The future of PvP in SWL

I personally came to SWL in the hope that pvp would be implemented like most of the people i know who came from TSW & although it’s said we are a small % of the playerbase i’m not so sure that is true considering how few people actually play SWL, yes pve is good fun but it nowhere near comes close to how dynamic the pvp was in TSW , that is where the real thrill is & i think Drenneth is right there are a number of people who as yet don’t know how much they would grow to love pvp , the perpetual pvp zones like Fusang were alive & kicking 24/7 with players alot of the time , it’s addictive but then maybe only to those of a certain mind , i don’t know but Funcom imo are exluding an important game component that if done properly like Drenneth says could really be to the benefit of the game as a whole & retain a playerbase & encourage a new audiance perhaps to this wonderful side of the original game that has effectively been cut out.

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With that metric I’d consider Shambala as a Side Mission based on time invested. I don’t need PvP to be anything but PvP though. I got a handful of matches in yesterday. It’s still fun. :smiley_cat:

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Since it’s part of what I brought up I believe it’s only fair I talk about considering Shambala a side mission.
You are right, purely from the time investment it is on level of a sidemission but making more sidemissions has a far less value as the hardest dailies to achieve are main missions (or daily upgrades assuming you are already getting past the range where you upgrade with green trash and you really hate solo scenarios) and while Shambala games are pretty easy from an effort compared to open world action/sabotage/investigation missions the same could be said about story dungeons.
Even the newest level 50 char is capable of doing a story polaris dungeon solo in decent time.

So I think under these circumstances it’s not that wrong to give shambala something people would need (an existing demand) for something that could easily be made into a source of main mission (easy to turn into a supply source of the resource “main missions”)

It still wouldn’t bring you extra sp/ap/xp/shards (like the raid missions) but could create an inncentive for a larger part of the playerbase to sometimes pick up shambala even if they aren’t the core of the pvp playerbase.

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That’s a bad thing though. People shouldn’t feel forced to run content they don’t enjoy.

PvP is inherently competitive by its very nature but to claim that people will only do it if there’s some kind of reward structure in place is disingenuous at best. It also ignores the fact that what you’re asking for isn’t rewards (because they already exist) but better rewards than everything else - after all “come and play Shambala, it gives the same rewards at the same rate as other activities” isn’t really an incentive, is it?

I don’t think main/side mission is something that’s really gated by time investment though - you can just go to Kingsmouth at level 50 and smash through a load (and by the achievement system’s own admission, some main missions can be completed in very short amounts of time :smiley:), so I think making Shambala a main mission would be a good thing. It’s what some people would consider their main activity after all.

:+1: I’ve played a lot of PvP games over the years and they’re always much more fun when you’re playing with and against people who enjoy competition for competition’s sake, rather than treating it as a grind they need to endure. PvP should give roughly the same rewards as any other activity (including a main mission credit) but it certainly shouldn’t be awarding MoF or AP or anything else you can’t directly get from other activities.

I’d suggest not just making Shambala a main mission but also trying to come up with some way to complete other daily challenges in there - making players count as multiple monster kills for example or (though this is veering into “much harder than it sounds” territory) a side mission that gives a bonus reward based on your individual performance. I firmly believe PvE players shouldn’t be forced to do PvP to maximise their rewards but the inverse is also true.

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I havent had answer via Reddit about things what I have had concerns about.
I have no interest of SWL PvP for those reasons only. I can only see it unimaginary RNG spamfest with cookie-cutter decks.

PvP future is in TSW. Be there or forget about it.

Unfortunately, SWL is not suited for PvP. There is a cruel lack of finesse in this game, because of the new gameplay and combat system, completely distorted from its depth. Funcom could decide to reopen Fusang, Stonehenge or Eldorado, PvP will never have the same flavour as what we know on TSW.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun yesterday during the special PvP event organized by Phidias. Unless Funcom decides to reimplement the old nexus, PvP future is in TSW.

So to summarize.
PvP without incentive to PvP is a lame duck.
Regardless of zone.

I think that is what has been overlooked since the beginning: The Secret War.
Funcom did the job well during the TSW prerelease with their Facebook game. After that, they have abandoned this aspect of the story. People, however, liked to turn countries in red, blue or green.

