[PVP in Legion] Be honest with yourself, WoW is a PVE game.

[ro9ue]

I really dig all of the new changes in Legion for PVP, because it's just allowing it to be FUN. I'm sure they will continue to balance it, I'm sure they will continue to iterate on it, but I think they finally realize WoW PVP is at it's strongest point when it's accepted for what it really is... a supplementary activity for a primarily PVE game.

Truth is, I believe Blizzard is starting to realize that the more they take their hands off the wheel for PVP, the more fun it is for players. Compare Ashran - totally overdesigned, they thought about every little intricate detail, to Wintergrasp or Tol Barad where there were few, simple objectives. Those were so much easier to hop into. You also have the most popular BGs with basic rules: WSG, AB, TP, BFG... capture the flag and "domination".

Then you complicate things further by letting people WAY outgear each other... so it's no longer fun for new players to just hop in. Or even just casual PVEr's that want an occasional taste in PVP. PVPers will always have the skill and experience as an advantage, they don't need a further advantage of +X dmg,hp, etc over everyone else. It just makes most PVP a slaughterhouse for the PVPers and everyone else is a lamb to be sacrificed for their own personal enjoyment.


Blizzard knows that Overwatch, HotS, etc ARE at their core PVP games and should focus on that. And I think that's why we're seeing a drastic shift in WoW PVP... which should just be a casual side piece of content to do for the majority of the playerbase, who are PVErs.

[rda]

Not sure what are those changes that allow PVP to be fun that you are talking about. Could you be more specific? Is it about gear mattering less than before? Because that's not true, it's the reverse. Is it about PVP being easier to enter? Because that's not true either. Etc.

- - - Updated - - -

OK, I will quickly quote another post of mine since I think you are indeed talking about gear supposedly mattering less. Here you go:

---

BTW, I will say that Blizzard are preying on people's ignorance with this "100 ilvls in Legion will only give you 10% stats, unlike today where you get the same amount from 10 ilvls". There are two things here:

1.

People hear the above phrase and think that due to this scaling in Legion, the difference in power between relatively ungeared and relatively geared will be smaller in Legion than in WoD / MoP / Cata. This is not the case.

Yes, Legion has this scaling factor that we don't have today. But it doesn't have ilvl altering mechanics which boost / cap all ilvls into a narrow range in BGs / arenas that we do have today. These ilvl altering mechanics produce about the same 10% difference that they are talking about in the phrase.

(Now, the difference is that in WoD / MoP / Cata, you can get to the top of the ilvl range by doing PVP and getting conquest - without any ratings - and you can't do the same in Legion, but let's even ignore that for this post.)

2.

People hear the above phrase and think that the difference in Legion is so small, it hardly matters. This is not the case.

As said, 10% is about the same difference as one we always had between honor gear and conquest gear. Does that difference matter? Hell, yes. Now, sure, yeah, perhaps the real typical difference between relatively ungeared and relatively geared will be smaller. Maybe not 10%, but 7%, looking at the ilvls. Does *that* difference matter? Absolutely, yes, that's a difference between a guy in full conquest and a guy in full honor plus two-three conquest pieces (and honor weapons for those who don't know much about how current PVP gearing works).

That's about it. The blue is deceptive.

[Taromillas]

>supplementary

I don't see raiders winning cash for slamming raid bosses faster than other guilds. Just PvP tournaments with cash payouts.

[Livevil]

No, it's not a pve game and the other aspects of the game arent supplementary. This idiotic mentality of overfocusing on raiding at the expense of the rest of the game was the primary reason wod sucked so much.

[Amaterasu65]

No, it's not a pve game and the other aspects of the game arent supplementary. This idiotic mentality of overfocusing on raiding at the expense of the rest of the game was the primary reason wod sucked so much.

Exactly. People see nothing outside of raiding because Blizzard failed to make all the other aspects in the game as appealing.

[ro9ue]

No, it's not a pve game and the other aspects of the game arent supplementary. This idiotic mentality of overfocusing on raiding at the expense of the rest of the game was the primary reason wod sucked so much.

I never said raiding, I said PVE. Ion recently said raiding, PVP, pet battles are all small niches within the WoW community, but nearly everyone participates in questing and dungeons.

[gcsmith]

I love it when people say "Gear matters less makes it less fun." right... cus all those years ever since TBC of asking for skill to matter more so funny.

[Crimewave]

Most PvP players left the game in late Cataclysm, so yes, WoW is PvE game now.
Sometimes I wonder what could've happened if they simply didn't messed with it after s7-s8. It was perfect time for PvP player and since than game is suffering from atrocious design decisions from developers.

