Devs, Read This Before Doing Another PVP Update:

trgluestickz

Gear Gap Issue Will Need To Be Tackled:

Currently the biggest obstacle to PVP population growing is actually the gear gap. I've been seeing a lot of people quit the game or complain because of gear gap issues recently and I wouldn't have any trouble filling groups for daily PVP events if people didn't feel the need to grind for stuff for PVP instead of coming to the events. PVP is unlikely to grow much without tackling this issue, especially now that mythic insignias have been introduced in mod 21.

I am able to matchmake people in private 5vs5s as low as 29k IL. But people still die too much from gear gap issues and its really discouraging to people even with me balancing a majority of private matches well.

This issue also becomes much more punishing in solo que since I can't ban as many broken items in solo que as I can for private matches and solo que matchmaking right now is even worse than it was when seasons were still a thing.


Any PVP system/updates introduced must involve the real classes already in the game and be sufficiently complex/challenging In order For It To be worth it:

If The Devs do remove the gear gap or reduce it a lot, that is good. Though there will of course be some outcry over that, it will undeniably attract more players to PVP, help us retain many of the current PVP players, and more people will have a good experience playing PVP.

However, the devs still need to use the real classes for this update if they do it. It is very unlikely that a PVP update would be successful in this game if the devs try to do playable champions/NPCs that aren't the already existing classes in the game. People would play it for a short time while its still new and then PVP would die again. Most of the players currently playing would also quit the game if we couldn't play our classes anymore and/or PVP gameplay gets dumbed down too much, that includes me.

I don't want to see another PVP update attempt fail and have Cryptic come to the conclusion that PVP can't be helped or that PVPers will never accept anything the devs try to do for us, so please, listen to the above.


A Note On How to Introduce More Player Choice and Variety:

Obviously removing the gear gap and/or pre-fixing our stats in PVP would reduce variety even more, which easily could result in PVP being too simple/easy and making attempts to save PVP fail.

This is already starting to become an issue even now in mod 20's oversimplified system, I released a build guide recently that literally is good on every single dps class and for every single type of PVP, its expensive and time consuming to switch to though.

To get around this issue, the devs will need to reintroduce variety to PVP in the form of things that don't require much if any grinding to get. I would suggest feats & powers updates or other non-gear related things that effect your gameplay.


New Timewindow for Updating PVP Before Its Too Late:

The PVP infastructure (chat, discord, daily PVP events) I set up with the help of Robb and Aizu for keeping PVP alive won't be enough to keep PVP going forever without help from the devs, we are on borrowed time until the devs update PVP.

The community efforts on PC to revive PVP also have made it so the PVP community is currently the least toxic it ever has been; kicking is extremely rare now, flaming is much rarer than it used to be, and everybody still playing PVP on PC is playing PVP for fun, they don't do it for rewards. If Cryptic ever plans on working on PVP again, it is important that they prevent the current community on PC from quitting so PVP has better odds of remaining healthy and a lot less toxic than it was when seasons were a thing.

I have decided to stay longer than I originally planned to.
In order to keep PVPers here past mod 22, devs need to throw us some kind of bone in mod 22 or partway through it, preferably way sooner than that.
Even if its not all of the PVP changes, if we see nothing for PVP in mod 22, going to be really hard if not impossible to keep people here
so devs probably need to break a PVP update into 2 parts
Right now PVP on PC is 100% dependent on me to keep it alive. So its very important we get some form of PVP update within mod 22 or earlier. Otherwise Cryptic risks losing the healthyer PVP community and infrastructure we have set up.

Here is an invite link to the most active PVP discord server right now, this is the discord server I do my daily PVP events on.
I want the devs to see how much I was actually able to do on PC, devs are welcome here anytime to watch streams when they happen or even come to the PVP events:
https://discord.gg/SSeBGh4ufu


Reintroducing Good PVP Rewards and Bringing Back The Leaderboard Is Necessary To Revive PVP On PS4 and XBOX:

Consoles currently doesn't have much PVP activity, its probably going to stay dead until the devs bring back some form of decent PVP rewards.

All Platforms would benefit from having a working leaderboard, right now it isn't working. It was briefly working recently but was turned off again as part of a company safety protocall apparently.

PC isn't dependent on PVP rewards anymore, the culture here has shifted back to playing PVP for its own sake, and not just because you get paid to do it.

It is also important to note that a big contributor to how toxic the PVP community got on all platforms when seasons existed was the rewards.
PVP got so toxic during seasons on PC that I can only think of like 3 people who weren't toxic back then. Looking at PVP's history in this game, that isn't normal, the % of toxic players used to be much smaller than that. Even on consoles there is plenty of evidence from them talking to us and eachother that they were also toxic.

We will still have to risk rewards being reintroduced in order to get enough PVP matches at all on consoles. Thankfully the break from the toxicity of seasons and the change in the current community's mindset is very likely to reduce how many players currently playing return to their toxic behavior next time rewards get reintroduced. I'm sure we will still see an increase in toxic players though.