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@CRYPTIC: What PvP needs to be a success.
jkaplan92
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 111 Bounty Hunter
Hi guys. I've been playing video games competitively for about 6 years now. I started in RTS playing dawn of war 2 first and later starcraft 2 at a high level, however I've always been passionate about MMOs and especially PvP in MMOs. I played for team paradigm and more recently alpha collective in guild wars 2. These were two of the top if not the top two competitive teams in that game when I played. Not trying to toot my own horn here, but I do think that my opinion is somewhat relevant in regards to PvP in neverwinter.
Getting right into it... I'll start by saying I think this game has A LOT of potential in terms of PvP. I played quite a bit of it over the last few BWEs and I think the core gameplay is solid, the classes are well designed, and the current format for pvp, although not unique or in any way innovative, works relatively well. I wouldn't be posting here if I wasn't passionate about this game. I really think this game could be great given enough support from Cryptic.
I'm just going to list off the changes that I feel are important to the success of PvP in this game. I'm listing them in order of their importance in my mind, so the first feature/change should be focused on first and so on, but all are important in my opinion.
1. Ranking systems/incentives for competitive play. PvP games these days desperately need to incorporate some kind of ranking system. Be it a simple elo rating system, or a more complex league system like what exists in SC2 and more recently league of legends, there needs to be some kind of way for players to gauge their skill versus others, and similarly as players improve they need to have concrete rewards for their improvement. Someone is going to post saying "You just want people to be able to compare epeens, this game doesn't need that." Well, for better or worse people want to compare epeens. It may make you uncomfortable, it may be shallow, but EVERY succesful competitively played game right now has some kind of rating system without exception. You simply cannot have a succesful PvP game without ratings. Yes, PvP may not be the main selling point of this game, but in my opinion it would be a shame to let the potential this game has go to waste and to see PvP being played by a niche group of players in a year. Look at guild wars 2. The game came out too early and featured no ranking system and no way to arrange matches between specific teams... The game started off with a large PvP playerbase and a huge twitch viewership... Now at least 75% of those players have left the game and twitch viewership is down to 300 or less a day. Cryptic I urge you not to make the mistake that Arenanet made.... Do not fool yourself into thinking you have all the time in the world to improve PvP. You don't... Arenanet added leaderboards several months after release... it was too late, people had moved on.
2. Allow for arranged matches. Mentioned this a bit in reference to guild wars 2, but there needs to be a way to arrange matches between two teams to foster scrimming and tournament play. This is another feature that was missing from guild wars 2 that effectively killed the PvP community within 3 months of launch.
3. Promote PvP and create tournaments. After the above feature is added the pvp community will need tournaments in order to promote viewership for the game, create fanbases for teams, and to make the PvP community feel alive. Players, whether competitive or not, enjoy being able to watch the best players compete, it makes the game feel alive and it inspires people to play and improve. It makes them feel like they have a reason to keep playing PvP instead of just to get the top honor rank or something of that nature. Eventually other organizations will sponsor tournaments, but initially it would be very helpful if cryptic could host their own with small monetary prizes or even zen/in game prizes.
4. Allow players to create PvP maps or even game modes via the foundry. I'm sure this is something Cryptic would love to do, and I think that while it isn't critical to the success of PvP, it could definitely be a huge boost.
5. Add a PvP forum... This should probably happen today because its so **** easy. Why is there no forum designated to the discussion of PvP? Previously all PvP discussion was even being merged into one thread and we couldn't even create our own threads on the matter... Whether you guys read that one thread or not, it makes the community feel like you don't care when you're throwing all of our long considered suggestions into some mega thread that we struggle to imagine anyone reads. There is just no reason not to give PvP its own sub-forum.
Thats all for now. In reality 1 and 2 are the only additions that are critical in my mind. If the game does not have a ranking system within 3 months of launch it will never develop a strong pvp community the same way that guild wars 2 did not, and PvP oriented players will not return to the game even if those changes come in the following months. #2 can be added a bit later, but is also critically important and the earlier its added the stronger the community will be early on.
