Sirens' Call is something of an education, I've decided. Well, putting it another way, I went to Siren's Call, and got schooled, big-time. My previous impressions of PvP in City of Various were largely based on tentative and furtive forays into Bloody Bay, a rather quiet zone much of the time, and despite it becoming a bit of a second home for my Stalker, I'd only actually been in a fight there once, and that by prior appointment. Actually stumbling across, and ambushing, a roving Superhero is a generally unlikely proposition, and in the end I just took to using it as a change of scenery to Cap Au Diable, for exclusively PvE work.
I think the place has several problems that combine to make it a poor choice of venue for a fight. Firstly, Bloody Bay is just so big! It feels comparable in size to Cap Au Diable, and possibly The Hollows, although I'm less familiar with Heroside. This makes random and chance encounters a rare thing to begin with. Much of the island is the tall dense Rogue Isles Townhouse style of architecture, canopied and dense forest, or tangled industrial - all of which is quite tricky to navigate through at street-level, and very easy to hide in, even without some form of stealth.
This is compounded by the fact that the very first and easiest PvE Mission in the place, (Patrol Bloody Bay), gives you a 30 minute temporary stealth power, no matter what Archetype you are, meaning that everyone can be invisible if they choose. Also, by the time you're allowed in the place, Level 15, most if not all players have one of the four travel powers, (Super Speed, Super Jump, Flight or Teleport), meaning that everyone travels very fast, so even if you do glimpse an orange (enemy) playername flash past, they're gone before you can stop your own breakneck dashing about.
It also has a quite harsh 'downscaling' effect on most players, bumping everyone up or down to L25. In doing so, it strips you of all the powers and enhancement slots that you gained after that level, potentially removing powers that many players will have come to rely on - several of the more powerful L20+ Power Pool choices in particular - Stamina, and the like. It means that unless your character has been grown from creation with L25 in mind as an optimum, with the very specific choices you will need at that level all bought in the correct sequence - a 'Bloody Bay Character' in effect, the whole experience is likely to just annoy. It does not give you bonus power choices if you are below L25 at the time of entry.
All in all, not a popular zone, and most people only go there in small groups to restock the Summon Shivan power, as our own little gang on hoodlums did this week. They're a handy thing to have in reserve for the harder normal missions, or Strike Force assignments.
Siren's Call is the next PvP zone up, pegged at L30, (L20 minimum entry) and seems a whole different ball-game, and a great deal more popular, with 10-20 players in the place, compared to Bloody Bay's 'Just me then'. It does seem to address a lot of the above problems, but not all. For a start, the map seems to work a lot better. Its a Heroes' 'home game', taking place in a district of Paragon City, with the Villains trying to make a beachhead. The map is essentially a broad L-shaped corridor, with a base at either end. Head toward the other base and you're bound to come across an enemy or two.
The place still has it's fair share of PvE Assist missions, the same ones as in Bloody Bay, mostly revolving around trashing Longbow/Arachnos bases in instanced doorways, to give zonewide buffs to your side and zonewide debuffs to theirs. There seems to be some kind of larger scale PvE battling to be had outside, to vie for control of the zone overall, and open access to shops and such, but there isn't anything like the Shivan Strike, and it's supreme usefulness in the larger PvE game. What goes on in Siren's Call stays in Siren's Call, and this seems to attract the more dedicated PvP types, rather than PvE tourists looking for an edge. This all means the level of competition is quite a bit higher, and most, if not all of the participants are in fact Level 50 folks, who have repsecced themselves to have the 'Correct' powers, and in the correct order for a L30 downgrading.
And then in wanders hapless carebear me! I'm not actually level 30 yet, being bumped up for the duration of the visit, and meaning that I didn't lose any of the powers I already had, and somewhat naively assumed that I, an Invisible Backstabbing Ambush Class, would be ideally suited to PvP. I came for the change of scenery, and to do a few of the Buff Villains Missions, and thought I'd have a go at the actual killing.
Of course the first problem was the classic 'I Think I'm Invisible, When In Fact...' faux pas. It was like a bad sit-com! I'd be doing that exaggerated creeping thing in a quite comical manner, sniggering probably, secure in my blanket of boiling darkness, approaching the defenceless Superhero loitering idly at the intersection, when BAM! They casually turn around and drop the old Snare/Stun/Sleep/Nuke combo on my actually quite visible indeed thankyouverymuch ass. I passed it off as a fluke, but after a number of these, it turns out that in fact every single Hero in the place has, quite wisely, opted for the Leadership: Tactics optional power, which acts as some kind of See Invisible type of thing. Well, it makes sense I guess; the Bad Guys have Invisible People with Backstab Powers! You'd have to be a Bit Thick not to take that if you're doing PvP more than once, ever.
It then turns out, that to get the really quite important and necessary feature of my chosen class back - Not Being Seen - I need to get the 'Invisibl-er' power, to make me Invisibler! Invisible is not a binary state in CoX PvP, and in fact uses some kind of pointage system. Of course being PvP professionals, they are likely to all have the basic Concealment: Stealth power too, making them ALL Stalkers, to an extent, only with Survivability if they are detected, a luxury I need to work on a great deal more.
If I take the basic stealth power, however, it will somehow stack with my own Stalkerishness, making me More Stalkery Than People Who Aren't Stalkers, again, with any luck, putting me back at the forefront of the 'Invisibl-est' Arms Race. Unless there is some kind of 'Percept-ier' type of power I am unaware of that will make me visible to them all again. Ho hum.
