Hi fellow players and maybe, maybe a Mod or a Dev!
First i would say this is no doomsaying, this is the reality, as much as it may hurt. As the thread opener i will answer my own question, in current state PVP has NO future in long term.
I really would appreciate Andy or somebody from Mods Team, who knows a bit about PVP or even a Dev to communicate with us PUGs and say a few words- yet again not demanding, just hoping.
I know we PUGs aren't valued, but please think dear Cryptic, we are the majority and we generate the most income and more happy players means more happy customers.
The Q for example is now so broken, one can most of the time see, that it is going to be a premade vs PUG or a premade vs a PUG/premade with traitor trick game.
I am long used since beginning of the game now to having no ELO, no brackets, no real matchmaking and a list longer, than Tolkien's books, full of cheats, but the traitor trick is one that cuts very deep into our PUG flesh.
Not that we have lost DOM entirely, GG PVP became premade playground too. Now, if one is lucky, then there are some times during a day, when the strom is calming down a bit and we PUGs can play with minimal distractions, but most of the time we have to either jump out, rage quit or sit out a match- insane. This is more insane in a MOD, which builds mostly on PVP experience.
I had a ton of matches today, where i saw 2 guilds running coordinated matches, no extra so far, but i see more of a tendency in using agent provocateurs or decoys. I won't name the guild, but they were planting a guy or two for dozens of matches in to the enemy team, they did zero, just fiddled around and of course their guildies didn't attack them at all. After a while, after "good work" done, they got the chance to be part of the initial premade onslaught and another guys from their guild were planted into the enemy team to sabotage things. Same thing, they stood most of the time around or were just riding along, but they didn't put up a real fight.
My question is, what use has this now, besides a few perverted having fun in easy play. Will this and many other dirty tricks keep PVP alive for long? How should a decent guild or a PUG player get enough seals to buy the PVP gear? Will there be enough people, who can be convinced to enter a SH PVP match against these odds? There are alreday so few players in PVP, that an old player like me, nearly knows all by now. Not that i am a genius, but the community is so small.
I don't know anymore, what to do to try to catch attention, but if Cryptic does nothing, PVP will be empty very soon, more so, that SH PVP made things even worse, many got mad to get the glory and seals and act like a bunch of wild animals (Sorry animals are never so bad as humans, never;) ).
This is actually a Catch 22 situation, the negligence of PVP Development and the 2 year old rule of a few guilds made PVP community go small, now if we PUGs stop PVPing, most premades will leave too, cause they will have no easy prey.
BUT there is still hope, you the Devs could make both of us a bit happier and isolate us. Sure many PUGstompers would leave, but the decent ones would stay and new, fresh PVP community would rise intead of this .... we have now. I know many who left, would come back to play the game again, cause they left only because of these problems. Think again please Cryptic!
Thank you!
The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
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Comments
Just saying. Not everything is a pvp guild conspiracy.
You must be kind of new.
I've expressed that this is the end times already on many occasions.
First, it began with ridiculous amount of RPs and ADs required to progress in your gear. Currently, we live in a system that is impossible for you to make any headway unless you pay punitively shocking amounts of money to individual pieces of gear/item. This was basically a focus towards their paying customers which the core majority are PvPers, but it was not a positive focus. Instead going in the way to encourage more people to become paying customers, instead, they decided to make the pre-existing paying customers like us PvPers, into cash cows. Milk every last drop of penny from our pockets before we leave... because obviously, this is what came next.
They started breaking balance. Whether on purpose, I do not know. But one thing for certain is that even some problems that reached a strong consensus among people, were never addressed. It starts with stuff like Sigil of the Divine... and then in the form of artifact equipment that gave you passive AP gain. Just 1 mod with that shi* flying around and that basically changed PvP forever into a Daily spamming fest, which caused more problems, which drove people to take even more extreme measures to defend oneself, which required more money and more AD.
The recent "peak" when the devs actually listened to us, was in mod5 preview. I remember the amount of communication that went back and forth between us TR players and the devs. They were quick to respond. They fixed many of the problems we tested out and suggested. It was a good experience... and then, after mod5, everything just stopped.
From that point on, every change, every new implementation is just a chockful of parade of banner signs and commercials recommending you to spend more money. Spend more AD. "Give us this much money, and then we'll give you this much ridiculously broken OP shi* in return!"
...
Fundamental problems? The single worst, criminally broken problem that disturbs the balance of the game worse than any broken class or broken power or item? The team balancing. For 2 years and 7 mods, its still not fixed. No hope of fixes.
You know what? I think devs, they just gave up.
Sorry if this is insulting to you, Cryptic, but I think you just gave up on everything. Any flare of creativity or aggressive and bold attitude you had for this game, its gone.
