Jump to content

PVP: Vertical Progression should go the way of the Dodo


ChazDoit

Recommended Posts

I see that Battlemaster gear is beign discontinued, something that I feared will eventually happen after they discontinued Centurion and Champion, and now a new PVP set is beign introduced, this is what people call vertical progression, the idea that once you get to the endgame you progress throgh the game by adquiring gear that is numerically more powerful.

 

I think this is a bad direction for SWTOR to take with regards to PVP for several reason. First, It's grindy at it turns people away, designers might think that a bigger carrot on a stick it's gonna keep people playing but that's not actually the case, almost every PVPer I knew moved on to another game, mostly because they are done chasing carrots, people should PVP in your game because it's fun, because they want to earn prestige among other players and for their skills and achievements to be recognized, not to chase carrots, that is antiquated design if you ask me.

 

Also, Vertical Progression completely devaluates all your former achievements. Hey remember how hard you worked to get your Champion or Battlemaster set? What an achievement! well guess what? those sets are now obsolete so all that work you put into the game is now pointless, this turns people off instead of keeping them hooked.

 

Many new games have been moving to Horizontal Progression, which means that as you progress in the endgame instead of getting more upgrades to your gear, you get sidegrades, you get different options. I've been playing Planetside 2, they do this pretty well, Guild Wars 2 does this to an extent and also League of Legends, for anyone that has played LoL, Riotgames doesn't keep their players hooked by introducing more powerful runes, they do it by introducing a variety of different champions, and while the game is not perfectly balance, no game is, but if they decided to start selling Tier 4 or runes or Tier 5 of runes intead of new champions the game would die almost immediately.

 

In my opinion all PVP sets should be equally powerful and the differences should be only cosmetic, maybe you would want to add different set bonuses when you get all 5 pieces, but stat wise they should be relatively equal, I think that simply recoloring an old set and slapping a bigger stat number to it it's pretty cheap and lazy from Bioware, and probably that's why they do, it because it's cheaper and easier, but if they keep going that route they will end up turning everyone off.

 

Here are a couple of videos on the matter that I find really interesting:

 

Edited by ChazDoit
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree, and let me link-spam my take on "bringing up the rear" in this specific case.

 

The question is if one can stop vertical progression in PvP while keeping it going in PvE though, since at some point, the latter will outperform the former.

 

Players are magpies though, and most of us intrinsically want new shinies with higher numbers to make us feel like we achieved something. Making new armour purely ceremonial like the event rewards would not do that as much, since the sense of progression would be lost, and it would only really benefit those who liked the looks of new shells.

 

All in all, I think that Bioware should scale the game with more variety, e.g., new warzones or a new attempt at open PvP for the competitive folks, and some storytelling parts (Kaon under Siege and the recent Theoretika quest come to mind) and tough-as-nails mechanical challenges for PvP-inclined folks. Not escalating gear would have the added benefit of keeping hard stuff hard.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would definitely prefer more fluff rewards or additional incentive to PVP other than gear, but the bottom line is that vertical gear progression is effective at getting players in warzones and is the traditional model for these types of games. Participation and numbers are key.

 

If you made it to War Hero before 1.6, you already have a leg up because you can start getting Elite War Hero instead of getting War Hero first. If you never made it past Battlemaster (which has been in the game in some state since Dec 2011), then you would feel like starting over. In addition, the power gap between War Hero and Elite War Hero is pretty small (or at least much smaller than it has been in than in the past).

 

In my opinion, the initial gear progression works fairly well, but starts to get painful when you get into the pieces that require ranked comms due to the amount of commendations necessary:

* fresh 50

* Get recruit gear

* Get your feet wet in normal WZs and acquire basic PvP gear for viability (previously: Battlemaster, now: War Hero)

* Grind for BIS gear tier (previously: War Hero, now: Elite War Hero) in ranked or normal WZs.

* Optimize Mods for BIS

* When a new gear tier releases, trade in shells to skip the basic gear tier, then start grinding new BIS optimized gear.

 

Getting basic viable gear (BM/WH) is a bit of a commitment for most, but not insurmountable (and can feel rewarding). As it stands now, getting optimized BIS PVP gear is a rather arduous grind, and results in only a few having perfect gear, or a short period of time where most dedicated PVPers are on an equal gear footing before they release new gear. The risk of changing this model is that it would de-incentivize PVP for many players.

