Since the game only has two factions any attempt at pitting them against each other will be unbalanced and being beat 3:1 isn't fun, nor is winning completely lopsided fights. Guild based is the way to go. It makes sooo much sense on a lore level for both the Empire and Republic. You could even combine a guild system into a faction vs faction system by making guilds akin to feudal vassals vying for control of certain resources/areas/whatever that give them unique capabilites or buffs to aid them in defending their faction. If you could pull off enough of that political power in the hands of the players it will really add to the game and the sense of a virtual world. I feel like the Old republic has a lot of room to make this kind of system believable and realistic and really fun for the players.

Guild vs Guild

I joined a PvP server not a PvPvE server. Only reason I dont want FvF is because of imbalance.

Everyone can find a Guild. If that said Guild isnt very good then its there players not an

imbalance. Also if your up against a better guild just ally with some others and take them out.

 

I dont want to be forced to PvE even with PvP in the mix.

Can i vote for raw open world pvp 200 more times? come on "pvpers".

My favorite PvP experience, by far, was Dark Age of Camelot's Frontier warfare. I feel that's something that can be implemented in a variety of game lore worlds and maybe an idea to keep in mind when designing a new PvP option for STOR.

Heard you guys like feedback and ideas

 

PvPvE: tricky business, hard to do right, we will need insant transportation to the arena, could use the PvE buffing mechanic like in WAR (other faction members in the PvE area around do PVE stuff that buffs the PVP guys like HC dailies to kill their minimap, or hack the others turett system) also smaller maps please, like twice a warzone not 10 times, speedering just kills the mood! Also take a look at the synergy between Dust 413 (or something) and eve: you already got ships and ground combat let me do incentivised space missions above the place to take away their air support (also really lore friendly idea)

 

Guild vs Guild: I can only imagine this with the eventual guild ships: Guild leader of 8 or 16 challanges other Guild leader (officer) in chat with a /guild duel they both get a random place in space where they warp to in the now instanced guild ships and from that its basically esseless/voidstar. I would love to do that + the added benefit of it forging the guild spirit.

EDIT: Please take a look at CrimeCraft: Gangwars - what they did there could be awesome If a guild beats another guild in a certain area they get to hold that place for several hours which generates revenue to the guild bank this could work in synergy with the above idea and people could see on the galaxy map which guild controls the space above Voss for example. This helps to make the guilds famous, which is an important epeen factor, and could get buffs for you faction on the planet. Atm I don't even know which giuld is the best on my server and would like to. I'm positive this would help the spirit of the servers. (also you can add same faction battles for space stations in outer rim places.)

 

Faction Population capped: Well I don't know don't we have warzones for that? If it would work by queing from the station, imagine poor imp guys sitting in line for an hour cursing life. If you make it so that they can do warzones in a simultaneous que maybe. Otherwise I'm not a fan of the idea because cap will be only an issue on one side (like ten reps against capped 50 imps if you mess up the system)

 

Raw PVP: I'm certain it can be made good just needs more attention from the crew! for example: - Smaller map or the whole planet made pvp even on pve servers (small planet mind you) so if there is 30 imps around I can at least see 1-2 from anywhere on the map acting like certain red flags to certain bulls. Also you can always add more Line fo Sight stuff so people fight in a relatively small area but movement and positioning counts for more than numbers. I'm thinking mazes, trenches: this might help with the load on smaller machines too

- Secondly, traveling made easy If PvPaul on the battlefield says to PvPenny from the guild that they need help on the battlefield she could get there easily with certain transportation devices found on Belsavis...

- Thirdly incentive! So the Illum buff was meh the armaments were even more meh, and when you decided to leave the blood combine (aka the dirty 16) to shoot the objective you crippled yourself not getting the kills of the others. One needs to have more objectives on the battlefield have you guys seen a war movie? this group has this objective that has that. Imagine that you as a sneaky char like a scrapper get personalyised objectives on your playstyle on the battlefield (maybe use the most points in skill tree) like sneak in enemy base kill x players there and blow stuff up, while a trooper gets points for killing sneakies in the base, while a sage healer gets objectives for healing x amount of people for x, and like a sniper gets a medal for killing people without getting damage. I hope you can see what I mean, this would be Dynamic and Immersive and your

PR guys could show off with it. this is similar to the medal system but not quite the same.

 

I really hope someone reads this as I only post on forums twice a year...

Thanks!

 

(pleas don't grammarize me I'm Hungarian ok?!)

Edited March 29, 2012 by Starhugger

How about making the flash point entrances or operation entrances in the open world so as to promote pvp in such areas. This open world pvp doesn't have to be objective based at all. Just a suggestion to consider to promote pvp in other areas, or even new areas.

