This post will not cover the broader spectrum of factors that made the game tank in general, it shall only briefly cover PvP design general errors and gameplay bad decisions.

Preamble: where SWTOR PvP comes from

SWTOR has been partly inspired by another EA failure: Warhammer Online, a fun but deeply flawed MMO that got forcibly shutdown at theend of 2013 after 5 years of utter abandon and unfixed bugs.

A number of former Mythic employees have been "salvaged" and put into helping shape SWTOR design.

Their hand is very visible expecially in some WZs: by example Ancient Hypergate is a faithful copy of Khaine's Embrace. So is some mechanics which were put in place for Ilum.

General PvP design flaws

- Bioware had a lot of experience in single player titles, less in MMOs. They chose "fluff over functionality" and this resulted in the graphic engine choice. An engine that simply could not function adequately for large or even medium scale PvP.

This closely resembles Warhammer Online. Due to negotiations with Games Workshop (copyright holders of Warhammer intellectual property) they had to promise a "good fluff, bad performance" engine that basically resulted in the long term demise of the whole game. It's possible that BW had similar restrictions.

A company who did not let lawyers dictate the technology to use, called Blizzard, was declined the contract with Games Workshop because their graphic engine could not render the orcs and elves with enough fluff.

Blizzard proceeded creating their own "orcs and elves" games, including World Of Warcraft. Which guess what, did not comply with lawyers desires but became an huge success. Not surprised at all.

- Besides the bad performance, BW repeated another Warhammer fatal mistake: not implementing cross server queues. This factor was one of several which quickly removed lots of players from Warhammer and is doing the same for SWTOR.

- Unlike Warhammer, SWTOR is not a "Realm vs Realm" oriented game. Coupled with the tiny limits (4 men per group and so on) it completely failed fostering tight and enduring player communities. SWTOR playerbase grew volatile, not cohesive, not tied to this game.

- Like Warhammer, there were no "social" structures created to attract PvP players. No ladders, endless "seasons" ending in nothing, laughable "rewards" (when they came) that were not even truly unique.

Seems dumb but e-peen has his weight in PvP communities. Basic, very basic mechanics like resolve never worked in an acceptable way.

- Grind based PvP like Warhammer. To mitigate the huge disparities they implemented the infamous Bolster. An excellent idea on paper, it resulted in "just" providing a flawed experience for years.

- Lack of satisfaction due to inconsistent game design. On one side, SWTOR is the typical gear grinder. You repeat the same grind N + 1 times like a lemming. It caters to soloers, PvEers, collectors. On the other side overdone bolster and needless gear resets (no new content? We make you re-grind all gear again, just because!) kill the satisfaction of the grind.

PvPers - on the other side - are less concerned at farming flashy and ever new gear yet the game imposes them grind after grind.

- A distant, silent development team that is acting like we were in 2004. These days of social media, tight contact developers has never arrived here. You see an obvious flaw and it takes months or years just to see it acknowledged, much less fixed.

Specific gameplay flaws

I won't dig into the various classes issues. That's game balance, not (entirely) related to game design. A not perfect game balance may be fixed (buffs and nerfs), foundation gameplay flaws cannot. Not with BW seemingly not existing budget.

- There's no good team play support. I am not talking about providing in game voice comms or 3rd person recording etc. (present in other games). The basic foundations are missing: no team oriented objectives, or rewards, you can't form a proper 8 men premade for WZs nor the current minuscule player base would allow to match it with another. I still recall 2007, looking at other games top world teams etc. etc. Not in SWTOR. Not in 2014.

- You cannot play against opponents of your level. In SWTOR it's basically perma PUG. For a real PvPer this is not fun. When I enter a WZ I'd want to play with similar level players against similar level opponents. Not going to happen. This causes adverse selection. That is, good players are dragged down, they just can't carry 7 terribles. Potentially good performing players get slowly discouraged, jaded, "grinded" by endless boring, mediocre gaming experiences, even if they win it's still either boring. Half opponents left or sit at one base waiting for match to end.

There's no mechanism to kick pure dead weight players, including those straightly saying they are going AFK. The vote kick has never worked once in my life (they just need to not go totally AFK).

