tl;dr at the bottom
We’ve seen many iterations of pvp gear throughout the years. Up untill WOD it was the usual grind honor/conquest=get gear. Then legion came and they introduced a system based on tokens and totally rng on top of gear being scaled so any type of gear could be used in pvp really. It was good because even newbies in green could participate but the big problem is that there was no sense of progression for those that wanted it in pvp and on top of that you had no say in what your secondary stats were.
In BFA it got even more insane since now pvp gear is obtained randomly through drops from bgs/arenas, no vendors, it could have been a while before you got the piece you wanted. So pvp players just did pve because it was way easier to get gear from there. Especially if you wanted to be competitive there were trinkets and other items that you had to have from mythic + and such.
Then Shadowlands came back and they brought back pvp vendors. The pvp crowd was happy because now they had dedicated gear for their main activity and they didn’t have to grind pve anymore. You like pvp you do pvp, you like pve you do pve, seems simple enough.
Now we are in DF. The system is relatively the same to that we had in SL. But the more I play the more I see how bad it feels.
First of all Blizzard has clearly tried throughout the years to try to implement a system to make the pvp system better but failed and ultimately reverted back to what “just worked”. However the game currently feels very frustrating to play. Aside from the first week of a new season where you gear your character, and conquest cap is locked, grinding pvp is a massive chore. After I get bored with my main I want to try other classes (which i think it’s only natural) but the thought of having to grind all that gear to be competitive it’s just a big turn off. And I’m a “big” pvp player. I’m not a high rated player by any means but I do pvp a lot. So imagine if someone like me is turned off by playing more pvp how can a pve oriented player or someone who hasn’t reallly touched pvp feel towards this system?
I don’t want to wait 10 or 20 hours before I can actually play my class, I want to play it now. It’s pvp, not pve, i’m not trying to defeat a boss. I’m trying to play against other players and I should not ever be at a gear disadvantage.
We ara almost at the end of the season right now (probably 1 month away?) and I just wanna fool around with my alts but I just can’t. I leveled like 5 alts in the past few weeks but playing pvp is just out of the question. First you buy BOE gear. Jump into bgs and you can somewhat help your team but still get deleted by full conquest players. Then you manage to get full honor gear, you still get deleted by full conquest players. Now that you are full honor gear you can que for solo shuffle (yay you can grind conquest) but guess what? Big long ques if you’re a dps. And going 0/6 getting placed against more geared players than you are after 15 mintues of que it’s not fun. Sure I can que 2s but still the point remains.
My point is grinding PVP gear to give pvp players a feel for progression is an outdated concept. Let’s take a look at other games that succeeded in creating a healthier pvp enviroment for their entire playerbase. In Guild Wars 2 there is no PVP gear. You have your normal gear, even useless grey gear that you just purchased from the vendor and then you pick your stats. Your gear scales in pvp instances but what changes are the stats/“enchants” that you picked. I haven’t played Lost ark but someone could confirm that it’s relatively the same.
You might ask “where do players get their sense of progression in gw2?” From reward tracks. In GW2 pvp players have a page full of many different reward tracks they get to choose from and they can repeat them over and over. These reward tracks award anything from materials to cosmetics.
Tl;dr pvp is a very frustrating experience outside of the first week of a new season. I should not have to play the game countless hours being fodder to high ilvl players before I can actually play the game. It’s not fun and it has never been.
What I ask to the people at Blizzard to consider is this:
- No more pvp gear grind. Players have the option to visit pvp “vendors” that give them a special type of gear that they can equip and choose their own stats. This gear is free and it scales to a fixed pvp ilvl in pvp environments.
- If you still want to give players a sense of reward and progression rewards in pvp are based on reward tracks that you complete the more honor you obtain. Look at Plunderstorm and that type of reward track, it’s a good example of what it could potentially look like.