Hey all,

As Anakin Skywalker apparently reached his shatterpoint when he gave Samuel L. Jackson an ambitious manicure... I, too, have reached my shatterpoint. Unfortunately, rather than become a Darth, I've decided instead to go into exile and wait for my Last Hope for good PvP in an MMO environment: Guild Wars 2.

I won't go into a huge thing here on why I've come to this point. Let me just say one thing that it wasn't: Class Balance. The class balance in this game is *remarkably* good, and I'm saying this as a Jedi Sentinel, one of the hardest classes to play and very few make a point that it's on the OP end. Class Balance is not SWTORs problem: in fact, it's one of the best balanced MMOs I've ever played.

Here's my Not So Comprehensive list of issues that tempted me on more than one occasion to put my fist through my monitor.

Premade vs. Pugs. Y'know, I feel I've made this argument for years, because I have. From WoW, to WAR, to Rift to here. And guess what? Blizzard figured it out. Trion figured it out. Hell, even EA Mythic figured it out. Of course, EA Mythic was fashionably late to the party, but as they say... better late than never. So why, 4 years later, am I making this argument still in an MMO? Why the heck is my team with 8 people with an average expertise rating of 80, with no healers and a tank who doesn't have Guard bound get thrown up against 4 Champion+ geared players on Skype? These four could take all eight of us out without even needing the other half of their team. Haven't we learned something yet? "Just roll with your own premade." No. Three other battlemasters should not be required to enjoy PvP in this game. As I said, every other company figured it out. So, what's the malfunction here, Bioware?

CC. Have you learned nothing from Warhammer? Here's something I discovered playing my Ironbreaker in your other game: People don't like being knocked into lava with a retardedly overpowered knockback. It's NOT heroic. It's too hard to avoid (never found a shortage of people to knockback in a huge way if the battle's being fought even in the near vicinity of lava/ledge) and most importantly, not everyone can do it. How can you design a map like Huttball and have classes in the game who do not have Pulls/Pushes or fire-and-forget stuns? Hell, some classes (like mine) lack all of those. Moreover, with your credio that: "you're the hero" - let me tell you, the life of a melee ping pong ball isn't as heroic as it sounds.

"Learn to position yourself." Yeah, right. Tell that to the people I stun on my Sith Juggernaut alt. That way, I get to move into whatever position I need to be in order to screw you. Trust me, with a knockback as far as I got, the only place you can position yourself where I won't find a way to screw you is on Azeroth. If there's a trap/ledge/pit/STD anywhere within EYESIGHT, you are getting it.

Or hell, my personal favorite: jump someone on the bridge, immobilize for 3 seconds, and then push to order. I don't care how pro you are - your man parts are going to be slow roasting in the Voidstar reactor and that's all there is to it.

"Learn to use the Resolve system." Heh, so glad you mentioned it.

Resolve: Honestly, if I were to name the worst mechanic in any PvP game I have played going back to Pong, this has got to be it. So this is the theory: You get hit by 3-4 CCs, then you're immune to them for 18-20 seconds. Here's the thing though: By the time you get hit by this many CCs, the enemies you are currently facing don't have them anymore. So Resolve is useless in small scale PvP. Considering that it also doesn't work on Immobilize effects, it's conceivable for you to STILL be CCed, even while your immune to CC. Lolwut?

Besides, what the hell good does this mechanic do in maps like Huttball where all it takes is one CC to knock you out of the action? By the time you get back into it (assuming you weren't stunned on acid or knocked into fire), not only is the situation you could have helped in probably over, but you've already lost all the Resolve you built up from that knockback. So, guess what, it just happens again! Why they've opted for a PvP system that utilizes this rather than Diminishing Returns, where you get a benefit immediately after the first time you're hit, I'll never know. This is just an example of developers trying to get too clever and one-up tried and true methods that actually promote fun gameplay.

Ilum: Won't get into a big thing here, but I honestly can't say I've seen a worse designed World PvP mechanic than this. Whether its game performance slowing to that of a PowerPoint Presentation if more than 50 players are on the screen at the same time, the sheer uselessness of melee classes in large scale PvP warfare, or the absolute ludicrous population imbalance on most servers, or the sheer redundancy of flipping points in a non-linear order, or the numerous bugs (stuck exploits still tons of fun), or the need for me to spam my class buff every cooldown to make sure I get credit for kills my ops does, or the crate spawn rates during downtime, or the... yeah, I can do this all day. Ilum every day is what Wintergrasp was on its worst... and Wintergrasp wasn't very good either.

Bag System/Random Loot. Kudos for finally getting your heads out of your asses last patch for Champion bags. Trust me: what's a good idea for that's also a good idea for Battlemaster bags. Smarten up, Bioware.

After a month of dealing with all of these mechanics, I've just reached my wits end. Everytime I draw Huttball, I want to stab myself in the eye with a sharp object. Every time I pick up my Ilum daily, I want to strangle puppies. And every time I get force charged/rooted/knocked off the bridge in Voidstar, I want to tear off my shirt, grab my supple manboobs and shriek. When that starts seeming like a good idea, it's time to slowly back away and give Operations a try.

TLDR:

We get it. Why spend time even posting this? This is the same stuff repeated in EVERY SINGLE THREAD on this forum.

I'm certain you get it. My question is why doesn't Bioware?

Guess what you'll see in Guild Wars 2, premade vs pugs. That's not going to change no matter where you go, best prepare your whiny posts for the future.

Actually, GW2 is going to be broken up into solo play and organized PvP right off the bat. It's there intention for casual play to be casual. Regardless, if it was JUST premades that pissed me off, I'd probably be okay with that. That's just the tip of the iceburg. No one thing drove me to write off PvP in this game - it's the whole smorgasboard.

