Is it about time they seperated the siamese twins pvp/pve ?

[Gourmandise]

It's way past time.

[PrairieChicken]

If they do separate the two aspects PvP will get even less acknowledgement than it already does, it's also actually a pretty big thing to ask for. You're essentially asking for every player controlled ability to be duplicated and given a different spell ID.

It'd cost at least a raid tier.

They already have the technology to separate numbers for the two.

[Kaleredar]

E-sports are becoming more and more popular.

With the already enormous playerbase world of warcraft has it could possibly attract many more players to it if they made wow pvp something spectacular.

It could become the world leading pvp mmo if they could consentrate on making that part perfect, not worrying about effects about dragonslaying.

WoW has always been about dragonslaying. PvP is an afterthought.


The problem with WoW being an Esport is that there's no visual to it. None. At all. You get a few classes that throw spells around and maybe you get a few AOE shots, but there are next to no skillshots, damage is largely shown in pure numbers (boring to watch) and melee classes basically have no visual style behind their abilities. Most healer spells look exactly like every heal spell. Players aren't killed by one big ability hitting them, they're killed by a bunch of chunks of damage whittling them down. None of which look remarkably different or visually distinct from any other chunk of damage they're receiving.

All the functionality relies in selecting targets. That isn't fun or visual. THAT is why WoW is not a massive esport.

From what I read many of those quitting are pvp'ers. Why continue to bleed customers when you can earn many times more by getting it right?

My sub ran out yesterday. I will follow the news to see if they start giving pvp'ers some love.

It will take guts to change it, but I really hope they have it in them to do something about the state of affairs.

I love wow, and will gladly throw my money at them if they dare to shake things up.

Far more players play WoW for the PvE aspect than the PvP aspect. In fact, some players revile even the notion of PvP. Remember how many people flipped their shit about having to do two battlegrounds for part of the legendary cape, i.e, the single most powerful item in the game, back in MoP? TWO god damn battlegrounds, and people were talking like it was the end of the world.

But my point still stands. It behooves Blizzard to tailor a majority of their time to PvE content.

[PrairieChicken]

The notion that it will take more work if they separate pve and pvp is plain wrong. They already have the tech to do different damage/healing in pvp and it makes balancing easier.

Only thing that is stopping it is Devs being stubborn.

[mickybrighteyes]

If they do separate the two aspects PvP will get even less acknowledgement than it already does, it's also actually a pretty big thing to ask for. You're essentially asking for every player controlled ability to be duplicated and given a different spell ID.

It'd cost at least a raid tier.

a lot of things apparently cost a raid tier... the game already got all those new models. That must be worth like 4 at least.

[Kagthul]

WoW has always been about dragonslaying. PvP is an afterthought.

As someone who was in the original beta extremely early (immediately after the Alpha ended) this is.. not true. PvP wasn't so much an afterthought as it was.. they simply had no idea, at the start, that it would be as popular as it was or that it would require separate balancing on the scale that it does. PvP was -always- an intended part of the game, from Day 1 of the beta, they just.. didn't know what to do with it.

So, not so much an "afterthought" as a "how the hell do we do this?!" thought. They always wanted it.. they just had no idea how to do it right. And back then.. there werent any examples of how to do it right. Nothing else existed.

The problem with WoW being an Esport is that there's no visual to it. None. At all. You get a few classes that throw spells around and maybe you get a few AOE shots, but there are next to no skillshots, damage is largely shown in pure numbers (boring to watch) and melee classes basically have no visual style behind their abilities. Most healer spells look exactly like every heal spell. Players aren't killed by one big ability hitting them, they're killed by a bunch of chunks of damage whittling them down. None of which look remarkably different or visually distinct from any other chunk of damage they're receiving.

All the functionality relies in selecting targets. That isn't fun or visual. THAT is why WoW is not a massive esport.

This is true, honestly. Its boring as shit to watch. A League match is fun to watch, even if you dont know the ins-and-outs of every champ and/or arent very good (My wife loses to beginner bots on occasion and barely understands some of the concepts - she still enjoys watching LCS matches) because theyre exciting and easy to grasp the basics of.

WoW PvP is really boring if you aren't the one actually in the hot seat doing the fighting. Really, really boring.

Far more players play WoW for the PvE aspect than the PvP aspect.