Visibility wasn't the only sore point mind you, and all the troubles I had with the Air Pirate mission came back with a vengeance too. I am a melee class, and require physical contact with my prey to do damage. Given that everyone in the place has one of the four travel powers, this is Quite Tricky to pull off. If you think bunny-hopping is a problem in FPS games, imagine the hilarity that ensues when you give them all a 75ft high bunny-hop. These monkeys were bouncing around all over the place! I'd stab one, if they'd just...stay...still...a minute!
One of my chosen powers is Teleport: Teleport Foe, a handy prerequisite to my own travel power, Teleport. Using this, I can -YOINK!- unsuspecting enemies into fist range, and this was indeed working as advertised. Unfortunately, I hadn't quite thought my cunning plan all the way through and one of two things would happen next - neither of which involves a Hospitalised Superhero and World Conquering Supervillain. In most cases, after an initial split-second of confusion, most of them simply mash the space-bar and jump 75ft up into the air, coming down two or three city blocks away - somewhat out of range of my devastating Fist-O-Doom assault. They usually start shooting fireballs at me at that point. Or Ice. Or sodding great rocks. Or photocopiers, burnt out cars and Second World War Shipping Mines. Or... You get the idea.
The rarer alternative is that they just turn round and punch me in the face so hard that I lose motor function and quite possibly, bladder control too! Stunned, I can then only watch as my Stalker is beaten unconscious in with none of my pesky defensive toggle abilities getting in the way. Nap time! I should really look into getting a Stun, Fear, Hold, Immobilse, Sleep, ANYTHING! of my own. And something that protects me form Stuns, Fears, Holds, Immobilises, Sleeps or ANYTHINGs too. And some kind of ranged attack that hits further than arms length. And maybe the Super Jump Power. Starting a complete new and separate PvP Corruptor Alt, in other words.
My own special effect, '-Accuracy' is perhaps less useful, given that pretty much everyone slots every power with 3x +Accuracy asap. I mean what good is the rest of the power's effect if you can't hit with it in the first place?
Teleporting as a Travel Power for PvP also leaves much to be desired. The control method is a bit fiddley, for a start, which isn't what you need while under pressure. You have to activate the skill, then angle the camera to look where you want to go, then place the glowing ring cursor where you want to TP to go, then click, then wait for a half-second or so while it charges up, then wait for a half-second at the other end as it charges down, and repeat.
In that time, Super Jumpers are awaaaaay - Mash Spacebar For Great Altitude! I thought that perhaps being able to TP in a random direction would help throw enemies off the scent, but it doesn't actually untarget you, and as in most MMO PvP, aiming is not used. It takes at least two TP hops to get far enough away to break this 'lock', and their bolts of ice/fire/rocks/spinach/acid home in with unerring accuracy during this panickey escape. A useful PvP travel power needs to be fast and simple to operate, and Super Jumping and Super Speed seemed to be the favourites.
Superior Mobility is a cornerstone of successful PvP in any game, increasing your own, decreasing theirs, and with everyone using either of those powers, the whole dynamic of the place is hectic to the extreme, and far more fluid and fast-paced than in many MMOs - very little duking it out here; it's all rapid skirmishing. Blink and you'll miss it!
Superior Numbers is another cornerstone, and very much in evidence here. Strangely though, it has seemed to be the Villains that have the numerical edge the majority of times I've been there. While I, personally, may suck, and offer easy kills for bored Heroes, the Villain 'Regulars' generally seem to have the numbers in the place, loitering near the Hero base and waiting for the Heroes to sally forth. Mind you, it doesn't take many Heroes to drive off the large collection of thugs arrayed against them if they organise a bit, and one outing saw the same two or three Heroes beating upward of ten Villains about the place in an almost comically casual manner. Turned out that they had an 'Really Very Invisible Indeed!' Healer type (Empathy Defender?) that none of us could find, making them more or less immortal. And a huge number of Stun powers! That and we were adhering to the Holywood Villain Convention, of only attacking the Heroes one at a time, which while fair, probably wasn't helping.
So much I don't know! It really is the deep end, trying to take part in Siren's Call, and in the end I figured I'd be the most help just doing the Longbow base wrecking PvE instance missions, to help our side with buffs instead. Still, I did somehow manage to score a kill of my own. It was less diabolical planning and brutal efficiency, and more an eight Villain 'All Pile On!' gang-bang on some hapless tourist Superhero who seemed as clueless as me, and I happened to get the last hit in. Still, that's one more toward the 'I'm a Psychopath, Get Me Out Of Here!' Badge. Woot!
Clearly, PvP in CoX is like many MMO PvP systems, largely about The Stats, and The Build, but Visibility, Mobility and Numbers play significant parts too. I expect a little research will turn up a generally accepted 'best' template for doing the above kind of high-jinks, a Template which is no doubt, a far cry from the ideal sort of powers and choices needed for optimum PvE work. That I'm even in there on my 'first go' through the levels is probably asking for trouble, and the better plan will be to finish the journey to Level 50, the 'real game', and then relax and play about with respecs and tweaks, PvP and Raids, with all the options now at my disposal.
Still, it cost me nothing but shattered self-esteem, a deep sense of worthlessness and enormous personal shame, and made for an interesting alternative to the day-to-day! I just need to have realistic expectations about the place and not expect to actually get anywhere, without a lot of practice, preparation and most of all, dedication to the sub-game at hand. Mind you, if I can actually manage to stay successfully hidden, it does all make for quite entertaining viewing, if nothing else!