Jump to content

Bioware: A Message From a Long Time Fan


Aluvi

Recommended Posts

Bioware,

 

First off, let me say that I have enjoyed your games for a very long time. I own all of these titles:

 

BG 1 & 2

Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3

Dragon Age 1 & 2

Neverwinter Nights 1 + Both Expansions

Neverwinter Nights 2

KOTOR 1 & 2

 

And of course SWTOR, pre ordered months ahead of time, have been subscribing and playing consistently for the past year. We are almost at the one year mark. It's hard to believe that a year has gone by. I have had a blast playing this game. It has replaced WoW as my goto multiplayer game. I have logged over 50 days of play time on my primary character, my Sith Warrior Marauder, Aluvian. That's roughly 1/6th of my time this past year, gone into playing your game, or, roughly 4 hours per day on average.

 

I have put up with a lot of faults with this game. The PvE end game content was nowhere near playable when it first came out. Riddled with bugs and imbalances, mechanics that only worked about 1/4 of the time, and little acknowledgement from your company that there were issues. Granted, I was one of the people that took a week off work and got to 50 within 1 week of playing, and was in ops within the first week of release. The end game content wasn't quite ready, and you guys were forced to push the game out early. OK, I understand that and I can even forgive it. I feel that you have finally gotten PvE pretty well tuned and you have a much better understanding of how to make PvE content and mechanics work with your Hero engine now. I am satisfied with PvE. However, I no longer do PvE content. I PvP solely now, because I find it much more competitive and challenging. So, on to the main issues of this post.

 

PvP. PvP in SWTOR gets me fired up like nothing since WoW PvP did in the early days of it. It has also gone through some pretty drastic changes lately, and I disagree with most of these changes. Indeed, I feel that many of these changes were not needed, and have made the PvP balance and level of fun in PvP worse. I am going to cover all of the issues that I feel need addressed here, and I welcome discussion - but no flaming or finger pointing please, rational discussion only, of these topics. I will start with more general topics, and get down to the more class specific balance issues later.

 

Resolve

 

I understand how resolve works, but I simply don't like it. It's a lackluster system. In return for being stunned for up to 18 seconds straight, you get a few seconds of cc immunity. During this CC immunity, you will likely be slowed or rooted and unable to act anyway. This can be punishing for ranged classes, but it is especially punishing to melee. Every class has multiple stuns, snares, slows, and roots available to them. In general, you can spend up to 30-40% of your time in a warzone unable to act. Loss of control is one of the biggest complaints that people have in PvP. A much better system would be similar to what WoW has in place, where stuns, snares, and roots all have diminishing returns - the more you get stunned/snared/rooted, the less effect they have on you. Someone has suggested a system like this that would even use resolve. Rather than resolve ticking down to zero once you hit the cap, it diminishes slowly over time, and the higher your resolve currently is, the more resistant to stuns, roots, mezes, and ballistics you are. For example, 80% resolve would give you an 80% reduction in the time you are stunned, amount of time rooted, amount of slow % applied, and % chance to be pulled or pushed. Resolve should also build faster, I think 1.5x the current rate would be fair. Resolve would constantly diminish at a rate of say 50 per second. This is just one of many suggestions, but the current resolve system is simply not adequate. It is not fun. Recent class balance changes have brought to light just how unfun it is.

 

Ranked Warzones & Cross Server Queue

 

After tonight, there will be little incentive for players to do ranked warzones. War Hero gear, which so many of us have worked so hard for over the past months, will become easily obtainable in a week or 2 by just about anyone via normal warzone comms. The new Elite War Hero set is a very minor upgrade. I understand that many players were complaining about the gear gap, but the gear gap between Battlemaster and War Hero was not that bad. The main problem was that people were unwilling to augment their BM gear, making it much worse than the augmented WH gear. These same people will be too lazy to augment their WH gear once EWH is out, and they will be just as bad off. The real issue here though, is that because WH and EWH are so close in stats, there is really no incentive to run ranked warzones now, and people rarely ever ran them before. You need to add some kind of incentive reward to do ranked besides a 1% boost to stats on better gear.

