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Star Wars: The Old Republic: How to Improve PvP
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Last week we broke down some of the PvP changes (and their resulting issues) introduced to Star Wars: The Old Republic with the release of Update 1.1 "Rise of the Rakghouls."
Today, we're offering a constructive take on how BioWare can improve on PvP in SW:TOR going forward.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Update 1.1 “Rise of the Rakghouls” was deployed to live servers last week, promising, among other things, major improvements to the problematic situation plaguing endgame open world PvP on Ilum. Unfortunately, the intentions were sound, but BioWare made some major mistakes in not anticipating some of the results of these changes.
Last week, we discussed and reacted to the changes in an update to our staff blog titled “How Not to Improve PvP,” and this week I’d like to discuss a number of ways BioWare can improve on the game’s PvP offerings.
Read more of Michael Bitton's Star Wars: The Old Republic: How to Improve PvP.
Comments
Excellent review of the pvp but i cant say much because im not lvl cap atm but anyway im having a lot of fun doing warzones because of the gameplay and combat style that is very well done.
I hope Bioware will take new ideas and try to make the PvP of the game less monotone and not just a grinding dailys and weeklys but i understand that is very easy to say something than get it done in the right way when u have most of the people happy with changes because lets be honest you will never have everybody happy when there is a change, all my good wishes to Bioware and SWTOR because i have a lot of hope that the game will get better with time.
This is a pretty good article that really addresses some of the major flaws in the SWTOR PvP game but there's no real shortage of minor ones either. PvP, by its very nature, is usually fast paced, fun and exciting or miserably frustrating; all depending on how the battle is going and SWTOR PvP is no exception to this. SWTOR PvP also happens to find a way to be boring as well, because the homogenized classes throw such a constant and predictable stream of crowd control at you with a truly mind numbing consistancy, your only option to continue playing is to build a protective layer of apathy.
That is one of the Major baffling issues plagueing PVP in this game. That a group of enemy players can chain CC you till you're dead!
Something that was plagueging WAR in the beginning too! With CC's being stackable and having no CC immunity after you already suffered one!
They later added an imunity timer in WAR to try rectify this issue and PVP greatly improved after that.
This is just YET AGAIN another baffling mistake that made it over from early WAR into this game!
Especially since Mythic and Bioware were merged and we know for fact that former WAR devs are working on this game! That so many issues and mistakes from WAR PVP ended right into this game just shows how badly mismanaged this game is. /facepalm
I would have been a Republic player, I tried 2 different Rep classes before finally settling on BH because it's just awesome. I'd honestly be happy to play as a neutral or swap to the Republic if it were possible once I reach the level cap.
Admit it, you just went BH so you could do this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUUWIgm5ssE
The only way Bioware can save Ilum is to go play Aion for a while.
Ilum should be FFA PVP like the Abyss is, command posts should only be vunerable at set times and open for taking, this congests the PVP to a few hour window each night.
Once 1 side has 50% or more of bases then the opposition should recieve a valor buff scaling higher the lower the % they have capped (only active on Ilum). This allows the side that has lower numbers to come with a smaller force but dealing more damage and taking less so can even things out.
Introducing a 3rd faction even if it is NPC similiar to the Balaur in Aion would be a godsend as this guarantees the shift of command posts almost, helps even out any imbalance and at least provides content if the opposite side fails to turn up.
BioWare will never be able to improve the PvP significantly.
This is because SWTOR was never designed for PvP - it was designed for storytelling.
In contrast, Eve Online was designed for open world PvP on one server.
Unfortunately, you have to 'choose the right tool for the right job'.
SWTOR serves as a decent break from Eve Online though.
One of the best things they could do is make the PvP gear incredibly easy to get, much like WoW did. They should have introduced craftable PvP gear for fresh 50's as well as gear through the leveling process.
Gear progression is for PvE, not PvP. As fun as it is to curbstomp some news from time to time, that's not true PvP - that's PvGear. Most of these games push the gear progression to keep people sub'ing or playing the game but's it's really a shame because they've essentially bastardized PvP into a mini-game which pits your gear against another gear instead of a match wits and skill.
In the age of copy and paste other MMO features. They could have done alot better with PVP than the turd AKA Ilum
Interesting article with many good suggestions. Unfourtunately it seems that PvP is not the main focus of SW:TOR so I doubt Bioware will spend much time, beside tweaking and bug fixing, when it comes to PvP.
Rift has similar issues with PvP and Trion has added very little content to it, only some tweaks and such.
As for faction imbalance, I would take a more innovative approach to the problem and that is to use the same tactics like in RL conflict when one side vastly outnumbers the other one and that is guerilla tactics. That is, give the weaker side ways to be more mobile, more stealthy and be able to do surprise attacks.
How that can be achieved is maybe with buffs, equipement and possibly AI help to achieve this.
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Good article.
In my opinion the faction imbalance isn't easily solved as long as you funnel all endgame world pvp into a single zone with a limited amount of objectives.
Another negative side effect of these restrictions is the other planets not playing a role at all in world pvp. (They aren't playing much of a role in endgame in general). Spreading out world pvp "objectives" (i.e. player kills themselves) over the entire game world(s), however, would give underplayed factions opportunities to stage raids with superior numbers in specific areas.
