As mentioned by Council member Spazassin, PvP is now being forgotten by Devs.
However, It’s really difficult to accomplish a good gameplay for new players when there’s a huge amount of spells, addons…etc, the learning curve is huge, I don’t have a solution in mind regarding new players.
At least for old players, my problem is that Blizzard don’t do anything regarding casual pvp that could bring players to ranked later.
There’s not a new BG since BFA pre patch (Blizzard doesn’t have to create a new mechanic, just copy Arathi, WS with new maps for other continents, Maps Skins)
We don’t have new PvP brawls in a while, I’ll add that Devs could do some Holiday thematic PvP brawls, if you’ve played League of Legends, you should know about the snowball power that teleports you to an enemy, something similar could be implemented for a specific xmas pvp brawl or hallow’s end, even Overwatch has specific holiday pvp modes, there’s just a lack of interest to invest in PvP.
Prestige Honor system introduced in Legion without updates since BFA prepatch and the reward path isn’t appealing, since you can get a new reward every 50-100 levels.
Queue times are huge for some PvP modes because of the lack of interest.
It’s a shame they can’t even balance the existing maps/content
Epic BGs for example are full of imbalances here and there, and AV is just a boss-rush again since pugs can kill the endboss with only 1-2 towers down (premades and partial-premades can currently kill the endboss with 0 towers down)
Even though casual PvP has a lot of replay value, it seems to be “on the backburner” in favor of catering to top 1% arena junkie types. Oh and of course, tons of attention/dev hours devoted to Solo Shuffle… just not even any “crumbs” of attention devoted to casual PvP
The whole thing is stupid, you start off playing shuffle in cardboard V mmr facing people on glad mounts. You say “to hell with this” and quit solo shuffle, join random epic bg but there they are, ubbernerds with twice my hp and oneshotting people with pve trinkets.
PVP players will constantly defend it but the reality is that if PVP was statistically showing as much player engagement as PVE does, they would allocate Dev time and resources into creating content for it.
Wow runs on a seasonal content structure now… some people don’t realize how bad this is for the game as now in order for them to stay on track for a new season every 6 months and having to make a new raid, m+ dungeons, and an open world rep farming zone each season, that doesn’t leave them much wiggle room for creating other content in the game. With this seasonal structure blizzard has it means we are going to constantly get the same recycled things over and over again because if they take time to actually create something big and new, they fall behind on that season content.
People can argue all they want that pvp is popular and that blizzard should do more for it… but at the end of the day blizzard is going to do what their internal statistics show them will keep players subbed longer, and have players logging in daily playing the game… if pvp was a big part of that, so would the devs resources towards it
I feel like low level bgs used to be heaps of fun creating a trail account just do some low level PvP was always fun nowadays things just feel completely unbalanced
Lost all interest in Arena’s due to it’s inflation with ratings. Fighting Glads in 1400 isn’t fun at all. The 1800 rewards are basically the new 2200’s.
With that said, BG’s are always fun. World PVP in DF is some of the best it’s been in years and PVP gearing is fantastic.
PvP isn’t popular. It’s technically one of the three pillars of end game (along with raiding and Mythic+) but is a shadow of the other two in terms of appeal. Couple of reasons:
Rated PvP is brutal to get into. Unlike mythics or raiding, lack of skill is obvious and makes you far weaker than other people - leading to you being targetted as the weakest link in a solo shuffle and killed 0-6. Which leads to discouragement.
It lacks rewards. An inexperienced player can do LFG or low level mythic+ and gain rewards. Chances are either of these activities will lead to them being ready for normals or mid-level mythics. PvP doesn’t. There the honor set and, eventually, the gladiator - but both are nigh on worthless in anything BUT PvP. Compare their popularity to Shadowlands PvP sets which were a viable alternative to gearing for raiders and mythic+ runners. No one collects these sets unless they pvp.
Failure isn’t rewarded at all - A new player is going to fail a lot. In other games, you’d gain a small percent along a track of rewards, or tokens that allowed you to work towards stuff. In WoW? Nothing. You queued, you died, you wasted your time for no reward.
The penalty for losing in rated play is brutal. A bad queue, a weak team, whatever and you can plummet down rankings. Fun? No. There’s no hard cap of how far you can fall, which feels like the kind of system that should have been phased out years ago.
PvP isn’t really developed by the designers to the level the rest of the game is. Hardly any new arenas and a real lack of new BGs. Heck, the Epic BGs haven’t had a refresh since Isle of Conquest.
There are other reasons but, essentially, the system stops new blood from entering it - meaning its played by a smaller and smaller group.