This is true only in that a large majority of characters are in it for the PvE aspect simply because something like half the characters/players dont even do content when it is current... they have no current dungeon or raid achievements, havent hit level 100, etc. So, yeah, technically, that means a LOT more people are "in it for the PvE" - but it isnt a part of the populace Blizzard is actively developing for anyway. Theyre doing content that Blizz already finished.

If you take into account people doing current content, its nearly an even split, with a slight advantage to people who do "end game PvP" vs "end game PvE". (The last time Blizz posted stats, before the Armory became totally borked and unreliable) Blizz posted that something like 53-55% of people did end game PvP (defined as BGs or better at the level cap) and 45-47% of people did end game PvE (level cap dungeons or better). The numbers shift when you move up to "semi serious end-game PvP" and "semi-serious PvE" - this being anyone who does Arena or rBGs and people doing at least some raiding (LFR or better)... only about 20% or less of people do rBGs or Arena (combined, and there wasnt a ton of overlap between the two crowds) and close to everyone who did any end-game PvE did at least a little raiding.

Still, a significant number of people participate in PvP at the level cap - nearly half the players or so - so its not a waste to dedicate resources there, especially when you dont need as big of a team to have a big impact. You dont have to design 20 dungeons, 4 raids, 10 new zones, quest lines, etc... PvP group really only needs to worry about balance, gear, and maybe creating a new BG and Arena or two every xpac.

In fact, some players revile even the notion of PvP.

I'd say there's just as many who absolutely revile end-game PvE past the Heroic dungeon stage. I'm one of them. Raiding makes me want to gouge my eyes out.

Remember how many people flipped their shit about having to do two battlegrounds for part of the legendary cape, i.e, the single most powerful item in the game, back in MoP? TWO god damn battlegrounds, and people were talking like it was the end of the world.

But my point still stands. It behooves Blizzard to tailor a majority of their time to PvE content.

And they can do just that - because they dont need 200+ devs working on PvP. PvE content takes more time and resources anyway, and its something that the majority of (zones, leveling, quests) matter to PvPers too, outside of the super hardcores who level through PvP because reasons.

But they can certainly build a team of PvP devs that isnt asstarded and incapable, which is what theyve got right now. And the stubborn insistence to NOT separate values for skill/abilities in PvP and PvE after so long is just dumb. Dedicated PvPers (myself included) have been telling them they needed separate numbers for the two since early in the original beta. Back then, the "well we dont want two sets of abilities" made at least a TINY bit of sense - since no ability worked differently. Fear lasted 30 seconds in PvP, etc.

But now? The "we dont want two sets of numbers and abilities confusing people" line is horseshit. Here's just a small taste of things that already work differently in PvP and PvE:

CC (all forms - through DR, duration reductions, etc)
Crit - half as effective in PvP
Multistrike - half as effective in PvP
Blanket DR (sometimes)
Blanked healing reduction (sometimes)
Some abilities hit for different numbers already (Chaos Bolt comes to mind, i KNOW there are others)
Some items work differently in PvP and PvE (and im not just talking the gear that jumps iLevel when you flag for PvP - that at least is easy enough to comprehend and is noted on the tooltip for a change) - but some trinkets have their procs reduced, some gear scales DOWN (Mythic lol - dont get me started on iLevel mudflation and how it is murdering the long term health of the game) and isn't noted, etc.

and ALMOST NONE of that is noted anywhere in game. Nadda.

Given just that short list (and i know there's more than that) the "we dont want two rulesets" excuse is absurd on its face. It's past time to buckle down and just separate the coefficients already (and UPDATE ALL TOOLTIPS TO REFLECT THIS SHIT for fucks sake) It will make PvP VASTLY more balanced almost overnight, allow classes to be tuned in both environments without affecting the other.

Mind, im not suggesting in most cases that abilities be changed to WORK differently - just tune the numbers. It isn't perfect, but its vastly better than what we have now. And maybe some abilities just plain dont work in PvP, that's fine too, though more as a last resort than anything. (In SWTOR, execute-style abilities did not function on player targets, for instance, and it was noted in the tooltip)

Frostbolt should still be Frostbolt - but the tooltip should clearly show the damage against NPCs and the damage against players, and the snare duration against NPCs and the snare duration against PCs. It's not rocket surgery.