I would also like to add that I feel that mounts should be removed from PvP however last time I brought this up feedback seemed to be mostly against it. I personally feel they have no role in PvP and feel cumbersome to use in PvP, but if most people feel they contribute so be it. It's certainly not game breaking.
Getting right into it... I'll start by saying I think this game has A LOT of potential in terms of PvP. I played quite a bit of it over the last few BWEs and I think the core gameplay is solid, the classes are well designed, and the current format for pvp, although not unique or in any way innovative, works relatively well. I wouldn't be posting here if I wasn't passionate about this game. I really think this game could be great given enough support from Cryptic.
I'm just going to list off the changes that I feel are important to the success of PvP in this game. I'm listing them in order of their importance in my mind, so the first feature/change should be focused on first and so on, but all are important in my opinion.
1. Ranking systems/incentives for competitive play. PvP games these days desperately need to incorporate some kind of ranking system. Be it a simple elo rating system, or a more complex league system like what exists in SC2 and more recently league of legends, there needs to be some kind of way for players to gauge their skill versus others, and similarly as players improve they need to have concrete rewards for their improvement. Someone is going to post saying "You just want people to be able to compare epeens, this game doesn't need that." Well, for better or worse people want to compare epeens. It may make you uncomfortable, it may be shallow, but EVERY succesful competitively played game right now has some kind of rating system without exception. You simply cannot have a succesful PvP game without ratings. Yes, PvP may not be the main selling point of this game, but in my opinion it would be a shame to let the potential this game has go to waste and to see PvP being played by a niche group of players in a year. Look at guild wars 2. The game came out too early and featured no ranking system and no way to arrange matches between specific teams... The game started off with a large PvP playerbase and a huge twitch viewership... Now at least 75% of those players have left the game and twitch viewership is down to 300 or less a day. Cryptic I urge you not to make the mistake that Arenanet made.... Do not fool yourself into thinking you have all the time in the world to improve PvP. You don't... Arenanet added leaderboards several months after release... it was too late, people had moved on.
2. Allow for arranged matches. Mentioned this a bit in reference to guild wars 2, but there needs to be a way to arrange matches between two teams to foster scrimming and tournament play. This is another feature that was missing from guild wars 2 that effectively killed the PvP community within 3 months of launch.
3. Promote PvP and create tournaments. After the above feature is added the pvp community will need tournaments in order to promote viewership for the game, create fanbases for teams, and to make the PvP community feel alive. Players, whether competitive or not, enjoy being able to watch the best players compete, it makes the game feel alive and it inspires people to play and improve. It makes them feel like they have a reason to keep playing PvP instead of just to get the top honor rank or something of that nature. Eventually other organizations will sponsor tournaments, but initially it would be very helpful if cryptic could host their own with small monetary prizes or even zen/in game prizes.
4. Allow players to create PvP maps or even game modes via the foundry. I'm sure this is something Cryptic would love to do, and I think that while it isn't critical to the success of PvP, it could definitely be a huge boost.
5. Add a PvP forum... This should probably happen today because its so **** easy. Why is there no forum designated to the discussion of PvP? Previously all PvP discussion was even being merged into one thread and we couldn't even create our own threads on the matter... Whether you guys read that one thread or not, it makes the community feel like you don't care when you're throwing all of our long considered suggestions into some mega thread that we struggle to imagine anyone reads. There is just no reason not to give PvP its own sub-forum.
Thats all for now. In reality 1 and 2 are the only additions that are critical in my mind. If the game does not have a ranking system within 3 months of launch it will never develop a strong pvp community the same way that guild wars 2 did not, and PvP oriented players will not return to the game even if those changes come in the following months. #2 can be added a bit later, but is also critically important and the earlier its added the stronger the community will be early on.
I would also like to add that I feel that mounts should be removed from PvP however last time I brought this up feedback seemed to be mostly against it. I personally feel they have no role in PvP and feel cumbersome to use in PvP, but if most people feel they contribute so be it. It's certainly not game breaking.