 

One reason that the gear grind is long is that there is no gating effect on commendations for BIS gear (you can grind all day - although comms from dailies add efficiency), so the costs need to be rather high or it is trivial. However, the major reason that gear progression seems bad is that the costs are tuned for playing in Ranked Warzones, which do not have heavy participation at all for various reasons. With a limited pool of 8man teams (server only, full premade only, no unique rewards besides very difficult to obtain Rating moddable pieces and a mount), matchmaking is almost useless and hinders participation further (a vicious cycle of people not wanting to queue for ranked because they get trounced by a few high rating teams because of a small pool of teams to play against).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I would definitely prefer more fluff rewards or additional incentive to PVP other than gear, but the bottom line is that vertical gear progression is effective at getting players in warzones and is the traditional model for these types of games. Participation and numbers are key.

 

I understand that some level of progression is acceptable, even in Legue of Legends you need to get your summoner level to 30, but reaching that cap is pretty easy and once you get there is a leveled playing field for everyone.

 

What does adding a new set of gear and discontinuing the old gear accomplishes? War Hero is the new Battlemaster, and if you want to remain competitive you have to grind for a new recolored War Hero set with bigger stat numbers, but ultimately it doesn't change the PVP experience in any meaningful way, it's not new content and it doesn't add variety at all, only grind, it's the worst way to artificially prolong the gameplay experience.

 

One of the reasons I'm going F2P is because I don't see the value in these kinds of updates and I honestly think that it would be better if they didn't even add the new gear, at least your current gear wouldn't be rendered useless.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

LOL and SWTOR are vastly different games. Comparing their PVP rewards system is like comparing apples to wall plaster. Completely different.

 

While I, personally, prefer horizontal rewards from PVP I'd like to put forward a few things that seem to be overlooked:

 

1.) Software development (including games) is not easy. One can not just wave a wand and *VOILA* something is created.

 

2.) Character classes in SWTOR are significantly more complex than LOL Champions. For starters, you have more than 4-5 abilities. A lot more. So, while adding a champion is relatively easy in LOL, it is significantly more challenging to create a new player class in an MMO that is ready for balanced PVP gameplay.

 

So, when you combine those 2 points, I think it pretty well spells out why this is not going to happen. At least not any time soon. It would take significant effort to change SWTOR PVP to more closely mirror LOL or even GW2's semi-comparable PVP system.

 

Why? Because SWTOR wasn't built to support systems like those, and developing those systems takes a lot of developmental resources. Resources that are limited and tied up in other tasks.

 

My (very rough) guesstimate--as someone that works in software development--that retooling the PVP system to reflect anything remotely close to what you're suggesting would take at minimum 6-12 months with a large number of resources dedicated to it. It would probably take much longer, and it ties up smaller projects that could be accomplished in a smaller timeframe while still providing "fresh, new content".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

/signed.

 

We are not even a year into this game and already we have Elite War Hero Armour Sets?

 

Where do we go from here? Do we get the Valour Rank cap raised? Or do we have Elite War Hero MK1,2,3?

 

Instead of a new armour set i would of preferred to have seen Ilum fixed and a few more WZ's introduced.

 

The gear grind is not a problem I’m in fully augmented War Hero, I’m just concerned about the future of PvP progression.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What does adding a new set of gear and discontinuing the old gear accomplishes? War Hero is the new Battlemaster, and if you want to remain competitive you have to grind for a new recolored War Hero set with bigger stat numbers, but ultimately it doesn't change the PVP experience in any meaningful way, it's not new content and it doesn't add variety at all, only grind, it's the worst way to artificially prolong the gameplay experience.

 

The difference between war hero and elite war hero is small so there really just making really good gear easier to get for everyone and this will make the game more balanced as well as competitive. Sounds awesome to me, and I have a few alts who are in full BM who I just couldnt grind out warhero for that I will be bringing out of retirement for sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I totally agree from my player perspective, however from a healthy pvp population and development money standpoint I think there should be a slight amount of progression.

 

For example, everyone would start out with a certain lvl gear. Then with all the modding/gearing/etc. optimization you could reach up to around 3% across the board bonus or maybe you do up to max of 5% more base dmg and crit chance but now you have less of everything else than others at your tier(hp,dmg mit, accuracy, etc.).

 

One major problem with gear progression is how people gain stats across the board. For example a recruit smasher now has around 15k hp and will do about half the smash dmg of an optimized one who also has far more dmg mit and 20k+ hp among other things. If the optmized smasher did 5% more dmg and therefore had the same hp as the recruit (or if they had 3% across the board) then this wouldn't matter.

