So next season..

As most of you have heard from your fellow PvPers not that many people are happy about having to grind out gear and spend replays to get the top tier day 1 of the seasons. I think what would help this a LOT is removing mods from PvP gear. I don't remember anyone asking for it, and it makes people not want to PvP because they have to grind out ANOTHER set of mods, and without them it's a big difference. Obviously you can't just rip sockets out now. So my suggestion is on next season's gear remove mod sockets from PvP gear. No one loses anything, and it makes getting your pvp gear a lot easier.

OH, and if you could Please PLEASE PLEASE Make 2 seperate marks. One mark for Tier 1-3 that you get 2 of every match, and it doesn't lock, and another mark for the 4th (final) tier. That you get 2 of every week, and to get more you have to reset the weekly reward. This way you still get Replay badges, and people in tier 1 aren't getting destroyed by people in tier 4 on day 2.

Honestly Replay badges for FOUR tiers was overkill.

I know this is off topic but when is the next season starting? like 2 or 3 months from now? I haven't been counting

I actually like the idea about removing mods from PVP gear. I dont want to spend all that time farming just for it to be a waste later, but I want to be stronger too..... like my leaguemates.

Much as I'd like to see mods gone, its not the modding. Almost nobody using replay badges puts major mods in before Vengeance. You replace a piece every 3-7 wins, its not worth the effort. Besides this is as unrealistic as getting home turf removed. Microtransactions from R&D scanners and Replay badges probably brings in more than subs.

The real problem is your second point. Introducing so many tiers at once behind a lockout that people are behind 4 tiers a week into the season, and pretty much have to sit there and take it for the rest of the season. I agree there should be 1 cash, 1-3 grindable, 1 endgame replay badge tier. I love DCUO so bring back influence.

And this is random, but I'd like to see the seasonal styles/events become a part of pvp. Could be used as a quick T3 catch-up for people hopping in mid-season, and pvpers fiddling with alts they wouldnt bother to gear otherwise.

Unfortunately this is correct.

I knew this was going to happen since day one of GU25. So no, continue with the next season. Its going to be hilarious watching the people who thought this was going to work and be a good idea get milked dry for the next one. Doesn't seem like a worthy investment when PvP is absolutely dead, right?

There's a bandwagon a lot of people on this forum need to join.. it's called don'tsupportshityoudon'tunderstand.

Original avatar gear: The era when PvP was not only totally free and at its highest, most competitive and populous.. but consistently growing.

Checkmate gear: Introduced a moderate pay-to-win model by creating a DLC restricted set and a free set that at least could compete. The PvP population around this time was significantly less but still competitive. Difficult to attain as a free/premium player.

Seasons and progression: Full-blown pay-to-win reliant almost entirely on how much players are willing to spend on replay badges to reset content for an advantage over those that aren't. PvP now is not only noncompetitive and absolutely dead, but has close to ZERO growth among players and leagues. Absolutely impossible to attain as a free, premium and casual player.

There is a trend here and it isn't about mods. You don't need replay badges to get mods.

Every point you made - absolutely. Mods do not matter in pvp nearly as much as spending $50 to get the best gear as fast as possible and then dominate by having a massive edge. I wasn't hugely fond of PVP before the change and now I'm less fond of it. I never replay anything unless I'm grinding for feats and the only reason I play the five maps per week is to get my box to get the feat for the Vengeance gear. Other than going for the four feats I have left that are PVP feats, it's completely dead to me.

If they had the best interest of the players and the best interest of the game at heart, there would be one set of PvP gear.... and everyone would have the same gear.

Makes no sense to put a players in Full T4 fully modded VS a player in cash gear. Make no sense at all. Damn how the matchmaking stinks.

But sadly all they have in mind is their own interest which is selling replays. And it seems to be working.

On day one of the PvP season... already you would face a LOT of players in full T4 already. In the early weeks of the PvP season trying to get a win was pure torture.

Not looking forward to the next season.

I honestly don't care what the devs or anyone else says.

Seasons gear was thought up to sell more replay badges. Seasons was not introduced to put everyone on an even playing field, much likes the devs have said.

If they truly wanted everyone and everything to be equal, there would be no seasons gear, no mods and especially plans that make mods/sodas in pvp.

I don't see how it's fair that a luck based drop in raids has such a huge impact on pvp. I've beaten paradox many times and haven't even seen a plan drop. Meanwhile, nubs are running around with all expert mods and sodas and think their beast in pvp.

As I said before, I'd have much more respect for the devs if they just came out and said, hey, ya we wanna sell replay badges so we introduced gear that resets every six months and you gotta use relay haves cause the maps are loot locked to once a week.


Lol

Ok before we get another 20 posts saying how the devs are selfish and greedy let me level with some of you.
They're a business. Obviously the pay-to-progress game style is being implemented, and of course they're going to do w/e they can to get replay badges. Now it's just a matter of finding a balance. Replay badges to go through 4 sets is ridiculous. No lock Free grindable sets for the first 3 then replay badges on the 4th isn't as bad. Like Malevolent knight/Checkmate - the DLC.

We'll never go back to Avatar bombardier days, because replay badges have been introduced. When people agreed with the idea of replay badges the Developers had a open field to build the game around it. That's how it worked. Blame the community for accepting it. Not SoE for being smart and playing off it.

Except you can't blame the community.

I remember the big uproar on the old forums about how it was wrong to loot lock pvp marks and force people to use replay badges in order to stay competitive.

