Let me start off by saying that Ilum was just a bad idea to begin with. I saw the 2:1 faction imbalance before the game even launched solely based on the guilds that pre registered and were placed on the server I'm on (Bondar Crystal) though I'm sure it averages out to roughly the same on most servers.

 

With the new patch all that's going to happen is instead of people win trading through the cap points people will be making alt characters from the other faction to farm kills for the daily and weekly quests. Making it so you can't make characters from the other faction on the same server per account would go a little ways to solving this but I'm sure some people would buy additional accounts to to do this. Nothing short of banning people for doing this will solve it and if they do that they'll be losing money from lost subs which I'm not sure theyre willing to do.

 

The best idea I've come up with is to turn Ilum into Wintergrasp like in WoW.

 

For those of you that didnt play WoW Wintergrasp - I will explain.

 

For the sake of example lets call it 1 hour on, 1 hour off.

 

So for 1 hour the Battle of Ilum will be active. Points will be able to be capped. The two sides fight over capturing and holding the points. At the end of the hour, whoever holds the most points wins. Could make the match end early if one side takes over all 5 points. After the match ends, for the next hour it is inactive and the points can't be interacted with. Once that hour is up the battle rages again.

 

The biggest problem is faction imbalance, hence either A) limiting the number of people that can enter the zone, lets use 40 people for an example, or B) giving the side with less people a buff to hp/damage/healing (or expertise) to make up for not having the numbers the other side has.

 

Again, A or B aren't IDEAL solutions, but I can't think of anything better. I challenge you to.

 

Two sides fight over the zone, winner gets to access a raid zone that yields good armor. It wouldn't even have to be "access a raid zone" as that would require Bioware to develop the raid zone - the winner could just be awarded a champion or battlemaster bag. Could even turn the daily and weekly into win 1 Ilum match and win 3 for the week and get the champion/battlemaster bags that way.

 

What do you guys think? Is there anyway to make Ilum worthwhile? Please share your ideas. If the zone is a lost cause then state your opinion on that also.

 

Maybe Bioware will read this and listen to some of the suggestions.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Blazzen

You basically have not fixed anything. Its the same thing we have now because we need the other faction to control zone for us to finish daily.

You basically have not fixed anything. Its the same thing we have now because we need the other faction to control zone for us to finish daily.

 

Maybe you didn't play WoW Wintergrasp - I should've explained.

 

For the sake of example lets call it 1 hour on, 1 hour off.

 

So for 1 hour the Battle of Ilum will be active. Points will be able to be capped. The two sides fight over capturing and holding the points. At the end of the hour, whoever holds the most points wins. Could make the match end early if one side takes over all 5 points. After the match ends, for the next hour it is inactive and the points can't be interacted with. Once that hour is up the battle rages again.

 

The biggest problem is faction imbalance, hence either A) limiting the number of people that can enter the zone, lets use 40 people for an example, or B) giving the side with less people a buff to hp/damage/healing (or expertise) to make up for not having the numbers the other side has.

 

Again, A or B aren't IDEAL solutions, but I can't think of anything better. I challenge you to.

 

EDIT: First post updated with deeper explanation.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Blazzen

Bump!

I did play WoW Wintergrasp, and you fixed nothing. All they did was trade the zone back and forth, that's it. For a day or two people seriously tried defending it. Same way in Tol Barad now, for a while people legitimately tried defending it, but it isn't worth it and the factions just trade it to get their one raid in and that's it.

At first glance, yea it seems preferable to what we currently have. But I never played Wintergrasp in WoW so I can't comment on whether that system was broken or not.

 

And as far as choosing A or B, IMO, you would have to choose A. Making a player stronger through option B wouldn't make them any better in the same way Zerg can easily defeat Protoss; numbers always win in video games, because they can't fully simulate strategy and geographical strengths.

 

If you don't know what Zerg and Protoss are, you have failed.

 

They could limit the number of players, and open up several more instances of Ilum. For example, have 50 - 60 players (which would require better servers than they currently have too) per instance. So the first 25 people per faction on Ilum would be placed in an instance.

 

I know, I hate instances too, but with the massive faction imbalance that has occurred in SWToR, it is the most obvious solution.

I did play WoW Wintergrasp, and you fixed nothing. All they did was trade the zone back and forth, that's it. For a day or two people seriously tried defending it. Same way in Tol Barad now, for a while people legitimately tried defending it, but it isn't worth it and the factions just trade it to get their one raid in and that's it.

 

Well aside from that, no one went to WG outside of the battleground times. If the idea was to promote world PvP then I think Aion did it better. Faction balance aside, the mechanics of Forts in the Air and Ground Abyss in Aion worked out pretty well to promote world PvP mixed with the various incentives in game to be in that area of the map. You had people out at all times of day and night so if you wanted world PvP, you knew where to find them.

Hey Blazzen, also a Bondar Crystal alum...

 

Anyway, back in Warhammer we had a similar issue with lockouts for Keep battles to make things "fair", which since again their was huge faction imbalance on the servers (Destro outpoped my Alliance by 3:1 on some servers). This unfortunately made people REALLY unhappy, as many Destros never got to see a Keep fight due to the lockout. As well, even Alliance was affected by this -- I remember constantly running to the keep zone only to be popped back to the rez point, over and over, on the off chance someone in the zone died or d/ced and I could sneak in their place.

 

Absolutely everyone hated this system.

 

Another Warhammer example on the flip side -- the newest expansion "Lands of the Dead" only allowed people to run the dungeons and raids in the new land if they controlled the zone. So, guess what happened on our 3:1 server? Yup, I got into one dungeon once. Complete fail of an expansion on my end, as I couldn't do anything at all with it...

 

In the end, the problem for World PvP is numbers make it inherently unfair, and with a two faction system there's absolutely no way to balance the system while letting groups participate.

sorry, but that's the worst IDEA ever.

so a complete run, will take 2 hours, lol i have better thing's to do then doing so called world PvP.

please no WOW BG that is just failed.

 

if bioware wants open world pvp LOOK AT DAOC AND LEARN FROM THEM!!! thats all i gotta say.

 

 

as for daillys use another method to complete it instead of base on control

such as killing certain amount number of players etc

They just need like a fort that as long as you keep you get incentives. AS long as you keep. And give you a reason why the other side shouldn't be allowed.

Relics like in DAOC are the only thing I can think of that could make world PvP worth it.

 

You have a handful of relics on each side. Capturing the relics should require 1-2 hour uncontested and significantly longer if contested. The relics should give bonuses like:

 

+10% force power

+10% str

+10% cunning

+10% AIM

+10% experiance gain

(Or maybe combo's like 5% str/end)

 

For your entire faction at all levels in both PVP and PVE. The bonuses should only work if you hold both your equiv relic + the other sides.

 

So for example if you were imperial faction had IR1 (Imperial relic 1) and RR1 (Republic Relic 1) then you would receive the bonus. But if you did not have IR1 and captured RR1 both factions would lose the bonus until one faction regained their #1 relic and still maintained the other factions.

 

This would give people an incentive to capture and hold them.