Topic
Time to Take PvP Seriously
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Edited by Ashin on 3/28/12 9:11 AM (PDT)
I lead an active guild, which finished Dragon Soul in the top 2% US in terms of raiding. Our guild is about 7 years old, and we have played multiple games together. Most of my members love to PvP.
During the course of Cataclysm, I witnessed something that I've never seen in my tenure as guild leader. I saw people unsubscribing from WoW because the PvP just burnt them out or caused them to rage quit. I also saw people essentially boycott WoW PvP. They still log in for raids on time. But they log out immediately afterwards. They turn to other games, like LoL or Guild Wars, for their PvP needs. It is my personal impression that Blizzard's WoW team does not take PvP seriously. There was very little discussion about PvP at Blizzcon 2011. As far as I can tell, there are no designers or employees with specific responsibility over PvP. And when I spoke to a few of the developers in person, asking why this or that, I was specifically told "I don't really know - I don't PvP." I take no pleasure in seeing WoW lose 1.7 million subscriptions. I especially dislike seeing my friends and guild members avoid the game, or feel like they are required to turn to other games to get their PvP enjoyment. I'm asking Greg to take PvP seriously. I'm also asking Blizzard, as an organization, to take it seriously. Assign staff with specific responsibility over this half of the game. Someone within your organization needs to be able to champion PvP concerns, and I sense there is no such voice at the moment. WoW unquestionably offers the best PvE experience on the market. But to the extent you have disregarded PvP, you have created opportunities for competitors. Don't let WoW become a niche product suited only for raiding. I'm asking that as someone who loves to raid. |
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Edited by Ashin on 3/28/12 9:15 AM (PDT)
Specific critique and suggestions:
1. The time-to-kill is far too short to offer an enjoyable PvP experience. It isn't even close to healthy right now. Part of this problem is due to your decision to scale DPS exponentially, while defensive stats and stamina (in particular) did not scale at the same rate. 2. The current goal of PvP is to chain together various CC so that you can kill an opponent while her teammate does nothing but stand in place. What this means is that, in order to succeed at PvP you need to disallow your opponent from playing the game. This design is self-defeating and you must rethink it entirely. 3. The diminishing returns system, in its current form, is dysfunctional. It is opaque, unintutiive, there are far too many categories, it is not displayed in the UI or described in any reference material, and even Blizzard employees cannot accurately describe it. It should be replaced with a more intuitive immunity-based system, which offers more strategic gameplay and scales better with large situations (like BG's). At a minimum, the categories must be substantially simplified, single characters should not span multiple categories, snare must be acknowledged as a CC (and made subject to DR), and the information must be clearly visible and explained within the default UI. 4. Interrupts cannot be trivial. There must be a cost associated with using them, and in particular a cost associated with mis-using them - ie, using them at the wrong time should sting or have a consequence. The design of the Rogue's Kick glyph is wise. This design should become universal to interrupts - that also provides scaling benefits in large fights (like BG's). 5. Melee uptime cannot be trivial. This is difficult to design correctly. Ideally, whether a melee has more or less uptime should be a function of the melee's skill vs. the ranged's skill. It should not be decided by default on the basis of class. Two categories of abilities are the top offenders of bad gameplay here: (1) permanent snare applied by auto-attack - this is terrible gameplay and should not exist, at all. (2) abilities which allow the attacker to be 100% immune while dealing 100% damage - this is terrible gameplay and should not exist. 6. Dispels cannot be trivial to perform. I know this at least is being address to some extent in Mists, but it bears mention. Blizzard made a good call in giving all healers the ability to dispel magic, but did not think through the PvP implications of this (much like with interrupts). A Dispel should be a powerful action, a choice, with compelling benefits when used well, and consequences when used poorly. 7. Cooldowns are out of control. They decide the outcome of a fight, and they must be recognized and responded to correctly in the space of 2 seconds. Yet the UI does a terrible job showing them to us. Examples of good cooldowns: paladin bubble, mage iceblock. They are easy for even a beginner to recognize, they are intuitive, they are signature abilities, they are cool and fun for the user, and they come at a cost to the user. Examples of bad cooldowns: shadowdance, recklessness. Novice players won't even know when they are being used, just that suddenly their opponent does ultra damage and globals them for no apparent reason. If you do not want to burden the UI with displaying enemy cooldown information, then those cooldowns need to have clearly identifiable visual effects. 8. It's time for dual tooltips. At least, features like Mists' proving grounds should be offered for PvP. But really, abilities should be allowed to have modified functionality in PvP - you would make your own lives much easier. You say that you don't want abilities to have separate function in PvP because it would be hard for beginners to learn. I assure you, tooltips are the least of your concern if you honestly want to make WoW PvP beginner accessible. You invest so much in making other areas of your game accessible to a wide audience. But when it comes to PvP, you put no effort into accessibility at all. Your balance decisions are driven by the cc-chains and bursts / cleaves that 2200+ arena teams are using, with almost no regard for how this translates to the majority. As a result, here is the average beginner's impression of WoW PvP: "I was killed in a few seconds while being unable to press any of my buttons, and I don't know why." |
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Edited by Screwtapius on 2/9/12 10:15 AM (PST)
I think in asking/addressing these, you have to say what kind of pvp you are talking about. The answer to these questions differs largely in the different pvp scenarios.
