Why does gear progression exist in PVP?

[Deleted]

Keep in mind, the new FPS like BF3/MW, where there are a lot of unlocks are played without or with limited unlocks in the competitive scene. Just noone takes WoW PVP serious... Face it.

[Ethes]

most online fps these days stil have "unlockable guns" that require x kils/gametime to open and while some are just sidegrades or switching to a same "dps" gun but with a lower rate of fire type effects -> guns will stil have "flavour of the month" attached to them as new custom maps and senarios are implemented and certain guns are situational but o wait you havn't unlocked gun y which is best at this map.

they all stil have some. even if it's a minor cosmetic upgrade or option.

And non of this is used/availeble in any competative sense. Personally I've played call of duty 4 close to top level and I can tell you that you play promod which means that you can only use certain weapons, no perks (per perk class there is something automatically setup for you) and that everybody has exactly the same access.

It's also the reason that other games from the call of duty series, like MW2 for instance, has no competative play (although not having dedicated servers doesn't help either).

Basically this has always been like this ever since the release of the call of duty series. Stuff that doesn't fit in a competative environment gets modded out and everybody gets the same chances.

The thing that comes closest to a "progressive FPS" is counterstrike where you gain money for killing enemies and winning rounds. This money you use to buy weapons and ammo at the start of each round. Also in competative play.

Oh! and nobody plays custom maps, atleast not in call of duty, in a competative sense. Cause honestly, if you only knew the amount of strategy there is to a FPS game you would understand that this basically doesn't work to throw a new map into the mix.

And the last thing is, almost every team plays 2x smg, 2x assult and 1x sniper. No flavor of the month, no "best weapon for this map" no nothing. You sir completely forgot we're discussing competative FPS gaming and arena's.

[Kivimetsan]

Yeah because the only thing that defines us is our actual skill rather than gear. I dont know why we have to farm gear... its rather stressful as well having to put up with a team full of retards when the only thing you want to do in the end is put up with 1, 2 or 4 other retards astounds me.

[PizzaSHARK]

I really like how the 'old' FPSes are Q3A, CS and CSS and the 'new' FPSes are CoD and BF.

Especially since they have huge spans of concurrent operation.

And that Halo has no mess of unlocks. Nor does TF2. Or GoW.

There's a name for this type of argument.

But it's not exactly a straw man. Probably false equivalency or something.

It's not based on when the games were published, but what type of gameplay they have. COD4 and the newer Battlefields (anything after 2142) may have been around in the twilight years of UT2k4 and Q3A, but they weren't the same kind of game. UT2k4 and Q3A are explicitly designed for competition and there is no unlocking, no XP grinding, or anything of that nature. There is no regenerating health or shields, and the only weapon which can register a headshot is a sniper rifle while scoped. Movement is extremely fast-paced and your ability to maintain rapid movement while also aiming at your opponent is a large part of being able to play well.

It's very different from "modern" shooters. For what it's worth, Counter-Strike can really be seen as a precursor to the "modern" shooter in that movement is pretty slow, one-shot kills are very common, and it plays in a fairly realistic manner. It doesn't have unlocks or XP or any of that other crap, however. You might look at Halo as a bridge between the old-school competitive shooters and the new-school "realistic" shooters. It's faster than the realistic shooters, but slower than the old-school shooters, and it does away with hardcore realism so we can have things like rocket launchers and perfectly accurate sniper rifles and the like. It's still closer to new-school than old-school, though.

[Yvaelle]

It's very different from "modern" shooters. For what it's worth, Counter-Strike can really be seen as a precursor to the "modern" shooter in that movement is pretty slow, one-shot kills are very common, and it plays in a fairly realistic manner. It doesn't have unlocks or XP or any of that other crap, however. You might look at Halo as a bridge between the old-school competitive shooters and the new-school "realistic" shooters. It's faster than the realistic shooters, but slower than the old-school shooters, and it does away with hardcore realism so we can have things like rocket launchers and perfectly accurate sniper rifles and the like. It's still closer to new-school than old-school, though.

