First off, many consider it a basic component of a triple A title, and it's absence would be conspicuous.
The problem however lies not with pvp itself but the players. I would say there are a lot of social aspects in pvp that are more inclusive of a younger or immature mindset. As an older player, I'm perfectly content to just enjoy myself. I do not define my experience by comparing myself to others, and by doing that in games or in real life you are starting down a near impossible path of fullfillment that is subjective and all to often fleeting.
Where I rank on pvp stats is a curiousity but nothing more. I want gear that helps me attain my goals and looks aesthetically pleasing to myself. Status objects to me are laughable in a virtual setting. Why would I even want to impress someone I have never met. Now, I'm not saying I have never wanted to be the best at a game or to have the cool stuff. But those days are behind me as I have a career, lovely wife, nice cars and a beautiful home of my dreams. Would some digital object that I slaved after days and weeks and months or a year compare to any of my real life achievments. No. They are just phantoms.
The other problem I have with pvp again goes back to the players. There is a very extreme, antisocial , and abusive mindset that sometimes accompanies pvp that you don't see in other aspects of gaming like crafting, rp, or pve. I'm talking about the social misfits who I have no desire to interact with because I don't baby sit, and on occasion I care for real psychotic individuals at work and I play games to escape that kind of stress.
Ofcourse, there are some really cool people who are mature and have a warriors code or sense of honor, and it is only because of those people and the good times that I would not write off or dismiss pvp, because they have made some of the greatest moments in my pvp gaming.
While I agree with most of what you said....I have to differ on the anti-social bit being something specific to PvP
Jerks are Jerks.....and I've been involved in several situations playing WOW where a nazi party or raid leader verbally abused people in voice chat or in game chat over a simple mistake in a boss fight, or because their "DPS" numbers didn't meet mustard.
There are elitiest jerks (pun intended) that play on the PvE side of things just as there are in PvP. PvP gets a bad wrap because you can more directly affect folks by dropping the hammer on other players directly.
And even with the anit-social a-holes that exist in PvP, there is atleast an opprotunity (in a free for all pvp environment) to make the jerk take a dirt nap. You can't do that in WOW.
I remember in Ultima Online that there was a whole PvP guild dedicated to doing nothing but hunting down and killing all the Player Killers in the game that prey'd on newbies and less organized players.
Again I say....casual linear gear based MMOs SUCK at PvP.
The reason a lot of people play MMORPGs is purely for the pvp.
You don't like it? Roll on a PVE server and leave others to do what they like doing.
True dat. I've never really been into MMO PvP, but to each their own. Many PvP'ers are total griefing buttheads, but many others are just folks that like to compete with real people. So long as there are different server types, we can all be happy.
I do think that a great deal of resources in an MMO are used to balance PvP rather than create content, so I guess in that way it could be said that PvP'ers at least slow the growth of MMO's.
But then, so does giving developers vacation time.
A lot of people here made a lot of great points as to why PVP is important and why PVE is important.
I personally prefer PVE because i admit my skills in PVP no matter what my gear are horrible at best. Plus i dont care about being better then the next player. This is why i trully enjoyed and thoroughly love final fantasy 11.
I dont believe PVP ruins a game. Competition has always been a huge part of video games. Lets look back at Super marios Bros 3. Each player would get to do a level but you would try to beat your buddy to the mushroom house to get one of the items to get an advantage during the game. This was PVP. Going to the arcade playing the shooting games, you played coop but you would have a score counter which players would try to beat each other, thats a form of PVP.
Now with COD, MOH, BF, WoW, SWTOR, PS, PS2 soon coming. PVP is brought to a different level and yes i believe that players who put more time into their characters should be rewarded for it. Weither it be gear or talents passive or activated.
1) PvP does ruin MMORPG's because they try to balance the game around it which usually means PvE is dulled down horribly. An awesome class ability that is unfair in PvP = removed or nerfed.
