PvP Arena in Rift. Yes or no?

[NearioNL]

IF they implement it in a right way, so not WoW-style, then it can be a good addition to the pvp-area of Rift.

I dont know if you can call it arena's what I am gonne propose, but personally I would like to see it as the following:

First it should be in Slivers, meaning other time-zones giving Trion all the creative freedom they want.
Offcourse based on current WF's and Zones.
2v2, 5v5. 10v10. 20v20. 4 different options, all should be able to do
2v2 and 5v5 should be done in WF's/Arena's and 10v10 and 20v20 in Zones of part of zones.
Gear should be obsolute, all on equal footing. Teams should be of same rank, or at least in the same Rx0 range.
There will be headon battles(2v2/5v5) and skirmishes with maps who favor tactical play(10v10, 20v20).

It should be easy to make this in line with any Rift Lore. some could be done in the past, some in the future(timeline speaking).
You could make Defiant vs Guardian, but you can also make Oath vs NF. We already have 5 factions for pvp(2 for WF's, 3 for CQ), so use them
Dont name it Arena, it will just narrow it down to actually Arena's :P

Maybe this all is just my inexperience in PVP. I did some in WoW, Swtor and Rift, but never much. So maybe everything I think of will be unable to realise. But personally I would find PVP much more interesting this way.
Specially when it become important, not just 1 single battle over and over. but a series of battles, where the outcome of 1 has influance on the next battle(or 1 simulanously fight in another " arena" )
The possibilities are endless

[TheGrinnz]

The last part is the main issue. I think it a safe bet to say the majority who want arenas would identify as PvP rather than PvE players. As such they would also likely be on a PvP server.

I would not make that deduction. The only difference between PvP and PvE servers is that on PvP servers you cannot choose when to PvP in the open world. I can't speak for others but I personally enjoy PvP, when I choose to participate in it, with evenly matched sides, warfronts and conquest are much closer to this than always-on open-world PvP. Being on a PvP server means more that you want that more chaotic style of PvP, or your friends are there, or you just don't mind randomly dying while questing. I do not identify as a PvP or PvE player, I enjoy pretty much all sides of the game. I don't think you or I could say with certainty how the majority identifies.

[Meina]

Two things. First, where is this statistic. You could be right but I wasn't able to notice it. Even if it did decrease after WOTLK that brings me to my second point.

An article on the subject. (Joystiq)


Another article on the subject. (Gameriot)

Supporting evidence. (Arenajunkies) If you compare the numbers for season 4 and season 5 you will note a definite drop in the number of "active" teams.

What game are you talking about? Maybe you did not arena but. In season 1 up untill the very end of TBC you could not get the current season's gear (5 piece and weapons) without doing arena.

At all.

True, but there's more to it.

You needed arena points to purchase season 1 and 2 gear, which meant that if you wanted that gear you had to arena. However, there were no rating requirements at the time you so anyone who played arena could by the gear.

In season 3 they added rating requirements to the current season's shoulders and weapons. In season 4 they increased the rating requirements.

You could not get an epic pvp weapon without doing arena until season 3.

True.

In season 3, they put the season 1 weapons on sale for honor (Battleground) points. In season 4, you could buy the season 2 weapons with honor points.

And in season 5, they took that option away. You could not get a PvP weapon unless you played arena.

You can get an epic weapon in about 4 hours of battleground play now.

I can't say what the situation is now because I haven't played WoW in like 2 years.

But, as I said earlier, with the release of Cataclysm they relaxed / removed a lot of the arena requirements on gear. When I had stopped playing the main set of current season's gear was limited to people who played either arenas or rated BG's and they had removed almost all of the rating requirements from current season gear.

You could only purchase shoulders with 2000 rating and weapons at 2200 rating. So for the first (3-4) seasons if you didn't hit 2200 you could not get any sort of arena weapon from that season. 2200 back in the first few seasons was roughly the .5% gladiator level of players.

Again, IIRC (and I'm not misreading my source material) rating requirements didn't pop up until season 3.

I agree with you, the idea of top rated players being significantly better statistic wise than a casual player is stupid. Cosmetic awards should be enough. But to say the drop off is due to difficulty increasing is just silly. Gear accessibility in wow is far easier than in rift.

It took WoW 6 years and one e-riot (and probably a few death threats) to learn this lesson.

By season 5, people were getting a little tired of Blizzard trying to "ram arenas down their throats". People who didn't arena were becoming very frustrated with being treated like second hand citizens. Kalgan's announcement that all PvP gear in season 5, even the blue starter set would require some form of arena participation was the last straw.