That it’s a hot mess that hasn’t gotten any better, I quit playing PvP all together in 9.1 when they altered how PvP gear works and never looked back.
I got tired of the rock paper scissors gimmick, curb stomps with your teeth being held on the curb while getting stomped on the head. The toxic way players act, I even remember when people were BLATANTLY being carried and would DM you post match calling you all sorts of names. The smurfs that would either make new characters or accounts, or enter rated matches and throw to lower their scores intentionally, or just get so mad that they would stop participating and throw. With smurfs one siding matches to the point where people would run from the GV to keep from respawning.
PvP in WoW brings the worst of the worst out of the wood works, and I would rather do PvE than PvP any day of the week because of that. That isn’t to say PvE has its share of issues, especially with players, but it’s far easier not engage with and find people to do the content with that won’t lose their ever loving minds constantly.
Its my hope that more discussion will bring the spot light to PvP. It feels like a big miss for both casual and hardcore PvPers. I would love to see PvP set side by side with game content again. New Maps, New Game Modes, New RBGs/arenas and a lower barrier to entry for new players, current players and returning players.
The more players I talk with the more I realize that the PvP scene isn’t dead yet, its just waiting for some love and would renew some of those player subs who still hold out hope for their favorite game.
Uhhh, I think unranked needs a bit of love, and ranked would likely benefit from everybody being a bit higher in terms of mmr but for the most part things are good.
Haven’t had a new battleground in some time and I wish they had converted warfronts into moba or style-style experiences for pvp.
It’s not forgotten, it was destroyed by Horde bias.
People don’t like to read this, certainly, but you need to maintain a healthy 50:50 for having a proper faction fight. A dominating red side will not give Alliance-players a reason to join war, especially when we, the Horde, get treated like royalty by the developers. Team Blue are still paying customers but it doesn’t look like this way to me.
What do I mean? The developers didn’t care enough to help the Alliance during BfA but one moment Team red cries on the forum during SL, that a choke point is dominated by Alliance-players, they change it? Bias?
I don’t see the reason for PVP to return. The game is too biased towards Horde with better playable (allied) races, racials with the only “downside” having a bad story, but this goes for the Alliance as well.
The system is trash, simply put. The Honor-income needs to be increased by 200-500% to give casuals an incentive to go for +500 levels.
No seriously, PVP in this game is and has been awful for a very long time. To the point that it is forgotten and almost unfixable. The problem really isn’t the Devs, but the producers that are causing the issues with forcing the PVP and other content to be marketable for the MLG (Major League of Gaming) another subsidiary of Activision Blizzard.
While I don’t participate in any sort of PVP with this game nor even care about the MLG content (Overwatch, The Great Push, Star Craft battles, Arena stuffs), I am glad that Phil Spector has mentioned that it is something that is going to be on his chopping block if / when Microsoft ever takes over. He might not gut it completely, but hopefully reach out to other companies to start bringing in content and make it sort of a competitive streaming where you can see some Madden or Fifa competitions as well. Then at at the same time, pull back on trying to make WoW PVP into something that it’s not.
True but since we’re not longer a faction war kind of game, just do a PvP not matter the faction, enable queues without using the double agent buff.
True, they need to provide like daily / weekly task for huge amount of honor, similar to a battle pass that provides quest, task for its progress, however; I won’t like a seasonal approach like a battle pass, I like it as a permanent thing like now, however; Devs need to split honor from being a currency and also a progress system for that prestige honor rewards. They don’t provide huge amount of honor because honor is used for upgrades and gear…Also casuals need rewards every 5-10 levels, if you don’t see a reward for 50-100 levels, you don’t feel rewarded enough, there’s serious issues with reward implementations in this game.
Just add more skins for the same BGs, enable achievement acquisition for old BGs but using the new skin, so we’ve a fresh Arathi, Warsong in another continents but progress old achievements with the new skin, they don’t have to add new achievements and there’s not a problem that there’s too much BGs and people won’t see their favorites, you’ll get your favorite BG mechanic but maybe in another skin.
I think people who loves casual pvp will like Holiday pvp brawls during each season, however; the last holiday refresh won’t bring enough gameplay even for pve, its just a hardmode and few quest, Devs should establish a more permanent replaybility including pvp brawls for those holidays with fun mechanics like other online games.
Pleasee council members push a revamp of the prestige honor system, I’ve mentioned this in every PTR forum for like 1+ year
Overall - PvP is my second favorite mode of gameplay to mythic plus.
Rating needs inflated severely, some reward tweaks need to happen, and anti-premade in epic bgs need to happen, but otherwise not terrible - balance wise at least.
