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The whole PvP thing, analysis.
jonkoca
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 2,586 Arc User
I think what has happened with pvp recently falls under the 80/20 rule. Pve, in comparison to pvp is above all, predictable. Going into any dungeon you know what you are going to face, and what you have to do to defeat it. You also know, to a great extent, what the reward will be. At the extreme, a bosses exact stats, behaviour and weaknesses can be researched online and worked around. The only unpredictable factor is treasure drop rates.
Then, unsurprisingly on the forums we see the most complained about topic, epic dungeon wise, is exactly that one unpredictable factor, drop percentages. And the most commonly offered solution..? Yet more predictability, a guarrenteed drop, after x amount of runs.
The second factor is learning curve. For pve, before the epic dungeons, the game holds your hand for sixty levels. You know what to do, when to do it, and most importantly, how to do it successfully. Everytime.
Pvp at 60 plus however, is completely the opposite. You dont know who you will face. They may be so weak and disorganized that you rolfstomp them into little bloody puddles. They may be so overgeared that one of them alone stomps your entire group. You don't know if your team will be experienced or newbies, supportive or indivdualist, ragequitters, abusive or honourable. You might get a lot, some, or nothing. You may play well, and still lose. You may play terribly, and still win.
The unpredictability is rife.
For some, the twenty percent perhaps, this unpredictability made it fun. Rather than adapting to specifics, it made you gear yourself for generalities and rules of thumb - if this situation arises, I do this, use that - if they do that, we'll do this.
Imagine if pve dungeons were the same..? A collection of randomized spawn traps. Around the next corner you might get 4 level 55 kobolds, or you might get rolfstomp cthulhu in power-armour. I'd run that dungeon, btw.
Secondly, the learning curve varies from steep to vertical. Worst case scenario, you get to 60, having never pvpd before, dressed in green and blue, and queue for a match. For 60 levels you've gotten used to winning, and to be honest, winning pretty easy. Win win win. Pvp. Lose. Lose. Lose and get teabagged by a dwarf.
Even pre-60 pvpers, have quite a gap to close post 60. Steep learning curve, and no helpful hand holding tutorials.
This makes people shocked, and angry. And begin to maximize time for reward by quitting even slightly losing positions, because they have internally admitted to themselves that there is nothing that they can do to reverse that losing position, and nothing to be gained by trying to.
Some people respond to the difficulty by gearing up, and getting better. Some, 80 percent worth of "some" perhaps, respond by asking developers for a level playing field. Which in my opinion, is lazy. Well, lazy but predictable. Time-efficient even.
Unfortunately, the wishes of the many, outweigh the wishes of the few. And thus we have post-patch pvp. A more farmer friendly version, if I were to be unkind, a more predictable version, if I were to put on a more empathic face.
Okay, I can live with inevitability.
The only saving grace however, of the pre-patch pvp, was the queue times. Why..? Because it allowed you to counter the learning curve through quick rollovers - if you wanted to learn the ropes, hone your combos, you could, again and again in a comparitively short time. I sometimes played 10, 15 games a night in the beginning. Queue, 10 minute stomping, queue again, repeat till you get good enough, and geared enough, to hand out some stomping of your own. No leaving, no whining, just practice. A queuetime of even 20 minutes, makes this if not impossible, very hard. I fear now, if was beginning my pvp career again, a month later I'd be just as hopeless as I began, not to mention very demotivated.
I dunno, it's early days in our new more predictable, nerfed and incentivised pvp system. In a perfect world, things would gradually reaproach the quick queue, quick and dirty fight, quick glory grab days of old, suitable to some, a bit off-putting for others. In an imperfect world, things may spiral to ever more predictable near-stalemate grindfests, where though no-one loses bad enough to hurt anymore, no-one really wins either.
But, hang on, we are in a perfect world, aren't we..?
Then, unsurprisingly on the forums we see the most complained about topic, epic dungeon wise, is exactly that one unpredictable factor, drop percentages. And the most commonly offered solution..? Yet more predictability, a guarrenteed drop, after x amount of runs.
