Stop the watermark grind.
Remove BiS gear. Burn it, throw it in the river, give it to the lost so they don’t run in rags anymore, have a hoard of elephants trampled over it for all I care - but get rid of it.
Pvp is meant to be about skill, and this is a pvp game. Gear should not be a factor. This game wants to think outside the box, so do so by removing a feature that’s a pve feature.
In a game like ESO for example, same as in many other pve focussed titles, gear progression is about being able to master harder and harder pve content. You grind bit by bit the next gear so that the dungeon content you are on gets easier, until you are ready geared to attempt the next harder dungeon.
None of that applies to pvp, and an innovative pvp focussed game should not force a tedious pve grind on its players, just to feel competitive. It is totally counter productive, as the settlement mechanics require pvp, yet the pvp player community is kept tied up in gear grinds. Why?
- Make it so that no armour or weapons drop from normal mobs, just here and there a little gold and repair parts, or only white armour, if you wish to stick with armour and getting repair parts that way.
- Then make all other gear having to be crafted, and make all skins available to all gear, selecting skins randomly for gear crafted at end game.
- Introduce rare skins, so some gear can be sold more expensive due to cosmetic reasons but NOT because of it being better in stats. Could even make it so that certain mats to create certain skins, drop from elites or elite chests, and maybe that even having those mats in the recipe only increases chances for rare skins, not to guarantee it.
This should give reason for pve players to continue enjoy crafting, same obviously for pvx players.
- Elites are to drop more gold, so they can be a gold grind mechanism, and elite chests could drop vials of Azoth 1-5, a chance for rare trophy mats, chance to drop the rare skin mats, still some chance to drop gear of the same values like crafted gear, (edit: also high end ready to use gems, another rare chance) and maybe even some super ultra rare additional rewards (not gear related).
A lot of the issues and complaints we are seeing, have to do with the fact that players feel they need to grind watermarks to be competitive. A tedious pve grind just so you feel you are best prepared for pvp.
In pve games, pve is the end game content, usually in the form of tiering dungeons, but in a pvp game WE the players are the end game content. Our enemies are the content, and maybe some added fun mechanics, like open world sieges on forts or new added structures. This is a massive difference.
Right now this game just feels majorly confused as in making unimaginative pve grinds part of the pvp play, while same time not even having pve content for which such gear could matter.
Also introduce pvp ranks that can be displayed, so pvp players have something to reward them for their pvp activity, something they can show off and brings a sense of achievement. Maybe to look at Lotro’s rank system for it, which took a lot of dedication to reach higher displayable ranks.
To those who will say ‘but it would be unfair, I grinded my marks and gear already’ - think about the next level cap increase and having to pve grind again and again, every time this happens, while players who just want to pvp and who would aid the numbers to make pvp a proper thing, will just walk away, bored of pve grinding.
New World promised a fresh outlook, a new way, and gear progression is not new, but old dusty pve content. Try come up with something worthy of this game, not recycle content that in my view does not belong here.
Would still be different if it would still be full flag, then one could somehow see it as part of pvp, but like this I feel it just hinders, not encourages what this game needs to actually make sense with its settlement mechanics and so forth.