Guild based - everyone is your enemy except players in your guild. Guilds claim objectives.

 

No factions. Allow alliances from both sides

guild based is not good...primarily because it conflicts with republic background.... they are not sith fighting constant civil wars they try to unite after all... and to be pro active: no gang/mob wars , separatists and corporate wars are not that important or big enough and not even a focus.

 

open raw: could work if it is made that way that population is dispersed correctly and there is proper counterbalances, of any kind, for population problem.

 

pvpve sounds promising and pve part of community that wines that pvp community demands mess with their fun could be enticed to be part of it.

 

somewhere between raw and pvpve sounds good to me

 

edit: with war oficialy on now you can blur the lines of oposition. so far the questing areas felt like porders my side their side. treat them now as a battle front were the no area of operations have depthe and the objective usualy is behind enemy lines.

that creates with no extra mechanism pvp reason... i would gladly camp an enemy quest objective for a wile and if ganget LOL and continue my game.

Edited March 29, 2012 by Narfirill

guild vs guild.

The whole bolstering is (outside of the 10-49 warzones) a terrible idea. be it with stats or npc. there is and can never be a perfect balance. also there shouldn't be. the better players, those with superior strategy, etc are supposed to win.

 

reasons why it will never be 'fair':

'Raw' Open World: Zerg is successful because no coordination. No real impact anyway.

PvPvE: if the supporting items are too good, it is contra-productive to bring people. if they are worse (as it will be), they don't change the outcome.

Faction population capped: generates playing times. we already have that in form of winning/losing streaks based on faction and time of the day (and day of the week). reason for that is that the % of bad players vary by time. all pvp with max group size suffers from that, will never be changed as long as pvp is not event based and in organized groups.

Guild based: also not fair but differences are earned. you think organizing a 100man group is easy? zerging doesn't work anymore if the defenders are even a little bit smart. because if the defenders have a spy in front of a choking point or just see it from their defense, the attacker runs into 4 simultanous orbital strikes, 5 cluster bombs etc and die. guild based pvp requires management and player skill. with it's rewards and competitive nature it can give a nice end game variant.

Managing world pvp is an art, I am not that kind of artist but I have spent 10 last years into MMO-games and have some taste for acknowledging what could be a great pvp experience from a bad one.

 

First, you asked us about the rules or story line that would excite us more. This would define the rules telling who our opponents are and the "objectives". These define the "game mechanics", in other terms the hidden rules that controls how often and how long a certain player would spend in the PVP area. It has absolutely nothing to do with the enjoyment and excitement a player could feel.

The enjoyment and excitement comes from great fights, epic ones. And this is quiet difficult to make it great for everyone: I mean soloers, stealth ones, 4-men / 8-men groups and for large scale raids. Everyone should find a lasting motivation to spend its entire playing time with a great scenario and great rewards.

 

 

Raw PVP without population restriction is quiet outdated. But anyway, you can make it viable even when a faction is 1v3+ ratio. You got to have some "mechanic" or "map configuration" where the under-numbered faction can stand and still have fun. Here comes to my mind the medieval fortress. They were build in a manner where the defenders would easily stand a larger group of attackers: Casters would dps and hide from small windows, healers would hide from attackers' LOS and heal their partners quiet easily, and surprise me to make a cac able to defend such a point.

In Ilum, the turret were a total fail: placed in wide open space, if a single player can reach it, that turret can wipe out an entire raid within seconds: this is going from total domination to total wipe in seconds. You should have called these turrets the nuclear launch site to be more explicit.

Make opportunities for soloers, some places where they safely see incoming groups and could hide behind walls or in houses or making a place that would randomly split a group and giving a fair chance to 1v1.

 

PVPVE balanced is commonly used in PVP environments for one simple reason. People need to sleep. If a server has "low" hours, PNJs should prevent small groups from unbalancing the current state of the world PVP.

In Ilum this is just ridiculous to have all the points tagged by a single player in 10min maximum and being said that the "Empire/Republic controls Ilum"... That is not Epic.

Also PNJs should guard something important, key-turning for the PVP "story", not just assisting players (we got our pets for that), that should be difficult to obtain without resistance, and totally epic with defenders.

 

Faction Balancing with strict balance of population: we already got that, you called it Warzones. If you want to make a larger Warzone, do it but never call it "world-pvp" please. How can you likely make a scenario that would limit the dark/light side balance to instanced matches between limited population? How would you justify that one Valor Ranked 90 character couldn't be participating to the world effort when a fresh character has been randomly selected in his place to determine the world balance? What is the logical aspect on World balance of such instanced combats where the dark side can be winning one and the light side winning the other one?