The second factor is learning curve. For pve, before the epic dungeons, the game holds your hand for sixty levels. You know what to do, when to do it, and most importantly, how to do it successfully. Everytime.
Pvp at 60 plus however, is completely the opposite. You dont know who you will face. They may be so weak and disorganized that you rolfstomp them into little bloody puddles. They may be so overgeared that one of them alone stomps your entire group. You don't know if your team will be experienced or newbies, supportive or indivdualist, ragequitters, abusive or honourable. You might get a lot, some, or nothing. You may play well, and still lose. You may play terribly, and still win.
The unpredictability is rife.
For some, the twenty percent perhaps, this unpredictability made it fun. Rather than adapting to specifics, it made you gear yourself for generalities and rules of thumb - if this situation arises, I do this, use that - if they do that, we'll do this.
Imagine if pve dungeons were the same..? A collection of randomized spawn traps. Around the next corner you might get 4 level 55 kobolds, or you might get rolfstomp cthulhu in power-armour. I'd run that dungeon, btw.
Secondly, the learning curve varies from steep to vertical. Worst case scenario, you get to 60, having never pvpd before, dressed in green and blue, and queue for a match. For 60 levels you've gotten used to winning, and to be honest, winning pretty easy. Win win win. Pvp. Lose. Lose. Lose and get teabagged by a dwarf.
Even pre-60 pvpers, have quite a gap to close post 60. Steep learning curve, and no helpful hand holding tutorials.
This makes people shocked, and angry. And begin to maximize time for reward by quitting even slightly losing positions, because they have internally admitted to themselves that there is nothing that they can do to reverse that losing position, and nothing to be gained by trying to.
Some people respond to the difficulty by gearing up, and getting better. Some, 80 percent worth of "some" perhaps, respond by asking developers for a level playing field. Which in my opinion, is lazy. Well, lazy but predictable. Time-efficient even.
Unfortunately, the wishes of the many, outweigh the wishes of the few. And thus we have post-patch pvp. A more farmer friendly version, if I were to be unkind, a more predictable version, if I were to put on a more empathic face.
Okay, I can live with inevitability.
The only saving grace however, of the pre-patch pvp, was the queue times. Why..? Because it allowed you to counter the learning curve through quick rollovers - if you wanted to learn the ropes, hone your combos, you could, again and again in a comparitively short time. I sometimes played 10, 15 games a night in the beginning. Queue, 10 minute stomping, queue again, repeat till you get good enough, and geared enough, to hand out some stomping of your own. No leaving, no whining, just practice. A queuetime of even 20 minutes, makes this if not impossible, very hard. I fear now, if was beginning my pvp career again, a month later I'd be just as hopeless as I began, not to mention very demotivated.
I dunno, it's early days in our new more predictable, nerfed and incentivised pvp system. In a perfect world, things would gradually reaproach the quick queue, quick and dirty fight, quick glory grab days of old, suitable to some, a bit off-putting for others. In an imperfect world, things may spiral to ever more predictable near-stalemate grindfests, where though no-one loses bad enough to hurt anymore, no-one really wins either.
But, hang on, we are in a perfect world, aren't we..?
No idea what my toon is now.
Post edited by jonkoca on
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Comments
I can't say I wholly disagree, in fact in many ways I do agree with you. This is my 2nd MMO ever, my first as Star Wars the Old Republic. I enjoyed it but never once did pvp, in part due to people that complained, but mainly because I had no interest in it and the Heroic missions and story was more than enough to keep me interested in running, at least until Makeb which caused me to let me subscription expire.
I disagree that a level playing field is lazy, in fact that is the spirit of competition, nascars rely on driver not the car, all cars for all intents and purposes are equal, same weight etc. The point of pvp is competition of player v. player and skill, gear should NOT be a factor. PVP in my opinion should negate all gear bonuses render stuns and roots unusable and let the player with the best skill (or best knowledge of their class) win. However different classes are innately designed to be weak against others, but currently you have TR that can solo a whole group practically, you have GWFs that require an whole party to kill, balance in player classes as it applies to PVP is mismatched badly. In pvp no one class should ever be able to take on 3 or more of any other class or players. Tanks, true tanks should be limited on dps but high in durability. GF should be a class that scares you when they have their shield up slowly marching towards you, he might not do a lot but you wont' be disposing of him quickly, GF characters would be more like DOTS rather than pure DPS. GF is a class that might require 2 - 3 people to get off a node quickly, maybe not require it but to do it with speed.