 

Sure in my perfect world everyone would be happy gearing only for looks but there are many paying customers that would keep paying for that tiny amount of gain and this way we can keep their development money. They are also the most fun to crush btw lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with ChazDoit, you should pvp for the fun of it, to challenge others and prove your skills. Making people just grind for a new set isn't great as it just drives people away. Yes there should be a grind to some extent, but there are many many people who don't pvp all day, everyday and who do not do ranked warzones, making the gear grind for pvp harder, longer and not as enjoyable.

 

Put some new sets but maybe change the set bonuses, maybe a new look, and just a small increase in stats, something that shouldn't make people wearing war-hero gear very underpowered to people wearing elite war-hero.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It took a great deal of hours to get my toon in a full warhero set once that set is obsolete I will not be starting all over again, Simple as that.

 

Its been a year and i have had centaurian, champion, battlemaster and now war hero. Then we get what, one new warzone.

 

PVP is Fun, Gridning gear in warzones with no place in the world to take my new gear, that is not fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They could introduce different set bonuses that buff different abilities in different ways. Kinda like customising your character. eg. 2 Guardians have roughly equivalent stats in PVP gear but my Force Sweep leaves a DOT while your Plasma Brand DOT time is shortened to 6 secs (LOL Vigilance Guardians should know this joke :p)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree 100% with the OP.

I haven't seen the first video you linked to but I really like the video by Taugrim.

I wish he still played SWTOR, he created a lot of good content for the PVP community. :(

 

As some people pointed out, it seems as though BW is slowly starting to notice that having a gear grind which is several hundred hours long and gives the player significantly better gear is not a good idea, so with the new gear which comes in 1.6 the difference in stats is a lot smaller when going from WH to EWH than what it was when going from BM to WH.

This means that after you've grinded WH (which will be at same prices as current BM), which doesn't take that long IMO, you've got decent gear which is competitive to what most of other players have.

It's still definitely far from perfect, but for now I'll take it. :)

 

Here is a thread I made on the new gear.

The difference in stats between WH and EWH

In case of TL,DR: All mods adds 1 stat per mod for most stats, by far the biggest potential stat increase comes as Endurance.

Edited by Rassuro
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This has been a growing topic for quite a while, GhostCrawler of WoW answered questions about their stance on this just recently in response to a growing chorus on their side of the fence (note, quoting here for lack of BW comments):

 

Player: 13 pages and counting. Peoples' opinion is clear. Now it's your turn! I'd appreciate reading, atleast OP. http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/5847925038

GC: I read that forum regularly. Ultimately, we want WoW PvP to be about skill and gear and not just skill. We can tweak numbers but we like the feature. (Source)

 

Ultimately the real answer seems to be that like it or not (I'm in the 'not' camp), gear grinds are extremely successful at maintaining participation rates - i.e. getting players to log in frequently and to grant them a feeling of ongoing involvement & achievement, as well as clear goals to aim for.

 

Gear grinds are arguably on par with story as fundamental features of MMO's or even RPG's in general, the gear meta-game has evolved through the decades and features quite prominently through (nearly) the entire games industry all through it's history.

 

Some games have occasionally broken the mould by varying degrees but more generally speaking nobody has yet found a truly viable alternative which addresses player participation and motivation anywhere near as successfully as vertical models.

 

Having said that, if there is a viable alternative I'd love to hear about it, as I'm pretty confident a number of other people would too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Gear grinds are arguably on par with story as fundamental features of MMO's or even RPG's in general, the gear meta-game has evolved through the decades and features quite prominently through (nearly) the entire games industry all through it's history.

 

Gear grinds are also very good at scaring people away. I actually tried World of Warcraft not too long ago, I got my old toon up to level 90 in hopes of doing pvp. But having to gear up in their broken and bot-riddled BGs isn't my idea of fun, especially not when you have to put so much commitment into it. I just wanted to play arenas.

 

I think that gear grinds lost their charm in MMORPGs. I myself am so tired of stats. Just look at what has happened to WoW. At the end of a battleground, I'm not quite sure what digits I'm looking at since there's soooo many. People are running around with 300-600k HP and in PvE people can do up to 100k dps or more. Such large numbers are very unattractive. Numbers are only fun in context, and more often I prefer smaller numbers since it's easier to understand.

