I've noticed something that has been a plague on PVP games in the last 15 years that I've been playing them that I think is utterly hysterical, as follows:
Many of the players of today that believe they are great PVP'ers do not actually fight the best opponents in open world PVP. This is common in not just ESO, but in games like WoW, EVE Online, Aion, etc. Essentially, what occurs, is a similar form of what we used to use clans / guilds for back in the day. I'll use a comparison of my 1st experience in a PVP game, with Lineage2 vs. my current experience in MMO's through the lens of ESO.
Lineage 2 - 15 Years ago.
In this game, gear grinding was insane, to have a B grade weapon (weapons scaled to S) you basically had to have been playing for almost 2+ years, at level 55+ grinding out 10% XP in a day required about a 12 hour investment, when you got to level 65+ it was basically 12 hours to make around 5%.
The penalty of death was 2-3% XP, and if you died in PVP and it wasn't a clan war and you were near level cap you were basically losing the last 12 hours of your XP grinding every time you died. Also, if you ganked someone who didn't want to fight, you received Karma which needed to be worked off slaying monsters, your name was red and you had a significant risk of dropping your gear if someone killed you while you had karma. Dropping something like a weapon would set you back at least a year.
This is what guilds were built and predicated on. You wanted to maximize individual gain and minimize losses by surrounding yourself with quality players and working as a team to accomplish very difficult goals. This encouraged teamwork between the best players, setting aside of ego, and created a natural hierarchy in the game in which the best players formed an alliance, managed the castles they won, and made it possible for the people who were playing in the zones they owned the castles of an opportunity to make significant in game currency (very rare) if the alliance managed the seeding process properly.
The best players were also the best PVP'ers. You needed to defend your grinding area's (TOI - Tower of *** I forgot the name) grinding angels was a hotly contested spot, and many times when we were at war with another clan we would fight over the opportunity to grind experience in these area's for hours on end. The best players were constantly fighting the best players for the best grinding spots.
ESO - Current Day
In this game, gear grinding is very easy. Some of the best gear is easily crafted and the stat bonuses from gold jewelry / gear is very minimal, you can be a very competent player in epic purple attire. Grinding XP is so easy that we have over 810 champion point levels. You can play casually and still be very competitive.
The penalty for death is almost totally non-existent. You don't need to repair your gear, the only thing you suffer is a respawn and having to run back to the fight. You will never lose something you worked for.
Guilds are now built and predicated on their ability to do specific things well (Trials) or are primarily social gathering places, with no hierarchy of who the best players are, and very little reason to set aside ego or differences to accomplish a greater goal, because no greater goal actually exists. I should note, this isn't the case for trading guilds, the last bastion of what a real guild should be based on, which many players in the forums want to ruin because they don't like the idea of paying dues. Old players have no incentive to teach new players how to learn how to play, because overall difficulty isn't that hard, finding enough players to do the content is fairly easy, even if you have drama with 90% of your server. Only the highest level achievements in the game now require teamwork.
The best PVE'ers and best PVP'ers are separated for the most part, though more often than not you find that the best PVP'ers are also very good at PVE as they have a serious working knowledge of the class and its limitations/best skills/best stat / gear allocation, etc. But, these so called PVP'ers that we find in ESO, don't actually fight each other, more often than not. Many of them have multiple characters across multiple factions, and rather than put themselves into a guild where they would need to control their ego, they separate into dueling circles or small guilds that don't fight each other in open world, and most have no idea how to play as a team.
They talk on the forums like they want "serious PVP" - they groan for balance - they complain about lack of challenge - yet they purposely limit the challenges to themselves as players (other good players) by boosting their ego ganking scrubs while totally ignoring the players who give them a challenge in Cyro.
i.e.
Majority of people on the forums are fake. I think this reflects our society today as well. Most of the people talking to you are liars today, with no interest in challenging themselves, constantly seeking the easy way out, massaging their ego's, and running from or refusing to challenge themselves due to a fear of having their ego crushed. They have no idea how to take their "L"'s and instead will focus on how a class is op, it was a 1vX, a mob hit them once, etc.
I know this comes off as a "Back in my day" and it's true, games are way more accessible today than they used to be because of a lot of the things mentioned above, and that's a good thing, but I'll say this -
If you think you're good at PvP but all you do is run around Cyro 1vX'ing scrubs and fighting the occasional duel against good players, while your group avoids fighting those good players because they are your "friends" - you're not good. Gone are the days when guilds had purpose, men and women set aside ego's to accomplish complete server domination for their guild, and good players treated each other with respect on virtual battlefields.
Enjoy the rest of your day you tea bagging clowns
![:)]( ":)")
- Signed: That guy who makes sure the zerg kills your small group instead of allowing you to wipe them and drinks up your QQ zerg tears.
