Are PvP drops actually helping PvP?

Just looked at the market today and saw that the +3% def Gladiator's Defense recipe is selling for a cool 2 billion influence, if it ever becomes available. The -resis proc is selling in excess of a billion and other PvP recipes that are somewhat desirable are selling for fairly high amounts as well.

I can honestly say that I find at least the procs desirable and would love to have them on a number of my toons, but that still doesn't create any incentive to actually PvP. I think that most of the people I know feel the same way. So are PvP drops actually helping PvP at this point? It seems to me that all this has done is create another handful of "elite" IO enhancements provided by a few PvPer's and a small number of masochistic farmers.

If the recipes were allowed to drop from Spawns within PvP zones, I believe this problem could be partially solved. Sure, people would farm them, but wouldn't the competition among opposing factions lead to...PvP, which is what the devs want anyway?

I have no interest in one on one PvP, but would probably risk entering the zone and killing some minions for the chance of getting one of these recipes. Due to the risk, I would probably even bring a team in to help out. It might also drive the price somewhere south of the influence cap as well. Make it lower drop rate than a Player kill, but something still feasible for a dedicated player. I know mentioning other games is somewhat Taboo here, but even though I no longer play a recently released game that allows you to intermittently fly, I have to admit that its system of rewards in PvP zones is very capable of completely driving an MMO endgame, partially because you can just kill random monsters in the PvP zones and still qualify for the rewards.

No they're not, they have a 1 in 200 kill chance of you getting one, you can only kill the same person once every 5 minutes, so if you kill at that time you'll get around 12 kills per hour so around 17 hours for each one farming in Arena.

They don't drop often enough even for players who actually do spend time PvPing. Some players that get them as drops will keep them for their own characters, which means less are making it to market. Doesn't help that while only PvPers are supplying these recipes, they're able to be purchased by both PvPers and PvEers so the demand is much greater than the supply. Rewards as the "carrot on the stick" for PvEers trying to get them into PvP will only work if the underlying system is at least somewhat balanced, but I13 (which was an attempt to do just that) actually ended up driving away PvPers and many PvEers won't even try PvP now that everything's so different.

The only way PvP is going to get help is if the system is fixed, which likely won't happen anytime soon.

in the current environment it isn't much help, but as they've said they're not done yet it's at least a step in the right direction.

pvp needs more incentives and IO drops help out.

ime, from the average 2-3 hour zone pvp session 1 person might shout over broadcast they got a recipe the entire time across the entire zone. i have gotten maybe 5 or 6 since they went live and all i do is pvp. the one nice thing about the rarity is that if i do get lucky enough to have one drop on me i can io an entire pvp toon on the proceeds. the way it is now, people who come to pvp for the loot are going to be disappointed 99% of the time.

here is proof of the sillyness of random dropping. i was happily pvping on my thermal corruptor for hours until my team decided to switch to heroes because the zone was villain heavy and this happens w/o me even being near the kill or firing a shot(on my earth/emp, lol):

Yeah, the changes were designed around making things more beginner-friendly, as well as trying to normalize everything. Unfortunately they went about it badly, and instead of trying to bring the low end up, they lopped it off at the top. Heck, it was admitted that some of the changes were implemented because experienced players were repeatedly beating new players, and experienced players had better reflexes, so everything got slowed down and simplified. I might just be being cynical here, but the I13 changes also managed to quiet things down on the PvP front - the players constantly asking for tweaks and fixes stopped asking, because they either stopped PvPing or quit the game. There's news floating around about further changes when Going Rogue comes out, but I'm afraid if the devs don't do a bang-up job of delivering what the players have been asking for, that'll be it for PvP. Of course, for those of us who still play and are trying to get changes made, we're walking a very fine line - last time the PvP community made a list of suggestions it was pretty much ignored and the players were handed a bunch of changes few people liked, and we're now wary of asking for changes because we're afraid the same thing will happen (I've already gone on the record as saying if it does happen again, I won't stick around).

So would a PvP "merit" system help more then (after DR gets dropped) to try and lure more people into zones? Say...get a merit for every non player killed in the zone and 50 merits for every player killed in the zone, with rewards being given by a PvP specific vendor?

I think the secondary effect to this type of system would be more PvP since a lot more people would be in the zone.

And yes, I agree. DR needs to go away. What's the point of IO's if they're simply rendered inconsequential upon entering the zone. If there needs to be an elite anywhere, it's PvP.

I don't love PvP 2.0, but I played some before the i13 changes and remember Blasters having Tank level defense etc. I wasn't a fan of that either, but the new system could have definitely been implemented better.

The funny thing is that by nerfing pvp drops, the devs made that carrot essentially impossible for the n00b players that want to possibly try out pvp to get the new lewt. And they can't even afford them on the market as they aren't sold frequently and if they are they are more expensive than purples.

So either you spend hours farming them, or hours farming for the influence to get them and then they get nerfed by DR when you go try to pvp.

Ya that makes them fairly retarded as a proper carrot.

I had an idea for a "relatively loot-free" PVP environment a while back. It turns out that it doesn't really solve a problem that actually exists, perhaps for anyone but me.

My thing about PVP is that if a new PVP'er plays an experienced PVP'er they will get hammered flat, and that's as it should be. The same is true of bridge, of chess, of a variety of traditional games. And yet bridge and chess and scrabble have found ways to pit people of like skill and interest against each other, in a situation where they have fun.

I haven't found that in PVP here. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough. There are just too many challenges to overcome at once to get someone interested.

1) new rules set
2) new skill set
3) new build, taking weeks and costing billions
4) Appropriate- level enemies

I have to master all of these things without any guarantee that, after putting in 50 hours and 5 billion inf, I'll actually enjoy the results of my work.

At least if I want to try folk dancing, or ice sculpture, or kendo, I can find out I hate it pretty quickly.

I personally average a pvpo drop every 200-300 kills; I spend INORDINATE amounts of time in pvp, and still I average 1, maybe two if I am EXTREMELY lucky.

The drop rate is simply NOT there, it makes me kinda lol.

My thoughts on PvP 2.0 is simply the fact that, I can now eat a sandwich while I PvP and still do well in zones and sometimes arena kickball's. They are honestly lacking the speed and damage that was PvP, I miss 1-2 shotting blasters on my stalker. Now? I'm lucky to 3-4 shot a good blaster. I miss 2-3 shotting corrs on my blaster, in a matter of 5 or less seconds.