You just gave the f**k up and now, just don't care about anything.
"Just keep this going for maybe a couple more years, with as much cash-hogging misery as possible, and we'll milk every last bit of money from our customers. Then we simply close it down, and then make a new game."
That's what you are doing. You don't care about the game any more. You don't care if your game is fun or not. All you care is the daily rate of money you milk in with volatile and rancid piece of shi* that breaks your own game and just destroys whatever balance there is left. The more gamebreakingly stupid it is, the more we will buy it. That's what you think. That's how stupid you guys think we are.
So... no. I don't think its gonna suddenly die out in a year, or something like that.
I believe its simply going to slowly, slowly die out, with the PvP areas of the game being 'emptied out' first with nobody playing it... and then, all the high-end PvE people will disappear, and you'll just get a bunch of bottom-feeding F2P-hoppers that just hop on any game that is free.
I give it about 2 years. The PvP? Once people start receiving those SH boons, then its the downfall.
They've stopped communicating with us. That only means one thing: they've lost it. The PvP has lost it.
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
Too many left game and newbies have to suffer too much to enjoy PVP and PVP
Thats no contest, its simply c.rap
They will not understand frustration about bug abusers, 30 mins ban cause of accidentally disconnect. They will not understand how iritated can be player perma rooted/stunned/dazed only because they are to lazy to fix it.
They will not understand iritation of player, who spend a lot of time (money) to get enchant - then they "fix" it, cause was OP. O.o
Two years we pray for duel system, even dueling foundry. 2 fvcking maps and one mode since start. IWD - be serious. With those lagz it's almost unplayable, especially pvp.
Hire some players, maybe they will help you, cause our dev's are actually newbies in pvp area.
.Suicide Squad.
IWD, that place is abandoned and open pvp ... better say nothing.
Need to release new content
It seems to me that the game developers have benchmarks to meet (for example, releasing a new module every x number of months) which are likely set by management. The rest of their time is spent ironing out the inevitable bugs from the new mod. I am presuming that there does not seem to be incentive for them to dedicate resources to fixing PvP bugs/imbalances if it does not coincide with their performance targets.
Strongholds and how it may lengthen the PvP lifespan
The onus then comes to the community to demonstrate to the game's developers (via this forum and our community manager) that fixing these bugs will lead to increased longevity of PvP, and by extension, this game. One example we could use is Strongholds. While their reasoning for developing this mod was to foster relationships between players and increase player retention, one of the drawcards from this mod was the MOBA like PvP system as highlighted in their YouTube video.
Need to promote new PvP players while retaining PvP veterans
However, in order to improve the success of a 20v20 PvP arena, there must be a system in place to foster the development of new PvP players and the retention of PvP veterans, that is, to ensure there is a large enough player-base.
How can they do this if the PvP arena in Domination and Gauntlgrym are affected by numerous bugs and imbalances? These include (but are not limited to):
1) An improper queuing system which start the match with unequal team sizes (this seemed to appear in Mod 7)
2) Disconnection problems leading to leaver penalties and is also a major disadvantage for the affected team
3) Pre-mades crushing PUGs (from a non-working Elo system with a broken leaderboard)
4) Underperforming classes (demonstrated by the limited presence of certain classes e.g. SW in the last NCL)
5) Armor and Weapon Enchantments which are considered BiS (other enchantments need fixes i.e. Barkshield, while others are probably WAI but still OP)
6) Stronghold armor equippable at all levels (an oversight perhaps? I truly hope so)
7) Non-gating of Enchants so lower brackets have Rank 12's slotted in equipment pieces
What needs to be done?
Firstly the issues highlighted above and throughout this forum need to be addressed. Ideally, this would be done by a dedicated programmer(s) who have a working knowledge, and better yet, an interest in PvP in this game. While this will require taking some resources out of developing the new mod, it should be noted that the Stronghold Mod advertises PvP as one of its core features and therefore should be a reason to kickstart them to look at, and fix, these problems.
The Stronghold Siege is slated to appear on September 15. In the time until then, I do hope developers can address or fix these PvP issues. If these imbalances which affect the current PvP system are set to continue, then all hell will break loose once the boon structure bonuses are handed to the elite-haves, at the expense of the ever-dwindling newer PvP players.
No matter how calm you want to be, if you're the only veteran-level player who actively refuses making shi*brained trollmades, and side with the casual pug-players every time, there's a limit to your patience. It's not as if I don't know how to bring 3~4 babysitters behind my back to roflstomp baby seals with a 6-ton industrial hammer. But I don't do it. I hope to at least balance things out a little bit by standing on the opposite end, and this means a constant uphill battle against odds I have no way of facing on my own. Do that for 2 years, and it gets to you.
