PvP Expectations
Alright guys, I have less to talk about the PvP portions at the moment, mostly because it's less automated and more re-active. But I did want to reiterate that being a casual guild, we want everyone to be open to all types of gameplay. So here is a quick breakdown of the pvp aspects of the game and how I would like them addressed as a guild.
PvP
Arenas / Battlegrounds / Warplots
Arenas – 2/3/5 person teams – Many people understand how an arena system works and why they are so popular. They are very fast paced, quick, balls to the wall killing matches. Wildstar plans on taking these in a somewhat different direction. Instead of a single death meaning elimination from the match, they plan on using a revival system of sorts. The premise is the same, beat your opponent to death, but instead of a person being dead until the match is over, a total number of respawns are available to each team. This adds an entirely new layer of thought to the old form of “Burst Healer, Kill DPS” train of thought. Now, their healer can come back to life without the aid of his/her teammates and keep the match rolling. Only until all of the respawns are depleted and the entire team is killed off can the match end. Remember, each character can only exist on one team per bracket. There will be a ELO ranking of sorts.
Arena teams should be organized privately. Arena events will most likely not be organized as a guild as a whole, but should heavily consider making teams with guild mates. Use the LFG tool and mumble at your leisure. I will be looking for an arena team and will be recruiting appropriately.
Battlegrounds – 10/15 Person Teams – These are the objective style games, such as Capture the Flag and Domination. As far as I know, these have been all but confirmed as game styles, but I'm not sure. I do know that there will be a bracket system and you will be able to level in Battlegrounds. Think of WoW's Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin. I really don't know too much about these at the moment, but I wanted to touch upon a couple things for the guild. Play with guild members when possible and play the objective. Don't be that jackhole that's just off killing people because killing people is what you do. Protect the flag carrier, hold down a point, and be a team player. Nothing worse than having a team of jackasses that only care about their personal score than to win the game.
SMASH AND GRAB – This is what we know from CBT2 Patch note.
If you want to make an organized BG team, PLEASE use the LFG tool to make events. If there is enough demand, I would love to see a weekly activity for people to play battlegrounds together. We will need people both to lead these events and to participate, so keep your eyes peeled for the PvP Centric players!
Warplots – 20/40 Person Teams– Holy shit. I don't know about you guys, but this has me almost as excited as raiding does. Seriously, who ever thought of this idea absolutely fucking rocks. If you mix housing with PvP, this is what you get. I wanted to go into a bit of how Warplots work and how I think, at this stage of the game, needs to be organized.
Warplots are customizable maps that a team builds prior to battling with another team. You use all of the resources that you have available and organize them on your grid system that you can fit. At the moment I don't know all the details, but from videos and reviews you can build walls, cannons, missile launchers, gates, pretty much anything that is military related... And raid bosses. Put a fucking raid boss on a warplot. Then your teams raid plot and the opposing teams raid plot pretty much smush together and you fight on eachothers warplots against eachother. I'm really not sure if it's just a massive fuck fest of killing, if there is an objective of capturing the other teams keep, or something else that we don't even know about. One thing is that there will be a need to REPAIR AND PREPARE after every fight, as items become perma damaged if damaged heavily enough from a fight. What I do know is, we need some form of leadership and organization in order to be successful. In the future, I will want some form of warplot development team.
PvP Gear and Currency - So far we do know that participating in PvP will result in some form of "PvP currency". At the moment, we don't know how much or the details of what to purchase, but we DO know that there will be diminishing returns in open world PvP and that this currency will be used to buy some form of benefit, be it gear or novelty items (mounts anyone?).
I also want to mention a quick blurb that was said about PvP gear. PvP gear will have all of the major stats that PvE players will have, but there will also be two stats that are worthless to PvE players. These starts are "PvP Attack" and "PvP Defend". What these do is pretty simple. On top of your general damage, PvP Attack will increase all of your attacks potency against players of the opposite faction. PvP Defend works in a very similar way, on top of your typical defense stats, you will have a bonus to how much damage you mitigate from people of the opposite faction. These will be an integral part of how one will customize their gear to be the most efficient as possible in all forms of PvP. That said, it WILL be possible to "convert" PvE gear into PvP gear by socketing these stats into it. Keep that in mind for a gear piece that you just upgraded. It may be good to change some of the sockets into PvP stats. Bam, instant pvp gear!
Remember that these stats help in all forms of PvP, be it Arenas, BG's, Warplots and in the open world. Might not hurt to keep a spare set with you at all times, especially in highly contested areas with top end mats. It may make adventuring into the world a bit easier, especially when you bring your friends!
TO BOTH PvE and PvP'ers.
These are just some of the things that I want people to start thinking of for Wildstar. We built AltTabMe as a community and have always focused on that first. GW2 was great for this because there was so little direction for “hardcore” gameplay. Now that we have that direction with Wildstar, I want to make sure we always put the community first, but also make sure we're not little bitches and fail at these new, awesome, hardcore features. Over time, we will start to really turn our head towards raiding. We will have a weekly schedule for raids. We will have a weekly schedule for warplots. We will need people who are willing to dedicate their times to accomplish these feats. If you want to play casual, by all means, play casual! We do not want people to commit to anything that they don't want to do. But if you want to be a raider or a warplotter, I ask for your dedication. There is nothing worse than preparing all week for a raid, making sure that I'm all ready and that my team is ready, only to have 10 people not show up. That kills peoples initiative and drive, and I really don't want that to happen. I want to raid with you guys. I would like to think you guys would want to raid with us. For some of you it's an experience that we've been drooling for years over, and some of you it's new and exciting. I want us to share this game together and achieve everything that there is to achieve.
I'm diving into this headfirst and I want to get everything out of it. I don't expect world firsts. I don't expect server firsts. I don't even care if we actually finish all of the content on time. All I care about is that we push and keep striving for better. Continually grow as a guild in all of these endeavors. Encourage each other. Help each other. Win with each other.
- Gyoin