This is a repost that seems to have been buried in a thread and I was asked to put in a new thread.
I'm not normally a poster on these forums. I'm a 41 year old player that has played a significant number of PvP games (i.e. Rainbow 6 siege being the most recent) and PvE games, and those that do a significant combination of both (World of Warcraft, for example, which had their PvP gearsets on an equal footing with PvE raid gear for a long time).
I understand that you're attempting to make the DZ relevant. That's important as a goal. Just as you didn't create sections of D.C. level 1-5 areas (because obviously nobody would continue to play in those low level areas past lvl 5, a relatively short experience), you really want people using the 3 DZ zones just as much as the player base uses the rest of the game.
Heres the problem, and many others have said it before: By making one place where the best gear drops, you instantly make the remaining world irrelevant because the grind is only fun if there is a possibility of player improvement. Not likelihood, but possibility.
Players should not be forced to PvE if they don't want to, or PvP if they don't want to. For me the issue is a practical one. I'm an older person, and while I have the financial resources to buy a nice video card no amount of money is going to be able to match the time put in by a college age teenager with, lets face it, a better set of reflexes that makes competing at a reliable level in a PvP zone counter-productive. That's why rainbow 6 siege was appealing to me, because while I would never have the crazy reflexes to be the best player in the game....overall a person's PvP ability is made by map knowledge, tactics, and patience.
Division 2 is not rainbow 6 siege. The PvP you designed for division 2 is laughably underdeveloped. The environment is unrealistically indestructible and 100% predictable. If Division 2 relied on its PvP for the basis of its continued success, you have created a massive failure of a game. I'm sorry if that's hurtful, but it's true.
The PvE of this game is why the majority of players care so much about these proposed changes. They care because we grind hours upon hours to perfect a certain playstyle that relies on gear.
By telling me that I may only get the gear I need to be the best PvE player in a PvP zone, you are asking me to grind hours on end doing something I don't enjoy. You are asking me to be griefed and destroyed by those that, quite franky, are better than me. These youngsters laughing at me and telling me to "get good" don't have the benefit of age to reflect on how un-insightful their statements are.
By the same token, PvP players shouldn't have to excessively grind PvE content to do what they do. I fully admit that others like what I don't like, and I don't advocate for "nerfing" anything the DZ players want or desire. If PvP centered players had to solve endless puzzles and take control points over and over just to PvP, they'd have just as much right to complain about how the PvE experience is ruining what they see as the fun of this game.
The problem that I see comes from your statements made on the livestream that "raids will have the same 515 Gear score gear as the DZ." That's fine, except do you realize what you just did with that statement? You have made an entire world of PvE and PvP and several zones and several things to do within those zones. It's honestly amazing how well it's done. And you just said "ya, this entire world we built was really just the tutorial. Once you get to a certain point you gotta do one of two things: PvP with the griefers and the gankers in the DZ, or do this ONE RAID that may or may not be good, and that's all you get to do to get the best gear. Everything else will honestly be just subpar. SERIOUSLY? Please do not disrespect the world you have created by ****ting on it.
You are about to do to the entire D.C. world you have created what you have already done to the crafting table, which is make it inferior and meaningless. A crafted item can only go up to 490 with no recalibration. Crafting was useful for 10 minutes to artificially raise my gear score and now it's something I do when i'm max materials and I click X a few times to create meaningless items I give away to projects. For the love of god, do not make the entire D.C. world meaningless. What if I love pvp and PvE? IF I know for a fact that clearing 4 control points is 100% a waste of my time, you're making the better part of the game less fun. I don't care that I have to farm for 10 hours now to find something marginally better than one piece of my gear. I don't mind because I know that finding that one piece makes it all worth it. If you make the entire city of DC useless you're shooting yourself in the foot in the worst way.
WHAT YOU SHOULD ACTUALLY DO:
1. Make the rates at which the better loot drops scale to the difficulty. DZ is clearly harder to secure the gear. Give them a percentage bump for that effort. They earned it doing what they do and it doesn't affect me the PvE'er, so give it to them. Make the normal missions drop it very very rarely and make it drop more commonly on difficulties that make us want to waste our time on those higher difficulties. Let's face it. I KNOW I can solo a mission on challenging, but at the moment i'd rather not just because of the time it takes vs. the loot it gives me. Make it so I want to do it on that difficulty because it drops, at a minimum, a few of those nice 515 gear score items. I want to feel that the time I am investing in the game is leading me, at least on an RNG level, to the build I will eventually get with time and patience. If you make some gear only available in the DZ, I will not have the time or the patience for an innately negative experience. Here's the good thing about this plan: If the drop rates favor PvE mission grinding, you can patch the drop rates to favor DZ to encourage people to try it out. Don't you think It's so much easier to alter drop rates than tell an entire playerbase to do something they innately do not want to do? if you tell me that I will earn an Exotic in 5 hours of farming in the DZ but 15 hours mission grinding, SOME OF US will still pick mission grinding. That's what you miss with this decision. We'll accept the fact that fortune may favor the bold and the better, but if you say it's not possible, you're locking the best part of this game out. When the default button in PvE is "loot all as Trash" and you don't even care what it is before looking at it, you're making the game worse, not better.
2. Make PvE (raids) and PvP specific cosmetics. Honeslty I shouldn't have to say this. Hunting cosmetics and masks were some of the most fun I had in this game thus far and it was a nice break from grinding for gear. I think it's perfectly fine to have some nice chase cosmetic sets that drop in DZ only zones. You don't have to "extract" the cosmetic and it gets people into the DZ. The argument that they shouldn't have to PvP to earn a PvP cosmetic is comical. The argument that they shouldn't have to PvP to earn REGULAR GEAR is significant. I hope you see the difference.
It's not my intent to disrespect any player who differs from my opinion. What I hope happens, is that the developers do not disrespect the world they worked so hard to create by making it useless to play in it. Please reconsider your proposal
This again...….Originally Posted by Orthopraxis Go to original post
The CM clarified later that the PvE Raids will be dropping the best gear.
In other words, the best gear is gated behind exclusive PvE content.
You should edit your post to reflect this fact and post it entirely from a PvP perspective as that is the contingent of players that are locked out of obtaining the best gear the game has to offer - not PvE players. They are golden!
Yes, but as I say in my post, if only the Raid and the DZ are dropping the good stuff, that instantly makes irrelevant the remainder of the game world. Is this really something you want?
What if you can only do the raid once a week?
What If i want to solo?
Again, i'm being pushed into the DZ in both of those instances if i want gear that improves my character.
Well that didn't last long did it.Originally Posted by Goo-Goo-Man Go to original post