But no matter what happens, I would never make a trollmade in a casual playground like GG. Maybe domination, but GG? Never. So the dilemma stands, the game's not fun. It is stressful. Watching the 2-bit thugs and pricks sweep the arena with the carcasses of slews of poor pug/casual players, and having no way to stop all of that myself, is maddening. Watching the level of stupidity as those self-described PvP guild idiots, as they destroy the very foundation of PvP and keep driving the people away, it just f**king sucks. No matter how much you explain, how much you plea or shout at them, they just don't f**cking care about anything, and the longer they do this, the shi*tier the PvP quality becomes, and the last 2 years have been a constant drop.
Why do individual players like me, have to worry and be stressed out about something the devs should have been doing? Why is it me that have to face the constant grueling fights, when its the devs that should have taken steps to stop that from happening? This isn't my game. My wages don't depend on this. It's their game...
...and WHERE THE ROYAL F**K ARE THEY??
In the end, it is ridiculous to expect individual players find a conscience and go with it. Why should they care when the devs themselves don't care? Why should I care?
So, if I don't feel like doing that any more, even still I'll never be doing the same thing as those clueless shi*rolls. I'm too proud to go down that gutter and do that sleezy, shameful display and behavior. Then what's the only option I have left?
Quit the game. That's the only thing left. They lose a paying customer. That's how the beginning of the end starts. Individual players becoming so frustrated and disappointed by the lack of communication and direction, we stop caring. And then we just walk away. And its US who provide the income to this F2P business model.
If you know something to be broken, stop using it.
Otherwise, you've got no right to be speaking of 'balance.'
Yes i do leave sometimes, who doesn't? If my team is utterly bad or very very freshlings, waste of time and i can not babysit all the time, my RL time limits my game time too, simple as that. Not gonna say i don't jump out from time to time, i have nothing to hide. Does this make me bad or are the ones who slay PUGs for fun the bad guys? That's why i see a little shimmering light in the PUG Channel too.
But i would be very quiet, if i were you, cause it was you, if i remember correctly, who has been banned for ability hack in PVP...
BTW, i am not missing anything in terms of partnership, if i don't roll along with some premades, i am not perverted and don't like easy PUG slaying, but to say the truth i was invited to PVP guilds, refused to join, cause if i had joined, i had to do the PUG slaying and even more nasty things, which i refuse to do.
Trolling every thread from some premades is already a habit now here on forums, so you guys get every thread closed, which would bring some attention to the major problems. Cool just do it, if this trend goes on even you premades won't have a playground anymore. Logic!
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Exactly and the new gear again and again. Most guilds won't get those boons ever or in a year+ maybe, maybe, until then the gap is getting bigger and bigger and PVP will lose players more and more. I have lost hope in getting the new PVP gear, it will simply need too many 20 vs 20 participations, which a normal guild with 2K+ players will never be able to do. Who wants to give another chance to get massacred all over again?! With the boons on top a whale PVP player, who is already a Tiger Tank,- compared to a normal PUG PVPer- will become a T-90.
Have the Devs really thought just 1 sec about those things, i really wonder.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
As earlier mentioned all they do now is trying to implent things that make people spend as much as possible like mounts that gives stats the example is never ending.
Pvp is about as broken as I seen in any game no devs even in sight to change that.
How long has this stupid you go link dead you cant get back and get 30 min penaltry been around now, months for sure endless of threads no devs in sight...
Piercing damage 1000nd and 1000nds of post about it not even a comment from devs.
If you ever played a game and seen the end comming you can for sure see it again in this game.
Pvp with Pals and Trs atm is a complete joke if you put it as nice as possible......
So many major bugs that been mentioned for such a long time without even a comment from the devs says it all - the dont care about the game content only what can make peope spend more simple as that......
But we all know this is never going to happen.
Back to initial point, 2 working Qs popping during happy hour. If this isn't alarming for Cryptic, well i dunno, what to say anymore. This means not even a possible of 40 players wanting to do GG PVP, cause of all the accumulated problems.
With missing PVE dungeons, broken SH strategy (which empties small guilds further, due to unreachable goals and puts them more down the line against big guilds and no dear Cryptic, many players won't join big guilds), empty battlefields what will happen here?! Yet again no doomsaying, just pure reality. Feel free to accept my invite and come down to us small players, to our guilds, see for yourselves dear game officials.
Robert E. Lee
I only believe in statistics that I doctored myself.
Winston Churchill
The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are.
David Icke
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream.
fanatism
On top no real PVE content, like above said: no presence, no future