The agent system could have been the opportunity to put the secret war front of stage, as this feature is just like what they have already done in 2012 but improved. They could even have developed a free application on mobile for advertising and targeting a wider audience. Instead, the agent system is only a way to get some lore and potions.

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What I personally think it needs is not better rewards then everything else but simply a reason to invest time into queuing for it. Currently it gives roughly the same rewards as a side mission and considering time invested (in a match) it is close ~3-4 minutes load in to load out (maybe closer to a main mission as discussed already). In fact if it were popping back to back its not a terrible source of shards and fodder bags, there are however 2 issues with this. The game quickly gets to a point where fodder bags are rather useless except for vendering for shards and shards though valuable in themselves are not really something people need excess of unless they are trying to complete there museum. The second issue is that Due to time Waiting in que it is much more profitable if I need shards to go fly through a Tokyo mission run or something of a similar nature the time vs reward ratio is not even close when comparing these two activities.

Now you might say well if we increase the rewards to Shambala and suddenly its popping back to back with no wait time in between matches then the rewards will become quickly Imbalanced. So to counter this I think that instead of a larger guaranteed reward on every match there should instead be something like a low chance of receiving something of value like an agent (as part of the new agent system) or something similar to the winning team. Perhaps a second bag which usually only drops another fodder piece but has a low chance of dropping something of more value.

I can’t disagree with you on these points. I know personally that even with the reintroduction of old PvP zones PvP in SWL will never be anything close to what it was in TSW. The new combat system is a large factor in this as well as the restructured EFB (Equal Footing Buff) that is currently in SWL.

As much as I loved PvP in the old TSW it still kills me to try to go back there. Mostly because there is no new blood in the game and partly because I hate the empty feeling whenever I have logged in. So PvP future for me will not be in TSW sadly and if I cant help it happen in SWL then it will be in another game.

I will however speak quickly on the EFB as I think it is greatly flawed in SWL and would be a step in the right direction to improving things if they decide to commit some time to PvP activities.

Currently the EFB (Tank/DPS/Heal) Appears to effect ONLY a players primary stats (Attack Rating/Heal Rating and Health). The secondary stats remain the same and I’m not in game atm so don’t quote me but its something like 40% crit chance and 150% crit power with a couple of the other stats sprinkled on top.

What this means is that with the current EFB there lack the opportunity for any build diversity (with what little build diversity that still exists) If I wish to proc effects of of Glance or Evade for example there is no way to do this passively, it can only be done through the use of a skill that forces and increase in evade or glance. The EFB in TSW though it had its flaws offered a lot more versatility in build creation so it would be something Id like to see changed at some point.

A suggestion is allowing players a secondary stat pool when entering a pvp zone that can be allocated (similar to anima allocation) but I understand that this would be a huge undertaking resource wise.

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You can look at this from the other side as well. If the entire game is built around a specific reward structure in the form of progression and widespread bonuses, such as glyphs, signets, special weapon effects and soon agents from what it looks, and those advantages play a role in PvP, then people will have to do the other types of content simply of the sake of staying somewhat competitive in PvP. If you have a rather low population, to begin with, and you force people to do stuff they don’t like (except PvP) because they feel they miss out on the rewards otherwise low participation in PvP is unavoidable.

Lets say I have 1-2 hours of time in the evening. Now I run some quests in Kingsmouth because I need Marks of Favor and Kingsmouth is the fastest way to go, even though I did those quests ad nauseam in the past. That’s 20 minutes of my time gone already. Then I start a scenario or two (pretty tedious content), do a dungeon (fun for the first couple of times when you learn the mechanics, not so much after 100+ runs), and my time is gone.

But if I don’t do the quest, I can’t upgrade my sprint or buy some glyphs/signets on the auction house. If I don’t do the scenarios I won’t be able to upgrade my glyphs. If I don’t do lairs I won’t get signets or I have to find another way to get MoF, and again PvP is most certainly not the way to go in this regard.

So maybe Funcom doesn’t need to give people more incentive for PvP, but rather needs to take a look why people might feel disincentivized to PvP…

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Yes, please give us Fu… sorry I meant Bluesang back.

I second that I got some of the best social experience in TSW all over while doing pvp there, while the game slowly getting less populated, I always got into Fusang just to hear the banter and “run to your mum loomies” by some special dragon player.

Even though ele / hammer were often and reliable picked as one of the weapons, I encountered a vast amount of different, and working builds.

