PVP - A Long Hard Look At The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

It doesn't have to be a PVP only game. I recognize and respect that. But Bioware has stated that PVP will be a pillar of the game. I just want it to be the best it can be, and I'm hopeful they will respond, although that optimism is definitely wavering.

Arenas don't have to follow the same rules as WoW. But I think its important to look at what aspects of WoW made the game so successful, and what aspects were a hindrance. Overall, arenas gathered a large community, and a very loyal community at that. One idea would be to have all gear equal when someone joins an arena, and make gear less determining towards a win than skill.

I don't want to turn this game into WoW. I just want to take the best from both worlds and make a better game.

Auto-facing does not belong in pvp

Hey Fellas,

I am a very long time experienced PVP'er (Mostly WoW 5x Glad, don't hate me for it). I want to point out some obvious flaws in the current state of PVP and allow everyone to add in their 2 cents to form a complete list of what we feel needs to be changed for the better.

This post will be focused on PVP flaws and needed fixes. We want to keep the PVP community strong, because SWTOR has such a great potential to be a fantastic and competitive PVP gaming experience.

I want to stay away from specific Class imbalances for now and focus mostly on Warzones/Ilum.

Warzones:

Wins not counting. I saw in the current recent patch notes that hopefully this has been fixed. Nothing is more frustrating than being at 8/9 in the weekly on Monday night and winning 3 games in a row at 2 AM that don't count before finally giving up and going to bed - missing out on the next week's weekly.

Quitting out early. There should be a deserter penalty given to players who leave Warzones before they are complete.

More than 8 players?? I've been in games with 12 Empire players against 8 Republic opponents. Nuff said.

In Huttball, Powertechs and Assassins can sit in their spawn, and pull enemy players into their spawn before the enemy can cap the ball to score a point. When doing so, the enemy player is instantly killed. I have been in games with players who will actually stand in the fire to commit suicide, just to respawn and deny a cap by pulling enemies into this insta-kill barrier. This should be immediately looked at. (We ended up winning still - silly Republic Shadow)

Kicked to the Imperial Fleet? When I join late, and have to wait for load times, to miss the initial spawn release at the beginning of a game, I'm most often removed from the Warzone and placed on the Imp. fleet. This is retarded.

Adrenals - Why are these usable in Warzones? World PvP is much different, but Adrenals should not be allowed to be used in Warzones. It is making Biochem an absolute must have for serious minded PvP players, and a severe imbalance to players who have chosen a different Crew Skill. I'm all for having the ability to customize and min/max your character to be as competitive as possible, but this should be looked at.

Bags - The bag system has a great number of flaws and is probably the absolute worst reward system I have ever seen in a PVP game. There are players who hit level 50 and immediately have full Champion gear, and other players who are valor rank 59, and have been grinding their butts off for weeks straight to have only 3 pieces. I myself opened 6 bags today with no rewards. I would suggest that there are no repeat rewards given and that the drop rate of Champion gear per bag be increased. Or that the system is scrapped and go to a point system, where you get points for quests and are allowed to pick and choose how to spend them.

Also, why do Battlemaster players still receive Champion gear bags? This is a very silly concept. Battlemaster and above ranked players should only receive Battlemaster bags from Daily/Weekly quests, as the Champion level gear has now become obsolete. This is a no brainer.

I also believe that there should not be a cap on the number of Champion/Battlemaster Bags a player can acquire before he is the appropriate valor rank to open/wear the Champion/Battlemaster gear. For example, if I am a level 50 rank valor player grinding for Battlemaster with full Champion, why can't I start earning Battlemaster rewards for the future and stack more than one Battlemaster bag?

Medals - Why are there Defensive Medals, and no Offensive Medals? If I score the ball in Huttball, I should receive a Medal or reward for doing so. I get medals for Defending Capture points, but not for Offensively capping them? This is silly.

Resolve - Resolve is probably the worst mechanic in the game currently. Every single class in the game has a wide array of stuns, interrupts, knockbacks and incapicatating abilities. Resolve does not work well enough in preventing players from being chain stunned/knocked back. A knockback should instantly fill the resolve bar, and the resolve bar should stay full for a much longer time period. This forces players to think smarter about when to stun/knockbacks. At the very least, knockbacks should have diminishing returns with other knockbacks, and stuns should share DR with stuns as well.

(BTW, Operatives are better off after this recent patch, because they can now chain their opening stuns with disregard to the Resolve bar because of how broken it is - its not the class, its Resolve)


Daily/Weekly Quests:

If I complete a Daily or Weekly quest the day I receive it, but turn in the quest the following day, I can not then get the quest for the Daily/Weekly for that day. This needs to be fixed so that completing the quest, not turning it in, counts respectively.

The 150 Kills requirement for the Ilum weekly is very steep for both factions. Republic are outnumbers and Empire players have too few Republic players to kill. I would suggest have armament spawns in more than just the Central location, with a faster respawn timer, as well as lowering the number to 90 (3 times the Daily, just like Warzone wins).

