Is pvp dead in BFA?

[haxartus]

A few points:

1. Scaling is dumb. This is a game where you improve your character. If you can't improve your character, there is no reason to play.

2. PvP toggle is dumb. The whole idea of World PvP is that it's always dangerous. Not that it's only dangerous when you decide it should be.

Both of these are going to do the following:

1. Effectively end competitive rated PvP. We've seen this in Legion - the rated PvP participation is lower than it has ever been. It's going to get lower.

2. Effectively end open world fighting. Nobody, and I mean nobody, will have PvP toggled on after the first few months of the expansion. If you toggle it, the world is going to be just empty.

This is a soft kill to the PvP part of the game as a whole. If you can't read between the lines, this is what they are saying:

"We don't want to deal with PvP anymore. We will create a reward system that can scale indefinitely without much intervention, so people can't complain that there are no rewards. We will scale everyone evenly so people can't complain that PvP is unbalanced due to gear. We will also make PvP entirely optional for everyone, so if they don't like something, they again can't complain. This will create a system that can maintain itself over several expansions with basically no intervention from us whatsoever, so we don't have to deal with PvP anymore."

This is part of the bigger picture, which is that the whole game has this problem - randomization, repetition with little to no changes, etc. All of this is done to reduce development time while creating the illusion of content. They want to pull out resources from this game to their other games, but they don't want the playerbase to know that.

[Deleted]

The bounty system seem a lot of fun and I am looking forward to it.

For the rest it's possibly just as terrible as it always was. It's simply not Blizzards cup of tea.

[Arrashi]

Im almost 90% sure that pvp will be even more dead that it is now. Especially since war mode looks like its gonna be massive failure.

[Conditions]

PvP has been dead in WoW for at least a decade.

If you can still get a ranked queue at almost any time of day, and a random battleground queue pop at any time of day then PvP is not dead, can people stop being huge dramatics. World PvP on the other hand is at present, definitely buried though.

Then we have a game like FFXIV, which has a few hundred thousand subs (probably, who knows, SE don't share - they'll only tell us how many people have ever played). Cutoff for top 100 rewards on EU last season wasn't even Diamond, and most of the 100 in it are pretty much the only people who actually queued regularly all season, and that included alts. 20 minute queues as Ranged DPS, some days you don't even get a queue at all. Queueing before 5PM ST or after 11PM? Forget it. Battlegrounds? Lucky to get a game after 11pm on those too. And even that is considered "alive" because PvP was never popular on that game on the first place.

[BlueRemedy]

If you can still get a ranked queue at almost any time of day, and a random battleground queue pop at any time of day then PvP is not dead, can people stop being huge dramatics. World PvP on the other hand is at present, definitely buried though.

Then we have a game like FFXIV, which has a few hundred thousand subs (probably, who knows, SE don't share - they'll only tell us how many people have ever played). Cutoff for top 100 rewards on EU last season wasn't even Diamond, and most of the 100 in it are pretty much the only people who actually queued regularly all season, and that included alts. 20 minute queues as Ranged DPS, some days you don't even get a queue at all. Queueing before 5PM ST or after 11PM? Forget it. Battlegrounds? Lucky to get a game after 11pm on those too. And even that is considered "alive" because PvP was never popular on that game on the first place.

FFXIV shouldn't even have PvP development. It's a waste of time, no one plays it, and it barely works.

I'd argue they shouldn't have a raid game either, considering its almost as bad but I dont think they have the talent to put out an alternative. I mean look at their dungeon system, look at the gear system, look at anything in that mess of a game that isn't the campaign or armor graphics.

Anyway, WoW PvP is fine and has seen more development in BfA than it ever has before. Hell, Legion PvP actually has absurdly good representation across classes for MMO PvP, so you can tell half of the crying is just from absolute fucking losers who can't break past the entry barrier

Its like all of the wood leagues in LoL, Overwatch, etc who grit their teeth and cry about how progressing is impossible because they're liquid shit at the game and don't want to admit it. "I-it's my team, i-i-it's class balance". No, you're fucking trash, live with it.

[Conditions]

FFXIV shouldn't even have PvP development. It's a waste of time, no one plays it, and it barely works.

I'd argue they shouldn't have a raid game either, considering its almost as bad but I dont think they have the talent to put out an alternative. I mean look at their dungeon system, look at the gear system, look at anything in that mess of a game that isn't the campaign or armor graphics.

Anyway, WoW PvP is fine and has seen more development in BfA than it ever has before. Hell, Legion PvP actually has absurdly good representation across classes for MMO PvP, so you can tell half of the crying is just from absolute fucking losers who can't break past the entry barrier

Its like all of the wood leagues in LoL, Overwatch, etc who grit their teeth and cry about how progressing is impossible because they're liquid shit at the game and don't want to admit it. "I-it's my team, i-i-it's class balance". No, you're fucking trash, live with it.

I mean balance will never be perfect in WoW, like it'll never be in LoL, OW, even DoTA etc. I'm just appreciative of the fact they at least try, but at the same time a lot of the balancing in PvP (especially in WoW/LoL) is based of how people play at a competitive level, hence why when DHs were god awful in LS1 everyone in random BGs and 2s thought they were gods when they were literally the worst melee you could have; so they don't get it.