I have not had but 3 matches after the PVP update yesterday, prior to the hotfix afterwards. The long queues is not a positive thing but hopefully that is resolved. I agree that when I first did pvp in this game the learning curve was there and despite no dedicated pvp gear (something I disagree whole hearteledly with in this game as that was what made it great originally) I lost until I figured out how to win. You are right in that it was a <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> shoot though. The first time I fought a team of 2 GWF and 2 TR I literally just stood there and let them kill me as I couldn't do a thing to them let alone use a power to do anything. The best matches I have had was with people in gear that seemed pretty comparable to mine, where we both hurt each other about the same it was just a matter of superior timing or superior skill/power rotation. There was a match that was won literally by less than 6 points, it was a fight nearly neck and neck for each point. Those were few and far between, I guess Ideally that is what is upposed to happen after everyone has a few matches under their belts. So far though I have to say the changes make most of my CW powers seem worthless for pvp and only about 3 or 4 even remotely useful, since i'm squishy it seems like my damage should be higher since tenacity pretty much makes roots and stuns useless (as it should be) but my other powers can't seem to overcome other players in tenacity laden pvp gear.
Star Wars did the same thing with expertise, its arguably a failure as Star Wars did expertise (same effect as tenacity) and then just buffed anyone who didn't have expertise and "bolstered" them with improved stats to be more competitive. The end result was a lot of players quitting because they spent months grinding matches for top pvp gear only to have new players come in with no pvp gear with expertise get bolstered with expertise.
I personally think pvp and pve games should be separate, as in having a character that does pvp and does not ever enter the world of pve or have an option to play in pvp worlds/servers and the rest of us in pve environments. PVP play in a PVE game just does not mix well because the powers need to win in PVE are annoying and not very fun when used in PVP. PVP rewards probably should be not gear related but maybe custom appearance related. You rock at PVP so you have gear appareance changes that reflect that. Assuming a company can get a graphic designer that actually knows what a truly "awesome I own at this" gear would look like.
There is a learning curved involved but no one wants to keep playing a game where they go in and die in less than 3 seconds or ever 2 seconds. If that happens repeatedly no one is going to sit there and keep doing it in the hopes of refining skill because you can't refine skill when you are down as soon as you leave the spawn point.
I agree that the unpredictable nature of pvp is enticing but in the current state of affairs it almost seems as though more balanced groups need to be matched up, for every class on team there should be the same class on another that way you don't have 5 gwfs pitched up against 5 dc's. I would say that a PVP match should consist of a group that would run a dungeon which is bascially 3 dps a cleric and a tank/gwf. In Star Wars tanks where not very common so if you were a tank you got groups easy dps was a dime a dozen and took longer, however in this game the gwf is pretty much taken over the gf role with tank and dps ability not to mention survivability. The only problem would be getting enough clerics to fill that void and naturally that would make premade groups rather strong too being able to pick and choose who is in theirs. Perhaps having separate queues for premade groups from those that are full of random people would also be helpful if not difficult to implement.
In any event, i'm not here to start a philosophical debate over PVP, just to point out that my experience was a good one overall and thus far with the implement of the new system it has thus far been less than exciting but it has only been a day so i'll give it a week to see what happens. I really do not want to carry two separate sets of gear just to play in pvp and pve so i'm hoping my causal dip into pvp will eventually lead to me being matched with people not fully decked out in pvp gear.
1) GWFs should have never had access to IV Path. Period. I play a CW and a GWF, and I'd like IV Sents gone. Cryptic didn't listen.
2) We wanted more maps. Cryptic didn't listen.
3) Some people wanted a leaver penalty, others didn't. Cryptic put it in. I'm fine with it.
