The PVP community would benefit greatly from more rewarding content that encourages them to participate in it. This can come in the shape of:
Adding a variety of different PVP battlegrounds (e.g. expand on OPR/War type content) – both small and large scale (e.g. 2v2 → 20v20)
Adding ratings and ladders into both small and large scale organized group play to expand the competitive landscape within 1.
Increasing character progression through rewards and other incentives within PVP content to encourage people to participate in them
The past few months have been focused on PVE content; an approach that has neglected all PVP aspects of the game and funneled PVP players into content that they don’t necessarily enjoy. As a side affect, there’s been no incentives to participate in the PVP aspects of the game.
The increased water mark/expertise, gypsym/umbral systems, and mutations aren’t bad content. They are just poorly executed because they were not integrated properly into the complete game. It feels like they were designed and thought about in isolation-- focusing on a single aspect of the game (pve) without consideration of the impact on others (pvp, crafting, trading, etc).
I believe all of these foundational systems are great additions, but they need to be polished and integrated deeper into the core of the game across all content. Additionally, I think expanding and focusing on “incentives and variety” for PVP would bring a lot of players back. At the core, that’s what this game is all about.
I know there’s a lot on your plate, and your roadmap and backlog is full… but, I just wanted to give you the perspective of an active PVPER whos spoken to a lot of PVPers over the many months of playing and watching the game mature.
I think more open-world battles would be healthiest for the game.
Some of the most fun pvp I’ve done was challenging enemy zergs during chest runs to contest the right to run/fight at those times. Now that all the PVP players are max GS, theres no reason for any of us to do that anymore.
I think adding some openworld PVP incentives would be neat.
’Territory Domination’ -
a random portion of the map highlights/pulses. It becomes a ‘PVP encouraged’ zone. You aren’t forced to flag but if you flag in that zone, you start earning passive faction tokens, gold, umbral shards ANYTHING. Idc what it is. It could even be a buff to participating companies like 24hrs of 20% increased influence gain if they hold the zone for 15mins.
Factions would fight for control over those zones for the duration of the effect (30min?). The locations can be random and sometimes even bizzare. For example… Malevolence tower for a ‘tower siege’ scenario. Or the open fields of WW to encourage musket/bows. Or the forests of Everfall for players to use the rocks/trees to their defense… or a river through Brightwood. Or the rooftops of Myrkguard.
Let the map geometry add to the experience. Thats the fun of open world PVP.
And let enemy tents be destroyable with a moderate amount of effort. Make players need to place them strategically.
PVE tents cannot be used if you’re flagged for PVP and you cannot use the tent of the enemy factions.
Aside from arenas, new opr maps, and other pvp modes, I think more reasons to do open world PVP that don’t necessarily require PVE elements (like world bosses) would be a good incentive.