108594-huge-letdown-lost-potential-pvp-perspective

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I will preface this post by saying that my perspective is as a PvP focused player.  After sinking years into the first Everquest I for the most part had thrown in the towel on PvE due to the huge time commitment and the fact that I was no longer in high school and I valued my time more than spending huge periods of time raiding.  I played several PvP focused MMOs since I had much more fun with the challenge of real players rather than fighting AI.  I had pretty much sworn off MMOs after the fiasco which was GW2 PvP.  GW2 had a pretty solid combat system and the Devs hyped up its potential as an Esport.  While I had no aspirations of making money from playing the game, the way they had promoted PvP made me think that they were going to have a solid competitive PvP system in place.  Also, the fact that it required no leveling to play in structured PvP matches and everyone had the same gear (aside from cosmetics) and the focus was on player "skill" I played the game a lot and formed a formidable 5 man team.  The game launched with no ELO system or any skill based matchmaking.  So our 5 man team spent most of our time stomping pugs/lesser teams.  They eventually launched "Paid Tournaments" which was another letdown as all it lead to was longer queue times, slightly tougher competition but they had an unnecessary barrier to entry and there was still no rating system.  After many months of hoping the Devs would get their act together we saw the writing on the wall and gave up on the game.  As I mentioned in the beginning of the paragraph, I had pretty much thrown in the towel on MMOs.
 
Then my friend showed me some clips of Wildstar and I thought that this could be the game that finally got it right.  There were no "auto hit" abilities (at least for damage) so player "skill" would be a major factor in deciding the outcome of matches.  The game was also launching with an ELO system and the option for rated 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 arenas as well as rated objective based play.  Despite the need to grind levels to PvP at the "competitive" levels I felt it was worth it for the aspects I mentioned.  While I was slightly annoyed that gear would be a factor rather than keeping everyone on an even playing field, I felt that the game would still be high quality.  As I work at a pretty serious job and have a gf time sink, I managed to hit 50 in about a month or so.  By this point there were already players who had acquired the best gear and tanked their rating, whether it was to carry other people, reduce queue times, or just stomp undergeared players, it was a huge turn off.But that wasn't the only flaw that I found.  My RL friend took a bit longer to level up and I tried rated arenas with some friends I had made in game and faced these highly geared players at the initial rating.  When my friend finally hit 50 we jumped into rated and at this point we discovered what appears to be a major flaw in the ELO system, as the ELO system appears to be negative sum  as I detailed in the following post ( https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/106161-arena-elo-point-system-is-not-zero-sum/ ), in short, the ELO system is such that ELO points are removed from the system as more matches occur rather than the same amount of points existing at all times.  This meant that it was more difficult to attain higher ELO scores even if you were playing against equally geared opponents, let alone the fact that you often faced people who had much better gear and tanked their rating. 
 
The solutions appear simple.  Ensure that the ELO system is zero sum and don't allow players to use higher ELO requirement gear if they do not have the ELO to use it, either by making their higher ELO gear automatically adjust downward to whatever their current ELO would allow for (optimal) or forcing players to use the lower level set.  Or the GW2 approach could be used and all gear would be equal but higher ELO would allow for the "cool" looking gear.  At this point it seems like the PvP community is almost on its deathbed.  When my friend and I queued for ranked 2's we would often face the same team 5 times+ in a row and when I tried queueing for an unrated BG just to mess around today I waited 20minutes and did not get a pop.
 
While this game has had various bugs (as a SS I am currently constantly annoyed by the trigger fingers bug where my abilities appear available for use but are actually still on CD) the fundamentals of the game are great.  The Devs mentioned (I believe 1-2 weeks ago) that the entry level pvp set would be adjusted to the second level set but it has still not been implemented.  I understand that MMOs are complex games and you can not expect a bug free or completely balanced game at launch but you would hope that glaring design flaws would be fixed as quickly as possible.  Since I have not lost complete faith in Carbine and the sub fee isn't a significant amount of money to me I have maintained my subscription hoping that the Devs would eventually "right the ship".  However, with each passing week it feels less and less likely that it will occur.  I really prefer MMO style PvP in comparison to MOBAs which is why I decided to invest my limited gaming hours into this game.  I have not lost all faith but with each passing week the PvP community becomes smaller and smaller and it saddens me that a game that got so many aspects right would fall so quickly.
 