[Meina]

I have no idea where the subscriptions came from nor did I claim to. My point was solely that arena was put in the game sometime between 2007 and 2008 and the game did not collapse and lose its players.

Anyhow I'm going to retire from this topic. It seems like the majority opinion on this forum at least is that arena would be a bad move. It also seems like the majority opinion to talk down to anyone who suggests a change in pvp. I'll be playing some other games for sure where PvP has mechanisms to show who is a good player rather than a player who has dedicated tons of hours to grinding gear (or conquest exploiting) which is all Rift's system has at this time.

We're not saying "Don't ever change PvP!" We're saying arena is not the best, and could possibly be the worst option.

[Synovia]

I'm not sure if this kind of thing has been posted on forums before or if Trion is already working on bringing Arenas into the game.. but I am going to make this simple and easy. Just post your opinions about what you think. 'Yes there should be Arenas introduced', or 'no, there shouldn't be.' In my opinion... Yes there should be Arenas introduced because they are skill based PvP matches (Once you have high end PvP gear obviously).
Thanks

The answer to your question is a resounding YES. Rift desperately needs some for of competitive, high-end PvP as to date it has had none. Arena can and should be implemented in Rift and it can be done so intelligently and efficiently as follows:

http://ascendedchronicle.blogspot.com

[shifttusk]

It took WoW 6 years and one e-riot (and probably a few death threats) to learn this lesson.

By season 5, people were getting a little tired of Blizzard trying to "ram arenas down their throats". People who didn't arena were becoming very frustrated with being treated like second hand citizens. Kalgan's announcement that all PvP gear in season 5, even the blue starter set would require some form of arena participation was the last straw.

Right and actually I can recall WOTLK driving alot of people from pvp who were casual. I had a friend who exclusively pvp'd but as poor at it and quit around the end of WOTLK because he could not get a current season weapon. I do believe they did end up making honor weapons available but they were significantly crappy.

Anyhow I think this whole point is moot. There does not seem to be a big drive to have this feature. Rewards system aside this is a very small subsection of posters and only a few of us are saying this is a good idea. More importantly no devs/admins are posting which means more than likely this is not on their radar.

Personally I consider myself a community member in these games and love to share my opinion on the forums but.... ultimately I play these for entertainment and I'm a consumer and not a developer at Trion. I enjoy rift's classing system but if there is no drive to have noncompetitive pvp I'll just go seek it elsewhere, I'd prefer a competitive game rather than a game that has endless pvp "practice' which is all unranked war fronts are. Farming and practice for competition that just does not exist.

[shifttusk]

We're not saying "Don't ever change PvP!" We're saying arena is not the best, and could possibly be the worst option.

If you (not you personally but the developers and the community) continue to refuse pvp with a rating system for competition you'll continue to erode the pvp player base. You'll have gear farmers but you'll lose the enthusiastic players who compete, troll other players into competition and share how to succeed with novices.

[Magis]

Most certainly not.

WoW Arenas caused horrible balance issues and limiting the size of pvp is only going to make matters worse because then you will need to attempt to balance small team sizes instead of throwing everyone into the melting pot.

Smaller team sizes = more balance issues = PVP vs. PVE balance problems as well = Worse overall game.

Balance on the scale of an MMO with as many options as we already have is hard enough, arena is an old idea, we need to fix the new ones we have instead.

[Synovia]

Most certainly not.

WoW Arenas caused horrible balance issues and limiting the size of pvp is only going to make matters worse because then you will need to attempt to balance small team sizes instead of throwing everyone into the melting pot.

Smaller team sizes = more balance issues = PVP vs. PVE balance problems as well = Worse overall game.

Balance on the scale of an MMO with as many options as we already have is hard enough, arena is an old idea, we need to fix the new ones we have instead.

Read my most recent blog post in the signature below which explains exactly how Arena would could work in Rift and why it is desperately needed.

[Kyera]

Read my most recent blog post in the signature below which explains exactly how Arena would could work in Rift and why it is desperately needed.

Your suggestion for implementation is pretty much the same thing that everyone on either side of the fence about this argument has said would need to be done to get arenas in the game. The only problem is that there's an underlying assumption that players would be interested in arena for nothing more than cosmetic rewards and bragging rights, and -- aside from a small but vocal forum subset, who I am not convinced could justify any expense in asset construction or PvE/PvP ability use splitting -- I've seen nothing that convinces me this would be the case.

PvP Rifts flopped because the rewards weren't good enough.
Conquest has plenty of complaints, some of which are about how it plays, and far more are about how the rewards weren't good enough.
Even the popularity of certain warfronts has scaled with how "good" the rate of reward gain is -- and let's not discuss premade queues vs. pug queues and "competitive" guilds syncing duo queues.