2) More Time Spent does NOT equal more skill. I feel like most MMO PvP players enjoy PvP in MMO's because they can invest more time to make up for their lack of skill. Take a game with even playing fields, everyone gets the same... everything... from day one. A better play can play once a week and win vs a player who plays every day every night. That is not true in MMORPG's where someone can grind to be "better"
To sum it up, MMORPG PvP allows people to be bad, yet invest more time to compete with the better players. A "good" player has to not only be good, but also invest time in order to compete.
Honestly, you need to have all types of players to have a believeable immersive world. I think it was summed up best by wtfman:
Darkblight touched on a great topic in his previous post; the holy grail of an MMO is balance. Everyone knows an MMO needs 'balance' to be good, and the better the 'balance', the greater the MMO. Balance, unfortunately, is one of those terms that no one ever understands in the same way. Most of the time, whatever benefits the player's interests is considered to them to be balance. For a trammelite, balance is being able to go out into the wilderness to make money without dying every minute. For a crafter, balance is the ability to create an item and have a good economy to make a profit in. And lastly, for most of us here, balance is the opportunity to pwn the previous two people and run off with their stuff.
The balance that darkblight wants to talk about, I believe, is the balance of all these types of players, which is what made Ultima Online the epitome of MMOs to date, but instead of discussing that he does what most of us thieves, murderers, griefers do (and I'm sure I may even in this article about my point), and goes on to discuss the balance which benefits only us, the minority of players who cause grief, chaos, and anger. And this is the major problem of balance in today's MMOs.
Now, I must state I've been a thief in any RPG I've played. I absolutely enjoy stealing, backstabbing, deceiving, and generally being a nuisance to everybody. If I can profit off another person's effort with minimal risk, great. But I'm also aware of the my role's position in the grand scheme of things. In order for me to enjoy this there needs to be another person for me to profit from, and in order for me to profit off of them, he needs to be able to make money with relative freedom, and this relative freedom only comes if there are a very limited amount of people like me, and you, who want to screw him over in the lich lord room after he's been there for 2 hours straight. That other player, the trammelites or anyone who loves to roleplay and decorate their virtual homes with sparkles and glitter, are needed in droves in order to run any MMO, and they need to feel as though the entire world isn't out to completely screw them over. They are the sheep to us wolves, and just like in nature, the balance lies in having less, much less predators than there are prey.
When you cater to only one of these types, the trammelite, thief, crafter, et cetera, the MMO will eventually only consist of that type. That's what makes most MMOs to date stale and boring and stale. No one wants to steal from another thief today who's just going to steal it back from them tomorrow. On the other hand, if you put everyone in a bubble, safe from all the evils of the world, even they will find themselves bored from a constant treadmill of levels and achievements. It's important to give everyone enough protection so they don't feel scammed of all their hard work all the time, but it's also important to provide some chaos, some destructive elements, in order to keep the world changing and to stay interesting. The key to balance then is to maintain the proper proportions of these elements.
Balance doesn't lie in PvP or PvE or crafting, it lies in the mixture of all these combined. MMOs are fantasy worlds where people interact with each other, thus it's more of a social balance that needs to take place in order to truly have an outstanding MMO. Given, individual aspects such as PvP, PvE, and crafting need to be balanced themselves, but the bigger picture is a diverse and dynamic world in which politics, drama, and power struggles take place. Ultima Online was laced with bugs, imbalanced mechanics, and always was down when you wanted to play it, but it was absolutely incomparable to anything else when it came to interaction and conflict with another human. It was a melting pot of roleplayers, murderers, griefers, crafters, you name it, even though it had all its flaws and imperfections. No one cared to max their character before heading out into the dungeons because there was an enormous mix of people to run in to, whether it be a newbie who wanted to just kill some mongbats with you, or a PK who was trying to In Por Ylem you to death. Even the huge changes that made a character go from a powerhouse to a gimp overnight didn't really stop us from starting to train a new skill from scratch the next day. Everyone was kept on the same playing field because we never really knew what tomorrow would bring.