Are you talking about random BGs? Arenas? Duels? Or all of the above? Are you addressing more novice players, more experienced, or all of the above? Note that novice != casual, and experienced != hardcore. For example, melee uptime varies depending on where you are. Are you a lock dueling a rogue? He's gonna be on your !@# 80% of the time. Are you a warrior dueling a mage? You'/re never going to touch the mage. Are you a warrior in a 3s team fighting an opposing team without UAs to cover frost novas? your healer should be attempting to dispel your roots. |
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I have nothing to offer other than to say that the points raised by the OP are valid and warrant consideration. thanks, ashin.
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Edited by Hellgor on 2/9/12 10:32 AM (PST)
Um wow.... the OP and his second post are pretty spot on and cut to the core of a lot of issues. It's the same sort of stuff I've been trying to preach as well.
I'd like to quote one or two points as "being important" but everything he hit is spot on and phrased in the exact way I'd try to phrase it. It's also a pretty good summary of what seems to be running through the "Feedback on PvP" in the Battlegrounds forums. <<< This guy is pleased. I hope this thread takes on a life of its own. Rarely does a post make me say wow...but I have to give a hat's off to the OP. |
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Screw, I think my largest concern is with both novice and amateur PvP'ers, not the pro's.
For reference I consider myself amateur, and depending on the format I tend to fall in that 1600-1800 bucket, so maybe I'm on the low end of amateur. |
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The OP is right on target with this post. I don't have any suggestions on what could/should be done about it, but something definitely does. Especially the root/interrupt. I've pvp'd in bg's and arena this expansion on a priest(both disc and shadow) and a rogue, and its way too melee friendly. The big thing IMO is just to bump the interrupt cd to about 20-30secs, and have it be even longer if the melee happen to mistime the interrupt. Even if it does miss they still have other stuns/abilities to stop casting.
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A decent criticism, although I don't agree with all points equally.
^This. CC is way, way out of control, especially "loss of control" CC. But an even larger issue, which affects that and everything else, is the very wide disparity between resilience levels and PvP gear available in the game. Especially at the end of an expansion, after so many upgrades have been made available. People who have been around for a while will probably just tough it out for 30 or so BGs and eventually start seeing improvement after buying a few items of gear; but people new to PvP or to the game as a whole might often give up. Heck, my example this morning is pertinent: 3 BGs in a row, utter failures, and I inspected many of my teammates, most of whom were in either all-PvE gear or only had a few items of honor gear. But I've been around for a while and know that this evening, when I log in again, I might be on the winning side of such matches or be lucky enough to get BGs where the teams are evenly matched. |
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I think another problem is the sheer volume of spells and abilities that are now available. There have been 3 expansions now so far and with each one comes major changes, which includes classes getting several fun and new spells. They make PvE great and fun and gives people interesting situational things to do and "non boring" rotations and all that good stuff. Threat was changed so that tanks now need to do more damage to hold threat. All of which works great for PvE
The problem is that all of these abilities add up to countless CC's stuns and interrupts that the OP mentioned not to mention crazy burst and "tank" spec players that can still output a ton of dmg. Making PvP radically unbalanced. One of which is having defensive cooldowns to "counter" this damage output. As a shaman we are on the tail end of this particular weakness having literally NO defensive cooldowns. Yay, i can drop a totem that absorbs 16k dmg, literally a fraction of the damage of ONE spell/move that a dps can do. This thread cuts right to the core of what is wrong with PvP. /endorse |
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I kind of wish they'd segregate pvp and pve, with all their money I would imagine they have the resources and memory to let the game memorize different damage outputs and mechanics for pve and pvp, so that you can balance one side of the game without fubaring the other side.
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Excellent post.
As a player who enjoys raiding, and dislikes PvP in WoW, and loves PvP in general this is pretty spot on. Here are some factors I dislike about WoW PvP. Resilience. Healing is too powerful in PVP Players are innately too squishy. Gear scales too greatly removing skill from the equation. Some classes benefit from PVP gear more than others Some classes scale better than others with gear. Too much CC. PVP is frustrating because 99% of PvP boils down to players exploiting the LoS / positional requirements. Additionally some classes are impossible for other classes to fight, while the rock paper scissors mantra does not apply to other aspects of PVP. |
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While I agree with you, and your points. I still hold firm on 'Take your PVP out of my PVE.'. *Shrug*
I can only hope that MoP will help to resolve some of those issues, with little interference to PvE. |
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Edited by Ashin on 2/9/12 1:10 PM (PST)
I don't really know what this means, in the context of my post. Especially since one of my recommendations was for dual tooltips? But in general I don't think it is fair to say this. I never ask Blizzard to ruin 5-man dungeons, even though they aren't particularly important to me. I would never ask Blizzard to delete companion pets from the game, even though I don't collect them. So it is hard for me to relate to somone that says "I choose not to play half of this game, therefore kill it." It's also especially hard to take from someone posting as a DK. This class is given seemingly infinite utility without any regard whatsoever for PvP balance. So I can't imagine what grievance you had in mind. |
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I'm sorry, do you want me to post on my Paladin, Warrior, Shaman, Warlock, and Druid as well?
