[Level9Drow]

Cryptek, I just wanted you to know that I don't want PvP to end for you. I want you to be able to have fun playing PvP and to get enjoyment out of it. I don't begrudge you for enjoying it either, nor do I feel you are wrong for liking it. What I don't like is that you want to force me, or people like me, to be target practice for you at the detriment of out enjoyment and progress.

Why? If I believe you should have a good time, why wouldn't you believe I shouldn't? That seems a bit unfair. Seems to me that you aren't interested in real PvP with others who also want to engage in PvP, you are interested in preying on people who don't want to play in your sand box with you. If I am wrong, and you DO want real PvP and only want willing opponents, then you should be vying for optional PvP as well. Otherwise you are a bully. I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe you are not a griefer troll and honestly want PvP.

[Cryptek]

Furthermore, you are worried about queue times as an antagonist which would also improve if there was a reason to play against them.

"decreasing the pool of players you can invade but increasing the amount of competing antagonists wont make queue times even worse, trust me"

the community should be split
All the reasons in your earlier post as to why you enjoy pvp in this game mean squat to someone like me,

"I think antagonists should be removed from the game because I started playing a 4v1 PVP game, but I dont like PVP and fuck anyone who does"

If you honestly believe splitting the community wouldn't have adverse effects on Antag queue times you are either: Delusional or just don't give a damn and wouldn't mind if they where removed from the game but don't want to outright say it.

There are zero arguments you can make that allowing people to opt out of PVP wouldn't decrease the amount of available matches for antags. The current queue times are already so bad that I have a book on my table for while I wait, if you give people the option to opt out (I mean we already have one person flat out admitting no reward would be big enough to entice them to play PVP mode) you might as well just remove antags, the queue time would be over an hour.

So dont give me that bullcrap.

[Cryptek]

What I don't like is that you want to force me, or people like me, to be target practice for you at the detriment of out enjoyment and progress.

I'm not forcing you to do anything, this is the game we play and here: I'll even play ball and give you two scenarios for how implementing something as awful as PVE mode would go.

Introduce PVE mode and dont change the current rewards: 98% of people opt out of PVP, the only people who do it are 4 man death squads only there to stomp on the antag for the expressed purpose of griefing and premades wanting to flip alignment.

Introduce PVE mode and change the current rewards to entice PVP.
Bearing in mind that currently the business model is based around antags fucking up your games and thereby slowing down your gold/BP/FP progress which means they're going to have to:
Drastically lower the rewards for PVE mode, since they have to compensate for the fact that since you're no longer worried an antag might show up you can now: Freely pick characters based solely on what is optimal for the mission, no need to worry about needing at least 1 guy around dedicated to fighting a potential antag.
Secondly since you now always know if you're going into a PVP match, there is no thought process of "hey my team is weak against this antag on this map, maybe I should pick a good counter instead of just a 4th CQC brawler" instead since you know, you'll always have every team that does go to PVP for the greater rewards, built so that it'll crush any antag.

Let me let you in on a secret: The antag is always at a disadvantage baring things like disconnects, lag and mentor matches. If there isn't that greed from the raiders side pushing them to pick suboptimal PVP builds, the already low win rate of antagonists is going to plummet even lower. (You know ruining any level 10 wanting to try out being an antags experience, in fact dont even think about clicking antag unless you want to go AFK for the entire match, unless you're a level 200 WAAC git kitted out with the best rare cards and guns)

You are selfishly going "But I just dont want to have to deal with, surely someone else will and it'll be fine" without thinking about the larger ramifications of such a change. Or willfully being deceitful by knowing full well but deciding to not acknowledge it.


Which is why I think the much better option would be to make Mentor matches the PVE mode (Along with capping their difficulty at 20%), it would give veterans an actual incentive to play mentor matches and also allow new players a bit of time to actually grow accustomed to the mechanics, throw in some actual in game communication and we'd even be able to teach them not to shoot the elites.

Edit: Also it's like 01:44 here so I'm gonna go to bed.

[Hiero_Glyph]

Furthermore, you are worried about queue times as an antagonist which would also improve if there was a reason to play against them.

"decreasing the pool of players you can invade but increasing the amount of competing antagonists wont make queue times even worse, trust me"

the community should be split
All the reasons in your earlier post as to why you enjoy pvp in this game mean squat to someone like me,

"I think antagonists should be removed from the game because I started playing a 4v1 PVP game, but I dont like PVP and fuck anyone who does"

If you honestly believe splitting the community wouldn't have adverse effects on Antag queue times you are either: Delusional or just don't give a damn and wouldn't mind if they where removed from the game but don't want to outright say it.