 

The problem with Ranked warzones, is that it takes a minimum of 16 player on at one time per server to run one. There are usually only around 300-600 players on between all the fleet instances at one time, and only a portion of them are lvl 50. Let's be optimistic and say 400 on. Of those 400, probably only half PvP, and of those 200, maybe 1/4 are serious enough to consider ranked. So we are left with 50 pvpers that might do ranked wrazones. That leaves us with 6 teams. 5 of those teams won't queue, because the other team always beats them, and they can't stand losing. If the pool was larger, and they only had a 1/20 chance of getting matched up against that really insane team, maybe they would queue, and ranked would be more active. To accomplish this, we NEED cross server queues. I can't put it any more plainly; cross server needs to happen for pvp to flourish. That, or the server size needs to increase by a lot. In other MMOs, there were THOUSANDS of players at max level on a single server all queueing for warzones, and they still implemented cross server.

 

Matchmaking PvP System

 

Another huge problem with PvP is that PUGs and non premades get stomped excessively hard in most warzones. While these players believe that the solution is to make two separate queues for premade and non premade, that would only cause queue times to become much much worse. What needs to be implemented is some kind of matchmaking system. There are many such systems out there that you can model this after - SC2 has an excellent one, the WoW Arena MMR as well is quite good. This system should not necessarily be based on gear, since you are closing the gear gap, but on wins/losses and other factors, such as dps/hps/objective point thresholds. I leave the math up to you, but something needs to be put in place to make team matchmaking more fair for the average player. As much as pugs get sick of teams like my guilds beating on them, we also get sick of having zero competition.

 

Class Balance

 

Here is where I feel things may get heated. These are my opinions, and my opinions are shared with the majority of players. Here are my list of grievances for class balance change. I am using the empire side names for things, because that is what I know, apologies to republic players.

 

Marauder / Sentinel

 

Rage needs to be tuned down a bit. It is unfair that I am critting people harder with an aoe ability than carnage and other specs can hit with single target abilities. Again, I leave the exact numbers and tweaks to you Bioware, but it needs to be turned down. I say this as a Rage Marauder with full best in slot min/maxed PvP gear. Someone who has critted for over 9k on a smash on one target in level 50 pvp.

 

Annihilation needs some kind of anti cleanse ability, or dots should not be cleansable. It is already the worst of the 3 specs for pvp, but being able to cleanse the dots makes it extremely weak.

 

Juggernaut / Guardian

 

Vengeance needs some love. Both for PvE and PvP. Damage output could be tweaked a little. Maybe not a ton, but a little. It should not do as much as rage for PvP, but it should be competitive with other single target specs. Jugg tank threat also needs a boost badly.

 

Sorcerer / Sage

 

Bubble stun for everyone has to go. Everyone can get bubble, but not everyone should get the stun portion. Keep the stun for sorcs, as in, the stun portion only works for bubbles popped on the caster. Since this ability can be used offensively, WHILE STUNNED by right clicking the bubble off, it needs to build resolve appropriate to an offensive ability, or remove the ability to right click it off and stun people.

 

Sorc DPS needs to be bumped up, or at least the burst does. Sorcs need a real defensive cooldown, like energy shield / saber ward, something similar.

 

Mercenaries / Commandos

 

They are currently trash in every spec. Lackluster heals, lackluster dps that requies a cast bar for nearly every ability and has unavoidable pushback. These guys need some serious love.

 

Concealment Operatives

 

They need some kind of mobility. As a primarily melee class with no way to close the gap, they suffer hugely after their initial burst. Once out of stealth, they are very vulnerable. They also lack sustained dps in both PvP and PvE.

 

Thank you for taking the time to look this over. I hope that you will take some of this into consideration. I simply do not agree with many of the changes made to classes recently. Buffing one of the strongest PvP dps specs (rage)? Nerfing the least used one (annihilation)? Ignoring the shortcomings of Mercenaries and Operatives, while making an already stunfest resolve system stun people even more? These are not the decisions of a company that listens to it's community feedback and plays it's own game at the higher levels of pvp play. With other developers, I may not always agree with some of their decisions, but I understand why they made them. With the last few months of changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic, I have been simply shocked and appalled at the decision making.

 

At this point, after being one of your most loyal fans, I am considering unsubscribing within a few months, or when the next big game comes along, if things here do not improve. I know, I am only one subscriber, Bioware probably doesn't care, but there it is. I am sure that I am not the only person that feels this way.

 

This is Star Wars, not Stun Wars. Fix it Bioware.