 

Also, not just PvP would benefit from Horizontal scaling. I can't believe SWTOR copied WoWs retarded badge system. Grinding flashpoint that offers no challenge is boring as hell. Not to mention that with full BM or War Hero, you can pretty much steamroll them. Vertical scaling in this game is broken.

Edited by Majspuffen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lack of progression isn't fun. Having something better to work toward keeps people playing, which is even more reason to keep it. Heck, in this game it's pretty readily available knowledge that your grind will only be given away some months later for free or reduced rates...and people STILL do it. It's not because they have to, it's because some part of them finds it fun.

 

Aside from the combat being a joke of simplicity, one of the things I came to hate about GW2 was that there was no pvp progression. I never realized how much I loved it, and I'd wager plenty of folks are the same way. It made me not want to pvp. Unless there's legit open world pvp in a game (which is rare these days), it's incredibly reckless to remove progression models...which is why they're only ever updated.

 

You need that carrot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lack of progression isn't fun. Having something better to work toward keeps people playing, which is even more reason to keep it. Heck, in this game it's pretty readily available knowledge that your grind will only be given away some months later for free or reduced rates...and people STILL do it. It's not because they have to, it's because some part of them finds it fun.

 

No, I do not find the grind fun in any shape or form. Levelling from 1 to 50, that is -fun- and -rewarding- progression. Getting more stats at end game is just a headache and a nuisance. It diminishes the end game too. If you're in rakata gear or better, then how fun to do you think flashpoints are, if playing with people in similar gear? Steamrolling is boring as hell.

 

I only have two characters in full war hero gear. One of them has been in full war hero since 1.2, and is rank 100 and I continue to play that character. And I'm having much more fun now that I'm geared, than what I had when I wasn't geared (of course, with my first character I never had to suffer the gear grind since I geared up at the same pace as everyone else. I wasn't ever at a disadvantage because of gear).

 

What I really hate to see, though, is Warzones that are lost simply because of gear. Yes, yes, bla bla bla skill > gear, but gear still makes an insane difference. Gear + team coordination > individual skill, in most warzones. I do not get any satisfaction out of killing a 14-16k hp target, either. It's not fair play.

Edited by Majspuffen
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another significant downside with gear-grinds and gear-dependance is lugging around a full set plus situationals & consumables for each role each of your characters participates in, in each game - PvP and PvE - and I say it that way because as discussed elsewhere, vertical progression (and Expertise) creates a huge divide, effectively making PvP and PvE separate games.

 

These are all issues I'm confident BW are well aware of though and they, along with other game developers have probably discussed them to death and back... but we still don't have a good solution so it's worth continuing on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding "players need to see a +5 to their stats to keep playing":

No they don't, and there are many games which have proved this. The only people who think that a +5 is necessary are people who want every game to be like WOW.

 

Let's take an example from a game which is not like WOW: Call of Duty.

Ideally in COD, when you unlock a new gun of the same type as another gun, it should not simply give the player a +5 upgrade, it should be a sidegrade, or to make it as simple as possible: If the bullets do more damage, then they should also shoot slower than the other gun. TTK will still be the same, and it's up to the player to choose what's important to them. Ideally this is also true with everything else in the game.

 

This is why Call of Duty is, for the most part, horizontal progression. Watch Taugrim's video on it if you are not familiar the concept.

 

Then once the player in COD gets to max level, something very interesting happens: The player simply chooses to start over. Not reroll a second character, not "to see a different story", just simply turn the one character they had, back to essentially the way it was when they began. The main difference is that the player gets a different emblem based on how many times he has done this.

 

So now we have a system where not only is progression not about giving the player a +5, but the player wants goes through the exact same progression several times.

 

But won't not getting +5 remove the RPG aspect? RPG is not only about getting a +5, it's about customizing your character and how the character plays. Making everything based around +5 is taking the easy way out.

Have you ever played COD? Some part are IMO pretty horrible so I wouldn't recommend sticking around for too long, but when comparing COD to end game MMORPG grind, in COD you actually have significantly more options on how you can to customize how your character plays, and you can completely change how you play in only a few button presses, while still keep working towards reaching your goals.

 

Should there be progression in games? Yes, the vast majority of players definitely want it.

Is +5 required? One of the top complaints you see every year with COD from dedicated players is that gun A appears to be an overall slightly better option than gun B, and that this is unacceptable. So no, +5 is not required, in fact RPG is pretty much the only genre where +5 is even accepted by a part of the player base.

