy maybe?
Map Design.
Like I already mentioned, this game features a 3 laned map design, which Treyarch (World at War, Black Ops) does with every game they make and get nothing but praise for, because it's simple, "balanced" (as long as you get the spawns right) and not overwhelming. Battlefield, however, you're not gonna see three lanes, given the map sizes. I didn't play the CQC DLC they had for BF3, so there might have been some there. I think for dedicated PVP maps, 3 laned map design could be a nice place to start since it's pretty much already in the game.
Time to Action
Looking at how PVP in the game works now, Rogues run. So, let's say they kill you. Here you are dead, waiting on the timer so you can re-spawn. Time's up. Now you're hit with a loading screen. Sent to the checkpoint or safe house. Time to grab ammo and med kits, now it's time to leave, hit with another loading screen, now you're back outside. Meanwhile they are long gone. Of course, you can freeze their timer and they can increase it by killing other players, but how long do you think it'll take you to get back to them if you decide you want to continue to fight? You can't fast travel within the DZ, you'll have to leave it first. Then again, the other option is you go rogue yourself.
Battlefield has vehicles to get you to the action asap, and you can spawn on squad mates and Call of Duty has near instant respawns. You don't need instant respawns in The Division if it gets dedicated PVP, but you'll have to make it and TTA 10x better than what it is now.
Time to Kill
This is where I wanted to talk about health. I have a build that nets me 213k health, some people have more than that. TTK is better that what it once was, but everyone is still walking around with different health pools, and that with armor determines how fast or slow you drop. Of course, builds come into play, and there are differences in numbers, but for the most part they are marginal, especially with the AlphaBridge meta. If I'm not mistaken, Mercy in Overwatch has less health than the entire cast. I could be wrong on this as I don't keep up with the game like that, I've only seen her number at a glance compared to other characters, but she can heal and is an immediate target because of it. And I assume the big Viking guy has more health than the cast, but is slower.
I mean, you can heal and revive in Battlefield, but only one class can do it and you lose health faster than you gain it back when you're near a med kit.
My suggestion is that every player gets the same exact amount of health: 100k, 120k, 95k, etc, if there are no roles to play (I'll talk about that in Skills), and things can be monitored by how the next topic is balanced.
Weapons
At the core and excluding the MDR, The Division has 8 ARs, 6 LMGs, 8 Pistols, 5 Shotguns, 6 MMRs, and 8 SMGs (excluding the Thompsons) If you use just the base variants and base stats (depending what gear score range you take from), you have yourself a pretty good looking amount of weapons for a dedicated and balanced PVP. You can even shave the number down on the AR and SMG category if you want. They all have their strengths and weakness (ex. AK hits harder, but a LVOA-C shoots faster), much like, I hate to say it, a Call of Duty game. In said game, these are the determining factor whether or not you win a gun fight (of course accuracy, too.) and you can monitor if a weapon is overpowered or not, depending on what people are saying. That and perks, but perks in this game don't offer the same clutches than those of a Call of Duty game. Those would be
Skills
Let's face it, first aid is still the reason why TTK is high. I mean, I understand why, it's an RPG game with RPG elements, but tack on the health pools, overheal, and even armor... pfft. Remember what those fights were like in 1.3? Lmao.
If skills are free in this dedicated PVP, every healing skill will be top tier, or ultimately what will ruin it. Let's look at Survival: basic skills, but at the same time, electronics still play apart in it. My suggestion would be to either remove skills entirely OR don't make them extremely easy (Maybe per kill.... kill streaks? Lmao) to get and just rely on base stats on both weapons and skills. Don't factor in firearms or skill power. Just give the player base health, a weapon (or the ability to choose a weapon or weapon(s). Careful with this though, because back during MW2, you could run around with an AR and a Shotgun without Overkill), and a system to acquire skills. Skills will be very strong in this and you can't really have "build diversity" or a role and balance at the same time. But, skills could be what blurs that line.
Alternatively from skills and weapons, you can have pre-made classes for players to choose from.
Weapon Mods
Eh.. I mean, I don't know about those. They have the ability to increase damage, so again, those are tricky.
Game Modes
You can have your standard TDM, and with those leaks, you already have domination, essentially. However, you could have an attack / defend type of game mode. That's the only extra thing I can think of.
Rewards
For a while in Destiny,a player at the bottom of the leaderboard at the end of a match, who really didn't do much work, had the ability to get an exotic, but then they changed that. I mean, I think they still can, but it's been a while since I last played it. I wouldn't be opposed to allowing every player to get a reward, but you'd have to make it fair.