Edited by Aluvi
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 66
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

First of all I would like to thank you for making an educated and articulate post. Most people just ***** and moan about the state of the game. I too love the PvP in the game more than almost any other MMO I have ever played and would like to see it improved. I agree with many of your points, particularly the need for cross server queues. I disagree that premades and non premades need to be separated, simply because queues for premades will inevitably be longer, and I really don't see the point in punishing people for socializing by giving them longer queue times. Furthermore I would disagree that the closing of the gear gap will lessen number of people that queue for ranked, 90% of the people I have run into in ranked have been at least non-min/maxed war hero, I really haven't seen that many (other than win traders queuing for ranked with no gear). I think that by closing the gear gap, PvP will become more competitive and it will be easier for people to get a competitive ranked team together. I still think cross server queues should be implemented through, just to increase competition. Other than that I agree with what you said, and give this thread the Rhaffus seal of approval (I know you don't really give two ***** but still). Thank you for making an intelligent post. Although unlike you I am still hopelessly addicted to this game, faults included. Edited by TheJackalistaken
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So...I took the time to read this, and I have to agree - particularly on Resolve. It has the makings of a great mechanic, but as it is, just isn't worth it; because of how it works, it's like BioWare shouldn't have even bothered. You'll still be totally controlled.

 

World of Warcraft's PVP should not outperform SWTOR's PvP, but due to the uselessness of Resolve...sorry, it does. I too love TOR's PVP - please listen to this man and rethink the Resolve system. I know the OP and I aren't the only ones complaining about this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good post. Solid points I generally agree with.

 

BUT...

 

All the people you are talking to were fired several months ago. The best you can hope for now is that some exec at EA sees this post (which was forwarded by a bu tt kissing flunkie) and thinks he somehow deserves some credit for all those other games he had no involvement with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all I would like to thank you for making an educated and articulate post. Most people just ***** and moan about the state of the game. I too love the PvP in the game more than almost any other MMO I have ever played and would like to see it improved. I agree with many of your points, particularly the need for cross server queues. I disagree that premades and non premades need to be separated, simply because queues for premades will inevitably be longer, and I really don't see the point in punishing people for socializing by giving them longer queue times. Furthermore I would disagree that the closing of the gear gap will lessen number of people that queue for ranked, 90% of the people I have run into in ranked have been at least non-min/maxed war hero, I really haven't seen that many (other than win traders queuing for ranked with no gear). I think that by closing the gear gap, PvP will become more competitive and it will be easier for people to get a competitive ranked team together. I still think cross server queues should be implemented through, just to increase competition. Other than that I agree with what you said, and give this thread the Rhaffus seal of approval (I know you don't really give two ***** but still). Thank you for making an intelligent post. Although unlike you I am still hopelessly addicted to this game, faults included.

 

Thank you for the response, however I think you misunderstood what I said about premades and non premades. I do not think they should be separated, for exactly the reason you posted - it would increase queue times for everyone. The solution that I propose is for Bioware to implement a quality matchmaking system. This system would be similar to how MMR works for arena in wow and the matchmaking system in SC2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am have most of the game the op has and love them I think they absolutely got the pve content in this game right. I can't think of anything thing they can do better other than more stories and maybe allow for you to have multi companions to take on heroics but that is not a must.

 

Pvp wise in game and on the forums I hear complaints about the dmg that smash does honestly when a ability hits more that your master 31 pt ability something is wrong. Hugh mistake on their part, I have a jug and which is one of th funniest classes to play IMO but the smash is out of balance.

 

I have a jug sniper sage and assassin, deception spec finall got a needed survival buff. Sages telekinetic spec is almost unplayable I don't know why the damage is so weak for so much cast time but damn its bad, seriously bad. To the point where I have never seen another tk or full lightning sage sorc in pvp in 1 year of playing this game. That's what I call poor design. I love sniper and jug you guys got those specs right other than 5 k smash on rage.

 

Love this game truly but fix the glaring problems and u will be ok pvp wise. Add more stories and u will be good pve wise.

 

as for resolve getting stun locked is not good for your game no one should have to use back to back to back stuns in order for their class to be viable.

 

You know why I think jug is the funniest class in the game because all their stuns are purposeful choke does dmg plus stuns, push takes a target out of the combat plus stuns and resets leap, aoe stun crowd control. Apply the same thinking across the board and u will have a very fun game.

 

Typing from a iPhone forgive the mistakes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neverwinter Nights 2 was not made by Bioware.

/thread

 

On a serious note, i do not agree with the following: Resolve, Concealment Operatives. Immunity to roots needs to be rare. Concealment ops already got their buffs in 1.4, they also got that extra speed. They don't need anything now.