Post edited by jkaplan92 on
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I'm really hesitant to say anything about PvP because the PvP I played was almost exclusively in the 10-19 and 20-29 brackets where players are different levels, not all skills are available, etc, but If I had to give my opinion I would say that I think it is fairly likely that control wizard will be overpowered in level 60 PvP. I think rogue is strong but probably not as strong as most people are making it out to be. I think GWF is probably slightly weak in 1v1 fights however sprint gives them the ability to get in and out of fights very easily so I think they have potential. Guardfian Fighter could be quite strong I think both with offensive builds and defensive builds. No comment on cleric, I think their healing is obviously enough to warrant their use and they seem to have some solid cc and damage options as well. All of that is completely speculative though and we won't know until people start hitting level 60.
As for PvE, I will say that I feel rogue is the easiest/fastest leveler and the best solo class, however control wizard is in my opinion the strongest overall dps class for group play because it has high damage, high cc, and high utility.
Now Neverwinter doesn't exactly have a great variety of maps for PvP, but it is action based and it does at least have gear rewards to work towards. I think a leader board would be great, but I don't think there is a pvp player base to support ranking matchups currently.
Scrimmages are good. Just have to be careful as players to not shut out other people that want to be part of it in order to help grow the PvP aspect of the game.
As for promoting pvp, I love the idea of the Foundry being able to create pvp maps. That would be enough promotion by itself. Why are they not doing this currently?
The PvP forums they just seemed to have forgotten about. I asked about it and was told there was no plan for a PvP forum but it may change. Whatever I guess. Just discuss it in this forum.
There are a lot of reasons why guild wars 2 failed for various people, but the reason why so many competitive players left is mostly because arenanet didn't support it. I will admit that the reason I left was because it wasn't fun for me anymore, but when I left the other 4 players on my team were still enjoying it although they were very disgruntled by the lack of features and the fact that we got no updates from arenanet.
I disagree with you that there isn't a player base to support a ladder. You don't need a huge playerbase to support it. Even if 100 players played it still makes sense. If you're suggesting that it isn't worth it financialy because the playerbase doesn't warrant the investment onc ryptics end, I may be willing to agree with that but its not about appealing to current players, its about attracting new ones. We can all agree the PvP playerbase is small for this game. I'm suggesting what it needs to develop, grow, and maintain a large following. If this game gets the right support players will come. The gameplay is there, it just needs the feature set to support it.
As for scrims shutting people out, that will never happen. There will always be random 5v5 que matches readily available. Scrimmages are needed so that top teams can practice against eachother instead of constantly queing for 5v5s and getting matches with randomly assembled groups of 5s and winning in a complete shut out. That isn't fun for either side and it will drive competitive players away quickly. It was REALLY boring playing tournament pvp in guild wars 2 because we almost never got matched with another competitive team. Eventually we started synchronizing ques and even had a guild made so that all the team leaders could coordinate and we could get placed in tournaments with 3 or 4 other top teams, but having to go to those lengths is just ridiculous and should not happen.
As for the foundry issue, I think its kind of a delicate issue. Do they allow authors to create new game modes or restrict them to domination maps only? I don't know what the right answer is, I'm sure thats something they're debating internally. Then theres issues with monitoring PvP, how would players access it since they can only que for pvp they can't enter it like they do other foundry instances, etc. I think its doable but I'm sure there are some issues they need to iron out first.
Yeah, I played control wizard to 50 and will main one at launch so its not even a biased opinion, but as I said thats all speculative since I haven't played end game PvP yet. I'm confident that control wizard will be a strong class at the least though.
There will be an end game PvE/PvP zone that presumably will have some larger PvP objectives but cryptic hasn't really given us any details on this at all yet so who knows. I'm not really a big fan of open world pvp so what I said in the OP is only directed towards instanced pvp.
Thanks.
Pretty much this.
Anyways, I'd just plain like to see more PvP. Domination is fun, but if it's the only PvP available, it's going to get old fast.
To be honest, that's about as constructive as I feel like getting about this topic. I agree with kilo418 100%.