I really can't see a matching scenario for that option.

 

Guild based PVP. Can be really an interesting concept, but NOT by literally using guilds as "faction groups". SWTOR need more than 2 factions to proper balances its world pvp. But going to the extreme where anyone is an enemy except your own guild is BAD. I would see a 3 to 4 "factions", with a political story lines to back it up, where any player should choose his political camp determined by his DARK/LIGHT levels by example, preventing players to change faction within hours, and the world pvp would be battles for political ideals. (instead of guild domination)

Anyway, choosing a faction should give advantages and disadvantages over the others, this where temporary alliances can start and this can turn to be exiting world pvp.

 

To conclude, the great solution would be a 3 to 4 factions revamp using the "Guild based system" as explained, with as few as possible PNJs to maintain the factions equilibrium during "empty hours". The fightings would take place in "Raw PVP areas" where small groups could eventually contain larger ones thanks to the "last" fortress and soloers can still enjoy 1v1 combats.

'Raw' Open World - faction vs faction, with no faction population restriction mechanics AKA 'true' Open World PvP. Factions claim objectives.

 

Yuck. I'd think your own experiences with grotesquely mis-matched faction sizes will do more to put this (wretched) option off the table than any poll, but I'm still here to say it out loud: the only thing worse that advancement by RNG, is advancement by population imbalance.

 

PvPvE balanced - bolstering the underdog faction through NPCs, turrets, etc. Factions claim objectives.

 

Played a fair bit of this style in LotRO, and on the whole its pretty sad and annoying. 3 guys hunkered under a pack of friendly elites while 39 enemies plink at them but refuse to commit to any sort of real attack does not exciting gameplay make. I like intereactive environment bits, but as a balancing mechanism for advancement by population imbalance... it still stinks.

 

Faction population capped - strict balancing in place between faction populations in objective areas. Factions claim objectives.

 

I'm unfamiliar with previous examples of this, but I'd be willing to try it out. In much the same fashion that warzones brought me to advance two characters to battlemaster when I rarely PvP at all in other MMOs. I don't mind having 4 people pile on me when I know that it's freed up 3 of my teammates to get the job done elsewhere.

 

Guild based - everyone is your enemy except players in your guild. Guilds claim objectives.

 

I despise anything that gives direct advancement advantage to mega-guilds. Advancement by population balance by a different name. I preffer to opperate in guilds smaller than 20: these are people I know, people I go over and have dinner with in person once in awhile. This means I shouldn't play in the new sandbox at all? Kay...

Edited March 29, 2012 by Nikei

I would like to reply to anyone saying that the only way to get a balanced PvP is the guild vs guild system.

 

I would like to point out, that by "guild vs. guild", the only thing you manage to do is getting 2 - 4 overpowered guilds, and the rest of the server licking their boots or joining them. It's basically RAW-PvP with few changes here and there, but with more people standing on the "overnumbered side".

 

PvPvE is balanced by definition, you can #1 Make points easier/harder to capture, and #2 you have Enviroment weakening the winning side (while not completely ignoring losing side).

Edited March 29, 2012 by Tomiz

Voted for PvPvE. I think that will bring the most fun.

 

I hate to say this, but the most fun I have ever had in a PvP match was Wintergrasp in WoW. You should take a look at that Bioware, and learn!

It's like this. Look to GW2 WvWvW = winning.

Can we please have Keep warfare like warhammer online where there ar emultiple keeps all over the maps where we can fight to capture and then defend and maybe kill a pve boss like warhammer online, this would give end game pvp a MASSIVE meaning and would be soo much fun, 24/7 open world pvp fighting for control of the keeps and fighting off sieges from the walls and using artillary to take down the door !!!

Signed for this vision:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=234156

 

The author put in great amount of work, please take a look at least.

Now im not flaming Bioware or anything like that, so far im very happy with my time in game. However, i feel that in order to be worrying more about which type of world PvP we participate in we need bodies on servers, which im sure you are aware is a huge issue at the moment. Im on Ven Zallow and half the time im lucky if we have 15 people on Alderaan and it just decreases more and more the higher level you get. So although i voted for PvPvE because i think thats something that will work at all times of the day regardless of population, I believe figuring out what to do with servers should be a main priority.

"True Open World" doesn't work in faction based games. It works great in truly open world sandbox games, but as soon as you introduce factions you introduce imbalance, which is a major problem and has been for years. You can get some semblance of order by introducing a third faction but that's obviously a tonne of work and doesn't always help (my DAoC server had nobody RvRing on Midgard and only a few on Albion).