There are zero arguments you can make that allowing people to opt out of PVP wouldn't decrease the amount of available matches for antags. The current queue times are already so bad that I have a book on my table for while I wait, if you give people the option to opt out (I mean we already have one person flat out admitting no reward would be big enough to entice them to play PVP mode) you might as well just remove antags, the queue time would be over an hour.

So dont give me that bullcrap.

In the current system you are correct as there is zero incentize to play against an antagonist. If, however, the playlists were separate there are a dozens ways to make playing against an antagonist more appealing. I would personally recommend a general play list for both raiders and antags, as well as a total prize that is split among all parties involved based on performance. So if an antag shuts down the raiders they get a larger portion; the same is true for the raiders. Similarly, I would include weekly challenges that reward additional bonuses based on winning in the antagonist pkaylist, and this could even include exclusive cosmetic items. And these are only a few of a dozen plus ways to encourage players to play as/against antagonists. It really is simple once you split the playlists as you can now provide rewards that are also separate.

[Whitebleidd]

The pve/pvp split should have been done with ftp launch, with the influx of players, and I’m betting player retention from relaunch would have also benefited from such a change at that specific time, the more they wait the worse the whole situation is going to get imo.

[Level9Drow]

What I don't like is that you want to force me, or people like me, to be target practice for you at the detriment of out enjoyment and progress.

I'm not forcing you to do anything, this is the game we play and here: I'll even play ball and give you two scenarios for how implementing something as awful as PVE mode would go.

Introduce PVE mode and dont change the current rewards: 98% of people opt out of PVP, the only people who do it are 4 man death squads only there to stomp on the antag for the expressed purpose of griefing and premades wanting to flip alignment.

Introduce PVE mode and change the current rewards to entice PVP.
Bearing in mind that currently the business model is based around antags fucking up your games and thereby slowing down your gold/BP/FP progress which means they're going to have to:
Drastically lower the rewards for PVE mode, since they have to compensate for the fact that since you're no longer worried an antag might show up you can now: Freely pick characters based solely on what is optimal for the mission, no need to worry about needing at least 1 guy around dedicated to fighting a potential antag.
Secondly since you now always know if you're going into a PVP match, there is no thought process of "hey my team is weak against this antag on this map, maybe I should pick a good counter instead of just a 4th CQC brawler" instead since you know, you'll always have every team that does go to PVP for the greater rewards, built so that it'll crush any antag.

Let me let you in on a secret: The antag is always at a disadvantage baring things like disconnects, lag and mentor matches. If there isn't that greed from the raiders side pushing them to pick suboptimal PVP builds, the already low win rate of antagonists is going to plummet even lower. (You know ruining any level 10 wanting to try out being an antags experience, in fact dont even think about clicking antag unless you want to go AFK for the entire match, unless you're a level 200 WAAC git kitted out with the best rare cards and guns)

You are selfishly going "But I just dont want to have to deal with, surely someone else will and it'll be fine" without thinking about the larger ramifications of such a change. Or willfully being deceitful by knowing full well but deciding to not acknowledge it.


Which is why I think the much better option would be to make Mentor matches the PVE mode (Along with capping their difficulty at 20%), it would give veterans an actual incentive to play mentor matches and also allow new players a bit of time to actually grow accustomed to the mechanics, throw in some actual in game communication and we'd even be able to teach them not to shoot the elites.

You still have the problem of unwilling participants then. Your suggestions about Mentor matches are great by the way, but there is still the problem with high level players who hate PvP.

Why lower rewards? Just keep the rewards for PvE the same as they are now and increase the rewards for PvP. You say only Elite Navy Seal teams will queue for PvP against antag, but the antag can choose what missions they can do. And besides, this is willing PvP where both opponents want to PvP. And maybe this will cause MSE to make better changes for Antag now that it is optional. Now that there is no people who hate PvP there to say that it's already too hard, they can now balance the AI and levels to be more balanced with PvP and give the antag more help since Navy Seal teams will only be queuing.

But otherwise you are saying it's completely fine to have unwilling participants, sheep for wolves to east. This isn't good at all. this will create a never ending cycle of animosity that will go beyond you and me being here on the forums arguing. If it was optional there would be no animosity between the two groups and no one could ultimately complain because they aren't FORCED. So if a new player decided to dip his toe in the PvP pool and had a shit time of it and got tilted, he could just easily say, "Well i won't do that again." instead of ranting on the forums,m or worse, quitting.

Just consider that, optional PvP didn't hurt other games, I don't see why it would hurt this one.