Ultimately, I think that's it. It might sounds like I want the PVP to be Call of Duty, and that's true, because the game itself (At least the multiplayer) is dedicated PVP, and at the fundamental level, too good to overlook. Again, Alternatively from skills and weapons, you can have pre-made classes for players to choose from. Overwatch and Siege is this, and Battlefield has its role in that, too. You can turn it into either of these, if anything.
Disclaimer - I have not played Elder Scrolls Online, Diablo, and have only played Neverwinter's PVP once, so if you have played any of those, feel free to let me know how they are, since they are MMORPGs with different builds in PVP.
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TrueOriginally Posted by z0g_ Go to original post
Nah, if anything, I'm just throwing out references, much like how they've been honest about which game they referenced for this game. Arena is thrown around almost everywhere when it comes down to this game. Call of Duty, Battlefield, Overwatch - they are created to be dedicated PVP games, there's no denying that. So if this arena or dedicated PVP were to be added to the game, those are the games to look it, because you're not getting anything original and there's really no other place to turn, especially with how builds work in this game,Originally Posted by Art.Van.Delay Go to original post
I dont think we need to go down the Call of Futy route in terms of multiplayer. You just need a couple of tweaks.
- Remove High end and Gear Set Armor completely from the Darkzone. You can only wear purple gear like in the days before patch 1.1.
- Remove armor as a major role and change armor to a 2nd health bar instead of mitigation. Also remove Damage to elites, Protection from elites as major rolls. Replace it with crit chance, Crit damage, health, EDR, Enemy Armor damage. Minor Rolls will be Kill Exp, individual resistances, Ammo (20-25%). This is for the purple gear.
- Instead of gear sets and high end bonuses a separate Darkzone talent screen is activated with skills specifically tuned to PVP combat.
- Make Central Park expansion thr dedicated PVP zone with 1 v 1 , 4 v 4 missions, or FFA missions.
This way you keep the RPG elements of The Division that isnt out of control.
Arena the way I see it:
Tune PvP damage multiplier so TTK is lower. Remove medkits (face it, we're all going to run first aid anyways), remove revives and remove the UIt skills. The objective (flag, cap area, ...) is the goal here, not staying alive and with to much healing capacity we're just going to take forever to take or retake objectives. You die, enemy takes area, you respawn, period.
Dying itself doesn't matter because you have an objective and lose nothing of personal value. TTK and health pools will resolve itself, a lower TTK on average will result in indirectly making differences in health pools less dramatic.
In essence it should be more "barebones" like Survival, but with our current gear we farmed for.
The Division does a great job in PvE at representing both shooter and RPG, in PvP it fails flatout horribly at representing the shooter element and seems to only work half decently in 1vs1's and Survival.
Armor as a BiS roll is a problem, but that's a different discussion imo.
Why wouldn't we add it is what you should ask yourself?Originally Posted by Art.Van.Delay Go to original post
This game has the potential to cater to so many audiences at once, why the stubbornness? N/O, but I do notice a general stubbornness among the community. If anything I wouldn't remove the current content at all, just stack on top. Normalized PvP, PvP as we currently know it, PvE content, ... instead of all stubbornly fighting among each other... why aren't we slamming our fist on the table together and ask for all of it?
An anticheat would become more needed.
But I do think it would help the playerbase in a positive manner if more content was added in different ways, both PvP and PvE.
The only argument here is, will it be enough or should it be saved for The Division 2 because the playerbase has gone down to much already?
I bought this game hoping it would be a nice blend of RPG and shooter, but so far I only experience this blend in PvE and in 1vs1 fights. Group based fights turn into full blown RPG, it's almost as if a 4vs4 is just 2 whirlwinds clashing into each other, dealing bits and pieces of damage until one gets sucked into the other and dies off.
You should not be comparing this game to any of those games that are built on PVP. All those games have to think about total balance. Weapons, health, and map balance all play a big role in those games. For good PVP I don't use the division and you really can't compare them. Even Destiny figured out that you can't mix PVE and PVP elements together to please people. You can never have perfect balance to any game and a perfect examlpe is Starcraft which is over 10 years old is still getting balance patches.
Were you only reading the thread titles? And the suggestion forum doesn't get nearly the same amount of traffic as the general discussion.Originally Posted by Art.Van.Delay Go to original post
I'm just saying where to look.Originally Posted by gt2k Go to original post