As far as your OP, I'll elaborate. For PvP to truly succeed, you need a separate server with different game mechanics. Considering that won't ever happen, Foundry created PvP maps and instanced PvP dungeons offer the best solutions, because it makes it fun for those who choose to PvP and is completely out of site/out of mind for the rest of us who don't choose to participate. I am not for a PvP forum, there's no need, and will draw the e-peen crowd that would cast a terrible image to a game that is just starting out and in need of capturing it's identity (and its standing in the D&D community should be paramount) .
However, as I see it, PvP will always be about who has the best gear profile (with the limited movement aka rooting... dont see why anyone would even bother to PvP but whatever floats your boat!) so it will consistently bring to light some of the worst aspects of the game, pay to win and class imbalance. Lastly this is a D&D IP, so PvP just seems out of place here, and I think it always will be out of place. This is not GW2 or WoW, there's a big difference. As long as it stays instanced, and out of the PvE world we'll all be playing in, I think PvEers and PvPers can coexist quite nicely.
As for your "ranking systems/incentives" and "arranged matches between two teams to foster scrimming and tournament play" is wishful thinking which is fine but way too involved for a game that just isn't that kind of game. I would be against devs spending time coding this. There's much more serious work that needs to get done first which affects many more people (the entire playerbase), such as more classes, more powers, more character customization, and an even more awesome Foundry.
So yeah, I think the best way to make PvP succeed is to rely on Foundry content providers. There should be endless areas to PvP in.
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Seriously, I don't care what your title is: if the only reason you come to a thread is to instigate arguments, and declare that the subject being talked about shouldn't exist in the game at all, you shouldn't be in this thread commenting in the first place.
Can we get a PvP section where people who don't care to talk about PvP can just, stay out?
If that's as constructive as you can get... don't post... PvP isn't going to be removed from this game theres literally 0 point in posting that other than to frustrate people who actually do care about it.
Secondly, I disagree entirely with your second paragraph. I don't understand how people equate lack of movement with lack of a skill cap thats just not true at all. Rotation is critical, builds are critical, timing your abilities are critical, learning to time dodge cooldowns is critical, learning to dodge specific animations can lead to avoiding the most significant abilities your opponent can throw at you, synergy and communication between your team is as important as in any other game, overall team strategy is important. Not sure where the lack of skill is. People don't need to be jumping around doing 360s around eachother mashing buttons like in WoW for it to be skill-based PvP. Thats just a horrible misconception. As for there being no need for a PvP forum... There isn't a need FOR YOU, but there is for people who enjoy it. Having played guild wars 2 competitively this game takes litearlly the same amount of skill in my mind and nobody EVER made complaints about guild wars 2 not being skill based..
I know you don't care about PvP and thats fine, I just don't understand why you feel the need to post in threads like this where your feedback is clearly both irrelevant and adds nothing to the conversation. If you wan't to go make a thread about why PvP should be removed from the game, by all means do so, but unlses you want to discuss how to make PvP better then posting here is nothing more than trolling from my perspective.
Take a look at games that foster a PVE world and you will find success.
I hate to rain on your parade guys but lets be real here....
First, this is a open forum, open to post and open to discuss. If people wish to post their views here on how they feel about PVP, regardless if it is for or against, they are welcome to.
Secondly, In my opinion, the pvp crowd tends to be the younger, problem starters who come to a game, grief for a few months, pwn n00bs and talk smack, then move onto the next ADHD function their brains focus on. I am not saying EVERYONE is like this, but we are speaking of a majority here.
Third, PvP fails in Fantasy settings. That simple. Every Fantasy MMO that focused Developer time on the PvP aspect, the game fell flat on it's face. Why ? PvP is boring after killing the same people 200 times in a row. Sure, I hear the normal arguments... " Fighting something that thinks or fights back " etc... But it does not give value to the game. If you want PvP...Buy a XBOX or PS4.
Fourth, Does PvP have a place in Fantasy Games ? Sure... in it's proper place... It should NEVER be a focus of the developers to devote time and energy strictly to PVP when PVP only pertains to a small part of the crowd, and once they get bored, they move on and your game is stuck floating like GW2 or Rift... PvP should have it's own server or specific area's for it and nothing more.. I played everquest for 14 years and PvP was stuck to it's own servers and the occasional /d on the Normal servers. And Everquest is still going strong for the PVE community and the PVP server ( Zek ) is a ghost town ...