[Nihilan]

PVP is becoming less about the player vs player and more about just being an alternate gearing path for people who dont like fighting scripts in a 20m setting.

[Florena]

Most PvP players left the game in late Cataclysm, so yes, WoW is PvE game now.
Sometimes I wonder what could've happened if they simply didn't messed with it after s7-s8. It was perfect time for PvP player and since than game is suffering from atrocious design decisions from developers.

It's always been a pve game at its core really. That's where the story and lore development is, where the primary focus of development resources go.

[Riistov]

Not sure where you're getting that. If you look at twitch, the top streamers are almost all PvPers, most of the professional players are pvpers, and blizz goes to great lengths to drum up hype for the arena championships at blizzcon.

The issue with WoD was that they focused almost exclusively on raiding, and the game suffered for it.

[Traveler Voltin]

Pvp came in a patch. It's technically been a side game.
Its always pve first, pvp second.

[Riistov]

It's always been a pve game at its core really. That's where the story and lore development is, where the primary focus of development resources go.

Not true. The story and lore at the very heart of the game are centered on a player driven conflict between factions, hence why we have the war in warcraft.

Less resources are needed for pvp, as most of the engaging content in player driven.

[Florena]

Not true. The story and lore at the very heart of the game are centered on a player driven conflict between factions, hence why we have the war in warcraft.

Less resources are needed for pvp, as most of the engaging content in player driven.

Yes, a core part of the game is horde vs alliance, but that isn't entirely pvp. The lore never unfolds via pvp. Battle grounds are static. Take Cata and MoP for example. Plenty of horde vs alliance content there, but it's in PVE format. Same in Legion. The worgen vs undead plot isn't being explored through pvp, but through quests and pve. At most bgs get a bit of lore flavor to set them up but that's it really. There's no story that unfolds, and the amount of development put into them is miniscule compared to pve content. Horde vs Alliance doesn't mean pvp, and pvp isn't always horde vs alliance.

There is no 'player driven conflict' in the story. People pvp but it's not part of the main story, they just get bits of lore thrown in as justification and then any 'story' is left hanging, and even pve horde vs alliance story dwarfs it.

[FayrenPickpocket]

Not sure where you're getting that. If you look at twitch, the top streamers are almost all PvPers, most of the professional players are pvpers, and blizz goes to great lengths to drum up hype for the arena championships at blizzcon.

The issue with WoD was that they focused almost exclusively on raiding, and the game suffered for it.

Because Twitch is the best metric to judge whether something is popular or not. The thing is, you watch PvP on Twitch and it's over in fifteen minutes max. People are less likely to watch the same raid for three to four hours. It's a speed factor that aids in PvP being watched in Twitch.

It's also the timelessness factor that attributes to PvP. PvP will always have something new and thrilling about it. It isn't the same fight, each one is different. With raiding, twitch will be busy within the first few weeks of a tier when people are watching the top teams rush through the bosses. Then it dies down because it does get repetitive.

[Gasper]

OP trying to trigger half of the people on MMO champion is all I see here.

[ComputerNerd]

Exactly. People see nothing outside of raiding because Blizzard failed to make all the other aspects in the game as appealing.

The players make it unappealing, not blizzard primarily.
Look at why LFR is so popular, because it is lacking that player dictated entry requirement and supports players who cannot commit readily to pre-determined schedules.
The community used to be far more flexible, more understanding of a real life getting in the way.

Look what happens in most random battlegrounds, players humping the scoreboard/damage meters and ignoring the objectives.

[Spiral Mage]

I used to have a guildmate who spent all day and night pouting and crying, and proclaiming: "WoW is all about PVP bro, it's where the devs are really focused," which is pure denial .. but in opposition, on ArenaJunkies years ago, someone made a comment something akin to: "You have to understand WoW is primarily a PVE game, they did include PVP and they do try to balance it but at the end of the day, PVP is the smaller attraction at the fair we call WoW."

That from a community of seasoned PVPers who devoted their time in the game to PVP.

[Deleted]

Pvp came in a patch. It's technically been a side game.
Its always pve first, pvp second.

I agree that PVE is always first, but PVP has been in the game since basically the very beginning of the first betas. Mages pyroblasting while being invisible to gank lower level characters has been there since the level cap was 30-40. One of the sweetest screenshots from the original beta was an Alliance character asking for help, then being mislead into a trap by an undead mage (who could still speak common) who one-shot him with pyroblast (could be other spell).

Saying that PVP "came in a patch" is wrong. You probably meant battlegrounds.