At the most basic level, it boils down to a lack of rewards. Undoubtedly when you make such a claim, you are met with seemingly unending jeers and poorly-phrased rebuttals. The most common of these is that, to paraphrase, "the reward for PvP should be killing your opponent and trying to win". This all too common statement misses the point entirely and betrays its originator's understanding of why we play MMOs in the first place.
Ask yourself the following question: why does the MMO market exist? The answer can be found in basic psychology: as human beings, we subconsciously find the effort<==>reward cycle engaging and addictive. You see a monster off by some rocks and you rush to kill it. For your efforts, you are rewarded with experience, money, notoriety, loot, credit towards a zone event, or any number of other rewards. This, however, is just the beginning. These temporary rewards beget larger and more substantial rewards. Your increased notoriety with that faction now opens up a small collection of very nice item enchantments. Your participation in the zone event sends a sampling of currency your way with which you can purchase all varieties of powerful trinkets. And the mob you killed happened to drop a modest upgrade to that piece of gear you've been looking to part ways with for some time. All of these are transactions wherein effort is the currency and rewards are the product. MMOs leverage this very cycle with hope of obtaining you as an ongoing customer well into the future - a future, I might add, that is designed to far exceed the futures to be found in most other games. The moral of the story here is that, for MMOs, the joy of simply "playing the game" is simply not enough to maintain a thriving customer base for any longer than would be possible in non-MMOs. Why else do you think a franchise like Call of Duty reinvents itself seemingly every year? Activision knows that the franchise must appear relatively "fresh" at all times or their player base will bleed away.
So what does Rift's PvP system offer? A sizable, gated grind for negligible gear upgrades, that you scarcely even need given the normalization in place, and little else. There are no actual "rewards". The effort<==>reward cycle in Rift PvP doesn't apply and the bleeding out of Rift's PvP community is evidence enough of this fact. Stated another way, there simply isn't any reason at all to log into Rift each and every day if PvP is what drives you. The same, tired zerg on zerg combat awaits you and when you log off after your session, you'll truly have nothing to show for it. This may get some of us by for a couple weeks or perhaps a month, but if you want the sweeping majority to stick around, you need to give us a reason to log in each day. And, no, attacking those with red names is not going to cut it when there's nothing on the line and no goals to shoot for. You can paint it any way you'd like but facts are facts.
Rift desperately needs some form of high-end, competitive PvP that can act as a defibrillator to a comatose PvP scene. Rift PvP needs to progress beyond the mindless clash of red names with nothing on the line and offer real competition with real rewards. This high-end PvP can come via an arena system, rated warfronts, or some other clever invention, but it needs to happen in one way or another if PvP in Rift is ever to be taken seriously by the MMO community. Denial of the issue will only make an already disheartening situation dire. And, unfortunately given their stagnation around the topic, it's almost entire in Trion's hands now. Efforts have been made by the community to inject some life into the dying PvP population but they've done little to curb the distaste for this aspect of Rift and simply cannot address the core issues. The question then becomes:
Where do we go from here?
Were I in charge of PvP at Trion, I would propose the following and have it released as early as 2.3:
1) Introduce Arena in Rift via dimensions. Put in place a small collection of Trion-created dimensions specifically for small team vs small team combat but allow for player-created dimensions to be available for non-rated matches (skirmishes). Those player-created dimensions that the community enjoys most can be promoted to official arena maps for rated games. Since we will be leveraging dimensions for this purpose, ensure that anyone can enter the dimension at any time if they wish to observe.
2) Implement a simple rating system for Arena and host it within the existing leaderboard interface. You can use ELO or even make it as simple as W-L at the start to simply get it off the ground.
3) Organize Arena into "seasons" wherein, at the conclusion of each season, the top teams are rewarded with a unique title, a mount and a dimension statue to commemorate their achievement.
4) Continue balancing PvP and PvE separately to avoid the seesaw effect that plagued WoW for a few years and has since lead uninformed players to claim that "Arena was the death of WoW". It wasn't but that's a topic for another post, another time.
5) Ensure that the Rift Arena system is not "required" for those that enjoy PvP but rather "an option" for those that prefer smaller-scale, coordinated combat.
From this point and forward, the sky's the limit but if we're to fly, we first need to leave the ground. To me, Rift has always been the greatest MMO on the market today in terms of PvE. Let's usher in a Telaran era where Rift PvP is no longer a laughing stock among the MMO community and is, instead, a highly-regarded asset to an otherwise fantastic game.
So what does Rift's PvP system offer? A sizable, gated grind for negligible gear upgrades, that you scarcely even need given the normalization in place, and little else. There are no actual "rewards". The effort<==>reward cycle in Rift PvP doesn't apply and the bleeding out of Rift's PvP community is evidence enough of this fact. Stated another way, there simply isn't any reason at all to log into Rift each and every day if PvP is what drives you. The same, tired zerg on zerg combat awaits you and when you log off after your session, you'll truly have nothing to show for it. This may get some of us by for a couple weeks or perhaps a month, but if you want the sweeping majority to stick around, you need to give us a reason to log in each day. And, no, attacking those with red names is not going to cut it when there's nothing on the line and no goals to shoot for. You can paint it any way you'd like but facts are facts.
Rift desperately needs some form of high-end, competitive PvP that can act as a defibrillator to a comatose PvP scene. Rift PvP needs to progress beyond the mindless clash of red names with nothing on the line and offer real competition with real rewards. This high-end PvP can come via an arena system, rated warfronts, or some other clever invention, but it needs to happen in one way or another if PvP in Rift is ever to be taken seriously by the MMO community. Denial of the issue will only make an already disheartening situation dire. And, unfortunately given their stagnation around the topic, it's almost entire in Trion's hands now. Efforts have been made by the community to inject some life into the dying PvP population but they've done little to curb the distaste for this aspect of Rift and simply cannot address the core issues. The question then becomes:
Where do we go from here?
Were I in charge of PvP at Trion, I would propose the following and have it released as early as 2.3:
1) Introduce Arena in Rift via dimensions. Put in place a small collection of Trion-created dimensions specifically for small team vs small team combat but allow for player-created dimensions to be available for non-rated matches (skirmishes). Those player-created dimensions that the community enjoys most can be promoted to official arena maps for rated games. Since we will be leveraging dimensions for this purpose, ensure that anyone can enter the dimension at any time if they wish to observe.
2) Implement a simple rating system for Arena and host it within the existing leaderboard interface. You can use ELO or even make it as simple as W-L at the start to simply get it off the ground.
3) Organize Arena into "seasons" wherein, at the conclusion of each season, the top teams are rewarded with a unique title, a mount and a dimension statue to commemorate their achievement.
4) Continue balancing PvP and PvE separately to avoid the seesaw effect that plagued WoW for a few years and has since lead uninformed players to claim that "Arena was the death of WoW". It wasn't but that's a topic for another post, another time.
5) Ensure that the Rift Arena system is not "required" for those that enjoy PvP but rather "an option" for those that prefer smaller-scale, coordinated combat.
From this point and forward, the sky's the limit but if we're to fly, we first need to leave the ground. To me, Rift has always been the greatest MMO on the market today in terms of PvE. Let's usher in a Telaran era where Rift PvP is no longer a laughing stock among the MMO community and is, instead, a highly-regarded asset to an otherwise fantastic game.
