Along time ago in an Azeroth long forgotten, two factions Horde and Alliance controlled and shared territory. It was up to the player to decide if they wanted to play on a PvP server and brave the yellow and red territories or PvE server for a casual relaxed experience.
Now we have PvP relegated to battle grounds and arenas (with small flagged world areas), dated maps and huge barrier to entry for new and current players. With bloated Addons, spec rotations, Gear farming and LFG gate keeping I can see why the PvP scene is so lack luster and unappealing for anyone who might want to try PvP.
I believe PvP could become a HUGE draw for new, Current, and Old players if PvP received more love from inside development. This game is to good to drag its feet in the competitive space for both casual and hardcore competitors.
I believe with faster BG game modes, Better LFG tools, smaller groups ( 5 man instead of 10), more maps, competitive game modes etc, PvP could become a huge draw for WoWs player base new/current/old and could revivalist the competitive scene within the game that is desperately needed.
You shouldn’t be required to watch a 45min youtube video to understand stun DRs Go windows, spell rotations, addons, etc only to be demoralized and quit as I assume most players do.
Sincerely,
A love of PvP
7 Likes
It is a tough spot. No matter the game or systems, if competition is involved, the best strategies and ways to play will always be explored and figured out. New players will always have to learn the meta to survive at high levels.
As someone who only does casual PvP (aka only battlegrounds, no arena or RBG) my opinion is that it’s not just rewarding to play. I get better gear, faster and easier from PvE content. The honor track, while a good feature in thought plays out poorly because of the amount you need to play in order to get somewhere within it.
I enjoy doing battlegrounds as content, which is why I still play regardless of above statement. But we still have issues with BGs in general:
- Many BGs ultimately isn’t a PvP battleground, it’s a rush objective before the opposing team. If you fail, you either loose or you’re stuck being spawn camped for the remaining time (see Ashran, AV, Eye of the Storm as examples).
- None-premade going up against premades. Back when I played BGs the most I had the issue of 1/3 (or even more) of the games being against coordinated premade groups. It removes all fun gameplay of “random battleground” when you’re up against people who are probably in Discord, with the correct group comp and the meta classes.
- No seasonal rotation on BGs. Having a season rotation on BGs together with a few new BGs would probably revitalize it as well.
2 Likes
I think PvP as a whole has been neglected for a long time now, especially more casual forms of PvP. There hasn’t been a new battleground in almost six years (three if you count the Deepwind Gorge revamp). I don’t personally think that’s good enough and having more variety, even if it’s only visual variety using the same gamemodes is great.
Casual PvP suffers at the moment because it’s not remotely rewarding. Honour levels come too slowly and are lacklustre in their rewards. The rewards that do come are infrequent and haven’t been expanded on for a while now as far as I know. Every X level, increasingly spaced apart, you get a slightly different colour of a mount. That isn’t really good enough.
I’m only a casual PvPer at best but I would love some more investment into battlegrounds, to me they are the heart and soul of WoW pvp and have been neglected for so long. I would like to see reward tracks (that don’t expire ideally) that give casual PvPers something to earn and I’d like to see more focus put upon battlegrounds in general. Solo Queue RBGs?
4 Likes
Thanks for posting Spazassin! I’m not huge into pvp but I’ve done a bit of it here n there. Complaints from friends were similar to those expressed by Exaltys, Safeguard, Valrysha and other new-to-pvp players I’ve encountered. Not sure if the honor track to get new players gear is too restrictive or even if opening up gear earlier would make a huge difference. Looks like there’ve been a few topics like Prosident’s The complete neglect of caual and leveler PvP that are similar to your post and I haven’t gone through the regular forums but I’d assume it’s similar as well.
Potentially providing a buff to players may help but again, since it’s competitive this may have regular pvpers jumping in on this for fun.
To make pvp fun for a new player, you’d want to look at barriers to entry and try to come up with solutions that wouldn’t “break” what’s in place or make things worse. I haven’t focused on pvp in awhile but I’m sure people of the pvp community might have a few ideas that may work.
Removing the group dynamic – enter solo shuffle. Just have to keep considerations like what’s in Worldpvp’s Solo Shuffle Feedback thread.
You could have it completely random with so many people it doesn’t matter – enter battlegrounds…but maybe have it tuned so low rated players aren’t completely destroyed?
New maps with timed requirements like king of the hill. Ohn’ahran plains centered having most kills/longest time in central zone etc.
Complete free for all might work. Trick of course is to have these comparable to other maps time to complete/reward system. Murloc madness – chromie has transported you to Azmerloth and all are murlocs – beat the other murlocs to be murloc king!
I’m sure within the pvp community we could find some decent ideas to remove barriers to entry on the pvp front (if not already in the forums) and make things a bit more fun. Just need to poke at some of the issues and provide potential fixes or ways that may improve things.
Also noted by one of our CC, it would be beneficial to have a tab in the adventurer’s guide for pvp/battlegrounds.
TLDR I agree entry to pvp/casual/nonrated should be revisited and new maps/challenges added
2 Likes
One thing I really enjoyed from FFXIV was that their battlegrounds have different abilities for PvP than the PvE abilities. Some are very similar, but I feel that would allow for balancing on a different scale. A big issue is that a lot of the game systems are designed around PvE and their PvP applications are a little wonky. I think more separation is needed in order to help the PvP community, but it is a tall task, especially when you take World PvP into account.