Suggestion for PVP Progression

[thasensei]

I wanted to throw out a few ideas on PVP progression and just see what the rest of the community thinks. Please keep in mind that I’m intending this post to be a starting point for a discussion, so feel free to contribute new ideas or bash those ideas that you think are terrible.

 

TLDR:

Tie Expertise to Valor instead of to equipment. Add persistent WZ-only buffs/bonuses that are purchasable with WZ/RWZ commendations. It vastly increases the options available for gear combinations and stat allocation without creating the need to grind PVE if you don’t want to. It provides a measurable reward for all that Valor that you’ve been collecting. It provides an advantage to those that work for it, but not so much of one that new-comers get discouraged.

 

The Problem

As I understand it, these are the main concerns of PVPers, both casual and hard core (in no particular order).

1. Constant shifting of gear progression invalidates countless hours of previous work. Either you’ve been PVPing at the top tier for a while and all of those hours don’t count towards the New-Shiny-Tier, or you worked hard for the old-top tier that is now being given away for free.

2. Disparity between different tiers of gear. Recruit gets rolled by BM, which in turn gets rolled by WH. I think the general consensus is that gear should grant an advantage, but it should be a bonus rather than an auto-win.

3. Set Bonuses. With BM gear having the set bonus tied to the shell, the PVEers could make use of those PVP set bonuses. This goes away with the removal of BM gear (and thus the removal of set bonuses tied to PVP shells). More options are always a good thing.

4. Aesthetics. People want to choose the shells. I don’t think this is an issue now, since the set bonuses transfer with the armoring in WH (at least I think that’s the case); but I’m including it here just in case I’m missing something.

 

The Solution

Here are a few suggestions that I think could help to address some of the problems.

1. Separate Expertise from gear, and instead tie it into Valor. As your Valor increases, your Expertise increases. This rewards the hard-core PVPers in a consistent fashion and gives them something to consistently work towards. If tuned correctly, it would create enough disparity to provide an advantage to the dedicated PVP players, but without creating the huge imbalance that discourages new PVP players.

 

This would make PVE gear viable in a PVP environment, but only if you also have the Valor/Expertise to go along with it. So those that play the game to its fullest (PVE and PVP) have the advantage of both higher main stats AND higher Expertise. If you only PVE, you won’t have Expertise and so won’t be great at PVP. If you only PVP, you’ll have a significant advantage over anyone except those that do both. PVPers, see the next suggestion before you blow write this idea off.

 

2. Commendations could be used to purchase buffs or bonuses of some sort, rather than gear. One example would be persistent buffs similar to the class buffs, but geared towards PVP. They would have to be significant and reusable. Another example would be some sort of WZ-only stat bonuses that help to offset the stat discrepancy between tionese and dreadguard gear for those that don’t want to PVE.

 

I'd appreciate any feedback, I'm curious to know how people feel about these ideas.

[Ashaari]

1. Research Warhammer online

 

2. Substitute valor for renown

 

3. Tie gear to valor level

 

Loosely speaking what you describe is a similar system to WAR. Those who had a level of 100 renown (valor) could take out 24 man warbands of lesser players solo. Whilst changes were made to limit this "God mode" it effectively finished the game off first.

 

Personally not anxious to repeat that experience.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Ashaari
correction

[thasensei]

Thanks for the response! I'm not familiar with Warhammer Online, so I can't speak to what was or was not possible, nor what killed or did not kill the game.

 

However, in this game Expertise has scaled Diminishing Returns that seem to work well as far as the balance of power. In my suggestion, that same scale would still be in place (and adjusted to compensate for the wider range of values). The difference is that Expertise would just be decoupled from the gear.