- Resolve is utterly obsolete. These days you can be perma-stunned and killed before it even budges.

- Vastly enormous amount of hard CC. We have hard hitting classes that ALSO can disable an opponent for half or more his health. There's NO stacking penalty so you can spend your whole (painful and unfun) lifetime stunned, then rooted, then bubbled, punted away unable to do anything while 4-5 guys jump on you. No other decent game allows these things. Why? Because being unable to control your character for many seconds is the apex of "not fun". A sense of hopeless-ness and discouragement takes over when you see there's NOTHING you can do while you see you die. I am speaking from my shadow experience (that is hard stun and big damage dealer) so it's not a "complaint" of somebody playing whichever "weak perceived" class.

What could be worse than this? Giving the same abilities but for a whole area! Unbreakable hard crowd control applied to a whole are, no other decent game got it!

- Now, you'd wonder: "with such amount of CC, it means this is a tactical game with relatively low damage involved, where players carefully pick the long cooldown strategic CC skills and outplay the opponents".

Totally the opposite! CC are often on very short timers so there's no need to play smart, just spam "whichever lits up first". And the damage? Quite high across the classes, so there'd be no need for all that CC or no need for all that damage.

- Boring battle objectives. I play shadow. I SHALL die of boredom, stuck guarding pylons, after pylons, after pylons. Objectives are off the "beaten path" so who goes there is pretty much sure to see no fun and rare action.

You'd think: "well this is so boring, then it's probably well rewarded!" Nope. You get half the "medals" the others got while also having fun. You just stand there waiting for two stealthers to kill you fast. At the end of the match, 90% of the time you won't get any "MVP vote" for having played for the team. They shall give MVP to the guy who did 2M pure fluff damage and 2 kills.

- There are probably a number of other reasons but I think I have typed enough already. Feel free to add them!

- Boring battle objectives. I play shadow. I SHALL die of boredom, stuck guarding pylons, after pylons, after pylons. Objectives are off the "beaten path" so who goes there is pretty much sure to see no fun and rare action.

You'd think: "well this is so boring, then it's probably well rewarded!" Nope. You get half the "medals" the others got while also having fun. You just stand there waiting for two stealthers to kill you fast. At the end of the match, 90% of the time you won't get any "MVP vote" for having played for the team. They shall give MVP to the guy who did 2M pure fluff damage and 2 kills.

This. I really hate when you are faithfully trying to fulfil objectives and be a good team player and you are punished for it while those players ignoring objectives to pursue kills are rewarded.

This post is pure win. And biofail will ignore it of course. Maybe they're too busy admiring their characters stuck in CC animations.

This game's popularity is due to one thing. Star Wars in a post Disney world with few to no new Star Wars games.

This post is pure win. And biofail will ignore it of course. Maybe they're too busy admiring their characters stuck in CC animations.

 

This game's popularity is due to one thing. Star Wars in a post Disney world with few to no new Star Wars games.

Anyone else wonder about how great 1313 would have been if Disney hadn't pulled the plug?

>inb4 the apologists

>inb4 sock puppet account

beautiful post 10/10

- Boring battle objectives. I play shadow. I SHALL die of boredom, stuck guarding pylons, after pylons, after pylons. Objectives are off the "beaten path" so who goes there is pretty much sure to see no fun and rare action.

You'd think: "well this is so boring, then it's probably well rewarded!" Nope. You get half the "medals" the others got while also having fun. You just stand there waiting for two stealthers to kill you fast. At the end of the match, 90% of the time you won't get any "MVP vote" for having played for the team. They shall give MVP to the guy who did 2M pure fluff damage and 2 kills.

I think this leads to many of the others. Boring objectives means that no one wants to do them, which means that the "bads" ignore them - although, half the time the "bads" consider themselves "goods" (and probably are not that bad if they'd try) who have decided just to not care because who wants to be stuck guarding an objective? Especially when no one from the other side shows up to challenge you. I too played a shadow for a LOT of this game, and, yeah... guard guard guard guard is BORING AS HELL. It's one of the reasons why I like Huttball - hate it or love it, at least you aren't stuck guarding a "node" and sitting on your butt doing nothing the whole game.