4) Some people wanted a match-making system, others wanted a PMvsPM queue and a pug verse pug queue. We got the former, and so far it's pretty awful.
5) The vast majority of people were against healing depression and tenacity. We now have it.
That's my summary. It's safe to say the majority of the PVP community is shaking their heads at this recent update.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
Fixed.
You're welcome
I could have predicted that things like this were going to happen out of the gate. Honestly Dungeons and Dragons was probably one of the worst types of systems you could add PvP to. While I grant you Cryptic has gone a lot of their own way with the system.
The D&D based system and the class roles as defined were balanced for PvE, not PvP. I knew they were going to have to nerf the heck out of some things and seriously boost some classes and in the end likely would never be able to get it there.
The real problem is, they took a PvE role based game and tried to make it a PvP game. Something the classes were never intended for.
Good luck on ever getting it balanced. If they were so somehow achieve it with D&D, they would quite literally be the first ever.
I can't say I disagree either. Frankly I got into the game for PVE and I love the controls, simple not clicking all over the screen with 4 - 6 tool bars filled with skills i'm trying to make use of. I do think they need to implement a switchable power bar, one configured for situations such as boss fight v. trash mobs and the like. I think making it only switchable outside of combat would make it useful without too much exploiting, albeit rogues might have exploitable habits with it.
I think there should be more dungeon delve content, extended story and working more in that raid direction, that could be fun if you have access to good groups to do it with. You do have to be mindful not to constantly escalate though, you don't want to move from 5 man groups to 10 then 20+ at some point you have to say this is the biggest we are going to get it and find something else to make it fun and challenging. Personally I think 8 man groups should be the limit.
I also think more should be done with Gauntylgrym to make it more of a group thing to do. Make it raid based pvp with some goals similar to what it has now except all the way you have an opposing team to fight trying to stop or undo progress. Have it time based whoever did the most wins cool stuff and points/seals to buy cool stuff with. Make a whole world map of it. Think Dark Age of Camelot did something like that did they not?
There are a lot of delve content, the problem is you don't do half of them since they are tier 1, you will probably omit 4 more after you have gotten your tier 2 gear and you omit 2 more dungeons if you aren't into gaunt.
Its the rewards system that prevents you from doing most of the dungeons. There is plenty of content.
Red
Cafè Crêpe•Control Wizard
First and foremost.. what do I see pvp is? It is a single person, like myself, taking their character they have built, often from paper first with stats / stat point allocations and gear even before they rolled the character, of what it should be when it is finished at level 60 with enchants. (case in point, my dc.. odd stat build and build, no feat path maxed etc, should have when done, 5100ish rec, 2500ish power, 3500ish crit, 300 armor pen, 45% dr from armor, 30% deflect, 36k hitpoints or little higher, 1500 regen. astral seal 20% dr, bastion of health 10% dr, other healing spell 6%, at will 6% for damage resistances, + healing. This is how an elitist rolls, and a die hard pvper. We run this, then we make the char or do this as we go up, and delete later on, in favor of other stats.
While some skills bother me, annointed symbol lvl 50 skill doesnt work as says etc.. the build is till solid and perfect. I have only a 10k gs right now, but.. bear in mind, I am also a dedicated pvper, that gs doesnt matter as much, and especially not as much in this game.
But we are saying.. this char.. I am putting gaainst yours, and your build, and how hard you worked on your character. In this game, we go further, and we are saying.. we are doing it for control of this 1 node.
Other times.. it will become even up to a 5v1.. and we arent running away.. we are still sayin ok.. you five.. bring it. I will last as long as I can... hard as I can, and do everything I can to last.. while my team takes the other two nodes for the win for us. bring it, bring it all.
People like me make up the 20% basically. We are much fewer in number, than the average pvper. They may be great, but they do not make the builds they are playing, they read forums, and get the ideas from them, and so ok... i iwll play that build. Yeah they can see how its played and do it, but really, they are not the elitists, the die hard. But.. they are great competition.
These guys amount to about 20% more of the population.
it doesnt matter.