So my request to Andy and the Dev team is this...
When you want to build a successful game, look at those who paved the roads and learn from them.
First of all no game has launched with a PvP mindset... ever? There has never been an MMO that's focused on PvP, literally since perhaps daoc or I suppose you could argue warhammer but even that game had raiding. The only game I can even think of that I would consider "having a PvP mindset" is camelot unchained which obviously hasn't been released yet.
Second of all, what games have even had successful launches since WoW? Swtor failed? Rift basically failed? Lotro failed. I'm not seeing the success you're pointing to here. I just listed three games that by and large emphasized PvE and all three could hardly be considered successful so what is your point? The only game that "found success" was WoW which has both diverse PvE and PvP...
I never said there shouldn't be PvE in this game so if you're going to make this a PvE vs PvP argument please just leave this thread. I'm honestly getting tired of debating whether there should be PvP or not in this game... There is PvP, there will always be PvP, that decision has been made. If you want to talk about the removal of PvP or the strict emphasis on PvE content please do so... In another thread...
I would like to see both aspects of the game be succesful and I think there are problems with PvE as there are with PvP but if you want to discuss where the emphasis should lie please do it in another thread because I'd prefer to talk about PvP with people who actually care about it in this one.
Thanks.
Frankly, besides D3, which for obvious reasons barely counts for this, I can't think of a single successful MMO that didn't have PvP at launch.
Oh wait, CoH didn't. So there's 1.
GW1 did have a lot of PvP as did GW2, but In both of those games I guarantee the production cost of PvP versus PvE content was heavily waited in favor of PvE. Even in GW1 with its limited PvE, I'd be willing to bet 80% of their budget probably went to building those zones and quests, and I hardly consider that a PvP focus. Camelot unchained will be the first game in my mind that truly has focused on PvP and im cautiously optimistic. Kickstarter isn't the best way to fund an MMO but I think their concept has real potential.
Almost every MMO has had both PvP and PvE at launch since WoW and almsot every mmo since then has been marginally succesful at best so I can hardly understand your logic here. lichlament. On top of this I guarantee that not a single MMO has ever spent more than 50% of its budget on PvP content.
My discussion was about time devoted to the pvp game... developer time, not the budget.
This early in a launch, even before Open Beta, Developer time needs to be focused on the two major aspects of a MMORPG
1. Content
2. Social
Great... You have no evidence to support those claims, its entirely subjective, and its also entirely off topic. Can we just move on and accept that nobody here has a basis for anything that we're saying in regards to PvP vs PvE. Theres way too many variables, its way too unexplored, etc... But more importantly its just irrelevant.
FACT: Cryptic has discussed what their emphasis should be going forward. What we say here will have NO impact on what they have already decided.
FACT: PvP is in this game and will stay for the forseeable future... Theres no rational basis for removing it.
FACT: The topic of this thread is how to improve PvP going forward.
In conclusion you coming in here and saying that PvP should be removed from the game or not receive any attention is both irrelevant to people actually discussing the topic at hand and irrelevant to cryptic. You posting your views on this forum is fine and there are the tools for you to create a thread to discuss your views as I have done here. I'm asking you to have respect for your fellow players and to not come into a thread and post comments that derail a topic that I intended to discuss.
Your comments add nothing to the conversation and quite literally all you're accomplishing is trolling the people who actually care about the original topic of this thread. I imagine thats probably amusing for you because you both seem to have some kind of unfounded hatred for PvP, but please just take it elsewhere.
Theres more people who enjoy and play this game than 40 year old D&D veterans. Stop thinking that you're the only market that Cryptic should appeal to because realistically your market is a small niche... At least be able to recognize that and move on. I think its great that this game appeals to a lot of different players with different backgrounds, thats what a game needs to be succesful. You don't see me trying to troll threads about aspects of the game that I don't enjoy because I understand that a good game can appeal to a diverse group of players.
