*Disclaimer* I would like to state that this post is intended primarily for the relevant BioWare development team, and I hope it reaches them. I should state in advance that I am troll proof, don't care what the trolls have to say, and likely won't even look at this post again after posted, so please if you are a troll, go find someone who's ego needs your approval elsewhere. If you are not a troll, please feel free to post your pros and cons here so that those too might be evaluated by the appropriate BioWare team.
Dear BioWare,
I am of the personal opinion that the latest Ilum changes range slightly above idiotic. I understand that while a change was necessary, the wrong change was made. BW was on to something when they implemented patch 1.1 encouraging open world PVP in Ilum. I realize that it did not go quite to plan on all servers, however, the changes made to fix the issues in the subsequent patch on Thursday were frankly... stupid.
Here is the issue. Ilum PVP became broke because on certain servers, one side (I am guessing in most cases the more numerous) steam rolled the other, destroyed the opposing factions turrets, and proceeded to camp the opposing faction at their med respawn. This is agreeably bad, and needed a change. While the subsequent change making the enemy base unreachable to the opposing faction was successful in keeping people from being spawn camped, it spawned a whole new slew of problems that really fix nothing, which I will explain in the following paragraph/s.
On my server (Balgoth's Beacon (PVP)), Imperial outnumbers Republic. On Wednesday (first day of 1.1) The republic took to camping between their turrets at their base, and simply healing/buffing the turrets, and letting the turrets do most of the killing when the Imperials attacked. The imperials tried to destroy the turrets, but were unsuccessful. While the Imperials controlled all of Ilum, the Republics claimed more overall kills, and the valor exchange was near even. While we did not have the same issue as the other servers had, the potential for it was there, and a change did in fact need to be made.
The problem caused by Thursday's change on Balgoth's beacon is that the Republics still camp inside their base, refuse to come out, and use exploitative behavior by using pull abilities to pull Imperials who venture too close into their base 1 shotting them. This has eliminated virtually ALL PVP on Ilum, when just a day before it was a massive battle/lagfest. The change effectively fixed one singular problem, and created several new problems, which by definition, cannot be labelled as 'problem solving'. In the spirit of 'constructive criticism', I have a few alternative changes I would like to propose to the BioWare development team that eliminate the initial problem, without creating another.
First, Instead of having an un-enter-able base, have an un-enter-able spawning area protected by a semi-permeable force field that only allow friendly players to pass through, and cannot be targeted through. This will prevent players from being spawn camped, give them an option to leave if things go bad, and will keep that factions players from exploiting the mechanics to gain easy kills. Most important mechanic to the force field is that it cannot be passed through if the player is in combat. This will keep it from being exploited by friendly players stepping out, taking shots, then retreating behind it to heal, but will still let them pass inside to use the speeder if they are out of combat.
Second, Put the sentry turrets back into the base, but make them indestructible, and change some of their mechanics. If you make them un-taunt-able, have random aggro, keep the damage high enough, and possibly give the turret shot an AoE effect, or a line AoE (though this might prove to be a bit overpowered, giving a camping team significant advantage by giving them many kills at a time); tanking them will not be a possibility. By making sure they have the range and line of sight to keep the area in front of the spawn clear, it will be virtually impossible to have an army camped outside the spawn area, giving friendly players some wiggle room.
At any rate, something HAS to be changed about it currently as taking 4 hours to complete a single daily is a bit... __________ (<--insert choice derogatory term here)
Sincerely,
Concerned Player
These are just a few of the suggestions I have, and as I really like this game, I would hate to see it go the way of the wind due to contradictory development choices (*cough* RIFT *cough*)
