I am PVX. I do dungeons, I farm, and I am in OPR probably 4-5 times per playing day and shuffle into arenas. Of course I fight open world where I find it. I’ve fought a handful of wars, but never really cared enough to commit myself to whatever schmoozing I’d need to do to get into them regularly (if I was even good enough).
Anyway, I think we all forget the magnitude of PvX players and act like it’s all pure PvE or pure PvP. The world, including this New World, is not so black and white. This post is about the pure PvPers. Ya know who you are.
As a preliminary matter, GC was often enough a good experience and I think it’s a bummer they got rid of it.
With that said, I feel like the “hardcore,” “pure” PVPers will never be satisfied. Now, there aren’t many of those people, but there are enough and they’re pretty vocal. I’ve played since launch; I’ve been on these forums enough to have seen the trends. In February/March all the talk was about arenas. “Arenas will save the game” went the mantra. Echoed by PVPers across these forums. Players will come back for arenas! Well, then May comes and by the first couple weeks of June arenas were old news. There are posts within the first week deciding it was “nonsense.” Putting aside the fact it is what AGS said it would be - a 3v3 PvP experience - apparently the matchmaking was such a problem that it was not worth doing…at all. It wasn’t worth goIng into a match against pre-made groups. Now, depending on the server (but including healthy ones) it can be hard to get into an arena match. Having played in dozens and dozens of arenas matches, never in a pre-made group, I don’t see what the big deal is that people have with playing in it.
But open world PvP is the answer! Those times where we Zerg back and forth, back and forth, against pre-made groups, companies bigger than one’s own. The name of the game is often who can bring more people to the fight and then trash talk like it was even all along. Let’s not forget, among the “great days” in GC there were days where you couldn’t leave the settlement if you were part of the non-monopolizing faction. That is to say not much PvP if what you’re looking for out of New World is an organic, somewhat even fight.
The PVPers need to decide what it is that they want without compelling others to do what they want. They get into these echo chambers of sorts where they hang out with other PvPers and form this belief that the whole game is made up of PvPers. It is not. Moreover, arenas were a wonderful idea, but now nobody wants to play them. Say it’s the matchmaking (or lack thereof) or the lack of rewards, but FFS you got what you wanted. Some people have the vision of the game that is much like what existed at alpha (which I totally understand), but like it or not, isolated PvE is not going anywhere. Nor are you going to conscript PvE players to be fodder. This is just a practical reality of how the game has developed.
Making the new territory PvP only would be pretty silly, even though it would be extremely well suited to how I personally play. Nothing is gained except a shallow ego boost by having PvE players having to fight seasoned PvP players for nodes the latter doesn’t have the time or inclination to sell or craft with. If you want to PvP, turn it on, walk around - someone will find you. I also cannot stomach people saying that it will “save the game” anymore. Putting aside the question of whether the game needs to be saved, or CAN be saved, the community already cried wolf and it is really hard to get past the arena issue. I get it, you HATED it, but that didn’t even coincide with a wonderful return of players just to try it out. The month where it seemed like we may have leveled or made a comeback was the Tempest update, so if history is any predictor of what will bring players back, it does not seem to be PvP content.
Of course, because a minority (and I stress minority), but very vocal, section of the PvP world equate PvP with winning the fight, this will face resistance as they’d much rather have an easy fight than an uneven fight, which, is to say, they don’t want PvP for the thrill of fighting others in a spontaneous and exciting challenge of skill - they just want the shallow feeling of winning and boasting to friends about the tank they just killed. But god forbid a musket player kill them then it’s because of broken PvP.
And I want to stress again that it’s really this small group of PvPers. They’re just quite vocal and set in their ways and I’m sure we all know someone, or maybe a few people, who are like that.
With that said, from my perspective as a non-pure PvP player (aka PvX player), of course there can be improvements. A new OPR map, instanced wars untethered to territory control, better fort combat (perhaps an “attack and defend” mode on a smaller scale than wars?), maybe some of the ideas from alpha where you can construct OPR-like bases with your company in designated open-world areas that generate modest revenue, maybe siphon from the territory settlement’s income (I like the idea of calling it a toll), desync improvements - always desync improvements - player bounties like alpha, replacing the declaration system. There are ideas out there.
Anyway, that’s my missive. Hope to see you all around.
nice try tho
pvp is inherently toxic and causes people to hate one another. That’s all.