I forgot the Unreal franchise ya (though I hadn't really competed in it since GOTYE), also I think one shot kills are more a mark of old FPS than the modern ones - the modern ones are all about spraying 3-10 bullets into someones chest to kill them - where as Q3A / UT / CS are heavily about accurate hits - most especcially with the Railgun / Sniper Rifle / AWP that I was known for. In Q3/UT you have rocket launchers and plasma rifles where you can use splash damage to kite targets around corners while still splashing them - but in CS a rocket launcher wouldn't make sense, so headshots became not just a unique thing of the railgun/sniper rifle - but the entirety of the game for all the guns.

In competitive CS/CSS though, no one runs around spraying chests like they do in the modern FPS though, so the competitive community gravitated toward the guns that could kill in a headshot - AWP/AK/Deagle/m4(double tap, but its accurate enough in burst to make it work). In that sense the game is more like Q3/UT railgun matches than anything in MW/BF, conversely the movement speed in CS isn't quite like any other FPS - but that's more a function of the game rules than the game style - the running speed feels faster than Halo or the base movement speed in MW/BF (but slightly slower than sprint in either) - but people walk because your footsteps get you killed in CS (and you only have the one life per round).

That said there are some definite parallels between CS as a precursor to modern FPS, but I'm more inclined to call it the last old FPS (as a franchise, because obviously UT's kept going, and Q4, and CSS etc all came out afterward, but they're updates not "new" FPS). The distinction to me I think is that Day of Defeat - with the endless waves of enemy teams rushing to take objectives and high ground, was the first modern FPS.

[anywherenotes]

WoW is not just an MMO. WoW is an MMORPG.
The RPG part kind of requires character progression ... at least through gear, if not levels or abilities.
You probably would be more comfortable with MMOFPS, I think there's at least one of those, it doesn't have same numbers in subscribers, and it may actually have gear progression - I think they sell gear in their store, but look into FPS's more if that's your thing.

[PizzaSHARK]

WoW is not just an MMO. WoW is an MMORPG.
The RPG part kind of requires character progression ... at least through gear, if not levels or abilities.
You probably would be more comfortable with MMOFPS, I think there's at least one of those, it doesn't have same numbers in subscribers, and it may actually have gear progression - I think they sell gear in their store, but look into FPS's more if that's your thing.

Prior to the Sandstorm patch, Global Agenda was a great MMOFPS (it's technically a third-person shooter, but whatever.) Unfortunately, with their Sandstorm patch (and a couple of smaller patches prior to it), Hi-Rez was trying to ape World of Warcraft and provide a lot of WoW-like content. It ended up completely killing off their competitive playerbase (read: pretty much everyone who gave two shits about the game) and turned it from an MMOFPS with good potential into just one more free-to-play abandonware title.

[holymolydonuts]

@Tentacleslol

1) Guild Wars 2 will probably blow, just warning you

2) It's more like facing off three SEAL's who communicate with three randomly chosen police officers who don't speak the same languages, and then the police officers justifying their losses because their armor was police blue and not SEAL black, and their standard issue 9mm didn't have hollow point rounds. Both of those things might be true, but when the seals are walking up behind you and taking headshots, it wasn't the rounds or the colour of their outfits that lost you the match. 99% of the people complaining aren't breaking 2200 because of their comp, their teamwork, and their class - but not their gear.

1. def agreed, i'm sorry guys. It'll just be a hype all over! >.>

[Pandapuncher]

The answer to all of the issues raised in this thread is..

Guild Wars 2.

Blizzard is too comfortable to do anything progressive enough to make WoW PvP anything better than somewhat fun and somewhat competitive.
While I don't agree with every little decision they've made, the GW2 designers are miles (and miles, and miles) closer to a great competitive PvP game than Blizzard is with WoW. Not because Blizz lacks the ability to do so, but because Blizzard simply doesn't want WoW to be that game. Their main focus is PvE (much to my chagrin).

---------- Post added 2012-02-20 at 12:16 AM ----------

p.s. - I am so with you OP in regards to it being silly to give the better players better rewards.

To exaggerate it a bit for illustration: It's like giving a Navy SEAL a fully automatic and full body armor, then giving a police officer a 9mm with only a chestguard, then facing them off. It just doesn't make sense, no matter how you look at it.