I'd like to say Ultima Online had no 'end-game'; the way I played Ultima the first day, up until the very last, was to just get out of town and see what would happen. Every time I logged in I never had a goal other than to have fun. If I ran into some of my thief buddies, we'd go stealing; if I found myself needing money badly, I'd go kill monsters. There was always something to do, always somebody new to run in to, and it never was the same thing twice, and that only works when there is a diverse balance of every type of player imaginable. MMOs today always seems to have a focus on only one certain aspect of a world, whether it be PvP, PvE, or being a furry. The next MMO that realizes the balance between having free-for-all PvP, fully-lootable corpses, and a safe enough stable for my neon horses, I'm in.
PvPers do not ruin games. Developers ruin games by including PvP.
The problem with PvP is it limits how creative developers can be with their classes. Too many stun and CC mechanics make for lousy PvP (look at WoW and SWTOR). Knockbacks are annoying (remember Warhammer and lava?). As long as players are attacking each other instead of NPCs, developers have to limit their mechanics.
IMO they ruin games by including PvP BADLY.
GW1 had both PvE and PvP and they were both stellar. That's because they actually thought about PvP and included it in their design from day one. If you do it like this, you'll have no problems.
On the other hand, if you're making a PvE game and then you decide to throw a bone to PvP-ers by including 3 half-assed maps and just flag everyone for PvP in open world... then you're asking for trouble.
Personally, I lean more towards PvP than PvE but I would LOVE to see a 100% PvE sandbox game, for example. There is nothing wrong with PvE-only game design... BUT THEN STICK TO IT FFS!!!!
Don't just add some PvP crud so you can appeal to 20% bigger target audience! It just ruins your game both for PvP-ers AND PvE-ers!
It actually never makes sense to me when faction based mmos didn't focus on PVP
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
I know, it's a wide sweeping generalization and there's always exceptions, but after playing MMO's for 10 years and after reading the SWTOR forums, I'm convinced that PvP doesn't do any good for MMORPG's anymore.
PvPers are constantly complaining about balance, when in fact judging by my own experience and experiences of others, the perceived imbalance is actually a lack of player skill and/or the choosing of a class whose mechanics don't fit naturally with their playstyle.
If there isn't PvP, developers can worry less about class balance, which I personally could care less about anyways, and pay more attention to social features, PvE content, and RPing features. Not to mention, it'd get rid of all the bickering that revolves around PvP mainly.
My first MMORPG was DAoC and my second was SWG, so I PvPed a great deal back then and I loved it. People banded together to overcome the enemy. People weren't worried about kill counts, or similar things. They were worried about completing large objectives, such as driving the enemy off their land or reclaiming castles and relics. PvP like this, I like, but the PvP matches and e-sport PvP has brought in a new type of PvPer who doesn't really bring any good qualities to the community. They're selfish and more concerned with what rewards they get out of playing, and how their class stacks up against the rest, rather than cooperating with other players to achieve something greater.
I've enjoyed the warzones thus far, but I can do without PvP if it got rid of all the crys for nerfs and buffs, and that's coming from someone playing a Marauder, which people are complaining is underpowered and not good at PvP.
The qualities (or lack thereof) you're describing of what "PvP" has been relegated to in modern MMORPGs really has less to do with Player vs Player combat itself....and more to do with the lazy implementation of PvP systems in Casual MMORPGs (WOW, Warhammer, SWTOR).
The common denominator in these new casual mmo games is that they are GEAR CENTRIC. In WOW, your gear has more to do with your success in PvP than the player's skill. In Ultima Online, it was the exact opposite.