What assumption did I make that you don't feel is true?
Great... You have no evidence to support those claims, its entirely subjective, and its also entirely off topic.
You saying there is no evidence to support the claims Developers are focusing on Content and Social is laughable at best. The game is Pre Launch, Pre Open Beta..what do you honestly think they are working on ?
FACT: Cryptic has discussed what their emphasis should be going forward. What we say here will have NO impact on what they have already decided.
True, and it falls into what I said initially, Content / Social.
FACT: PvP is in this game and will stay for the forseeable future... Theres no rational basis for removing it.
This is not a fact, it is more of an objection.
FACT: The topic of this thread is how to improve PvP going forward.
As I mentioned in another thread. Dev time is focused on Content and Social, You all are chomping at the bit for PvP and PvP caters to a small niche market, as you attempted to state about the players who basically gave TSR it's audience over the past 40 years
( lol ).
PvP will get cursory glances at best, and class balance wont even get a sniff until the rest of the game is flushed out and the kinks are worked out. Which also ties into Content / Social side of the discussion, now this is a fact.
In conclusion you coming in here and saying that PvP should be removed from the game or not receive any attention is both irrelevant to people actually discussing the topic at hand and irrelevant to cryptic.
This is where you assume....
Nowhere did I say PvP should be removed. I said it has it's place and areas it should stick to. PVE builds successful games. PvP is fun for a small amount of time before people hop on the next thing to attract them.
Look at it this way... Play Madden... you can only play it online for 6-8 months before it's collecting dust on your shelf and your waiting for the next one to hit the shelves...
Call of Duty
Battlefield
NHL
NBA
etc..etc..
Player vs Player does not drive games or worlds. It has it;s success on the console gaming market in large scale. in Fantasy MMORPG's it has a limited crowd it appeases and sooner or later everyone is complaining about OP classes or immature players or hacking.
PvP causes more problems than it solves.
Your comments add nothing to the conversation and quite literally all you're accomplishing is trolling the people who actually care about the original topic of this thread
If i was trolling then I would be making statements and acting immature and taking shots at you all only to get a reaction.
In no time have I been disrespectful and have only pointed out PvP's limited role in Online PC MMO's. This is a open forum and I am free to express my point of view. You may not agree with it, and I do not agree with you, but do you see me calling you out for trolling me ?
This is called a Debate. A Discussion. Welcome to the Internet.
Theres more people who enjoy and play this game than 40 year old D&D veterans. Stop thinking that you're the only market that Cryptic should appeal to because realistically your market is a small niche...
First... *laugh*..... Secondly, I am glad that this game would appeal to more than us that are a bit long in the tooth, but trust me , we are not a small part of the market...so your claim is not true.
Edit: Ranncore at no time did I say I was a moderator, lol. I think your mistaken.
I hope and pray that Cryptic developers will not succumb to this. Rogues have already been nerfed pretty considerably and I'm 99% sure it was caused by PVP complaints. PvP is great and all and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. But this is first and foremost a PVE game. Don't screw up PVE class balance to make PVP crybabies happy.
You said developers SHOULD be focusing on content and social not that they ARE. It's an entirely different statement. Yes, there is an emphasis on social and player created content more than content itself, that has nothing to do with what they SHOULD be focusing on which is entirely subjective. Any kind of analysis you make based on previous sales is just going to be incomplete and full of variables. There is no way that you can make a fact based argument about where developer emphasis should go. Your statement regarding PvP focused games failing was just completely wrong and again, full of variables.
PvP being removed is simply not a reality. That is not an objection that is a fact. Removing PvP will add NO value to this game. I'm sure you would love it but it won't cause you to spend more money on this game or anyone else for that matter. It will, however, drive away players. If you think removing PvP has even crossed the mind of cryptic in months... I don't know what to say, you must be stuck in a world where everyone playing and developing MMOs is an older D&D veteran who wants to play video game pen and paper D&D.
Your third statement is based off of nothing more than assumption quite literally. Unless you know someone inside cryptic who is willing to confirm what they've said to you and nobody else, then you're talking out of your ***. Because Cryptic has made statements about creating new content for the game by no means excludes any other aspect of the game.