[Cryptek]

Why lower rewards? Just keep the rewards for PvE the same as they are now

Because as I said there are cards and weapons which are better at PVP which you would normally want to bring in for regular missions on the off chance that an antag shows up, just like there are characters that are way better at dealing with PVE than dealing with an antag.

Like honestly give me a good reason to for example pick Harec over other raiders if PVP was optional, and no "thinking he's fun" doesn't count. His damage to objectives is worse than raiders like Schneider, Valeria and Hans and since his headshots kill elites rather than put them in a downed state there are much safer bets.

And finally because Mercurysteam is a business and current gold rewards like them or not, are balanced around the fact that you're going to lose matches or get a low score, thanks to antags showing up. You dont honestly think ANY company with a f2p model would just leave those values the same do you?

I mean why do you think the gold rewards for solo missions are a one-time thing? Because otherwise the most efficient way to grind gold would be to run missions solo, no bad players or antags to mess up your game and you can bring a character custom built to speed run that one specific map.

[Hiero_Glyph]

Why lower rewards? Just keep the rewards for PvE the same as they are now

Because as I said there are cards and weapons which are better at PVP which you would normally want to bring in for regular missions on the off chance that an antag shows up, just like there are characters that are way better at dealing with PVE than dealing with an antag.

Like honestly give me a good reason to for example pick Harec over other raiders if PVP was optional, and no "thinking he's fun" doesn't count. His damage to objectives is worse than raiders like Schneider, Valeria and Hans and since his headshots kill elites rather than put them in a downed state there are much safer bets.

And finally because Mercurysteam is a business and current gold rewards like them or not, are balanced around the fact that you're going to lose matches or get a low score, thanks to antags showing up. You dont honestly think ANY company with a f2p model would just leave those values the same do you?

I mean why do you think the gold rewards for solo missions are a one-time thing? Because otherwise the most efficient way to grind gold would be to run missions solo, no bad players or antags to mess up your game and you can bring a character custom built to speed run that one specific map.

Blueprint missions, faction points (not everyone has multiple characters unlocked per faction), testing cards, trying a new weapon, using treasure/bounty hunter, a preferred character is locked, just for fun, etc. are all reasons why players would select suboptimal characters for PvE.

Also, there are plenty of gold sinks that could be added to the game. Converting gold into faction points, paying for experience boosters (technically already in the game but not worth it), buying loadout slots with gold (highly requested), rerolling weapon stats without upgrading, etc. You make it sound like players would be sitting on millions of gold when that is just an indication of not having enough gold sinks in the game.

[Cryptek]

You make it sound like players would be sitting on millions of gold when that is just an indication of not having enough gold sinks in the game.

You're straight up naive if you think this way, if you actually thought like a developer or watched how this goes down in EVERY f2p game with very few exceptions, you'd understand that this isn't me being cruel or trying to take your candy.
This is me stating facts on how it would go down because that is how it has gone down every time prior to this.

The most efficient gold making methods always get nerfed and we both know that the safety of PVE mode WOULD greatly improve efficiency across the board, people who play for fun are never the subject of balancing, it's what you can do with a WAAC optimized group that sets the gold standard for everyone else.

Current rewards are balanced around the fact that every match you run the risk of an Antagonist showing up and ruining your score, if they remove that element of risk, they're obviously going to lower your rewards as a result.

Edit: Ok for reals this time I'm going to bed, good night.

[EMack114]

You say it's not okay yet you still went through with destroying these beginners that will probably quit playing this game because of your actions. Inb4 "i'm just playing as intended" gg.

As "mean" as that is, that is actually pretty common for an Antag nowadays.  Most of the people I see playing this are noobs with a few vets and, trust me, people like this guy aren't the reason newbies ultimately quit. They quit because the gameplay gets hella frustrating, for both noob and vet alike. As a rule of thumb, I think the antag should have some kind of scaling system and shouldn't be accessible to the "boss" stages.  An antag on that last mission is the LAST THING anyone needs; same thing for the Aneska mission.  Things like THAT will make a person quit before getting a bad hand antag on a simple mission will.

As a rule of thumb, I play antag only to get the points for a level change.  Since I get points as long as I get a single kill, I don't even spawn.  I just do some homework, jiggle the controller every once in a blue, and let them play.  In my opinion, THAT is a good antagonist in this game.  This way, I don't mess with a person's potential chance at getting a blueprint, I don't "discourage" noobs from playing the game, and I get my points. 

Everyone wins.

[Tekato]

You make it sound like players would be sitting on millions of gold when that is just an indication of not having enough gold sinks in the game.