[rda]

a lot of things apparently cost a raid tier... the game already got all those new models. That must be worth like 4 at least.

Judging by how little there is in 6.0+6.1, character models did cost something like 4 raid tiers, yes.

[dak1]

I think it would take less work and result in a better game if they made PvP and PvE identical, but balanced around PvP first.

PvP has far more variables that need to be balanced (mobility, burst, defensives, off healing, cleave x2/x5/x10/x40, sustained damage, sustained healing, mana, purging, dispelling, etc). PvE really only needs some small adjustments after that to make sure sustained healing/dps over 6 minutes are balanced — really, balancing just sustained damage should be trivial after getting everything else right.

PvE encounters can be tuned to whatever the DPS/HPS numbers are, and any mechanics can be designed around what the classes and specs can and can't do.

And before people who PvE freak out about PvP wagging the PvE dog, I used to raid hardcore and I strongly feel MORE depth would be added to PvE if you focused on balancing the much greater depth required by PvP.

And when I say exactly the same, I would go completely to the extreme. For example, CC lasting only 8 seconds on mobs. This might seem like a horrible nerf to PvE, but, really, what's the fun/depth that "Sheep/Trap/Sap X/Y/Z once and then forget about them" adds? You'd create much more room in PvE to highlight skill if people were putting together CC chains and handling that as opposed to just learning a DPS rotation and dodging a specific mechanic.

Same for crit, multistrike, and every ability in the game.

I also think this is a better goal, would feel better as a player (no difference), and is easier than duplicating everything.

[solarfallz]

No, because I would rather play one well-designed cohesive game than two different halves stuck together. Abilities should do the same thing no matter who you use them on; players should be treated just like monsters and vice versa.

WoW has experienced so much power creep (and I'm not talking about the number scaling at all, but rather the ability design) which has affected both PVE and PVP. The difference is that it gets complained about in PVP, but not in PVE. PVE content has been, for the most part, trivialized by class power creep, the only form of PVE that remains at all dangerous is higher-difficulty raids, which have had to drastically change their design fundamentals, and be tightly tuned based on character ilvl in order to remain challenging. Nothing in the game world is a threat any more, but it has nothing to do with the numbers like mobs' HP or how hard they hit, it has everything to do with the insane amount of utility that classes have been given, and the ease with which players can now deal damage and control mobs. But at the end of the day, monsters don't complain about your overpowered moves like players do. The truth is, though, that most abilities that are overpowered or frustrating to deal with in PVP are also too good in PVE.

Remember how Chimera Shot had to be PVP-only nerfed after 6.1? Well, it still 1-shots two equal-level mobs out in the world. One of the MANY moves that makes questing and solo content boring and easy. It's an instant cast, low-cooldown, 40+ yard ability that pierces armor and hits 2 targets, and on top of that, it's also one of the hardest hitting moves in the entire game. Just think about that. People don't see themselves as overpowered when there's no player on the other end of their moves, though. This whole concept applies to more than just damage moves. Classes have all been given survivability and healing cooldowns (or passives in many cases) as well. It's come to the point where peoples' only idea of "class balance" is being just as overpowered as the class next to you.

I believe the original development team had a very different design philosophy in mind when they made the game than the current developers do. Instant casts were originally recognized to be extremely powerful, and rightfully so, because THEY ARE. There were very few instant cast direct heals (only talents: holy shock, nature's swiftness, and holy nova) and instant direct damage was also rare, the only true unavoidable instant casts in the entire game being Moonfire, Fire Blast, Shadowburn, and Shocks (the others all relied on a dispellable buff/debuff or in the case of hunters being deadzone-able, and in the case of all melee abilities, being out-range-able). You could make a GIANT list of unstoppable damage, heals, and CC now. Most classes have more than the entire game originally had, and the game has suffered for it, both PVE and PVP.

By no means am I trying to say the game should just revert to classic WoW. I'm not saying they should just remove the recent changes and additions, I just think they should have made an attempt to reconcile them with the original design of the game. I think they had the right idea with the "ability pruning", but they really executed it terribly. Instead of an ability "pruning", they should have had an ability "re-working", which left the abilities in but changed them to be less mindless and boring. They could have, for example, left Fel Flame in, and simply made it a non-instant cast similar to searing pain, or how about keeping it instant cast and allowing it to extend dot durations without itself dealing direct damage. Just some thoughts. I think all abilities could have their place in the game, but making them harder to use or less powerful would go a long way to making the game more fun in both PVE and PVP.