Devs, I beg of you, please resuscitate the PvP aspect of this game, many of the solutions are quite simple and can be solved by different approaches.
Please either put all PvP players on a level playing field (gear wise) or automatically downgrade high rated gear to the players' current rating level.  Please ensure that the ELO system is a zero sum system.  Implement some sort of leaderboard system to encourage players to strive for as high of a rating as possible.  Adjust PvP gear to be the best in PvP in a way that doesn't efffect PvE so PvE players don't complain about PvP items being better or easier to obtain than commensurate PvE gear.
 
I have not seen a game which got so many aspects of PvP right begin to bleed numbers so quickly. Please don't let this games PvP potential wither away.	
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I have not seen a game which got so many aspects of PvP right begin to bleed numbers so quickly. Please don't let this games PvP potential wither away.
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			To be fair, DAoC was the king before WAR was even a gleam in Mark Jacobs' eye.  And WAR had many other problems outside of PvP.  I don't have a dog in this fight really because I do mostly BGs and don't care that much about Arena, but I will say that the OP's criticism was well-thought out and presented, unlike some of the other ragequit threads I've seen recently.	
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I never heard of War.  If you are referring to Warhammer, I never played it but I heard there were lots of issues with it (I heard something about bright wizards or some shit like that being stupid OP).  I come from the oldschool PvP games like Ultima Online with full loot and Shadowbane where you could destroy people's cities and loot everything not equipped.  MMOs have become more carebear over time partially due to the itemization most games use (with items taking lots of time to acquire rather than being quickly replaceable).  I also played Darkfall but that game was a huge grindfest and wasn't for me, althought it had the hardcore aspects that I enjoyed.  At this point I am looking for competitive MMO PvP with rating systems with skill based attacks, no auto hits and this game delivered in that aspect.  It just has failed in it's game systems rather than in gameplay.
 
@MeWow: I played DAOC as well.  It was fun but was the first step into the non full loot cycle of MMOs.  As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, due to current MMO itemization styles and the general carebearification of the player base who don't want to lose any of their pixels, the best I can hope for at this point is competitive instanced based PvP rather than sandbox full loot MMOs.  I think that this game has a great foundation for such PvP but just needs a few tweaks to make it right.  I don't think it's some hurdle that can't be overcome with a bit of work from the Devs but they seem to be sitting on their hands when it comes to making PvP changes and it is exasperated by the negative sum ELO system and the lack of motivation for players to maintain their ELO after aquiring high end gear.	
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I never heard of War.  If you are referring to Warhammer, I never played it but I heard there were lots of issues with it (I heard something about bright wizards or some shit like that being stupid OP).  I come from the oldschool PvP games like Ultima Online with full loot and Shadowbane where you could destroy people's cities and loot everything not equipped.  MMOs have become more carebear over time partially due to the itemization most games use (with items taking lots of time to acquire rather than being quickly replaceable).  I also played Darkfall but that game was a huge grindfest and wasn't for me, althought it had the hardcore aspects that I enjoyed.  At this point I am looking for competitive MMO PvP with rating systems with skill based attacks, no auto hits and this game delivered in that aspect.  It just has failed in it's game systems rather than in gameplay.
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			Warhammer online world PvP was all about AoE damage ( as you can expect with 40 vs 40 fights, but even in smaller scale... ). Bright wizard ( and their almost Mirror sorceress) were the specialized AE classes... witch hunters, marauders and other single-target classes ( or melee classes) had basicly no hope of getting trough the constant spam of firestorm / various AoE  showering the door and ramp leading to fortresses.	
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			WAR definitely had the fun aspect down for PVP, just not so much the skill aspect imo.  	
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