The other one I think is lack of matchmaking. Maybe this is what you meant by "level". Competitive games, where you feel like it can go either way, have always been so rare. I don't know other game's PvP, though, to know if anyone has really solved this. Sure, in theory, if there was a large player base and lots of people were queuing and you had a "rating" based on straight win/loss, I guess it would converge to put you at the right spot... just not sure if the real world would actually work out that way.

>inb4 the apologists

>inb4 sock puppet account

 

beautiful post 10/10

...really?

you give yourself away every time

anyway can someone tell me about Warhammer? Never played it myself did not even heaer about it til one thread brought it up a few months back

...really?

 

you give yourself away every time

 

 

anyway can someone tell me about Warhammer? Never played it myself did not even heaer about it til one thread brought it up a few months back

what are you on about ...

I think this leads to many of the others. Boring objectives means that no one wants to do them, which means that the "bads" ignore them - although, half the time the "bads" consider themselves "goods" (and probably are not that bad if they'd try) who have decided just to not care because who wants to be stuck guarding an objective? Especially when no one from the other side shows up to challenge you. I too played a shadow for a LOT of this game, and, yeah... guard guard guard guard is BORING AS HELL. It's one of the reasons why I like Huttball - hate it or love it, at least you aren't stuck guarding a "node" and sitting on your butt doing nothing the whole game.

 

The other one I think is lack of matchmaking. Maybe this is what you meant by "level". Competitive games, where you feel like it can go either way, have always been so rare. I don't know other game's PvP, though, to know if anyone has really solved this. Sure, in theory, if there was a large player base and lots of people were queuing and you had a "rating" based on straight win/loss, I guess it would converge to put you at the right spot... just not sure if the real world would actually work out that way.

I see you're on pot5 and have at least one pub toon. I find that interesting because I've never played a CW where the opposing team didn't send at least one (usually stealth) to the "unnatural" node. the only toon I transferred over there was pub, and I rarely had same faction matches while I was there, but I'd say the natural node gets tons of action on that server. at least if you're pub. as pubs were usually outgunned from my experience.

regarding the matchmaking thing...I think we passed the point of no return a long time ago. certainly, that point passed when a huge chunk of ppl left upon the announcement of no more 8v8s (very soon after paid transfers!!!). it's a post mortem thread, so that makes sense. I just thought I'd pile on the despair: better matchmaking is nigh impossible at this point. substantially better matchmaking anyway. even for 4v4, you need to go on swtor date and woo your opponents. it's pretty bad.

Duran'del here:

You can't do a "postmortem" analysis of something that hasn't died yet.

Competitive PvP is mostly unseen and a very low amount of people play it, but regs pops are mostly instant on BegCol(A RP-PvE server).

Is the PvP here healthy and thriving? No. Is it being played? Yes. Because its fun. I played ME3's multiplayer a few hours ago, and I didn't have to wait long to find a lobby.

TL;DR- People will continue to play something of it is fun. That is why SWTOR's PvP, and by extension, SWTOR, is still being played. Becuase it's fun.

I see you're on pot5 and have at least one pub toon. I find that interesting because I've never played a CW where the opposing team didn't send at least one (usually stealth) to the "unnatural" node. the only toon I transferred over there was pub, and I rarely had same faction matches while I was there, but I'd say the natural node gets tons of action on that server. at least if you're pub. as pubs were usually outgunned from my experience.

I have (played a CW where the "unnatural" node was never attacked), plenty of times. But on those occasions where they do send a stealth (and that happens plenty often too) - I think that's the flip side. You can "single handedly lose the game" if they pop out and kill you FAST, or are good at the dual-mezz thing (especially if you are inexperienced), such that they can get the node before help can arrive even if you call out as soon as you know they are there. Who wants that responsibility? It's like the field goal kicker in football... if you miss that kick it's YOU that lost the game. If you make it, it's he team that won it.

regarding the matchmaking thing...I think we passed the point of no return a long time ago. certainly, that point passed when a huge chunk of ppl left upon the announcement of no more 8v8s (very soon after paid transfers!!!). it's a post mortem thread, so that makes sense. I just thought I'd pile on the despair: better matchmaking is nigh impossible at this point. substantially better matchmaking anyway. even for 4v4, you need to go on swtor date and woo your opponents. it's pretty bad.

