justcallmetarzan Posted February 8, 2012 Share Posted February 8, 2012 Caveat : I put 'save' in quotes because it's not really dead. It doesn't really function terribly well as a game mechanic, but people are in warzones PvPing; some people are on Ilum... PvP exists. Whether it is on a downward spiral is kind of in the air. I don't see any indication on my server that fewer people are playing in WZ matches; there's no talk in /1 about unsubbing or fixing broken mechanics. On to the meat and potatoes... So there are three basic problems that come up again and again in discussions of PvP: 1: No endgame content 2: Gear grind / box pickup is boring 3: Everyone on my team sucks How can these be fixed? 1: Endgame PvP Content I think the solution to the endgame PvP content is a complex one. Simply adding more warzones probably won't fix things, though it would be nice to see more maps like Alderaan that require some actual strategy to win. What I would propose is for there to be more world-bosses that are styled specifically for PvP, with PvP and/or epeen rewards for downing them. Example: On Tython, the Jedi council sits relatively unguarded in a room in a pitiful little base. Let Empire 50's make a raid and go kill one of the Jedi Masters there. Rotate which master is available (one for each of the Sith force-user specs). Before people start crying about letting 50's on Tython, there's a simple solution - just send them to a different instance that is a very small area of the planet - i.e. they just start in the hills North of that base, fight their way in, kill the boss. So how does PvP come in? As the Empire op group lands, a small queue window appears at the rebel fleet, allowing an opposing op group to assemble and get transported to Tython to defend. Regardless of the number of people that actually go to defend, after a short timer, the Imp op is released to attack. The base mechanic is that they capture, say, 3 of 5 points to open the blast doors to the base, at which point, they may enter, but the Reps cannot. In essence, the encounter makes the opposing faction the "trash" to their own boss. Put a timer on the amount of time to capture the courtyard and give players a once-per-day lockout on attempts. Make the boss encounter rather quick and painless, but drop high-level PvP gear and/or mods. Another option to make the rewards seem less PvE-like would be to change the mechanic slightly so that once the base is opened, players loot a weapons/gear cache. In that latter type, I think a more appropriate entry mechanic would be essentially the same as a warzone with a lockout. Another, quick Example: In a sequestered area of a planet (50's only), cause a locker to spawn at a predictable time inside a base (e.g. at 20:00 server time). Give a scaled reward based on how many show up to attack/defend. Basically, if 50 Imps show up and only 10 Reps show up, they're of course going to get stomped, so the reward should be a handful of item modifications. But if 10 Imps defeat 50 Reps, it would drop a handful of gear pieces. 2: Boring Gear/Box Grind Improving endgame PvP content as described above would partially solve this problem. However, as with any progression-based PvP system (and by this I just mean incremental gear), there needs to be a "backup" system to get better gear at a predictable, if slower, rate. Remove the requirement of daily kills in Ilum. Get rid of it period. Change the kill requirement to any enemy player within a zone around your own level. Give it, say, a 2-level window, or perhaps something like 2 below and 3 above. Restrict 50's to only killing other 50's. Add world PvP valor gain. I completely fail to see why killing another 50 in Ilum grants valor, but killing the same player on Corellia does not. This, combined with the recent changes to bag drops should serve to add variety to the slower method of getting PvP gear - players would no longer be restricted to a single, buggy 5-fps zone to complete PvP daily/weeklies, and would not have to set aside special time to go trade kills in the wasteland. And, more fundamentally, it encourages world PvP to exist in the places where the other players actually are, not in a pre-defined area that doesn't really work. 3: My Team Sucks The simplest solution to this is to allow 8-man premades. Another solution involves some kind of PvP ranking system, but this opens us to the problem of balancing the server population with the ranking bracket. So do they open it up cross server? (IMO no.) Long story short, *not* allowing 8-man premades opens up Pandora's box of unsavory band-aids to solve intra-group balancing issues. Honestly, the other solution is to learn to play with a mixed group. This means adjusting your own tactics to fit the unbalance of the group. Short on healers? Play defensively, peeling off each other, watching each other's backs, etc... In a pugged group, there will always be that one person who is really, truly, bad at their class and needs to go back to square one. That's the unfortunate reality of a server population. One thing that would certainly be helpful here is combining servers so that not only is the population more balanced, but the playerbase is larger - makes the baddies fewer and farther between, and gives the really good premades more, better competition. And last, but not least, there should be a way of tracking group, if not individual player, performance. There doesn't even necessarily need to be an arena-type system (though that would be nice too, but should be cross-server) to rank players... Just some kind of metric by which players can gauge their performance as compared to others'. My apologies for the wall of text... let me briefly recap: 1) Add interesting PvP quasi-raids with better rewards. 2) Open valor/daily/weekly quest gains to all PvP on the server (except in warzones). 3) Allow 8-man premades to queue for warzones. 4) Add player metrics. Most of this (if not all) has been sporadically suggested, flamed, fanboy'ed, etc... I'd like to coalesce it into something more concrete that constructively addresses the issues - something that is useful. To wit, if we get some good dialog on this issue, I'd love to add it as a petition in the suggestion forum. Also, please add to these and we'll gather other useful suggestions into one place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
justcallmetarzan Posted February 8, 2012 Author Share Posted February 8, 2012 Reserved for additions... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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