Edited by NoTomorrow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Resolve

 

I understand how resolve works, but I simply don't like it. It's a lackluster system. In return for being stunned for up to 18 seconds straight, you get a few seconds of cc immunity. During this CC immunity, you will likely be slowed or rooted and unable to act anyway. This can be punishing for ranged classes, but it is especially punishing to melee. Every class has multiple stuns, snares, slows, and roots available to them. In general, you can spend up to 30-40% of your time in a warzone unable to act. Loss of control is one of the biggest complaints that people have in PvP.

 

A very astute observation and one that I agree with; I would offer the following to fix the stun fest we have in PvP.

 

1. Do away with the resolve system completely. Anything that affects a player in the form of a stun, roots, slows, CC, or otherwise inhibits a player from acting should all fall under stun and can be stopped by popping their stun break.

 

2. Lower the CD of the stun break from 2 minutes to 1:30 seconds. When a player uses this power to break a stun, they should have an automatic immunity to all forms of stuns, roots, slows, CC, or whatever else that can be used to inhibit their ability to act for 1 full minute. When that minute expires, they have 30 seconds where they can be vulnerable to the above mentioned powers until their CD on their stun break is reset.

 

3. This will allow players to engage and fight to their heart's content without worrying about being stun locked until their immunity wears off. This will speed up play and promote more brutal combat in PvP as it should be.

 

4. This is something similar we had in CoX. We popped an inspiration and we were immune to any affect that inhibited our ability to act. That lasted for 1 minute. Combat in PvP was fast, furious, and deadly for everyone. We worried more about fighting than watching our characters die while they are stun locked as we see in SWTOR PvP.

 

There is nothing worse than sitting on a node being hit with a stun from an operative/smuggler/shadow/assassin and wait until it wears off before acting. Because as soon as you break it before the stun/cc wears off to stop them from capping, they nail you again and you're done.

 

Giving a player full immunity from being controlled by any and all means for a full minute will promote more intense play within the Warzone, just as it should be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A very astute observation and one that I agree with; I would offer the following to fix the stun fest we have in PvP.

 

1. Do away with the resolve system completely. Anything that affects a player in the form of a stun, roots, slows, CC, or otherwise inhibits a player from acting should all fall under stun and can be stopped by popping their stun break.

 

2. Lower the CD of the stun break from 2 minutes to 1:30 seconds. When a player uses this power to break a stun, they should have an automatic immunity to all forms of stuns, roots, slows, CC, or whatever else that can be used to inhibit their ability to act for 1 full minute. When that minute expires, they have 30 seconds where they can be vulnerable to the above mentioned powers until their CD on their stun break is reset.

 

3. This will allow players to engage and fight to their heart's content without worrying about being stun locked until their immunity wears off. This will speed up play and promote more brutal combat in PvP as it should be.

 

4. This is something similar we had in CoX. We popped an inspiration and we were immune to any affect that inhibited our ability to act. That lasted for 1 minute. Combat in PvP was fast, furious, and deadly for everyone. We worried more about fighting than watching our characters die while they are stun locked as we see in SWTOR PvP.

 

There is nothing worse than sitting on a node being hit with a stun from an operative/smuggler/shadow/assassin and wait until it wears off before acting. Because as soon as you break it before the stun/cc wears off to stop them from capping, they nail you again and you're done.

 

Giving a player full immunity from being controlled by any and all means for a full minute will promote more intense play within the Warzone, just as it should be.

 

Perfect, now let me and my friends all roll healers with a few melee and we will faceroll the crap out of you without CC stoping us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Read and agreed with all of it. Operative sustained DPS is really bad. My commando at least has the option to go into an operation and perform very well and contribute, even if it's total crap in PVP. Operative DPS is bad on both sides of the game and that's just so wrong on so many levels.

 

Agreed on resolve, agreed on the need for cross server queues combined with actually good matchmaking.

 

Frankly Aluvi, you are one of my least favorite people to see in game, since it's always across the field on a warzone, but you make some damn fine points here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree. Main problem with PvP is resolve system, I can survive all other problems, but I cant stand stuns, roots etc. which are at least 50% of battle. This would work in 2v2 matches, where you must accually think and wait for the right moment to stun/unstun, but when there are 16 players it realy becomes a stun wars.