[Tyrean]

I could make a fairly comprehensive argument that WoW pvp is actually very well balanced currently and that if you are decent at your character you can make a comp work to a high enough level. There will always be some road blocks to certain classes or comps, but that is because at the highest rating there are only a select few to play against and if your comp/class is weak to theirs you will mostly always lose.

The biggest problem to PvP right now is simply participation. Yeah, there are tons of people playing randoms but that is hardly the place to be able to judge balance or skill and it is definitely skewed currently because the expansion is over and that is something you can do with no one else online on your friends list/guild.

The biggest problem will always be participation. I like that they have gone back to a conquest system that guarantees you will get a full set of gear if all you do is put in the time, it will bring back certain players. I think that until there is way more cosmetic stuff and way more gear to be had to improve your character you will not see great participation numbers like in wrath or mop. I also think that the introduction of mythic+ dungeons has more or less taken the place of PvP as the way to progress a character without raiding and that probably has more impact than you guys think on the current participation problem.

[Kagthul]

I could make a fairly comprehensive argument that WoW pvp is actually very well balanced currently and that if you are decent at your character you can make a comp work to a high enough level. There will always be some road blocks to certain classes or comps, but that is because at the highest rating there are only a select few to play against and if your comp/class is weak to theirs you will mostly always lose.

The problem with this argument is that 3v3 is not the entirety of "WoW PvP". Its not even a remotely significant portion of WoW PvP. It never has been. So 3v3 may be in a great place, but since even in the best season ever the ladder represented less than 20% of people actively PvPing enough to get a full set of CQ gear every season... and in most seasons was more like 10%....

No, PvP in WoW is not very well balanced, because PvP does not begin and end in 3v3 DETHMATCHBAWKS.

The biggest problem to PvP right now is simply participation.

Agreed.

Yeah, there are tons of people playing randoms

Nope, there aren't. If people were playing tons of randoms, there would be a shitpile of people with mid-ranks of Prestige. Even from losing. The number of people with even prestige 8 (which is, quite honestly, pathetic, given that it doesn't even represent what would have been getting the 25CQ achievement in a single season) is abysmal - sub 4%. Compared to the number of people who used to get the 25CQ achievement every season at an average of 45%-48%.

Thats a 90% participation drop, for those following along at home. In freaking RANDOMS. The ladder is even more of a joke. Less than 120k people on the ladder. (Last math i saw was only ~45k people on the Alliance side of the ladder).

but that is hardly the place to be able to judge balance or skill and it is definitely skewed currently because the expansion is over and that is something you can do with no one else online on your friends list/guild.

Its the best place to judge balance. Skill be damned. You should never balance around the 5% of people who dont pay the bills. That gets the 95% of people who do to leave. Thats why rated/Arena was a mistake from day 1 and always will be.

The biggest problem will always be participation.

Participation literally wasn't a problem ever before. Even in WoD, HALF the end-game population of the entire game was getting a full set of Conquest Gear every season.

I like that they have gone back to a conquest system that guarantees you will get a full set of gear if all you do is put in the time, it will bring back certain players.

Only if you can do it without doing rated. Otherwise, it wont matter. The huge majority of those people who got full sets of Conquest every season prior never set one foot into a rated anything. They wont come back if you make them do rated.

I think that until there is way more cosmetic stuff and way more gear to be had to improve your character you will not see great participation numbers like in wrath or mop.

Gear that improves your character is the only thing that matters.

I also think that the introduction of mythic+ dungeons has more or less taken the place of PvP as the way to progress a character without raiding and that probably has more impact than you guys think on the current participation problem.

Agreed, and i realize you're being general here with the "you guys", but a few of us have been very clear that the ease of which (better) rewards are gained through PvE is what absolutely murdered the shit out of PvP participation in Legion. I can get better gear than if i were 1900 rated by simply walking around Argus collecting treasures and killing rares. As long as that remains remotely true, and/or PvP doesn't at least offer similar rewards (id still do PvP instead of wander around Argus as a simple preference of the type of content i like), then people will not come back.

[Tyrean]

You could never balance based on BGs. There is too much going on, people are not aware enough to realize that the reason they can't kill that warrior is because there is a rdruid hotting him up behind the bushes over there.... There are people that are playing solely to stay alive to defend a point until help arrives. There are massive outnumbered fights. It will never be something that can be balanced. I would wager that most of the people that complain about X OP class fight them in a BG and don't realize things like powerups, debuffs (kotmogu), potions, how X OP class works, what help they have from teammates, etc. I ran into a fury warrior last week that wrecked my face 1v1 and I was so surprised by it that I say in the GY reading my combat log. 70% of the damage he did was from an old war potion and a grenade. Most BG players will just think that fury warriors are OP!!!

When I said it was fairly balanced it is because if you were to put together a 10 man team in RBG you could do it with most any classes as long as the people are good. The current RBG meta is based on what is easiest, not necessarily the best. DH flag carrying is probably the only real problem in RBG. Even the healer meta can work with other classes. So yeah, I think it is fairly balanced and not because of 3v3 but because there is never an absolute best. You run into a team and you never think it is an easy win based on the classes.