When I turn in a Daily/Weekly, why am I not rewarded with Valor? Normal quests reward experience - PVP quests should reward a large number of Valor. This would additionally incent players to complete Daily/Weekly quests regularly as they are grinding to Battlemaster rankings.

I also would like to see more quests added. Perhaps a quest to achieve 8+ medals in a Warzone. Or Warzone specific quests, such as Score the Huttball, or Download the data in Voidstar in under 5 minutes.


Ilum:

When I die in Ilum, I can /stuck and instantly reappear where I was killed, allowing me to pick off the poor guy who beat me down and is trying to heal himself back up. (Sorry to all you Repubs who owned me)

Server population imbalances. Its been said before, and its obvious to see, Empire is just much cooler than Republic, and thus we outnumber the poor guys fighting for good. And by a very large margin. This completely defeats the purpose of Ilum. Republics don't have a chance and Empire players are fighting for the scraps, few are far between. I think that the zone needs to be sized down considerably so that players have a greater chance of finding each other and engaging in combat.

As I said above, armament spawns should be greatly increased and added to both Northern and Southern Assaults to allow players to engage in more places for the rewards armaments provide.

Kills not counting - When I've killed the same Republic player twice in a 3-5 minute span, I only get credit for one kill. I can understand the thought behind this, but its not working. Because there are so few Republic players to find, let alone kill, each kill should count. There should be no hidden immunity timer.

General:

Arenas. This makes for one of the most competitive environments for serious minded players. Competing on a small scale with groups of 1-5 is one of the most exciting aspects of PVP in any game. Arenas need to be added. I feel that the player base of SWTOR overall, especially the PVP minded players would support Arenas. Arenas brings an added element of responsibility for Bioware, in that players are much more demanding in terms of balance, but the payoff is greater than the effort required. If you want to remain a strong game for years to come, Arenas is a great way to build player loyalty.

Auto Camera Follow: WHY CAN'T I DISABLE THE AUTO CAMERA FOLLOW YET??!?!?!? This is a complete joke. Try running and targeting an opponent from behind you. Hint: YOU CANT!

Targeting: The targeting in this game is probably the worst I have ever experienced. The lack of macros for Focus/Friendly targeting, on top of the fact that its nearly impossible to click on either an opponent, but especially a friendly player (guard/heals) makes targeting the #1 fail in my book. This really needs to be fixed.

Ability Delay/Denial: Sometimes I spam my Vanish (forget the real name of the ability on my Assassin) and it looks back it me with a smug smile, deciding not to comply. Ability Delay hopefully is already being looked at, but what about when abilities simply don't go off at all?


Let me know what you guys think. Certainly not everyone is going to agree with me, but I think most of these changes are reasonable and overall would be healthier for the game.

Thanks.

I agree with most of what you are saying, the PVP does need work. I enjoyed Arenas, but I think it changed MMO PVP forever, and not in a good way. I think they can make a small Warzone that is 4v4, and you will get the same affect as Arenas. Then Bioware can open other Warzones, and focus on PVP as a whole, and fix all of the bugs. If they focus on a new system, and Arenas, then PVP as a whole will suffer. Lets fix what is broken now, before we add more broken stuff to spread out our resources to address.


Idea: I want a large never ending Warzone, so I can join and run PVP any time I want. I want to be able to have many quests in there, that can be repeatable, and offer pvp rewards. I want small side quests, where a small stealth group tries to capture a point, then it triggers a new quest for the other faction to defend it, and promote small surgical strikes, where both factions have the opportunity to Gank, and kill in PVP, while having a lot of fun.

This would be a great way to collect your armaments, and run other pvp quests, and dailys. They can also program bots that they can put in to offset the population imbalance. They can make them smart, and run in groups of 3 or 4, and have them also running the quests, and ganking people.

The ideas, and potential for running an eternal Warzone are endless.

The only concern is that there has to be small short quests, and side quests. fighting for 6 hours, and getting 32 valor would suck, so it needs to have some good controls as well.

How about calm down take it easy and wait for fixes to roll out if they feel like fixing some of these issues is worthwhile? Like the imbalance there really is no real fix for this what did you expect when you rolled Republic a cheery group of people and lots of them? On Empire side you have purple lightning and other cool effects such as death from above. The Republic side options for those effects are just okay although picking up huge items out of the ground and smacking people with it is kinda mean and fun. Just wait until the game matures and stop it with the complaints people stuck out for WoW to fix lots of issues so just wait and be patient if not no ones forcing you to play.

My two cents. Also all of you guys on these forums with the I WANT IT NOW points of view need to learn to sit down and be patient. < That is to everyone on these forums who complains at these early stages of an MMO >

Hey Fellas,

I am a very long time experienced PVP'er (Mostly WoW