So this is the theory: You get hit by 3-4 CCs, then you're immune to them for 18-20 seconds. Here's the thing though: By the time you get hit by this many CCs, the enemies you are currently facing don't have them anymore.

Haha There are some people out there who think that resolve is that great, there were even players telling me resolve is actually DR.

It is like it is, there is too much CC in group pvp and you picked exactly the class which sucks in the most of it.

Good luck to you and I can understand your decision.

I'm certain you get it. My question is why doesn't Bioware?

Because there is still has another month left in the pay-to-play public beta event...

...didn't you get the newsletter?

Oh look, another GW2 fanboi.

Enjoy it when all the pvp guilds go to one server so they can squash other servers in the server vs server world pvp- then the complaints when they don't get any pvp, or from other servers when nobody bothers to pvp.

I'm sure a company whose previous mmo couldn't handle persistant worlds... thinking they can go from a single player mmo to a 200v200v200 pvp zone, it'll work out.

I'm sure it'll be lag and bug free- and we won't see imbalances, like, say, a class that can't be targetted- they sure respond to bugs fast.

If you love GW2 so much, why don't you go join their beta and post your love on their forums?

Guess what you'll see in Guild Wars 2, premade vs pugs. That's not going to change no matter where you go, best prepare your whiny posts for the future.

GW2 will have issues, but atleast they understand they need to try to provide pvp content, and what the foundation should look like.

by providing various levels of structured to sandboxed pvp, hopefully one of them will fit the bill for people.

Its all in the execution, lets hope for the best.

In any event, EA pushed this out too soon, and even if they did not, the focus was obviously not on pvp, we would jsut have more voice overs on lowbie quests.

Oh look, another GW2 fanboi.

 

Enjoy it when all the pvp guilds go to one server so they can squash other servers in the server vs server world pvp- then the complaints when they don't get any pvp, or from other servers when nobody bothers to pvp.

 

I'm sure a company whose previous mmo couldn't handle persistant worlds... thinking they can go from a single player mmo to a 200v200v200 pvp zone, it'll work out.

 

I'm sure it'll be lag and bug free- and we won't see imbalances, like, say, a class that can't be targetted- they sure respond to bugs fast.

 

 

If you love GW2 so much, why don't you go join their beta and post your love on their forums?

Bioware Defense Force.

pretty sure ur wrong about resolve. here read this, its a sticky in the pvp forum, dont know how you missed it

i think its usually like 2 CC's, not 3-4 to fill the bar, and ur immune for around 8 seconds, not 18-20. facts are fun. try them?

lol he rage quit to pvp

edit meant pve

Bioware Defense Force.

Can you quote the part where I mentioned BW or SWTOR? Just to show you read my post.

CC. Have you learned nothing from Warhammer? Here's something I discovered playing my Ironbreaker in your other game: People don't like being knocked into lava with a retardedly overpowered knockback. It's NOT heroic. It's too hard to avoid (never found a shortage of people to knockback in a huge way if the battle's being fought even in the near vicinity of lava/ledge) and most importantly, not everyone can do it. How can you design a map like Huttball and have classes in the game who do not have Pulls/Pushes or fire-and-forget stuns? Hell, some classes (like mine) lack all of those. Moreover, with your credio that: "you're the hero" - let me tell you, the life of a melee ping pong ball isn't as heroic as it sounds.

It's funny, this (and Bright Wizards) were pretty much what killed Warhammer. Did they learn? Apparently their solution was MORE KNOCKBACKS! And pair some with ROOTS!

Someone needs to slap some sense into whoever is designing this crap (Gabe?).

OP pretty much nailed it on the head.

My wife and I only log in to do our dailies and then we log off. Pretty much what we did before we finally quit WoW.

I fear this is my last MMO though... I've been playing them for as long as they have been out, and frankly I'm sick of ALWAYS picking the booger class, always picking the losing side, and always dealing with everything exactly as written by the OP.

The only part of your post i really agree with is the cc.Resolve,while a good idea,doesnt really work..byt the time you get a full resolve bar your pretty much dead,so most people wont bother trying to cc again cuz they can just burst you down,or like you said they out of cc anyway.

i also think the hazards(firepit/acid) do a bit to much damage.Last night i got an opponent to about 10 % and while the animation for assassinate was running he managed to get a knockback in,i flew off and landed in a already light firepit ,died in about 1.5 seconds.not fun ,not skill based ,just frustrating imo.

aside from those 2 things ,the rest will fix itself with time.

Can you quote the part where I mentioned BW or SWTOR? Just to show you read my post.

That's kind of the point. You ignore all his actual points and start rambling about Guild Wars.

Well said, OP.

SWTOR PVP is neck deep in a ********, you can't save it.

Maybe in future BioWare will fix one thing or another, but they don't have balls to fix everything as long as everyone pays their sub fee.

Oh GW2 release, where art thou.

Because there is still has another month left in the pay-to-play public beta event...

 

...didn't you get the newsletter?

 

LOL. I love you.

Rated BGs are coming soonish so at least that's one problem down, and the gear issue is fixed for the most part so that's two of my big ones scratched off. I agree with most of this though.

Oh look, another GW2 fanboi.

 

Enjoy it when all the pvp guilds go to one server so they can squash other servers in the server vs server world pvp- then the complaints when they don't get any pvp, or from other servers when nobody bothers to pvp.

 

I'm sure a company whose previous mmo couldn't handle persistant worlds... thinking they can go from a single player mmo to a 200v200v200 pvp zone, it'll work out.

 

I'm sure it'll be lag and bug free- and we won't see imbalances, like, say, a class that can't be targetted- they sure respond to bugs fast.

 

 

If you love GW2 so much, why don't you go join their beta and post your love on their forums?

Is this Gabe? You sound both worried and mad. You worrad bro?