In response to your fourth statement... Again... Where are the facts? What are you basing these statements off of? PvE builds succesful games? What games? What are the figures? How can you point exclusively to PvE? What games have even been succesful since WoW? What game hasn't had PvP over the past 10 years? PvE players may be a majority but PvP is still a market that has a lot of potential even despite how little development effort has been spent on it. Your statement about more development time going to PvP is just utterly wrong. If you think more time has gone into creating battlegrounds or pvp arenas in any game as opposed to the numerous zones, end game raid content, dungeons, etc you're just wrong.
Also what are you talking about? Call of duty is a HUGELY popular franchise how can you possibly bring that up as anything other than a success story? League of legends is the most played video game in the world right now? please enlighten me about how slaying minions in the jungle is the true selling point of that game. Starcraft 2 is incredibly popular... the list goes on.
@paragraph 5... You're coming into a topic I started to discuss something and completely derailing the discussion and contributing literally 0 constructive discussion to the original conversation? What more do you want me to say here?
@6 Yes... you are a small part of the market... Do you think that a game intended entirely for D&D players could ever come remotely close to the playerbase of other popularly games on the market? The answer is no. The MMO market as a whole is much larger than the market for players looking for an MMO version of pen and paper D&D.
this has already happened sadly with Rogues and Clerics.
@jkap thats alot of text for my old eyes, let's just agree to disagree, shall we ? I also noticed alot of **** 's in your post so our "Debate" is bordering on being non constructive. I scanned a few sentences , alot of it is opinion and blah blah stuff... So let's just save each other alot of time.
None of these popular PVP games are MMOs. In fact, they are built mainly for pvp, and should excel at it. This is why they are referred to as MOBAs, and they are the best place for balanced pvp.
It is just my opinion, but I feel mixing PVP into a PVE based MMO leads to the mediocrity of both.
My point was that PvP content by no means suffers from a lack of replayability, I would argue it actually has more replayability. 10 million people play as the same champions on the same map in league of legends every day and they still pay money and love the game. I agree that focusing on both PvP and PvE can lead to a mediocrity of both especially with lower budget titles like neverwinter, but I think you can make relatively low cost improvements to both (ie simple leaderboards) that can vastly improve either side of thegame. But in regards to the previous games mentioned, its not really relevant that they aren't MMOs. Whats relevant is that they're a PvP experience and they're vastly popular. As we've seen particularly recently, MMO elements can be tacked onto virtually any genre of game (see planetside and many others) fundamentally theres no reason why PvP cannot be the basis for an MMO (again see planetside) but the fact is that it has never been anywhere close to the emphasis for any developer neither in terms of budget or developer hours. The exception will be camelot uncahined but with only kickstarter for funding the possibilities are limited.
Have patience and let them build the game first, truthfully.
Now on the constructive department, i think what made wow's pvp not to attract me was the simple lack of a way for PvErs to switch to PvP, for which i stayed at low level pvp with my alts.
I think the fix to that attraction problem is NOT what gw2 did, I have always been opposed to grind, but since most people like it, i won't stand in it's way, in fact, i'll give my 2 cents for it.....
Just make the same currency for both PvE and PvP gear, allowing people from pve to switch to pvp and vice versa. Yes it would bring noobs to pvp, but everyone is a **** until they learn. I was once a ****, you all were.... Hell, even the developers were once noobs in their department, which brings the question: Why hate noobs, instead of teaching them, or at least try?
As far as i know noobs always go pve first, pvp later, so if what you want is to get a big stable pvp playerbase, they most acceptable choice would be to put make the same currency (astral diamonds) to drop and be useful in both pvp and pve.
I am not saying free gear, or high-end pve gear being as useful in pvp, but a way to easily switch even after grind takes it's toll of boredom.
Another suggestion would be to separate pvp abilities from the pve ones, just like gw1 did, it gained a lot of both pvpers and pvers just because balancing affected only one side.
Thanks if you have read this, and please don't troll.