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Bioware either wants to kill, or is at least apathetic towards the life of PvP


Craydingus

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We haven't received a new Warzone map in over 3 years now. Bioware was giving us new ones about 1x/year before that, and a decent amount of new story/PvE content has been released in the same span of time that no new maps were added to PvP. This, if nothing else, shows neglect.

 

The last time we did get new maps, it was Battle Ring (OK, not a terrible arena, but definitely not some people's favorite, and it has been buggy) and Vandin. Vandin, which is reviled so immensely that not even a 15-minute quitter lockout can deter some people from preemptively quitting it, was purposefully spammed incessantly upon its release, constituting up to 80% of Warzone pops in a sitting. The repetition of such a polarizing, lag-infested map could have easily compelled players to quit PvP, or at least temporarily pull back from it, for the several months that it lasted.

 

Then, 6.0 came. Not saying that the wide array of set bonuses and addition of tactical item slot was bad on paper- quite the opposite- having numerous choices of ways to build a character is always a good thing. Nor am I claiming that the game was ever perfectly balanced before 6.0/ The problem is that the set bonuses and/or tacticals for certain disciplines only gave their performance a slight boost, while for others, it sent their power ceilings to the moon. Specs that had one or two already-powerful, noxious assets saw that asset multiplied times a billion, while already-underperforming disciplines got peanuts. Paraphrasing the words of a popular streamer who frequents this forum, "In this xpac, it's not meta vs. off-meta, it's viable vs inviable." The unprecedented class imbalance led to one of the most monotonous, stale metas in the games history, where you can expect to see any one of the high-performing specs make up 4-8 of the total players in a given warzone, and the less powerful disciplines are rarer than a clear image of bigfoot. If the devs wanted to make people sick of PvP, the staleness that comes from the repetition certain disciplines basically being omnipresent would be one way to do it.

 

Then, of course, we have patch 6.1.2 D, the most obvious attempt at murdering PvP. In a livestream, Chris Schmidt claimed that by implementing win-only missions and a quitter lockout, it would "encourage players to develop a winning-focused mentality that they could take into ranked." Assuming this is his sincere argument, it is beyond flawed. It assumes that people whose main niche is reg PvP at this point in the game's life can still be prodded into queuing for ranked; that the type of people who get enjoyment from winning 8-man maps have any inclination towards queuing for arenas. It assumes that reward-motivated players feel bound to any one game mode. It's basically BioChris saying that he thinks he can play god with people's motivations for PvPing. Chances are, it's not a sincere argument at all, just a false front for an endeavor to kill PvP. When, in the history of game development, has any dev sought to bring more people into a game mode by making it on the whole less rewarding? Never, because it's not a thing. If you make something less rewarding, fewer people will partake. The devs know this. They pumped life into ranked season 11 by making it more rewarding, specifically, making it the only way to obtain the ossus data crystals for mainhand/offhand weapons. And if they really thought that win-only missions were the best thing ever, they'd have slapped the clause on GSF too, which they didn't, because they don't want to kill GSF. If anything ,solely going based on reward structures, it seems like the devs want everyone doing GSF. It yields a ton of conquest points.

 

As for the quitter lockout, a quitter lockout without any form of preemptive map filter effectively just means no choice in what maps you play. Bioware knows that taking choice away from a game mode is a s**t-for-brains construct. Every groupfinder activity has some form of choice, be it a filter, or knowledge of what mode you're queuing into before you take a pop. The devs know that being able to choose what you play is a basic QoL necessity in order for a game mode to not be actual garbage.

 

And the way the grouped maps... ... Ugh. Whether it's voidstar, hypergate, or one of the huttballs, it happens way more frequently than not that something will get spammed ten ways to Tuesday. Again, staleness and repetition is a highly effective way to drive people away from a game mode.

So this patch resulted in PvPers being stuck in maps they loathe, potentially the same map for more than half the night, and for no reward if they happened to commit the crime of having bad RNG. I'm not saying the weekly mission is some high and mighty reward to strive for, but Not even being able to progress closer to earning that for the trouble of getting stuck in [insert map you don't like and number of times in a row it popped here], is irritating to say the least.

 

And no, galactic seasons was not an attempt to breathe life into PvP. Look at the activities that progress it. Kill 75 insectoids (random), Section X daily missions (ew, those things take forever), some long, drawn-out, lesser-played FP's. All activities that bioware knows had become unpopular or potentially pointless, and PvP had certainly fallen into this category for some. Bioware did not add galactic seasons in the hopes that players would do the unpopular activities instead of using cartel coins and potentially real money to progress it; they wanted you to be deterred by the unappealing assortment of activities that could progress it, and opt to progress it using real money instead. Bioware knows they made PvP a wildly unappealing activity, they all but explicitly acknowledge it.

 

Monotony in many ways, decreased rewards, no aspect of choice. That all pretty clearly points to discouragement from a game mode. I rest my case.

Edited by Craydingus
Needed to add an important detail
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  • 2 months later...
they basiccly killed PVP by removeing 8v8 ranked and made Ranked TDM

 

I mean the devs removed 8v8 ranked because at the time it's what people wanted because nobody was queueing for it because it required 16 people to do and if one team dropped the other was just left standing around with their hands in their pockets. Personally I think they shouldve had 8v8 ranked and 4v4 ranked but it's a little late now because people wanted it gone completely.

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I mean the devs removed 8v8 ranked because at the time it's what people wanted because nobody was queueing for it because it required 16 people to do and if one team dropped the other was just left standing around with their hands in their pockets. Personally I think they shouldve had 8v8 ranked and 4v4 ranked but it's a little late now because people wanted it gone completely.

 

This is incorrect.

 

There were tons of pvp guilds on the larger servers. The problem is there was no cross server queues and BW messed up opening too many servers back then leaving a lot of servers empty. When they opened up server transfers the entire pvp community came together and moved to POT5. There were dozens of teams queuing every single night. A short time afterwards BW decided to nuke 8v8 and create arenas. They killed pvp guilds over night and 8v8 ranked lost more than half of the teams that were playing every night.

 

The problems with pvp are entirely BW's fault.

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I mean the devs removed 8v8 ranked because at the time it's what people wanted because nobody was queueing for it because it required 16 people to do and if one team dropped the other was just left standing around with their hands in their pockets. Personally I think they shouldve had 8v8 ranked and 4v4 ranked but it's a little late now because people wanted it gone completely.

 

Yep incorrect. Fridays and Saturdays always had 10 teams in que.

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This is incorrect.

 

There were tons of pvp guilds on the larger servers. The problem is there was no cross server queues and BW messed up opening too many servers back then leaving a lot of servers empty. When they opened up server transfers the entire pvp community came together and moved to POT5. There were dozens of teams queuing every single night. A short time afterwards BW decided to nuke 8v8 and create arenas. They killed pvp guilds over night and 8v8 ranked lost more than half of the teams that were playing every night.

 

The problems with pvp are entirely BW's fault.

 

This is entirely true.

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Maps?! No one cares about new maps.

 

The biggest problem in this game is the fact PVP has been broken since the game was released and BioWare does nothing about unbalanced classes and the OP classes, such as Operatives.

 

They nerfed the H*LL out of Gunslingers and took away most of their defenses and ALL of their healing.

 

Yes, you are correct, they HATE PVP.

 

But for all the wrong reasons. They don't hate maps (they couldn't care less).

 

They actually HATE PVP.

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