But your right, the devs went the way of replay badges to make money, and they are a business.

But don't blame the community, that's just asinine.

Everyone knows its a business but you can't have your cake and eat it too. People tend to severely underestimate how valuable subscribers are.

Let's say the average player subs for $14.99 a month. Over a year that's $179.88 without including any additional payments a player may make. Using a sample size of 50,000 subscribers (WoW had over 10 million for reference).. that brings in about $8,994,000. That is 9 million dollars annually. I don't know what the subscriber base is across the servers but if you wanted to bump the subs up to 100000, that is $17,988,000 or 18 million minus taxes & cost of operations annually.

If I worked there, my ultimate goal would be to pull in more subscribers.. not update by update make them want to leave. PvP is getting destroyed as the micro-transaction system is getting built around it. We're losing players because of this and this alone. There is a reason why they won't do this in PvE. That's where the bulk of the subscribers are. The people who supported seasons and progression early on are who I blame. It's a horrible system, I just don't understand why more people didn't realize it and say so earlier.

While I agree with what you're trying to get across, this thread needs to get absolutely flooded with every single PvPer available saying they want this nonsense out of the game for anything to actually happen.

How about no, as much i hate farm mats and exos, is not fair leave the options out, i use alphas and betas to get the innates, if some are willing to spend their lifes farming mats/exos for full experts plans let them, replay badges are fine now, because players going to get marks even losing, replay badges were bad only at start of season1 because there were too many players overgeared stoping the rest to build their gear, now everyone get marks i see no issue here.

Exactly. "They're a business" isn't a rebuttal to "Why are you making terrible business decisions?"
PVP isn't the same kind of ethos as PVE. You can't just sell replays, build a business model around gobbling up as many as possible while taking the easy way out of problems you make, and expect it to not alienate the crap out of your players.

You can call it "metagame" and whatever nonsense you want to, devs. The bottom line is, you make people unhappy to compete, and unhappy people stop giving you money. The latest is a bandaid fix. People say 1v1's are unfair and unbalanced and there are unwinnable scenarios! Rather than address why that is, how it comes about, you slap debuffs on movement powers, wipe hands on pants, call it a day. The word Slapdash comes to mind, not just for this, but quite a few PVP decisions.

I had made this suggestion a long time ago but the downside to it was unless they pump the stats so far up on pvp gear players will go back to the old times and just use pve gear since it could be modded and give you a better advantage.

IMO pvp gear should have its own seperate mods, they could of made it so pvp gear only accepts pvp mods and pvp mods would only be able to be slotted in pvp gear. They could of used the currency they phased out (influence). This would of cut down on farm time and allowed for more free to play players to compete on the same level as paying players.

Right now pvp is very dependent on spending tons of time in pve to be on the top competative level in arenas. If they want it to become an esport something is going to have to give to make it more accessable to all players and not just the ones who have money or else i doubt this game will ever become an esport.

Players need the carrot on the end of the stick to keep pvping, guild wars was a prime example of that fail. But you run into other problems when the carrot goes from regular size to small bite size carrots that require you to get a lot more to get the same full feeling you would get from a regular size carrot. Eventually it leads too much work and players lose interest and is also why legends is played more then arenas currently.

If they ever expect this game to become an esport for pvp they need to take the pve out of pvp.

I like mods in pvp it gives more diversity on how you want to play.

To make pvp even

1. Let everyone just pick mods they want on there pvp gear (will never happen lol) I plan on quitting after this season i'm not getting expert mods all over again.

2.limit the use home turf!! one trinket at a time or longer cool downs that will even things more.

3. release only 1 new tier gear to get and make punchline easy to get or purchasable so everyone can catch up!

4. back to the old days no replays in pvp just grind marks.

5. Weekly map rotations hadn't seen star labs in so long.

It's discussions like this (which are 100% valid) that make me glad I have most of my pvp feats. They just went and got so darn greedy. I agree that PVP was at it's best when it was just avatar gear and no mods, that was the most level playing field there has ever been in this game. Problem was what to do with all the extra marks. Those were the days.

You are right that grinding gear was more fun. This could be posted in another section but you put this response here. Why is it then that 2 pieces away from my second set of checkmate (which I could grind, even using replays) I now have to rely on LUCK from the vault. I run the vault first thing every freakin day, and have yet to see a piece of checkmate. I still get mostly Egyptian and Jar Kir. Please Mepps can you respond to the mentality of taking away grindable gear (with 50 point feats) and leaving it solely on luck (and if it was in a casino, this kind of luck would have cost us all our houses by now).

I for one Mepps am fine with Seasonal PVP, however, that being said I acknowledge 100% that I am in the minority. Competitive PVP pretty much died when Seasonal PVP was introduced. Seasonal PVP plus Tier 5 Raids just destroyed it. Not enough people enjoy Seasonal PVP for whatever reasons. I think the main reason is simply, regardless of how fast you can get Vengeance/Punchline PVP gear, people are not keen on the idea of having their accomplishments stripped of them and forced to do it all over again every 6 months (yes I realize you keep the Feats but people still feel like you've kicked them in you know where by forcing them to start over again).

My humble opinion on the matter is simply make the seasons last 12 months and separate PVP and PVE. If it doesn't have a Toughness statistic it becomes inactive in PVP arenas. This will solve any issues that would might arise from PVE gear over powering PVP gear whether it be a trinket, Utility Belt, Ring, etc...This would ensure you could make PVE content without having to worry about PVP being effected. It would make things so much easier on you guys in the long run.