The reason PvP has been treated as an after thought in linear themepark games is because GEAR is the primary motivator to get people to do stuff (run quests, run dungeons). For example...if gear were expendable in a game like WOW, half the people playing wouldn't bother running dungeons add nausium, or grinding rep. And since you need to have a player skill based system, over gear based system, to have a good fair PvP game....PvP in games like WOW, Warhammer, and SWTOR is sort of crap, or treated as an after thought.
You also have to be careful how you motivate people to PvP. Take WOW for example....they have several pretty well thought out Battleground scenarios......yet the majority of the people queueing up for the Battlegrounds have ZERO interest in capturing the flag, burning enemy towers, taking over enemy camps, or any other team based objective. They are there to "participate" (which sometimes means AFKing or killing NPCs) so that they can collect POINTS for GEAR.
So the problem isn't so much with allowing players to engage in combat with eachother in games....but more so that meaningful & fair PvP is incompatible with games that make it about GEAR or other Tangible rewards. And since GEAR is synonomous with linear themepark games, most of these WOW clones suck at PvP.
Pretty much spot on post
I wouldn't put pre bioware WAR as quite as big a villian in this regard (post bioware 1.4 though hell yeah, worse that wow gear)
RIFT is this worst at this, but not mentioned.
I don't think its about "casual", I think it's about EQ style tiered gear progression, they have that with raiding, so they introduce separate grindy gear aquisition for PVP, that escalates with each new raid released, eventually making it a baby eating game locking out new players
I just want to reitterate that I AM a fan of PvP, not just the way it's implemented since WoW and the type of crowd PvP has brought in with the new market.
Star Wars NEEDS PvP in order to be believable, and Bioware is adding open world objective-based PvP on Illum in a future patch, so we'll see how that goes. I just hate how whiny PvPers are about class balance.
Once again, I don't think absolute balance is important. Life isn't balanced and fair, so why should a game be? Some classes make more sense to be better at certain things. It's not rock>paper>scissor, rather it's "learn to work together with other classes that cover your weaknesses and need your strengths!"
Basically, I went from DAoC-esque PvP to Modern Warfare PvP. In DAoC, people grouped together and knew how to work together as a group. They knew all the rules of grouping, because they've consistently been grouped since lvl 1. WoW has brought in a new generation of PvPers that approach PvP like it's an FPS. Everything must be fair on a 1v1 basis. They want quick engagements (ie. bg's and warzones), and they want to be rewarded for their efforts with gear. They also bring that FPS smack talk and rudeness in the game.
I don't know why anyone wants those people in MMORPG's.
I know, it's a wide sweeping generalization and there's always exceptions, but after playing MMO's for 10 years and after reading the SWTOR forums, I'm convinced that PvE doesn't do any good for MMORPG's anymore.
PvEers are constantly complaining about balance, when in fact judging by my own experience and experiences of others, the perceived imbalance is actually a lack of player skill and/or the choosing of a class whose mechanics don't fit naturally with their playstyle.
If there isn't PvE, developers can worry less about class balance, which I personally could care less about anyways, and pay more attention to social features, PvP content, and RPing features. Not to mention, it'd get rid of all the bickering that revolves around PvE mainly.
My first MMORPG was DAoC and my second was SWG, so I PvEed a great deal back then and I loved it. People banded together to overcome the enemy. People weren't worried about kill counts, or similar things. They were worried about completing large objectives, such as driving the enemy off their land or reclaiming castles and relics. PvE like this, I like, but the PvE matches and e-sport PvE has brought in a new type of PvEer who doesn't really bring any good qualities to the community. They're selfish and more concerned with what rewards they get out of playing, and how their class stacks up against the rest, rather than cooperating with other players to achieve something greater.
I've enjoyed the warzones thus far, but I can do without PvE if it got rid of all the crys for nerfs and buffs, and that's coming from someone playing a Marauder, which people are complaining is underpowered and not good at PvE.
Fixed
On a serious note nate1980, the problem with pvp you're angry with is over this instanced battlegrounds bullcrap that WoW-clones, like SWTOR, are pushing on players.