You can make the argument that this is because of the gear gap, and I won't deny there's some merit to that argument (even though we disagree on other issues relating to the gap); however, and I can only make a subjective judgement on this, the sheer number of people in P36/P40 who are crying about not being able to get the P50 gear ASAP (people are seriously complaining about it taking a month) to "compete", even though it's only a minor upgrade, tells me that there isn't exactly a mammoth chunk of Rift's subscriber base (active and inactive) that would be interested in a) highly competitive PvP or b) PvP without tangible, "progression"-style rewards.

So, the success of your take on the community's suggestions for what would need to happen to implement arenas successfully hinges in part on there being a large enough population of players willing to play competitive, fluff-reward-only PvP (essentially, to PvP for bragging rights and the "sake of PvP"), and I don't think it's there, or we'd have seen Open World PvP, Warfront Premade Queues, PvP Rifts and Conquest all play out differently than they have.

Sorry if this is rambly. It's, like, 3 AM, and it's a billion degrees here, and I am tired but unable to crash. ;(

[Averwinge]

Get rid of 4 piece bonus, and make it unranked. that is all.

[Meina]

Right and actually I can recall WOTLK driving alot of people from pvp who were casual. I had a friend who exclusively pvp'd but as poor at it and quit around the end of WOTLK because he could not get a current season weapon. I do believe they did end up making honor weapons available but they were significantly crappy.

Anyhow I think this whole point is moot. There does not seem to be a big drive to have this feature. Rewards system aside this is a very small subsection of posters and only a few of us are saying this is a good idea. More importantly no devs/admins are posting which means more than likely this is not on their radar.

Personally I consider myself a community member in these games and love to share my opinion on the forums but.... ultimately I play these for entertainment and I'm a consumer and not a developer at Trion. I enjoy rift's classing system but if there is no drive to have noncompetitive pvp I'll just go seek it elsewhere, I'd prefer a competitive game rather than a game that has endless pvp "practice' which is all unranked war fronts are. Farming and practice for competition that just does not exist.

Re; the underlined bit.

Trion reps have stated, and maintained, that there will be no arenas in this game. They covered this in beta and have mentioned it at least twice since then.

An excerpt from the beta 5 preview...

"Some people think these are a great idea, and others are less than thrilled due to negative experiences with related-sounding mechanics in other games that provide E-Sport style PvP, which we have intentionally not included and do not have plans to. Other games have their issues to design for, and we have ours. The two are definitely different."

Source

It's not that they aren't responding, it's that they've stopped repeating themselves.

[Meina]

If you (not you personally but the developers and the community) continue to refuse pvp with a rating system for competition you'll continue to erode the pvp player base. You'll have gear farmers but you'll lose the enthusiastic players who compete, troll other players into competition and share how to succeed with novices.

As I've said, repeatedly, I'd be all for a rated WF system and I honestly do not think many people would be against it. This would be the perfect middle ground for the people who want competitive PvP and those that don't want to see Rift repeat the mistakes Blizzard made with arenas.

It would also be much easier to implement. The framework already exists in the form of the current WF's. All they'd have to do is come up with a rule set and a rating system.

[Gatorage]

I think arenas would be great in rift. I played WoW since vanilla and quit in the begenning of cataclysm and was very competitive in arenas from s1 till about s8. I came to rift mainly because the endgame content seemed fun and, from what I've heard, challenging. I am very new to this game so bear with me.

Implementing arenas could only improve ones experience in Rift... if done correctly. Arenas should only be for bragging rights, titles, and items/gear that have no affect on stats or gameplay (and by gear I mean something along the lines of a different skin on current PvP gear earned through favor). Those that do not wish to participate would not suffer from it and those that do want to be competitive could show off their titles and items to others. Also, everyone should be on an even playing field while in the arena, no improved stats from gear, etc.

I've read a few replies saying "no balancing for arenas." Why? I understand that many players wouldn't want it to interfere with PvE, but changes could be implemented to only affect PvP scenarios. This could include reducing the damage that a spell does in PvP only or change its effects (like rooting, controlling, and self buffs) against another player as opposed to it how it would affect a mob in PvE.

I also read a post where someone stated an issue that WoW arenas had, "My friends don't play the right classes for arenas." I can't see this happening in rift since there are only 4 callings (as opposed to the 10 classes of WoW) each with enough souls to fill almost any roll that would be needed. I'm sure anyone could find an arena composition with whatever calling your friends play.

I'm sure an arena system could be implemented into rift that could keep the game from changing for those who don't want to be a part of it and at the same time be rewarding for others who wish to be competitive and compete in it... satisfy their epeen is what I'm trying to say.