This is why the level synced modes, which don't use or require PvP gear, are available.
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The gear and ability difference between a new player and someone with levels and 70 gear is rather large.
The crafted entry gear is pretty mediocre.
This is ideally what a matchmaking system is supposed to fix.
One REALLY needs to be implemented, and rather quickly.
No new players are going to come in and be a 2 second distraction for hundreds (thousands even, if you lose most) of games, just to get a couple pieces of gear and become a 3 second distraction.
They'll just quit PvP instead.
Really before they get this done just bloody put a Ilvl 55 requirement for Lvl50 PvP. I'm sick of those people who come in and do sub 1k damage and heals.
simple fix, remove all gear advantages in pvp, either solo que mode for pvp or 4man premade in pvp, no in-between.
What happened to people that liked to pvp because it's pvp and fun, rather than people trying to farm gear and be at a advantage of everyone else every way possible to give the opponent a handicap in every angle...? Is there a great sense of accomplishment knowing you completely rocked a solo que team with your 3-4 man pre-made on top of gear advantage...
Your use of "successful" mmo is definitely not based off of their pvp system. Any mmo game known for their pvp is not gear based. Just because some people like to take advantage of others in pvp with a handicap does not mean "a lot". If anything it's the other way around. A lot more people would be pvping right now if they actually felt pvp was "balanced."
Let's be honest, if pvp is perfect right now, there would be no need even for SE to completely rework the entire arcanist class along with changing 3 man premades vs solo ques. Even SE admits that their own pvp system is completely unbalanced.
WoW's PvP has easily been the most successful of any (MMO) game, in terms of participation and things like tournaments/events.
It's gear based.
DAOC, Rift, Aion, WoW, SWTOR, Everquest, and so on, they all have gear given out for playing.
GW2 was probably the most recent one with equal gear.
PvP was not very well received, it went nowhere because nobody felt they had something to play to (and the lack of attention and matchmaking. It's huge.)
Nobody said PvP was perfect, rather that a gear grind is pretty standard in MMOs and it's fine in FF14 if there's steps taken to even the playing field.
Me and 3 FC friends tried PvP last night, for the first time. We had forgotten it, in the midst of all the new dungeons and quests.
Well, we did lv30 and lv40 (as we thought lv50 would crush us)......we were the whipping boys.
It matched us with synched players in full Wolf Gear...it was pointless and we died horrible deaths.
However, that said, even though we were god awful, and the other teams must have thought we were donkeys.....never laughed so much in my life! :)
We had fun!! (we were on a conf call together - giggles, laughes, screams of delight, and jokey emotes all the way through!)
We are here to serve you, masters of PvP - we are your fodder!
:)
All those games you mentioned are not popular for pvp at all... if anything all those games you just mentioned, no one even plays anymore.
I'm talking about mmo's that were known for it's pvp. Old school games like Ragnarok Online with their WoE, entire guilds fighting to claim forts (Yes gear made a difference but there was no pvp arena gear grind to purchase pvp specific gear. You bought gear and/or created your own pvp gears with enhancement cards/refiner). Or games like Dragon Nest where their arena style pvp game play is non gear related and non lvl related. Both of those games pvp were so popular they have tournaments held annually world wide where players actually flew out of their country/state to compete.
I'm not trying to say that ff14 should follow the same pvp systems, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to take some ideas from games that were actually known for it's pvp. It's better than the mindless token style pvp system that has huge imbalances atm.
Meh I don't care about PVP one bit, as long as it doesn't impact on PVE I'm happy.