Design and balance the classes properly, and you won't have to separate PVE from PVP, and the game will be better for it in every way. It will be a more immersive experience and the combat will be more rewarding and entertaining.

tl;dr: I want the opposite of OP, I want players and NPCs to follow the same rules, and I want them to balance the game as a whole, rather than making all classes equally overpowered and splitting the game in two.

edit: damn that came out pretty long! I wonder if anyone will actually read the whole thing.

[Jessicka]

No, because I would rather play one well-designed cohesive game than two different halves stuck together. Abilities should do the same thing no matter who you use them on; players should be treated just like monsters and vice versa.

Yet so many abilities already serve no purpose in PvE, but are integral to the function of a given class/spec in PvP. And vice versa. What could possibly be more different in terms of functionality?

[Deleted]

Yet so many abilities already serve no purpose in PvE, but are integral to the function of a given class/spec in PvP. And vice versa. What could possibly be more different in terms of functionality?

NUMBERS maybe?! They balance stuff around PVE and then tweak numbers for PVP. I myself only PVP and couldn't care less about new raid tiers which i know make 70% of the game

[solarfallz]

Yet so many abilities already serve no purpose in PvE, but are integral to the function of a given class/spec in PvP.

Like what?

[rda]

Like what?

Crippling Poison. You almost never use it outside of PVP. "No purpose" would perhaps be technically wrong in that everything has a use if you are, say, soloing old content, but "very little purpose, could have been removed if it wasn't for PVP" would be right.

[solarfallz]

Crippling Poison. You almost never use it outside of PVP. "No purpose" would perhaps be technically wrong in that everything has a use if you are, say, soloing old content, but "very little purpose, could have been removed if it wasn't for PVP" would be right.

Snares in general are situational for melee in PVE, yes, but they're still useful for things like splitting linked pulls, avoiding runners agroing other groups, or simply running away. Admittedly, they were a lot more useful when you couldn't easily facetank infinite mobs...

[Redecle]

I myself have gone through all of the aspects of WoW started as RPer, turned into serious PVE and now in MoP and WoD have been enjoying PVP, while still maintaining the other aspects to some extinct.
I'm on the complete other spectrum in hopes what the future would be. far less e-sports, more open world, less instancing and reload screens.
This is something that WoW competitors imo have failed already, ESO/GW2 both had one major pvp zone and in the pve zones pvp was prohibited entirely.
Although they didn't separate specs or talents, they just further separated the pvp zones.

In optimal situation the current BGs would be implemented in to the seamless open world as objectives with no player limits, zones you can go into and play the current objective let it be cap the flag or control some mines. Arenas would be more in the style of tournaments like Gurubashi arena or arena equivalent of brawler's guild system instead of instanced zone. Only artificial restriction that this would have to have mandatory is the realm player count balance, transfers would need to be 1:1 ratio (one switches realm other switches to that realm same faction) and dismissed as a buyable option.

Class balance would be worked as it sort of is now, weaknesses and advantages against certain classes, no homogenized standardized balance. Balance that aims to far more team work, in the sense that you can counter class x but not y and you need class z cause they can counter y but not x.

Imo not every game needs to be competitive e-sports arena game, it can just be.. you know a game. Or even more a world, that doesn't put restrictions up with instance queues or that doesn't restrict your actions because of the gear you're wearing. Eliminate the gear and level differences and the balance would become naturally via player skill. Everyone on par what comes to hp and damage differences that come from classes eventually enforcing team work to survive. Level should be more of indicator of your game time experience much like age is for humans than a difference in the health pool and damage values. And "levelling rewards" that count for progression path that's an arc of multiple options in talents or skills, not necessarily better but more variants. And via "levels" you could gain small advantages in using certain skills, not in the range of 150 executes turning into 500k executes, but more much more subtle slight advantages.

