Age of Empires Online: Feel shafted as a PvP player

I am a PvP player and I hate PvE. I have no problem with PvE being in this game, it being a viable path of play, etc, but right now PvP doesn't feel viable at all. I'm level 12 currently and I feel like I have to PvE in order to PvP. This is a huge mistake from a game design standpoint because you're forcing some players, like me, to do something that we don't want to do in order to do what we want to do. This is a major problem in MMORPGs and has caused many games to fail, hard. Obviously a lot of players like to do both, but I think there are a good number of people like me who are going to be greatly frustrated by the fact that in order to get gear and level up efficiently we have to PvE.

You thought this was going to be a serious RTS? This game was created for the social/casual RTS end of the market, not for the hardcore multiplayer side. To me, this seems like an 'advanced' halowars kind of game, unless they managed to kill off all the bugs with the path finding and mechanics. What I mean is, unless they keep adding new civilizations to the game, I wouldn’t expect this game to last more than 1.5 years max because of the multiplayer system.

Maybe the main market of this game isn't PvP players, fine, but nonetheless there are competitive players here, and more seem to be showing up. I don't see how you can argue that a competitive environment isn't beneficial to MS from a business perspective and beneficial to this games community in general. SC2 is an extremely competitive game, yet not everyone plays it competitively. I have friends who are in silver league, don't really care about getting better, and still follow the competitive scene of sc2 and watch day 9 etc.

A few minor tweaks could make competitive players way happier without affecting PvE fans. It’s a win situation that requires little effort from the developers. What’s to lose? Just tweak the exp rewards for PvP so that less skilled players aren't turned off and so that it’s a more viable leveling path, and also add chests or a full array of gear in Sparta for all level tiers. We shouldn't be forced to PvE at all if we don't want to, and we shouldn't have to play 1 civ in order to play how we want to.

In beta I was level 6 and I reached level 30 only owning in pvp matches, I didn’t quests. All you get from PvP is Sparta points and empire points. The Sparta points can buy you a few pieces of gear, but the bottom line is that if you choose to PvP exclusively then you are forced to try to buy almost all of your gear which is time consuming and frustrating especially considering your only source of income from PvP is lucky tickets from empire points. PvP players really are shafted.

I'm hoping the PvP can be taken seriously. Do you mean you don't think it will be balanced well or what? I was really looking forward to getting into it when this game comes out. Don’t share the same thought but DO agree, I think you should be able to earn anything through PvP that you can through PvE (and relatively the same amount of time to do so). If a player enjoys PvP a lot and doesn't care for PvE why should he/she have to do PvE to gain the loot he/she needs to be competitive? To some people PvP is a large (the MAIN) reason why they get a game.

There needs to me some incentive (not only to learn and practice), for beginner players like myself to comeback time and time again to PvP. I am still very new to RTS, once I finally get the game...I'll do some PvE to begin with to learn the basics and improve, but my end game is definitely PvP. I really think introducing seasons/leagues/divisions etc has to be something for the future. There needs to be some further competitive reason to play ranked PvP, other than just another win/loss for your win/loss ratio. SC2's league setup to me sounds perfect.