Mid-Game PvP Experience

My characters are currently between level 20 and 30. I am greatly enjoying the game!! (Like overall the game is amazing, I am a satisfied customer!) The core gameplay mechanics are excellent and collecting a wide variety of gear is really satisfying. (Obviously, inventory issues reduce the fun of collecting cool stuff, bur that is another thread.)

I want to like PvP in this game, but currently, I am not finding it very enjoyable. There is very little challenge/Risk/Danger in PvP. I have played PvP every day since global launch and I am currently in Silver league.

I currently find it trivial to win dozens of battles in a row. (I don’t think I have lost at all this week and today is the last day of the tournament).

Given that I win every battle easily, it seems that all PvP is about is waiting to see if I get lucky enough to win super-quickly (one or two turns). The more often I get lucky in a given week, the higher I am in the PvP rankings. (Since everyone on the leaderboard also seems to be winning every match).

This isn’t urgent, but at some point it would be good for the developers to examine the PvP Experience. Personally, for me, PvP would be more enjoyable if I could feel good about winning close matches or pulling victory from the jaws of defeat. Instead it seems like winning is a given and any match that lasts four turns is essentially a lose, when if I finish at full health.

I’d like to say the PVP experience improves as you progress, but really it is exactly the same, and has been for many months. PVP really does need a rework.

Winning battles is pretty much guaranteed. The only battles you are liable to lose will be while you are still levelling to 50 and come across an opponent who has been sandbagging - deliberately keeping themselves in lower PVP tiers for easier wins.

Currently there is no incentive to progress to higher leagues - they offer exactly the same rewards, only with an increased likelihood of finding more experienced players with better gear that are harder to kill and more capable of quick wins. But you still win every battle, it is just how quick you can do it.

This latest patch mixed things up but only by making turn 0 wins impossible. People now fall back onto counting a round 1 win as a good result, and anything slower as bad. Losses don’t even factor into that.

Looking at minion stats and even your own PVP record it looks like there was meant to be some mechanic for defending in PVP, but I’ve not seen any sign of that in the game in ~10 months.

This. As a game mode it is virtually as-is from the very start of Early Access and desperately needs rethinking to actually make it something worth playing as entertainment.

The only reason to do PvP is to farm Honor and weekly rewards (Tier Rewards and gems) which can be achieved with ~2 days of game play. There is no value in doing PvP otherwise. You can get Crests through all game modes, like Events, Skirmishes, and Dungeons. The Goals “Win X Versus Battles” is maxed at 500 so is easily accomplished over time (unlike the other modes).

Honor is certainly a worthwhile resource but the main thing it can buy that is not otherwise easily available is Keys. The problem with Honor is that it can be used for so many different resources (mainly Ore) that it hamstrings the Honor Deal function in the Kingdom Bazaar leaving most kingdoms to never touch it (in order to maintain the Bazaar at higher levels for Gold and Ruby Keys, it requires your entire Kingdom to be running 30 pvp matches daily; lower levels of the Kingdom Honor Deal are a waste).

1st… I have to say you are not mid game. In the current state, I’d say “mid game” is more like 5 level 50s and at least 50 citadel. I’m only saying this to give you an idea of what is in store down the road. The struggle is real. Heh

PvP has always kind of sucked. But unless and until it is ever a live pvp, against a real opponent, it’s not pvp anyway. It’s just another you against AI mode.

OK now to the details. PvP is not about the winning (because virtually everyone can pull that off) it is about the scoring. Its about getting to place where you don’t have to rely on getting lucky to get those “super quick” wins.

Is that awesome? No. But that is the pvp. You are really playing against yourself, trying to get the high score. “Wins” mean little. The ease of wins means little.