Rishi PvP is All About Fun, and That’s a Problem

The Rishi Stronghold is by far the most innovative Stronghold ever created. Centered around player-made PvP, Rishi allows players to team-up and go head-to-head in a variety of formats such as 4v4, 1v1, 8v8, and Huttball.

Rishi may not be open world PvP, but it’s in the same family, and as we all know, open world PvP hasn’t fared well over the years. I’ve visited the Outlaw’s Den on many occasions and I’ve yet to see another player there, yet alone a full-on PvP Brawl.

Iokath, BioWare’s latest attempt at open world PvP was met with great anticipation, but fell short of expectations, and did not meet the vision BioWare had for this daily area.

So here we are about to get the Rishi Stronghold, whose hallmark is player created PvP. There are special decorations players can craft and purchase to use as obstacles. Players can breakup into teams for Huttball. There is fancy scoreboard to keep track of who’s winning and who’s losing. Even Baron Deathmark is on hand to provide commentary for your match. Oh, and since Giradda the Hutt isn’t there to observe your matches, you can kick the Huttball.

Unlike regular PvP the only incentive for players to participate in Rishi PvP is for the fun of it. You can’t queue for matches. You can’t earn XP, CXP, or Valor. You can’t advanced weekly or daily missions, and there are no unassembled components or other rewards to be had. There is only the novelty of dueling with friends in their custom created courses. I don’t doubt it will be fun, but it’s not clear that players will be willing to settle for a meaningless pick-up game when they can group together for real competition and rewards.

I like that BioWare continues to swing for the fences with their content. Whether or not Rishi PvP will be a home run, remains to be seen.

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Game Update 5.9.2 which includes the Rishi Stronghold and other PvP changes is now available for testing on the PTS. Game Update 5.9.2 will go live on July 31, 2018.