Yep, totally agree. Ranked queues were popping for a bit when the rancor was announced, but even with all that we still couldn't get good matchmaking going. (Although, I believe at least *some* of the ************ here, about people being put in with "bads", was probably that some of those people were not actually as good as they thought they were. Or maybe that was just me that was forced to face that reality. )

Duran'del here:

 

You can't do a "postmortem" analysis of something that hasn't died yet.

 

Competitive PvP is mostly unseen and a very low amount of people play it, but regs pops are mostly instant on BegCol(A RP-PvE server).

 

Is the PvP here healthy and thriving? No. Is it being played? Yes. Because its fun. I played ME3's multiplayer a few hours ago, and I didn't have to wait long to find a lobby.

 

TL;DR- People will continue to play something of it is fun. That is why SWTOR's PvP, and by extension, SWTOR, is still being played. Becuase it's fun.

Spoken like a true regstar. Obviously regs will continue to pop...

Spoken like a true regstar. Obviously regs will continue to pop...

well what else are we supposed to do the competitive stuff is dead except to get a rancor

Spoken like a true regstar. Obviously regs will continue to pop...

I am also a 55 HM FP pro, never done a Op aside from EV and KP, My PvP gear is stock conquerer, and I have less than 3 mil combined on all my characters.

Don't worry, I'm qualified to talk on the behalf of the community:p

Spoken like a true regstar. Obviously regs will continue to pop...

Nothing wrong with being a regstar, but regs will eventually go down in population as well. In fact, I'd say those of us that are not worried about the pretending of a ranking meaning anything and like just PvP are more likely to leave for other games where PvP is supported better but just isn't really individually "competitive." This game eventualy is likely to become PvP for people who manly do other things and like PvP on the side.

This game eventualy is likely to become PvP for people who manly do other things and like PvP on the side.

What are you talking about? This has always been 'that game'

PVP is an afterthought, and with bolster in ranked (***?!) it's meant to be played by casual PVE gamers.

Back on subject. **** the stupid CC and resolve in this game.

well what else are we supposed to do the competitive stuff is dead except to get a rancor

Yes, but he said the game wasn't dead because regs are still popping. Obviously, the competitive scene dying is what matters. And at least solo ranked pops every night on POT5 and Bastion.

Op has no credentials this post is laughable when every name in the op

Sig has no ranked rating at all

Maybe play the game postmortem indeed hahahah.

Op has no credentials this post is laughable when every name in the op

Sig has no ranked rating at all

this^^

Its also obvious that hes utterly noob. Resolve works like a charm. Bet hes one of those guys who put you two times into mindtrap and then wonder why their stuns wont work....bugged resolve...yeah....

>inb4 the apologists

>inb4 sock puppet account

 

beautiful post 10/10

Jurgens?

this^^

 

Its also obvious that hes utterly noob. Resolve works like a charm. Bet hes one of those guys who put you two times into mindtrap and then wonder why their stuns wont work....bugged resolve...yeah....

Yes resolve does WORK when you are full resolve. But the amount of time you can spend cc'd versus healthpool and damage output is not correct.

The main thing that hurt pvp imo is the lack of competition. Matchmaking is very important. Sure some bad players see it as their savior and some premaders say that premades don't have an advantage anyway, but many of us good players with nice irl's realize that even matches are great and more fun. The other two types I believe like matchmaking once it is implemented as well.

This game has a rather low softcap for skill (by this I mean the level to which you can be a decent threat is very easy to reach, however there is still a lot of room to grow if you are able) and if you add this low skill softcap to a lack of matchmaking and a big problem appears.

I think with cross server and matchmaking this game would be great. Without cross server then the game needs mixed faction teams and matchmaking.

Jurgens?

Biodrone apologist?

Biodrone apologist?

You know I wish the day would come that all these blind defenders who accuse anyone who says anything 'hateful' about this game about being a former banned person banned themselves, but sadly EAware tolerates that sort of disgusting behavior and even breaches the forum rules themselves for allowing that disgusting behavior to continue