[Redecle]

On not pvp server these areas would flag you to pvp if you enter the vicinity or the actual area which currently is the instanced bg area.
Clueing you in, basic example.
Warsong Gulch is not a pvp instance, there's no battlemaster or lfg, you mount up, walk up, crawl ( i don't know how people like to proceed gaining distances in the game) however you move forward and make your way to Ashenvale, the gulch is actually located Southern Ashenvale in the mountains, even though it's not in-game there currently but if you go there you'll find the battlemasters and a mountain, it's between the silverwing sentinels and warsong battlemasters if it was there actually and not a loadscreened instance. There's no loading screens to enter it. It's a cap the flag a vs h, alliance members against horde members who enter the gulch. There could be 3 guys there could be 50 guys fighting over for the falgs you dont' know until you're there. Heck there could be entire server of 5000 players competing over 2 flags if they so desire and all the other zones in the realm would have no players cause everyone wants that wsg flag (even though you could get free conquest points from Alterac Valley in Hillsbrad cause no ones there) , hence the point in the first post of forced server player faction balance.

Since flying is possible in Azeroth and would break the actual goal system, it could be a no fly zone as Wintergrasp is, air turrents shoot you down if you enter the airspace. Anyway matches start timed and last as long as the current BGs or last on until objectives completed. Winning side gains same rewards as they would from BGs, aka box and cq and honor points as to oppose that pure random location world pvp would still award only honor points. These would be just pvp hotspots and objectives, possibly with a buff that could be gained to the zone the pvp arena is located like winning team of wsg buffs Ashenvale with 150% extra xp for 15 minutes or something like that.

World pvp doesn't exist anymore, well it would cause there would be no instanced pvp, all the current BGs and arenas in the game would be in the actual game world.
Arenas could be restricted a bit much like the Brawler's guild is, random players cannot jump down there if there's a match in progress, you could spectate aka sit in balcony. Since it's "sophisticated" rated pvp, people could probably like throw rotten apples to on the participants etc or then npc guards that overpower anyone trying to intervene a ranked match in the arena. It could still be sort of world pvp, 6 guys fighting in the actual arena "cage" for ranked points and 2 factions like 200 people going on all out no limits war outside the cage raging on who they want to win the match. The overall arena places in numbers might be the only problem since if a server hosts 5000 players, having 3vs3 would cause queues to enter the cage, but it would just require more arena places, there's ring of blood areas that could be arenas, there's an actual fighting cage in Darkmoon Faire that could instead be used as an arena. Just plenty more arena type of areas in to the game, Azeroth has plenty of zones that could fit some fighting ring. Or the arenas could actually be hosted laddered tournaments. You'd wait your time and have your change to progress in the local arena ladder until an winner is found and then the tournament restarts.
Or some arenas could be Gurubashi and Highmaul arena style free-for-all brawls, like no restrictions no npc bouncers, just last man standing wins. This type of arenas could be like if you happen to ride by and see there's 50 guys fighting over +15 rating and 100 cq (possible price?) in last man standing brawl you turn your mount around and join the fight without queuing up and waiting for 24 guys to join some instanced thing.

Same thing for PVE. Raids would not be instanced, they would be a PVP PVE world bosses. There's one cave or foundry or whatever and who controls the entrance or the cave in pvp gets to kill the bosses or die trying to kill the bosses. Something few other MMOs already have like Mortal Online as one. It doesn't have much else going for it, but you can venture in the raid cave or world boss and encounter other players and have to fight them alongside the boss or trash or whatever lurks there. This is more of problem for PVE servers than the open world BGs. They could handle this, either the "raid" areas zones will flag you for pvp or the boss mobs are first tag first served based..

That's just a vision how i would like to see it. Not gonna happen in wow, but i know that if a game would combine Azeroth and it's inhabitants, storie, lore and WoWs overall quality of production (skip the few mistakes and balance issues) with such mechanics i wouldn't be here playing this.

[PrairieChicken]

No, because I would rather play one well-designed cohesive game than two different halves stuck together. Abilities should do the same thing no matter who you use them on; players should be treated just like monsters and vice versa.

Which is next to impossible to do though.

[Ooshraxa]

Yep, separate the two. Multiple changes impacting one side or the other could be avoided - hunter tranq shot nerf, pet cornered nerf, shred nerf (all needed in PvP), glyphed Holy Shock nerf bla bla bla.

[rda]

Which is next to impossible to do though.

It's simpler - we don't have a "well-designed cohesive game" now. We have two worlds - PVE and PVP - de-facto, it's just that the separation is unnecessarily clumsy and faulty.