You're straight up naive if you think this way, if you actually thought like a developer or watched how this goes down in EVERY f2p game with very few exceptions, you'd understand that this isn't me being cruel or trying to take your candy.
This is me stating facts on how it would go down because that is how it has gone down every time prior to this.

The most efficient gold making methods always get nerfed and we both know that the safety of PVE mode WOULD greatly improve efficiency across the board, people who play for fun are never the subject of balancing, it's what you can do with a WAAC optimized group that sets the gold standard for everyone else.

Current rewards are balanced around the fact that every match you run the risk of an Antagonist showing up and ruining your score, if they remove that element of risk, they're obviously going to lower your rewards as a result.

Edit: Ok for reals this time I'm going to bed, good night.

I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but you keep making up excuses to try to justify forced pvp. You're making it seem like all these missions are a cake walk and not difficult enough on their own. People fail and get bad scores all the time even without an antagonist this is just reaching for straws at this point seriously. You just want it to stay this way so players still bring unoptimized team composition  because they don't always expect an antagonist. The moment they make it optional with good enough incentives to make players want to do it they will always bring top tier pvp characters/cards and that's what you're afraid of. Trust me if they make the gold earning/faction points of antagonist matches double or more of the normal amount, even i would probably join a few myself. Aslong as there's good enough incentive players will join and there won't be any matchmaking issues other than the current ones present already.

"Oh but the game has been and will always be advertised as 4v1" then why is not every match guaranteed 4v1. They should just have made every mission have an antagonist that way I would have already stopped playing this game.

[Cryptek]

I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but you keep making up excuses to try to justify forced pvp.

If you call explaining that the current system is built around, balanced around and infused with PVP "excusing forced PVP" here's what I have to say to you:
The moment you downloaded and installed Spacelords you consented to PVP.
If you're a Vet you have no excuse, you didn't start playing the game and "suddenly the devs introduced forced PVP" no, you joined the game and kept playing despite the PVP or indeed because of it.

Meanwhile you address none of the antag side issues, because you dont care about the antag side, you dont care about the antag experience, you dont care about the already horrible antag queue times or the fact that what you're suggesting would benefit only YOU and would negatively impact anyone who enjoys playing an antag in multiple ways.

The difference is one party here is playing the game, as it is, as it was intended by the devs and how it is marketed.
And the other is a spoiled child who wants to change the game and anyone who's experience is negatively impacted by your desires be damned, because the most important person is you and no one else.

[Hiero_Glyph]

I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but you keep making up excuses to try to justify forced pvp.

If you call explaining that the current system is built around, balanced around and infused with PVP "excusing forced PVP" here's what I have to say to you:
The moment you downloaded and installed Spacelords you consented to PVP.
If you're a Vet you have no excuse, you didn't start playing the game and "suddenly the devs introduced forced PVP" no, you joined the game and kept playing despite the PVP or indeed because of it.

Meanwhile you address none of the antag side issues, because you dont care about the antag side, you dont care about the antag experience, you dont care about the already horrible antag queue times or the fact that what you're suggesting would benefit only YOU and would negatively impact anyone who enjoys playing an antag in multiple ways.

The difference is one party here is playing the game, as it is, as it was intended by the devs and how it is marketed.
And the other is a spoiled child who wants to change the game and anyone who's experience is negatively impacted by your desires be damned, because the most important person is you and no one else.

You are not listening if you think no one has suggested ways to make the antag experience better. We want better rewards, weekly challenges, faster queue times, exclusive cosmentics, leaderboards, etc. The issue remains that only the antagonist is 100% prepared for pvp while the raiders may be farming blueprints with a stock character.  Why waste their time and cheapen your win? Or is beating players that are not prepared part of the fun? No one wants the antag removed, we just want it to be a better experience for all 5 players.

[Cryptek]

No one wants the antag removed, we just want it to be a better experience for all 5 players.

I cant take that statement serious from people who would like to opt out of PVP and play PVE instead because they dont enjoy the PVP.

But I'll level with you and give it one last effort to hammer home why you cant suggest splitting the community currently as if it would fix the game and wouldn't just ruin the game for people who PVP while only benefiting people who are scared of it.

