PVP = Player vs Player.
The moment your character is directly dealing and taking damage from other player that thing it’s PVP.
The numbers of players have been growing in every genre because the playerbase has grown overall. When I grew up, playing video games wasn’t all that common, today you’re weird if you don’t play them. Relatively speaking, ARPG has grown very little compared to other genres. There was one big ISOaRPG in 2000, today there are 2. And both of these pale in comparison to D2 when it comes to player retention. It is a stale genre by any relevant definition.
It means they are focusing on pvp my man, the number is irrelevant this early on. Don’t be stupid.
1 Like
PvP can exsist, instanced, within a core RPG
Yes ofc. I would however prefer both instanced and open world pvp. Blizzard have stated it will be in certain zones. So long as these zones aren’t somewhere far away where nobody will go then it’s better than nothing.
1 Like
Yeah, you are pretty much making things up at this point. Saying that D2 has player retention is a joke. Any abandoned arpg just isn’t going to keep players.
My bad, forgot to add for its time. Back when D2 was popular it had a big healthy playerbase for many years. It offered replayability in many ways.
There aren’t that many players left now though, it’s 20 years old after all. All good things come to an end.
More gamemodes means more players because not everyone enjoy scripted pve and not everyone enjoy pvp that is more brutal because you play vs players not scripted monsters.
A lot lot of people are scared of pvp, they don’t even try it because how much harder is it compared to pve and they don’t want for other game modes to be popular.
Example: There is pvp in D3, a lot of players started playing it more than rifts so we got less people in communities looking for rifts.
But there is small problem. D3 is limitted to few abilities with few runes it greatly reduces skill gap between players and makes items matter more than people’s skill.
In the end D3 isn’t designed for pvp with this amount of rng. it is good idea to add this to D4 because it will bring more players to game but in D3 it will not work.
Also blizzard proved that they know how to make people play more 
Good example here is wow. They force people to play both pvp and pve to stay revelant. If you miss one of the rewards in first few weeks of new season people will be ahead.
If there will be pvp in D4 i am afraid they will do the same…
PS: Pvp can’t be forced in any game because some ppl are just too bad for pvp and it will ruin their experience if they are killed by everyone. This game mode is not for everyone. It’s not like pve where you can try inifited times and succes after training. This is why people are so scared of pvp and if it they will be forced to play it they will leave game
1 Like
D4 has PvP. It just made not for griefing. So what it’s the problem here?
Also please stop comparing arpg pvp vs real pvp game. It is insult to the real pvp game out there.
Is that a trick question?
I always thought Guild Wars had a good pvp system.
PvE skills that were going to be OP in PvP, were just locked out. And they had skills that you could only use in PvP, as they would have been OP in PvE.
If you didn’t want to, you never had to set foot in PvP, it made no difference to the PvE world, and vice-versa, you could level up in PvP, without ever setting foot in PvE world, if that was what interested you as well.
Plus there was at least three different PvP types: Guild Battles, Arenas, and Faction Battles.
That was a fun game.
2 Likes
Man, you guys keep asking questions that were answered decades ago, by an incredible team called Blizzard North.
In D2, slows only impacted players a percentage of how they impacted monsters. All damage did a mere fraction to players, of what it did to monsters. Certain ranged attacks had their numbers tweaked even further, as well as gap-closing abilities for melee champs.
It isn’t rocket science guys, it’s a video game.
Balancing PVE is incredibly simple. It’s a simple game of math. From that point, you make small adjustments to how actual mechanics apply to enemy players.
PoE actually does a pretty good job with PVP, and it’s definitely fun, but D2 did it very well. POE’s PVP falls short simply because they tried too hard to go in an e-sport direction, while D2 simply developed it as a core element from the beginning.
Yeah, they need to just include open pvp for those who want it, and specific pvp modes like “arena” or whatever. As long as they allow the pve crowd to just grind in peace, everyone should be happy.
Man, I forgot about GW’s pvp. You’re right, it was insanely fun. I spent tons of hours playing GW pvp. You could even just fire up a lvl 20 character without playing the campaign at all, and go directly into pvp.
They really handled pvp well in that game.
They dropped specific modes and a ladder. But there is still PVP. I play against my brother all the time.
That’s the thing about pvp in an arpg, it’s probably better to refrain from trying to turn it into an e-sport. Although I LOVED GW pvp, and it was very e-sportish. I don’t have all the answers, but it’s quite clear that the vast majority of the gaming world prefers pvp.
Hell, Dark Souls is a great example of handling pvp very well in an ARPG. Even though the overall multiplayer experience sucks because of the peer to peer connectivity.
Hear that everyone? Every ARPG is perfectly balanced, because it’s a simple game of math, and everybody can do simple math, right?
And the same dude is telling us D2’s PVP was balanced. Sure it was. The same PVP that requires lengthy and complex dueling rules that all players involved have to abide by to make it somewhat sorta work instead of being a one shot gank fest.
The Guild Wars system of separate skills and areas for PVE and PVP sounds OK, but honestly I’d prefer the devs didn’t waste a second of their time trying to make PVP work, and instead make D4 the best PVE experience it can be.
Lol! You have never played D2, please don’t act like you have. You’re asking questions already answered in that game, blatantly, and you’re making claims about things that literally didn’t exist in D2.
It was never anywhere remotely close to a one shot gank fest. The highest DPS character in the game couldn’t one shot the squishiest. I have no idea where you got that. The player to player damage was reduced by 75% compared to player to monster damage.