HOWEVER, games like DAOC who did pvp PROPERLY divided up how abilities react in PVP & PVE. Meaning, that abilitiy timers & effects had a MORE balanced effect on players than it did on monsters. I could almost perma-stun monsters in DAOC, but players had a REALLY long stun immunity once i stunned them once.
You need to REALLY emphasis what you're complaining about in the future. Games likw SWTOR & WoW shouldn't have PVP at ALL. Linear themepark games ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS "tack" pvp on to their game in order to get MORE money from a broader audience. The problem is, it's not REALLY pvp and is NEVER balanced.
I'm still waiting for DAOC2, Planetside 2, or ArchAge to save me from this blackhole in the MMO genre atm.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity: Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Comments
While I agree with most of what you said....I have to differ on the anti-social bit being something specific to PvP
Jerks are Jerks.....and I've been involved in several situations playing WOW where a nazi party or raid leader verbally abused people in voice chat or in game chat over a simple mistake in a boss fight, or because their "DPS" numbers didn't meet mustard.
There are elitiest jerks (pun intended) that play on the PvE side of things just as there are in PvP. PvP gets a bad wrap because you can more directly affect folks by dropping the hammer on other players directly.
And even with the anit-social a-holes that exist in PvP, there is atleast an opprotunity (in a free for all pvp environment) to make the jerk take a dirt nap. You can't do that in WOW.
I remember in Ultima Online that there was a whole PvP guild dedicated to doing nothing but hunting down and killing all the Player Killers in the game that prey'd on newbies and less organized players.
Again I say....casual linear gear based MMOs SUCK at PvP.
True dat. I've never really been into MMO PvP, but to each their own. Many PvP'ers are total griefing buttheads, but many others are just folks that like to compete with real people. So long as there are different server types, we can all be happy.
I do think that a great deal of resources in an MMO are used to balance PvP rather than create content, so I guess in that way it could be said that PvP'ers at least slow the growth of MMO's.
But then, so does giving developers vacation time.
A lot of people here made a lot of great points as to why PVP is important and why PVE is important.
I personally prefer PVE because i admit my skills in PVP no matter what my gear are horrible at best. Plus i dont care about being better then the next player. This is why i trully enjoyed and thoroughly love final fantasy 11.
I dont believe PVP ruins a game. Competition has always been a huge part of video games. Lets look back at Super marios Bros 3. Each player would get to do a level but you would try to beat your buddy to the mushroom house to get one of the items to get an advantage during the game. This was PVP. Going to the arcade playing the shooting games, you played coop but you would have a score counter which players would try to beat each other, thats a form of PVP.
Now with COD, MOH, BF, WoW, SWTOR, PS, PS2 soon coming. PVP is brought to a different level and yes i believe that players who put more time into their characters should be rewarded for it. Weither it be gear or talents passive or activated.
Few Points:
1) PvP does ruin MMORPG's because they try to balance the game around it which usually means PvE is dulled down horribly. An awesome class ability that is unfair in PvP = removed or nerfed.
2) More Time Spent does NOT equal more skill. I feel like most MMO PvP players enjoy PvP in MMO's because they can invest more time to make up for their lack of skill. Take a game with even playing fields, everyone gets the same... everything... from day one. A better play can play once a week and win vs a player who plays every day every night. That is not true in MMORPG's where someone can grind to be "better"
To sum it up, MMORPG PvP allows people to be bad, yet invest more time to compete with the better players. A "good" player has to not only be good, but also invest time in order to compete.
Honestly, you need to have all types of players to have a believeable immersive world. I think it was summed up best by wtfman:
Darkblight touched on a great topic in his previous post; the holy grail of an MMO is balance. Everyone knows an MMO needs 'balance' to be good, and the better the 'balance', the greater the MMO. Balance, unfortunately, is one of those terms that no one ever understands in the same way. Most of the time, whatever benefits the player's interests is considered to them to be balance. For a trammelite, balance is being able to go out into the wilderness to make money without dying every minute. For a crafter, balance is the ability to create an item and have a good economy to make a profit in. And lastly, for most of us here, balance is the opportunity to pwn the previous two people and run off with their stuff.