Things you need to fix before you can even consider it:
The reward system, currently rewards are shit
The new player experience, both PVE and PVP because I see so many level ones just pull the plug halfway through a mission, even if we're winning because they aren't having fun.
The latency issue, no one is having a good time if there's 400 ping and I would personally prefer having to wait longer in the queue than have 20+ minutes of being unable to participate (and before anyone jumps on that: No an antag doesn't make it so you cant participate, get better at the game, you cant get better at dealing with ping when it breaks the CQC system to the point that even if you throw a counter punch BEFORE an enemy starts a grab, you'll still get grabbed due to the delay)

Most importantly however: Much, Much better communication, it's laughable that a team based game like this has such piss poor communication options (Especialy on PC, but we're the smallest playerbase so that's probably last on their to-do list)

Once you fix all those things, which will take a LONG ass time, you then have to look at the population numbers. It's no secret that spacelords doesn't have the numbers like for example: Warframe.
at time of writing just on Steam Warframe has 56k people online, then you add the consoles ontop that afterwards.
If spacelords had a population like Warframe? You could definitely survive splitting the community into PVE/PVP.
With the current however? I dont know what numbers for PS4 and XBONE but for steam there's currently 91 people online
ninety-fucking-one
You CANNOT with a straight face say splitting a community this tiny wouldn't adversely affect antags, you CANNOT say "oh but the guys who wanna PVP will just PVP and I'll live in my magical happy place without mean antags" without accepting that holding that opinion is tantamount to: Fuck antags, remove them from the game by giving them huge queue times and make every, single, match a complete stomping of them. "oh but we'll just balance it"
Have you seen the last patch? They cant even balance one map (talking about "In shock" here) what makes you think they can just magially make the antag experience anything resembling what it is now if you did a split?
Never mind that again, Antags are going to have 30+ minutes to an hour queues and that's IF you beef up their rewards to drastically out perform PVE rewards.

And then we come to the final thing, it might not be you, but you just know that if you make the rewards for PVP better than PVE, someone is going to be angry and whine that "why isn't their hard work being rewarded as much? Is their time less valuable than people who PVP?" and because players are hardwired to always go "yes more rewards for less effort" it'll get a landslide of approval, with any antag speaking up getting shot down as a brutal dick who is stepping on the poor defenseless casuals.

So no, your appeal of "but I dont want to PVP so you should feel bad for invading me in a game about 4v1 PVP" doens't hold up in court.

[Tekato]

I try to give you the benefit of the doubt but you keep making up excuses to try to justify forced pvp.

If you call explaining that the current system is built around, balanced around and infused with PVP "excusing forced PVP" here's what I have to say to you:
The moment you downloaded and installed Spacelords you consented to PVP.
If you're a Vet you have no excuse, you didn't start playing the game and "suddenly the devs introduced forced PVP" no, you joined the game and kept playing despite the PVP or indeed because of it.

Meanwhile you address none of the antag side issues, because you dont care about the antag side, you dont care about the antag experience, you dont care about the already horrible antag queue times or the fact that what you're suggesting would benefit only YOU and would negatively impact anyone who enjoys playing an antag in multiple ways.

The difference is one party here is playing the game, as it is, as it was intended by the devs and how it is marketed.
And the other is a spoiled child who wants to change the game and anyone who's experience is negatively impacted by your desires be damned, because the most important person is you and no one else.

Yeah you're not listening at all I've already said antagonist matches need better rewards like double or triple gold/faction points etc. The reason why i haven't adressed the antag side too deeply is because the only problems with it is the score and rewards which I agree need a change but other than that they're fine. The wait times are not that long or about the same as it is for raiders at least from my experience and everyone already knows matchmaking is terrible for either side with the lv difference.

"The moment i downloaded and installed spacelords I consented to PvP" really? Like i said before not every match is 4v1 or pvp. Sure the game says it has 4v1 experience but look at fortnite they started out as a standard horde mode 3rd person shooter co-op and now they have a battle royale pvp mode. Games can change they don't have to stay the same, spacelords was pay to play and now it's free to play. In the words of valeria your excuses for this harassment system are absurd and the way you dress is atrocious. Like many have said before in the current system you will often run into players that are not prepared for pvp by bringing a character to farm a specific blueprint or faction points etc, their team composition in that case is gonna suck and that's probably what you want. If you truly wanted a fair pvp match you would be supporting optional pvp so that players know for sure there will be an antag and they won't get bullied when they're using a useless stock weapon character to farm blueprints or trying out a character they just purchased. The way it is now the raiders have more to lose than the antagonist since it's 4 players losing out on rewards/blueprints vs 1 single person. I'm not asking for them to ban pvp or remove it just make it optional with enough incentives for players to opt into it. You're the one asking pve players to uninstall the game and completely stop playing if we don't enjoy pvp so if anyone is being spoiled here its you. You offer no way for both type of players to co-exist and just want us to slug through pvp matches we do not enjoy to satisfy you.