 

PvPvE with balancing mechanics works much better, whether through extra NPC support or a Tenacity style buff, but it's still far from perfect and really, really hard to balance.

 

Faction population capped is very difficult to balance - the faction with the over population will have a hard time getting games and the underdogs will still suffer from games where they don't reach the cap (we see this in Voidstar and Alderaan already - it's rare we start with a full team on my server). Besides which, it just becomes another Warzone - just make another Warzone if you're going down this route.

 

Guild based could be very interesting, but I think it would be very limiting if it was based solely around guilds. I don't always pvp with my guild, for instance - I have friends I play with regularly in other guilds.

 

Honestly, being a hotbar MMO you're very limited in what's going to be fresh. Even GW2 is restricted by the fact that it's based around putting out numbers rather than skill, and that's looking like the most interesting PvP the genre has to offer so far. You could look in their direction for some guidance but at the end of the day hotbar PvP just isn't all that fun after a while because you peak far too quickly in terms of challenge. Maybe look at bringing in some X-Wing vs TIE Fighter style space combat!

Edited March 29, 2012 by goatfoam

This game needs a "Daoc style" of factional open pvp area with objecdtives.

 

You could put an instance off each home world, Curascant and Drummond Kass, that the enemy can attack. Think of bases with NPC bosses and relics(objectives) to capture and bring back to the opposing bases.

 

When a faction captures the enemies (relics/leaders/objective) the faction gets a buff. Like plus 5 or 10 percent to looted coin, XP, legacy points, social etc etc.

 

Good god man.......give us a 'Real' reason to pvp instead of another tired gear grind for personal gain.

play DAoC for very good PvP.

 

all the ideas are crap here:(

I hate to say this, but the most fun I have ever had in a PvP match was Wintergrasp in WoW. You should take a look at that Bioware, and learn!

 

I'm sad to second this.

I'm sad to second this.

 

Me too!

PvPvE balanced - bolstering the underdog faction through NPCs, turrets, etc. Factions claim objectives.

 

In a limited way, yes. This would boil down to variable-strength NPC defence forces I guess, which can work, but will be hell to balance and keep free of bugs and exploits (good ol' pullable guards from WAR will be back, and we will also see spurious mass-spawns and all other elements that made fortresses "fun"). Luckily we'll be spared doorhammer objectives, since there's no realistic way that an attacking force could take a well-defended chokepoint with the complete lack of area damage–and that's a good thing, keep it that way.

 

A mostly image-based system that lets guilds occupy and reinforce objectives would be welcome, but no overpowering defences should be possible. I think with today's game "community" the largest scale objectives could realistically scale to would be the equivalent to DAoC's towers bearing a guild banner (WTB) and a branded boss NPC.

i agree with some posts, i am willing to do faction cap to fix any form of unbalanced numbers, which is base and spawn camping, is unfairness and not fun i rather just have 50 vs 50 ppl going at it in, raw brutal brawl battle and last man standing type thing in world pvp. Aswell as tactics of flanking and just chasing people all over the planet, of gank squading.

 

However, in SWG i loved how in succeeding in world PVP you were able to control planets, so factions would be able to have planets under there control and would have perks to whatever faction holds it. So that being said there would be an opportunity every few weeks, for the opposing faction to retake the planet while the other faction defends for the planet. I remember one of the perks was faction NPC's turrets and walkers and maybe a buff or so.

 

One of my guild mates was saying Bioware has all these beautiful planets with very nice textures but no one is on them and they are not populated, i am on helm of gurash and its a pretty heavy populated server and all planets except ilum have less than 10 ppl which is just a waste imo. He said his idea was to get players out of the Fleets, to go world pvp, like gaining PVP comms + valor based on the players valor rank that was defeated. so if my friend who is valor rank 85, he dies the person who got the killing blow gets a BM comm, and various other levels receive the other appropriate comms based on there valor rank.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Sireene
use of retarded - due to age of post, no action

There wasn't a choice in the poll, but I would prefer server vs. server vs. server as an option, similar to the way GW2 is setting things up. This could be shuffled on a periodic basis to match against similar skill levels. You could also combine several servers together in each "world" to get the populations up. Making the conflict have 3 factions adds a nice dimension to the process. DAOC and Planetside both did this well. Since lore limits us to 2 factions, a WvWvW scenario may be easier to implement while maintaining a 3 faction dynamic. You could also go crazy and make a 5 faction conflict that allows some really bizarre emergent behavior!