The balance that darkblight wants to talk about, I believe, is the balance of all these types of players, which is what made Ultima Online the epitome of MMOs to date, but instead of discussing that he does what most of us thieves, murderers, griefers do (and I'm sure I may even in this article about my point), and goes on to discuss the balance which benefits only us, the minority of players who cause grief, chaos, and anger. And this is the major problem of balance in today's MMOs.
Now, I must state I've been a thief in any RPG I've played. I absolutely enjoy stealing, backstabbing, deceiving, and generally being a nuisance to everybody. If I can profit off another person's effort with minimal risk, great. But I'm also aware of the my role's position in the grand scheme of things. In order for me to enjoy this there needs to be another person for me to profit from, and in order for me to profit off of them, he needs to be able to make money with relative freedom, and this relative freedom only comes if there are a very limited amount of people like me, and you, who want to screw him over in the lich lord room after he's been there for 2 hours straight. That other player, the trammelites or anyone who loves to roleplay and decorate their virtual homes with sparkles and glitter, are needed in droves in order to run any MMO, and they need to feel as though the entire world isn't out to completely screw them over. They are the sheep to us wolves, and just like in nature, the balance lies in having less, much less predators than there are prey.
When you cater to only one of these types, the trammelite, thief, crafter, et cetera, the MMO will eventually only consist of that type. That's what makes most MMOs to date stale and boring and stale. No one wants to steal from another thief today who's just going to steal it back from them tomorrow. On the other hand, if you put everyone in a bubble, safe from all the evils of the world, even they will find themselves bored from a constant treadmill of levels and achievements. It's important to give everyone enough protection so they don't feel scammed of all their hard work all the time, but it's also important to provide some chaos, some destructive elements, in order to keep the world changing and to stay interesting. The key to balance then is to maintain the proper proportions of these elements.
Balance doesn't lie in PvP or PvE or crafting, it lies in the mixture of all these combined. MMOs are fantasy worlds where people interact with each other, thus it's more of a social balance that needs to take place in order to truly have an outstanding MMO. Given, individual aspects such as PvP, PvE, and crafting need to be balanced themselves, but the bigger picture is a diverse and dynamic world in which politics, drama, and power struggles take place. Ultima Online was laced with bugs, imbalanced mechanics, and always was down when you wanted to play it, but it was absolutely incomparable to anything else when it came to interaction and conflict with another human. It was a melting pot of roleplayers, murderers, griefers, crafters, you name it, even though it had all its flaws and imperfections. No one cared to max their character before heading out into the dungeons because there was an enormous mix of people to run in to, whether it be a newbie who wanted to just kill some mongbats with you, or a PK who was trying to In Por Ylem you to death. Even the huge changes that made a character go from a powerhouse to a gimp overnight didn't really stop us from starting to train a new skill from scratch the next day. Everyone was kept on the same playing field because we never really knew what tomorrow would bring.
I'd like to say Ultima Online had no 'end-game'; the way I played Ultima the first day, up until the very last, was to just get out of town and see what would happen. Every time I logged in I never had a goal other than to have fun. If I ran into some of my thief buddies, we'd go stealing; if I found myself needing money badly, I'd go kill monsters. There was always something to do, always somebody new to run in to, and it never was the same thing twice, and that only works when there is a diverse balance of every type of player imaginable. MMOs today always seems to have a focus on only one certain aspect of a world, whether it be PvP, PvE, or being a furry. The next MMO that realizes the balance between having free-for-all PvP, fully-lootable corpses, and a safe enough stable for my neon horses, I'm in.
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Gotta have that balance of all types of players.