Guild wars 2 is also strictly PvP

[Gratlim]

As a ex-glad thing is wow is NOT a competitive pvp game. Precisely because of 3 factors:
- Racial skills balance
- Dominating classes (atm read Rshaman, Priest, Rogue, Mage)
- Gear (allows you to steamroll fresh pvpers / gear faster than them. It's basically a vicious circle)

[Wolfdragon]

As a ex-glad thing is wow is NOT a competitive pvp game. Precisely because of 3 factors:
- Racial skills balance
- Dominating classes (atm read Rshaman, Priest, Rogue, Mage,LOCK)
- Gear (allows you to steamroll fresh pvpers / gear faster than them. It's basically a vicious circle)

Y U NO MENTION WARLOCKS AS OP ?
I find it quite surprising that most of you seemingly don't remember TBC/WoTLK tournaments, the fact that WoW for 2 expansions has been on MLG and it still has it's spot however blizz still isn't confident enough to put it on the market. From my own little research and well a huge deal of logic, the main reason as to why, is because of select classes(and select speccs) have never had their spot in the limelight, which might be the reason why afflock and rshaman is dominating atm. WoW is promised on MLG in MoP, so you can cry yourself to sleep about it not being a competitive game atm, however deep down, you know there's just one type of combo that's unbalanced in WoW atm, and it's L/S/X. Rogues and mages people can deal with, I am openly guaranteeing that people can't deal with L/S comps due to lack of possibility, not skill(in a big ammount of cases atleast).

[Bonkbonk100]

E-Peen factor.

[Albafica]

Come on, the reason of getting better pvp gear is the feeling of power over others that come with it (smashing people in random BGs) and be able to be competitive in serious pvp (arenas, rated bgs). We all know that pvp is not perfectly balanced, but thats ok, it gives the game variety, plus it will never go away. If we all have the same gear there will be still balance problems between classes/comps, etc... Oh and pve gear in pvp content I think it is good. It is a choice, you can go with pve gear and hit harder, but you will also get hit harder. Not everybody can get it? Too bad, if you want it go and join to a raiding guild then, but it is your choice, it is not mandatory and you can do just fine without those things. Some things are op, I agree, but those things change every patch... Why play an online game with progression when you want everybody to be equal? That doesn't make sense and would kill that unique trait.

And doesn't matter what you do, equal gear, no pve-gear allowed, or whatever, people will always cry for something and blame something else, it is part of us

[Deleted]

I have to ask this Just out of curiosity.
When you say it's unfair for players at over 2200 to have better gear (Well weapons) available to them, does that not mean that it's unfair for raiders on HC content to get better gear available to them ?

[Deleted]

I have to ask this Just out of curiosity.
When you say it's unfair for players at over 2200 to have better gear (Well weapons) available to them, does that not mean that it's unfair for raiders on HC content to get better gear available to them ?

Are your chars stats tuned with 2.2k+ gear in mind? It's not the same argument. Gear progression for PvP gear is fine for allowing people at least the illusion of upgrading their chars, but it is a neverending arms race. To be honest I don't really mind it, in competitive PvP you can bet players all have equivalent gear on so it is skill-based(class imbalances excepted for this argument) where it counts. In randoms players will typically have on a wide range of gear with a lot of imbalance, but randoms are more of a knockabout area style of play intended for casual use. In fact gear is the least of imbalances in my opinion, people can earn that stat benefit from gear eventually but class imbalances can't be overcome so easily.

[Lefuu]

Something I have always wondered.

Because they don't care about pvp, it's there to force you to keep playing if you want to stay on pair with others.
What you mean you don't like that carrot being forced down your throat?

An MMO with competetive pvp and no gear farming, disadvantages and carrots? Guild Wars 2

See ya in game. Soon™

[rzy]

Depends. Are you talking about shitty modern FPSes, or proper old-school shooters like Quake, UT, and old-school Counter-Strike/TFC?

In old-school FPSes the only practical limit was your own skill level, and the skill levels of the people you played with. You didn't grind XP, you grinded knowing how to fucking play.

If only they made decent FPS games these days, can't wait for CS:GO though!