PVP Battlegrounds getting boring

[J11]

Just requoting from back a while ago on how to keep people engaged (of course we knew this was coming… ).

@J11

if you have already gained something, the kill probably would be worth nothing (extrinsically).

Dropped loot may also not mean much to lets say a purist PvPer… However that is not to say that intrinsic motivation would be decreased… Games like counterstrike thrived off pure instrinsic motivation for a long time ‘i beat you, and that increased my dopamine levels… mofo’. That is not to say that it wouldnt be possible in Orbus… But… You can see that the original counterstrike evolved in to providing custom skins (an extrinsic reward) to players etc… as did many other PvP based games.

this gem from chezil:

@Chezil

Getting R12 in one week is really the only goal I have, After that I got a feeling ill quickly get bored of Reborn with nothing PvP oriented to aim for.

And one other comment with a recommended solution for that problem:

@Chezil

Makes sense but a 2x havest is still a lot, Honestly maybe giving that PvP Transmog Gear some higher stats then regular Gear would make it better, Bg’s would pop a ton more!

Unfortunately world pvp is largely dead already mainly because of this:

@Arthanos

The guild Laughing Coffin has already stated their intent to do this, their goal to “turn all names white”. In a game with a larger player base this isn’t an issue, new groups will always pop up to fight, but in Orbus this could lead to things like when the wilds chest went largely uncontested by all but EK. I know I plan to have PvP on most of the time, but if the people I’m playing with don’t and I am repeatedly getting ganked by a whole group from a PvP guild I will be forced to turn it off.

There are solutions that have been recommended to give people more motivation to get in to PvP a bit more:

@Rickness_Voidwalker

How about gear with PvP “mini-affixes” which have a chance to drop when you kill a player such as:

• x% Increased crit chance vs players
• x% Increased crit damage vs players
• x% Reduced incoming crit damage vs players
• x% increased healing (only works with PvP on)
• x% increased DoT damage vs players
• x% Damage vs players
• x% Reduced incoming damage from players
• x% Honor point gain

and then they are scaled higher than the % you would get on PvE gear, this way, PvP players can PvP to get PvP gear and are not forced to PvE if they don’t want to and the increased resources can be a 1 in 10 chance to gain extra resources like the 10% exp bonus, it’s a nice bonus for the “risk” but isn’t something that is going to feel like you’re being forced in to doing to stay on top as a PvE player

Let’s sum up all these quotes with a TLDR:

• Extrinsic motivation is low right now. Not many people are truly feeling those dopamine hits.
• Getting highest rank is the only true extrinsic motivator for PvP
• Because the player base is so small, nobody wants to run around in the world with PvP on as it is not worth the pain to get ganked (as I mentioned in a post a couple of times before, forcing PvErs to PvP is not a very good way to go). PvP resources and PvP has been monopolized already even if unintentionally because of this.
• Some gear reward made for PvP will create a new strong extrinsic motivator transmogs, useful armor from drop tables or otherwise.

Here are my recommendations:

1) fill up the drop table gap with some PvE and PvP related items for overworld and battlegrounds rewards.

Essentially you will be drugging the whole community with dopamine if you added in some progressive rewards around that area (yay!):

@J11

There just needs to be some other rare things to list on the AH and let the basic neccesity items (the stuff already in the game) be as they are.

Anddd… I am sure some world PvPers will like this idea… Make some rare vanity items only drop when in PvP mode in overworld

2) Start adding progress bars for everything in the game. It has been stated and proven in the game psychology world that everyone loves progress bars. I personally have been part of teams which have built products that have had their sign up rate and stickiness increased by more than 100% MoM on a user base of 100k+ simply because we added several progression hooks such as progression bars:

(more thoughts on this here: Demonstration of progression in Orbus)