Furthermore, you were given huge amounts of warning time, if someone did want to kill you. In fact, you could easily avoid all pk’ers by making private games. Hell, it was insanely difficult to find other players that didn’t want to be found, even if you did want to pk
There was never any lengthy dueling ruleset. Lol, what are you even talking about? If you were part of a guild, sure, certain players would hold tournies. But when you joined a dueling game, you knew you were in for an 8 person free for all, and it was glorious.
Again, stop pretending like you actually know what the D2 playerbase is talking about, or experienced. Lying isn’t helping your case at all, it’s actually hurting it, and proving to anyone who happens to peruse the forums, that the D3 playerbase is exactly what the rest of the gaming community thinks – a tiny echo chamber of niche players.
In fact, they’ve already confirmed that they’re bringing pvp back. So it was clearly a massive flaw in D3. So much so, that they’re ignoring the 20 people who still play D3.
1 Like
I want a pvp mode that isnt gear, or level based. Purely skill. a 1v1 pvp gamemode centered around objectives thats purely skill based would be perfect for me.
1 Like
Yeah, it’d be a blast. I’d like opt-in open pvp servers so you can constantly have that element of danger, as well as purely skill-driven modes like you’re talking about.
That way you get pvp no matter what you’re doing.
Okay, Minecraft has PVE. LoL, PUBG, Fortnite, and DotA don’t. I win.
1 Like
I remember when assassins were destroying everyone, and they developed an elementalist counter that just destroyed them. Made so many kids cry 
1 Like
LoL, Fortnite, and DotA all have PvE gamemodes.
They’re not good gamemodes, but you’re the one who wanted to start claiming that a game’s popularity is because of a side show to the main focus of the game.
So if you can twist reallity, then so can I =P
Also, Minecraft is more popular than the other games on your list. Microsoft reported 112 million monthly users earlier this year.
Even Fortnite’s last reported numbers are 78.3 million, and it beats every other game listed in this thread by a pretty significant margin unless you want to start getting into the mobile market.
Sorry, but the most popular game in the world is a super casual PvE focused game.
Even back in the days of Diablo 2 the best selling PC game was Myst, a single player PvE game.
and it would be surpassed by The Sims, another purely single-player PvE game. Diablo 2 might have sold a lot in the first few weeks, but it never actually outsold other games on a total number of copies sold measurement.
The only facts that show the best selling games are PvP focused ones are purely made up “facts” not based in reality =P
He’s a griefer itching to harass people in D4. Using logic & common sense against him is as effective as voice-recording a pathological liar & playing it back to him/her.
Yet doesn’t include almost the entirety of Arpgs out there. You just named a bunch of titles that are pvp-oriented first and foremost. In fact, CoD is the only one you listed with any semblance of PVE.
No joke. Other than D2, I can’t think of a single Arpg with successful pvp. I remember Marvel Heroes, which, in a lot of ways, was a reskinned D2, tried pvp and it failed miserably. There were so few people doing it you could queue and have it never pop lol
There’s not enough time in the day for me to list the successful games without PVP.
#1 Diablo 3 !
Reading more about it, I can understand why for some, D2’s PVP was awesome:
"D2 PvP wasn’t that good right out of the gate. It was a lot of random 1-shotting and frantic teleporting and it just felt clunky. The thing is, it was completely open thanks to a flagging mechanic; it was unrestrained and uncontrolled, very much unlike Blizzard’s other PvP games like Starcraft. So there’s a lot of nostalgia for the crazy fun and weird grass-roots community that developed around it.
It really hit its peak as the hardcore (some would say “underground”) PvP community developed over the years. What developed was a meticulously researched process of finding and trading (sometimes through PayPal) ultra-godly gear, and fine-tuning builds and items to counter seemingly overpowered builds from other classes. Some players had gear that was literally lottery-roll rare, stuff that took over a decade of playing to accumulate. Players learned how to exploit the quirks and weaknesses of the D2 engine, like breakpoints, de-syncing, and frame skipping. So it eventually became a combination of mindless button mashing and teleport spam with a few glimmers of control skill mixed in.
There were unwritten rules for PvP in the best communities. Players could earn scorn or respect across whole servers. If you wanted to PvP with the elite, there was an extremely high barrier to entry. There was nothing “carebear” about D2’s PvP, and so a lot of suburbanite would-be gangstas inhabited the community; there was a ton of trolling and chest-thumping and general douchebaggery. This was before the days of Reddit and internet white-knighting and sympathetic anti-bullying gamers. D2 PvP was like the wild west."
But it boiled down to starting with an unfair advantage over the other players and then exploiting that advantage. That’s not PVP, and it certainly won’t be how any PVP system in D4 would work (so what’s the point of putting it in the game? A balanced PVP system isn’t what D2 fans want, they want wild west). How popular would Fortnite be if some douche could start sniping you before you landed? Or trap you on the bus and blow it up?
Maybe D4’s PVP will be awesome fun for all. But I doubt it. This a PVE game. The role playing fantasy of slaying evil demons and minions as a powerful hero. Fighting other players heroes would just break that immersion. And if it involves different zones and modes and gear and skills (and it pretty much has to) then well, meh. Whatever. If I want PVP, I’ll play a PVP game which is based on PVP and balanced around PVP and provides a fair battle of skill with equal opportunity to win. I play a bunch of PVP games. I’m playing this game to slay monsters.
I implore the D4 devs not to waste any more time than strictly necessary on the PVP side of the game. They can’t win. Whatever they come up with, very few players will be happy with it.
1 Like