MY THESIS (TLDR)
Adding PvP Arenas will likely see the largest influx of returning/new players, so arena design should accommodate these players first and foremost–as a better business decision. Which is why gear should be normalized (everyone has the same amount of attribute points to distribute).
MY CREDENTIALS
People seem to add this as if it matters… I have been playing form day one and never took more than a few days off. I kind of rejected the high watermark system from the get-go, thinking I would just buy my gear, which screwed me over and I have very slowly been raising my expertise. I work for a large ad agency and write copy for one of the largest advertisers in the world – so while not a business suit, I do know a thing or two about marketing. Most of our efforts in advertising are to increase household penetration (attract trial / conversion) OR win-back (attract light or lapsed users) OR increase consumption (in gaming this is often done through daily login rewards or daily cool-downs). Consumer Retention is sometimes a focus but it is rarely a goal and it doesn’t drive growth (definitely helps when launching a new product though lol).
WHY GEAR SHOULD NOT MATTER
Since this is likely the first patch since launch that has a real shot at bringing a significant number of players back (or even new players), it makes better business sense to remove all barriers/friction from that experience to better ATTRACT and then RETAIN those players… In other words, gear should not matter.
Like it or not, it doesn’t do AGS a whole lot of good to make YOU, current player, all that happy, if you are already relatively happy. With numbers seemingly stable, now is the time to win-back. The best way to win-back right now is to make gear not matter in arenas.
If gear is a strong determining factor for the outcome of matches (and even if gear is perceived to be a strong determining factor), new players are going to quit rather than waste time slowly gearing up just to have a chance. And while on a philosophical level I am sure many of you are thinking, “Good. It’s an MMO. You have to grind first. No welfare gear!” … this is bad business. If the game hadn’t hemorrhaged players since launch, you might have a strong case. But at this point in the game’s life, I think drawing new and returning players in and retaining those players is PRIORITY #1.
Especially since they are launching without leaderboards, now is the best time to launch with “normalized gear.” Once you add leaderboards, we can have the debate on whether gear should matter in ranked play or not … by then players who returned for arenas will have had time to catch up. By then there might be better design options / business decisions based on new data.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT?
The easiest way, to me, to implement this would be to have a separate character tab called “Arena Attributes” and the number of points available are independent of the gear you are wearing and the same for every player, regardless of gs OR level (yes a level 20 players will have the same amount of attributes in arena as a level 60). This will increase participants of arena and it will retained those participants. This has an added benefit of making respeccing far less painful for people who do different builds for arena than other parts of the game (likely anyone who does more than just arenas).
WHAT ABOUT PERKS?
There is no clean and easy way for new players to have access to any perk AND you can get lower level gear with good enough perks on the TP… so while I think gear score (and therefore available attributes) should not matter, weapon perks SHOULD be derived from the gear you are wearing. This means no clunky UI changes (e.g., choosing templates via drop-downs) and also it’s a small reward for players who have or will grind better gear but it’s not SO strong of an advantage that it will turn new/returning players away. If you’ve been playing and grinding from day one to make your BiS set, you get to keep those perks. If you are new or returning or swapping builds, you can find some decent two-perk items on the TP and jump into arena RIGHT NOW and still stand a fighting chance, slowly building up your BiS set too.
AND THE FUTURE?
Once leaderboards and ranked arenas are added, we can re-open this conversation. At that point, anyone who wanted to play arenas would have had plenty of time to catch up. As long as decent gear is rewarded for PvPing (so you aren’t forced to PvE just to have a chance in PvP), I don’t see why it would be a problem … though I personally would still think even attributes is the way to go regardless.
So there it is. My business case for making gear not matter at the launch of 3v3 PvP arenas. It worked for Lost Ark (countless forum posts and videos hyped the fact that arenas were even and that absolutely fueled its monumental launch and better-than-NW retention).
If you’ve stuck with this game from the get-go, like me, and just want to see it succeed, I think this is one strong way to get even more people excited to jump back into New World but also to stick around for a lot longer. We won’t need a catch-up mechanic because new and returning players can jump right into the action … and that’s a good thing.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?