Yeah because PvEers don't constantly bitch about doing 5% less dps than someone else during your weekly epeen contests.
Get off your high horse, you and the things you like arn't more important than anything else.
Meanwhile reality:
"Oh hey lets make a pve mmorpg"
"Hmm, yeah sounds good but lets slap some pvp on it so we can advertise pvp features and get that crowd too"
"BRILLIANT"
release
"HEY GUYS GUYS, listen! We got PVP FEATURES!"
first week
"wtf what kind of bulshit is this?"
suprise suprise
Pi*1337/100 = 42
IMO they ruin games by including PvP BADLY.
GW1 had both PvE and PvP and they were both stellar. That's because they actually thought about PvP and included it in their design from day one. If you do it like this, you'll have no problems.
On the other hand, if you're making a PvE game and then you decide to throw a bone to PvP-ers by including 3 half-assed maps and just flag everyone for PvP in open world... then you're asking for trouble.
Personally, I lean more towards PvP than PvE but I would LOVE to see a 100% PvE sandbox game, for example. There is nothing wrong with PvE-only game design... BUT THEN STICK TO IT FFS!!!!
Don't just add some PvP crud so you can appeal to 20% bigger target audience! It just ruins your game both for PvP-ers AND PvE-ers!
It actually never makes sense to me when faction based mmos didn't focus on PVP
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Pretty much spot on post
I wouldn't put pre bioware WAR as quite as big a villian in this regard (post bioware 1.4 though hell yeah, worse that wow gear)
RIFT is this worst at this, but not mentioned.
I don't think its about "casual", I think it's about EQ style tiered gear progression, they have that with raiding, so they introduce separate grindy gear aquisition for PVP, that escalates with each new raid released, eventually making it a baby eating game locking out new players
In short - RAIDERS RUIN MMOS
I agree. It is the pvp players who push balance to the point no class is fun to play.
PvP e-sport is here to stay, indeed.
I just want to reitterate that I AM a fan of PvP, not just the way it's implemented since WoW and the type of crowd PvP has brought in with the new market.
Star Wars NEEDS PvP in order to be believable, and Bioware is adding open world objective-based PvP on Illum in a future patch, so we'll see how that goes. I just hate how whiny PvPers are about class balance.
Once again, I don't think absolute balance is important. Life isn't balanced and fair, so why should a game be? Some classes make more sense to be better at certain things. It's not rock>paper>scissor, rather it's "learn to work together with other classes that cover your weaknesses and need your strengths!"
Basically, I went from DAoC-esque PvP to Modern Warfare PvP. In DAoC, people grouped together and knew how to work together as a group. They knew all the rules of grouping, because they've consistently been grouped since lvl 1. WoW has brought in a new generation of PvPers that approach PvP like it's an FPS. Everything must be fair on a 1v1 basis. They want quick engagements (ie. bg's and warzones), and they want to be rewarded for their efforts with gear. They also bring that FPS smack talk and rudeness in the game.
I don't know why anyone wants those people in MMORPG's.
Fixed
On a serious note nate1980, the problem with pvp you're angry with is over this instanced battlegrounds bullcrap that WoW-clones, like SWTOR, are pushing on players.
HOWEVER, games like DAOC who did pvp PROPERLY divided up how abilities react in PVP & PVE. Meaning, that abilitiy timers & effects had a MORE balanced effect on players than it did on monsters. I could almost perma-stun monsters in DAOC, but players had a REALLY long stun immunity once i stunned them once.
You need to REALLY emphasis what you're complaining about in the future. Games likw SWTOR & WoW shouldn't have PVP at ALL. Linear themepark games ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS "tack" pvp on to their game in order to get MORE money from a broader audience. The problem is, it's not REALLY pvp and is NEVER balanced.
I'm still waiting for DAOC2, Planetside 2, or ArchAge to save me from this blackhole in the MMO genre atm.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.