Some games have tried to replace the +5 stat grind by giving the player the option to access various different shinies. This has never worked, the player need some clear goals and a clear path with several small goals which the player gets to on his path to the larger overall goals.

 

Would the COD model work exactly the same in an MMORPG? No, I do not think so, there are a lot of differences between the two genres. However something similar can definitely work, and if nothing else COD is proof that a game can have a progression without giving +5 to your gear, and still have extremely high player retention (COD has more players than WOW, and basically has one expansion per year with some small updates in between).

 

In before "Derp, COD players are dumb anyway".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Regarding "players need to see a +5 to their stats to keep playing":

No they don't, and there are many games which have proved this. The only people who think that a +5 is necessary are people who want every game to be like WOW.

 

Let's take an example from a game which is not like WOW: Call of Duty.

Ideally in COD, when you unlock a new gun of the same type as another gun, it should not simply give the player a +5 upgrade, it should be a sidegrade, or to make it as simple as possible: If the bullets do more damage, then they should also shoot slower than the other gun. TTK will still be the same, and it's up to the player to choose what's important to them. Ideally this is also true with everything else in the game.

 

This is why Call of Duty is, for the most part, horizontal progression. Watch Taugrim's video on it if you are not familiar the concept.

 

Then once the player in COD gets to max level, something very interesting happens: The player simply chooses to start over. Not reroll a second character, not "to see a different story", just simply turn the one character they had, back to essentially the way it was when they began. The main difference is that the player gets a different emblem based on how many times he has done this.

 

So now we have a system where not only is progression not about giving the player a +5, but the player wants goes through the exact same progression several times.

 

But won't not getting +5 remove the RPG aspect? RPG is not only about getting a +5, it's about customizing your character and how the character plays. Making everything based around +5 is taking the easy way out.

Have you ever played COD? Some part are IMO pretty horrible so I wouldn't recommend sticking around for too long, but when comparing COD to end game MMORPG grind, in COD you actually have significantly more options on how you can to customize how your character plays, and you can completely change how you play in only a few button presses, while still keep working towards reaching your goals.

 

Should there be progression in games? Yes, the vast majority of players definitely want it.

Is +5 required? One of the top complaints you see every year with COD from dedicated players is that gun A appears to be an overall slightly better option than gun B, and that this is unacceptable. So no, +5 is not required, in fact RPG is pretty much the only genre where +5 is even accepted by a part of the player base.

Some games have tried to replace the +5 stat grind by giving the player the option to access various different shinies. This has never worked, the player need some clear goals and a clear path with several small goals which the player gets to on his path to the larger overall goals.

 

Would the COD model work exactly the same in an MMORPG? No, I do not think so, there are a lot of differences between the two genres. However something similar can definitely work, and if nothing else COD is proof that a game can have a progression without giving +5 to your gear, and still have extremely high player retention (COD has more players than WOW, and basically has one expansion per year with some small updates in between).

 

In before "Derp, COD players are dumb anyway".

 

I love everything you said here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some people seem to think that I'm saying "there shouldn't be any progression" "there shouldn't be any new gear" "there shouldn't be grind" and that is NOT what I'm saying.

 

What I'm talking about here is VERTICAL progression, and what I would like to see is a shift towards Horizontal Progression, we have already seen some glimpses of this in SWTOR, for example the Rated War Hero gear, is something you have to work really hard, some people would even say grind, but it doesn't make you more powerful, it gives you more prestige, it gives you bragging rights, but it's not statistically more powerful, it's just an empty shell as far as I know.

 

The same with the Black-Purple, the Black-Orange, the exclusive pets and speeders from the PVP Vendor, these have no impact at all in your stats, except for the crystals but as far as I know they are in line with any other crystal of their level.

 

So in short, to the people saying "Hey if you take out progression and gear grind from an MMO it will be boring" that is a Straw Man, that is not what I'm saying, I'm talking specifically about Vertical progression, the one that makes you statistically more powerful, if you want to better undestand what I'm saying please check out the 2 videos from Taugrim and Extra Credtis at the end of my Original Post.

Edited by ChazDoit
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Your old Battlemaster is no obsolete. And neither is Champ or Cent gear. You get the new Elite Waro, rip out the mods, and put it in those older loots. Now, you are just as powerful as the new group, but you look more unique since it is something none of the new guys will be able to have. This makes it a win/win for anyone who currently has BM CHMP or CNT gear.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...