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I literally said at the bottom of that post you’re quoting that I don’t believe PvP players should feel forced to do PvE either. As far as I understand the “Equal Footing” buff, the only things that actually matter gear wise are your signets and your exceptional item effects and yes, currently PvE is the only way to get those.

It would be nice if shambala gave a special chest that could be opened with dungeon keys and gave a random dungeon item or signet but I have no idea how practical that would be to implement.

when talkin about rewards for pvp, its important to understand that everyone weighs the reward of task to time spent on achieving it. it could be a mission, it could be only doing so many boss in a particular dungeon or even maybe they don’t like a particular scenario.

most people have limited time to play games so they need to make good use of that time, when shamby was the best place to get shards it was popping and as mentioned in TSW it was the pvp signet drop.

when they reduced the participation reward the interest died down cause time was spent so much better elsewhere even if you wanted to play shamby.

I think the participation reward is fine where it is, but I do think there should be an incentive for performing in shamby. It doesn’t have to be anything game changing, just an incentive to play and do more than run in and collect the minor award. even something similar to key bags from side quests in kaidan would be something.

maybe have the key bag drop a pvp token and that currency could be spent to engage in pvp raids where you could premake teams and fight for a greater reward. have it work like raids on the weekly timer, only get the big reward once.

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My 2 cents:

I would like to see proper PVP in SWL and i would re-install the client if it would be worth it.
Currently i have the client uninstalled and that´s because there is nothing what makes me wanna play SWL again. The 2 Reasons are the lack of new/fresh story-content and the lack of PVP. (i personally don´t need the agent-system. For me it´s a waste of development-resources)
(also Shambala isn´t good pvp in my opinion.)

I already posted on reddit about that topic a long while ago but … well … reddit sucks.

About PVP in general ( personal opinion! ):

PVP is what always brought me back to the old game itself (TSW) when there was no new story content and it made me stay because it was fun. Yes … there is/was a PVP community and those people are/were mostly nice human beeings. I also liked playing PVP for my personal Gear-progression because i am not a fan of normal Endgame-Content like dungeons, raids oder scenarios. I hate the gear-grind in SWL and it feels frustrating. In the old game (TSW) I earned my very first purples in Fusang and it didn´t felt like a grind it just was fun, because i was doing what i wanted to do and played the game how i wanted to play it.

What i would like to see in SWL:

-A comeback of the old PVP-Areas (Mostly Fusang)
-strictly seperate Balancing of PVP and PVE
-PVP/Equal Footing beeing independend from gear-prefixes, -suffixes etc. (=Only Skill matters!)
-A comeback of the PVP-Community and the old PVP-veterans i sometimes really miss to play with and talk to!

Addition: I won´t take part in TSW-PVP again as long as people with raid-gear have advantages over other players even if the skill-system was better than in SWL ( Yes, i also miss the skill-wheel!)

Greetings and respect to:

@Sawo
@withoutscratch
@Drenneth (Especially for bringing that topic up again!)
@Zeitgeist
@Sevenoir (Good to see you here mate!)

And whoever i forgot.

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I’m totally with you here. SWL’s Equal Footing makes it really hard for me to PVP the way I enjoyed it in TSW—outlive and outlast. I don’t like playing damage dealer in anything. SWL’s EFB reduces our Evade and Glace below the percentages a player has naked, fresh off the turnip truck.

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Good to hear from you. One of the best things about these posts is seeing all the old PvPrs come out of the wood-works when a topic related to PvP comes up. Its actually one of the things I enjoyed about PvP in TSW also. People would take breaks from time to time but then sometimes even a year later an old pvp’er would come back into the game and still kick your a**

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Yes it was rather disheartening. I put together some interesting tank and heal builds and couldn’t work out for a while why they were performing so bad. Until I realized I was just a glass cannon. Yes their is defensive cool downs but up against an AR user with heavy purges you may as well just be a glass cannon.

PvP? What’s that? :kappa:

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Actually… nobody knows. But mentioning about it makes peoples nervous in here… so we basically, you know :smiley:

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PvP used to be good in TSW and many people enjoyed it.
Bring it back, it’s important.

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You may also infer the future of PvP given that the agents system uses ‘P’ as it’s shortcut key, the key that was for PvP in TSW. Funcom kicked PvP out of the house and already gave it’s room away.