 

The other thing i was wondering lately is Hut Ball. In my opinion it needs fixing, becouse there are several classes that have unfair advantage there. Problem is with ball handler. For example you are slowed but you are able to jump, you are able to use speed and other skills while other classes simply can't. The game depends on which team has more Sages ;-)

 

My proposition is to prevent ball handler from jumping and doing other stuff. Instead give him a hp boost or something else which can make him a bit stronger. But no jumping, speeding etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Op that was a fantastic very well writen post. I hope BW reads it. the only thing that i disagree with you on is the issue with everyone getting WH gear for the same price as BM gear. I have a fully geared healer op fully WH augmented and sure the grind suxed but there was a desparity with gear and this move by BW puts folks on a more even playing field.

 

Everything else i totaly agree with you on 100%

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the BM augment problem was really BW fault. No one will augment the bm cause you need to turn in the shells and the shells are the only thing that have the bonus. Thus, you either strip the mods and go without bonus or you go with the bm bonus, but later have to re-augment your gear due the requirement of having to turn in the shell. It's too costly for people who only pvp.

 

There was always little incentives to do any form of rank pvp in any game. While it initially helps wow has shown that continual gear gaps will eventually result in pvp dying off, especially with rank requirements. The only way I see ranks working in any game is by provide unique items, specifically unique gear, but I doubt it any mmorpg will do that for such a small group of players. This isn't a professional sport that generates a lot of money to justify the cost of the rewards. Personally, I think they should have multiple tiers eventually leading to tournament at end of each season. In those tournaments reward players with good items. However, those end tournaments will be cross server. First, have sever regional tournaments, then have server final tournaments between all the servers. That will make a very competitive rated pvp and give rated meaning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agree with all you said with the exception of the operative. Concealment operatives have a gap closer. It's called sneak and it works extremely well. Operatives struggle with sustained dps. it's meh atm, but what can you do about it? If they are given initial burst + sustained dps they will become massively overpowered like they were at launch.

 

I'm a die hard concealment operative. I love the spec. The only change I would make to the spec is to allow the operatve to re-stealth using regular stealth everytime you kill a target. Use a 5 second window per kill so that it can't be abused and alter stealth itself so that there is "NO" cooldown.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A very well written post! Finally a Marauder/Sentinel that knows what he's talking about. :jawa_biggrin: I must say that I agree to everything you wrote, now let's just hope that Bioware reads it as well, cause as the game is now the Pvp is unplayable for some classes and as you said the resolve is broken and should just be removed.

 

Anyway +1 from me!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perfect, now let me and my friends all roll healers with a few melee and we will faceroll the crap out of you without CC stoping us.

 

It wouldn't be any different from what is happening today with all the stuns, roots, slows, CC, and other means to keep a player from functioning in a Warzone.

 

However, you neglected to read the fact that for 30 seconds, everyone is vulnerable to being stunned, rooted, slowed, CC, and otherwise inhibited from acting. In anything there is a tradeoff. However, in its current form, the resolve system along with the plethora of abilities to stop players from having any actions is simply broken in its current form. You may disagree, that's fine. But I would venture a guess that you have had your share of stun locked deaths to the point of frustration too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It wouldn't be any different from what is happening today with all the stuns, roots, slows, CC, and other means to keep a player from functioning in a Warzone.

 

However, you neglected to read the fact that for 30 seconds, everyone is vulnerable to being stunned, rooted, slowed, CC, and otherwise inhibited from acting. In anything there is a tradeoff. However, in its current form, the resolve system along with the plethora of abilities to stop players from having any actions is simply broken in its current form. You may disagree, that's fine. But I would venture a guess that you have had your share of stun locked deaths to the point of frustration too.

 

I'd say a whole minute of immunity with only thirty seconds of vulnerability is probably a bit too much in the other direction from what we have now. I do think you're on the right track, though. Even the immunity to further stunning for awhile would make a big difference. I don't want CC to totally go away, as that is an interesting facet to PvP. I just don't want it dominating it so much. I'm still getting to 50, but there have been plenty of times where I was chain CC'd to near death, and it's no fun. The matches I remember most were the ones where people were all fighting, not where they ganked that one poor sucker and he couldn't do a thing about it (and I'm talking CC, not where 4 people beat down on 1 easily).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks...

 

 

 

 

After careful evaluation I agree for the most part with the OP's thread and rate this a 4/5.

 

If you want a real recap:

 

-Pro matchmaking and xserver

-Anti separate queues

-Hit or miss on class changes, tune down rage, make bubble pop on caster only, make anni DoTs uncleansable (100% no, but un-nerf healing por favor) for examples

-Resolve doesn't really work, but wants something for snares/roots (no)

-Overall improve the game

Link to comment
Share on other sites


×
×
  • Create New...