Except every Blood, Unholy and Frost nerf this entire expansion was to balance PVP and forced our DPS in PVE to suffer, along with some utility?
I didn't say kill it. The phrase 'Take your PVP out of my PVE' has never meant kill PVP. It simply means stop nerfing classes to 'balance' PVP, causing said class/spec to suffer in PVE. Whether people recognize it or not, PVP is an addition to WoW. Not it's focus. Nerfing something for one aspect, causing a cascade effect into another aspect is wrong. |
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Edited by Ashin on 2/9/12 2:09 PM (PST)
Go right ahead. And please explain specifically how your PvE experience on your Paladin, Shaman, Warlock and Druid has been damaged by Blizzard's relentless and single-minded emphasis on saving PvP.
Except that data happens instead: http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_DPS/25N/all/14/30/median/#3vs00 Your DPS is hardly "suffering", nor has it ever. DK's are borderline mandatory in heroic raiding, and have been for the entire expansion, due to their overabundance of utility.
I was under the impression that PvP was part of WoW since the very first day of its launch. Clearly it has not been the focus of the designers' efforts - one wonders whether it has been a consideration at all. The result, in my experience, has been that players who enjoy PvP are turning to competiting titles because they just cannot have an enjoyable experience here anymore. I have seen it in my own guild, as I said. |
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Things I would like to see addressed:
CCs are far too powerful. I can keep someone CCed forever if they aren't playing a class with 50 buttons they can push to break roots and sheeps and stuns and silences. Dispels are too powerful. They cost nothing, they do too much for their cost and they have no CDs. I remember the original intent of dispels this expansion was that they would cost a lot of mana and would have to be used sparingly and could not be spammed. That failed... very horribly I might add. Snares/Roots that don't require you to press anything or are spammable for virtually no cost. I'm looking at rogues, DKs and warriors on this one. Crippling poison and mind numbing are absolutely ludicrous. Chains of Ice is hilariously OP if you don't have someone around you to dispel you. Hamstring is an infinite snare... Frost mages are fairly horrible in this regard as well but I think melee are the worst offenders. Frost mages snares and roots take casting, have long CDs or have very short durations. Getting into PVP is extremely hard as well. I am managing fine with my lackluster pvp gear because I am playing a class that is fairly powerful even without resilience and I know how to play it. I tried to get into PVP on my hunter and found it impossible to do anything at all. There was nothing I could do as there was no way I could survive to do enough damage without 4k resilience or 4 healers pocket healing me.. I feel like when a melee is on me I cannot cast. Ever. Or I will be silenced and promptly destroyed. I agree with dual tooltips. If PVP and PVE were separated they would be easier to balance without screwing up either side. CDs do need much better animations. If a rogue uses shadow dance they should turn black and have a huge shadowy apparition behind them or something. Things like that would make dealing with opponent's CDs much easier as well as adding some flare to those powerful CDs. Burst is out of control for some classes. Mages, Warriors, Rogues and a few others can absolutely tear through peoples health bars. It is reminiscent of WOTLK where a shaman would global anyone they came across. Just my thoughts about PVP in Cataclysm |
There is a long-standing frustration from mainly-PvE players (ie., those that mostly PvE and some PvP) about how changes for PvP adversely affect PvE, but not the other way around. While that may not be entirely true, it is the general perception. What is true is that Blizzard seems unable to balance things to anyone's satisfaction in regards to PvP, but when they do go making changes, PvEers are always the ones having to make concessions and sucking it up on raids and heroics. Additionally, just as PvPers gripe about people showing up in PvE gear to a battle, so do PvE-players gripe about PvPers showing up for dungeons and raids in PvP gear (maybe not you specifically, but it does happen, and frequently). Then, there's this whole concept of world-PvP that some people are enamored of, but which just gets worse and worse, no matter how you cut it. The bulk of the world is built for PvE, but then whenever PvP happens, it generally gets in the way of PvE enjoyment. Not so for PvP. You don't have PvE occurring in the middle of a BG, where everything stops because a raid is occuring (except for AV, which is just badly designed for anything PvP OR PvP). Ultimately, it's PvPers doing the screaming about how things aren't right, but it's PvEers who get shafted. |
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Spot on, OP. Great job summarizing a number of the issues a lot of players find in PvP.
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Grass is always greener on the other side. PvP is frequently shafted by PvE as well. It goes both ways. |
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What if spells had two descriptions? It'd tell you what it did in PvE and PvP.
This way they could tweak the spell for just pvp and leave the pve side of it alone and vice versa. They'd have to simplify the tool tips of course so it wouldn't feel like reading an essay for each spell of course but it just might solve the whole "PvP nerfs hurt PvE" and what not. |
