Many years ago before starting Spacetime, one of my most critically-acclaimed games featured a required "PVP" component. The 'last level' of the game was all about beating each other up (in space). My development team had millions in resources, months of time to build, and we wound up creating one of the most finely balanced multiplayer space combat games that's ever existed. Unfortunately none of that mattered because the rest of the game was almost entirely PVE, and only a small percentage of the game population would accept PVP performance dictating their PVE success. Facing massive backlash from the majority population of the game management insisted that we revert the "PVP" requirements for endgame. Looking back, I'm dumb for making this effort (in "Star Wars: Jump to Lightspeed") because some friends of mine had done a similar thing with another older game and it had flopped in the exact same way. They warned me and back then I didn't listen. As a general rule, MMO players en masse prefer PVP success based on PVE content consumption and not the other way 'round.
Also, to be clear: expansions are a business effort (driving player retention and long-term revenue). I would not green-light a PVP-focused expansion that didn't effectively monetize all of the components in such a way as to make up for the deliberate absence of PVE revenues. My guess is that these monetization changes would sour even the most dedicated player as they would go far beyond what we currently have in our largely PVE-focused game.
Originally Posted by Cinco
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