Being able to kill someone, roflstomp someone is a benefit certainly, having the uber gear, but take in mind my dc.. I had my now 10k dc in enemy back node (my team was immune to the touch of a node, so I was taking caps) and enemy gwf comes up to fight me. 3 times in a row I was able to push him off of the node, and off of the ledge, with stil keeping myself alive, and for the most part healthy. Ended up he ran to take the other node that was still ours on the other side of the map.
my 10k dc scored our team alot of points during this time.. from both nodes. It is the reason we won.
This type of competition can be won with a single team getting 0 kills and 50 deaths, and before at least, with the rewards being significantly higher, and worth it to at least try to win against all odds. This games' arena pvp is built off of winning the arena first, pvp is secondary.
It is why gs' is a much lesser factor in it, than even playing the game.
of that 40%.. you have maybe 30% that know how to play the game, and want to win. Then you have 70% that are there for just a.d. gains.. just to mindlessly murder they dont care about winning.. etc.. or they dont even know how to win, never learned.. never spoke to people in games, the pvp teams, never read the forums, never read guides.. never tried to learn.
As a pvp'er, I wanna face those other 30% of the population, the rest are trash to me. I want competition, and eventually when I am decked, competition at the highest levels.
So yes, I also was one of the 'leavers' as it was before, but even with gm's lying of why people leave etc, none of it was about the other team being strong. It was always about my own team, or for many of us leavers, our own teams. Blasting music, waking up our kids, blowing up peoples hearing aids, not taking nodes.. not even trying to get to a node to fight for it, not doing anything to win. I want competition, I do not want teams that play to lose.
If I am the only one on my team, that is not what I went into queue for.
Many of the 30% were leavers because of this. Of the 70% left.. those people.. yeah I can see them leaving because they were roflstomped as it were. The majority of them should never have queue'd for pvp to begin with, especially for reasons of ad gains from pvp.
participate in four matches for 4k ad.. however in that 1 hour timeframe as it was before, if all matches lasted 15 min even with queue time.. in 1 hour I can make from the auction house probably 20k ad. just from buying cheap blues, selling them to shop, buying potions, and reselling the potions for a profit.
They are the butt end of this game, I am not interested in wiping butts, that is not what I queue'd for.
I went in for competative pvp.
Hence for these reasons on all counts.. leaver penalty has fixed no issues. It has actually ignored every issue possible, including the enemy is too strong one. People are camping out at fires now waiting for time to end, not even trying to struggle anymore. The developers knew this also in advance, people told them here on forums and they were ignored.
Take my healer build. add in about 35% dr from tenacity now, even with healing depression, when I get him finished.. eh. What balance is this? For elitists against elitist fights.. those big hits.. really are needed. For tr's yeah, the big hits and perm stealth werent necessary.. but moreso the perm stealth part.. classes need damage to actually do something against all this mitigation that currently exists (take my healer, and add 30% mitigation from a good priest build hr, with healing from him too) and boom.. what more? Many classes have buffs affecting the entire party in this manner, though these two are the biggest.
from my standpoint, this path in its entirety has been the worst thought out and implimented project of any game i have ever encountered, to the point that if a developer said we tried to make balances, I would have to call them a liar.
It is a depressing situation as a player, and as a pvper, also to know that the entire time I have typed this, I am still in queue for a pvp match. I have not, as a dc, gotten a match faster than 35 minutes, including missing the entirety of gauntlgrym pvp because of queue time.
The added pvp gears, I make an ammendment, are good, with some rather big wants towards the accessories but its a very big step up. The rest of the patch in its entirety is a tragedy.
I have not played pvp today but if queues are still 30 min long then I will not be looking forward to pvp play, and just continue to my normal pve grind until Icewind Dale comes out.
Or maybe as a thought, the Devs hate pvp and are trying their best to make people dislike it and stop playing, that seems to make sense when you think there are only 2 maps to pvp on and the utter failure of the GG 20 v 20 pvp that seems to never happen.
Well done, thank you, I take back everything, well, most of it anyway.