- 40 new Grandmaster Traits, unlockable from PVE only
- Team Deathmatch – (map only)
- (Presumably) common skins across PVE/PVP
- (Presumably) leveling through PVP
- No changes to the current meta
- No/insufficient changes to broken PvP builds
While the new things are met with some trepidation, the reveals so far have brought about more vitriol and disdain than cheers and appreciation. Why is this? Primarily because the game the players want is not the game the developers are giving them.
This is causing a disconnect, resulting in the players becoming disheartened and angry.
This has happened in many MMO’s over the years. Some MMO’s degrade in customer satisfaction until they reach a knee in the curve where the dissatisfaction increases asymptotically after some perceived degradation in services provided. Naturally, something needs to be done to rectify the situation.
Typically what I see at a junction such as this is the company cracks down on negative PR, resulting in numerous players getting banned from the forums and/or the game. This is the most common course of action I have seen from MMOs. Most recently Rift did this same thing. When players get on the forums to express their dislike with the direction the game is going they get perma-banned from the forums. From the company’s perspective, this appears to make the most sense. Forums get cleaned up and all the negativity is removed. Players no longer complain on the forums for fear of being banned and everything seems fine. Of course, the end result is more people silently leave and the game continues to diminish in its player base and, consequently, its revenue stream.
…and I believe that is what will happen here.
However, I still find myself asking – where is this going? From an objective perspective, I can see that a few classes are completely dominant in PvP: decap engies (solo queue), HS warriors (Cheese Mode winning nearly every tournament with double warrior until they quit), and PW thieves/thieves in general (no zerker ele’s, zerker mesmers all rerolled thief).
Yet, I see no changes to the game to correct this situation. In fact, the most recent Ready-Up had a developer saying they believe warriors are right where they want them to be. For the moment, let’s assume the developer is not ignorant of the state of the game and not incompetent. Warriors are the most played profession in the game, and completely dominate PVE and WvW. Now they dominate PvP.
So, the developers want warriors to dominate PvP. This means they want the game to have an explicit pecking order: Warriors >> all other professions
What about thieves? Well, thieves are also a heavily played profession. I’m not sure exactly where they fall, but I’d guess either second or third-most played.
It seems the team wants to retain players by making their preferred professions the most dominant and powerful ones. This makes no sense, but it is the only conclusion I can come to, barring ignorance or incompetence.
So what does this mean for PvP? Well, it means that the game can never be truly balanced. And balance is a crucial element for interesting gameplay, and even moreso when team sizes are fixed.
If ArenaNet were to listen, perhaps they would make an all-stop and perform emergency triage to correct the problems with the game.
However, I don’t see that happening. History tells me we will see a crackdown on disgruntled players in the forums and the PvP will continue to degrade.