That way organization becomes a much more important aspect rather than going to the single, obvious spot for world pvp on an individual basis.
I'd like to see the following:
- A move of world pvp rewards away from quests towards player kills (valor and a chance on a commendation drop), so no more dailies and weeklies.
- The same valor and chance on commendation drops anywhere on any shared planet, not just on Ilum.
Of course kill exchanges should be excluded by severe diminishing returns and other mechanics. (only one commendation drop possible from each specific player in 24h, to name one). Also lowbie kill farming should be excluded by factoring in level ranges.
Also make merc commendations a secondary requirement for all rewards and warzone commendations not being exchangable for the merc ones. The other way around is fine.
edit: I realize that most of my suggestions would only work for pvp servers V_V
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Here's my top 3 problems with TOR PvP:
1) No purpose to it besides the gear treadmill.
2) Over abundance of CC and ineffective DR system.
3) Faction imbalance.
It's amusing to me that people say we don't want no stinkin gear grind, but then when given the opportunity to play without worrying about gear they forsake it entirely. Case in point nearly every review I read for SWTOR talked about being all light or dark side because there were no gray options yet not a single person took the gray path simply to take it.
Players talk about all these different things, but when its time to put their money where their mouth is they always bail. Case in point Illum without PVP rewards. No one wanted to play because it was "pointless" and so they just did PVE dailies.
People say we want better PVP and/or openworld but those games but stake their livelyhood on it (Warhammer Online, Eve Online, SWG) are generally ignored. The fact of the matter is that openworld MMOs are ghost towns and themepark worlds are crowded.
The People have spoken.
You do realize that this is in the game right?
It's called resolve. Look it up. You have a meter that fills up when you are crowd controled. When it's full, you get a burst of cc immunity.
Sounds like an "immunity timer" to me.
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i would say let the madness begin. Let us join a "PVP" server and find we can open world pvp on any map at any lvl, everywhere. Thats why it is titled PVP server, so give us raw and violent pvp on pvp servers. The day i see that working as intended will be the day i stick with a game forever because i dont like instanced pvp so i have to stick with PvE even on PvP servers thanks to heavily restricted open world pvp......on said servers
Well then it's bugged and not working during PVP. I have played plenty of warzones these past days (didn't bother before due to lvl50's) and been chained CC'ed to death. It felt like early WAR PVP all over again.
if anyone is looking for a balanced PvP server try Firkrann Crystal. Its on east coast apparently there's a pretty close empire/rep ratio.
don't quote me on the exact ratio, I just know it's not overly one sided
I am waiting for the today's patch, but yesterday Ilum PvP was ... well playable... but still republic players were camping at their base even though (surprisingly) I estimated their numbers to be the same as of the atackers (us). I didn't notice any disadvantages for the rep players - it is just they choose this strategy not to fight ))) It seems as if they are the ones exploiting the game mechanics now by atacking empire from their safe zone))
I would suggest some penalties for not engaging in combat as the golden standard for most combat sports. E.g. players in their safe zone don't get the valor points and kills don't count towards daily objectives. You want to score go risk your life (there is no death penalties - why the rep players would be so cautious?).
Regarding factions imbalance - there are ways to split the endgame empire into additional rival sub-factions. Some options:
1) Light side empire vs. dark side empire. Or just 2 rival sith leaders. While those sub-factions can co-exist in the same capital and without altering main plot and leveling experience - it is relatively easy to create warzones for sith in-fighting (to partially replace much hated huttball) and to alter world PvP to resemble 3-factions conflict.
2) Neutral Hutt cartel sub-faction (for non-force users only). Will create an interesting split and some class competitive combat (also making non-force users more appealing to players). There is no need to make this a completely new separate faction - just the endgame PvP sub-faction which accepts both Empire and rep players, and you can leave at will and return to your base PvP faction (either Empire or rep).
3) Combine 1 nd 2, so there will be 4 PvP factions. )) I am absolutely sure there will be more balance as players will be able to switch from one faction to another and auto-balance factions (as fighting weak factions is not fun at all).
4) Not sure if this is a good idea, but certainly appealing to the rep players. Make some sort of the fallen Jedi PvP faction, which would be more like an early sith order - plotting to capture the power for themselves and fighting both republic and sith during PvP matches (again - this won't change your base faction - just endgame PvP side). Though this is likely to boost republic populations - might as well attract the majority of player to this one, so the vanilla republic faction would shrink further ))))
I don't think EA has much interest in improving PvP. They are more focused on increasing box sales and they are probably putting people towards an expansion, cash shop and eventually a F2P package. That is where the $$ is.
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Just two brainstorming ideas:
- add open, tiered PVP zones with castle siege-mechanics, similar to WAR. Those were great fun and not so hectic and imbalanced as "10 VS 10" arena PVP often is.
- give some REALLY cool looking PVP armour sets, the current ones just look like trash. (That's generally an issue, you can do the LONG bonus PVE quests and get nothing special at all. SWTOR has generally way too less "coolness" factor in rewards were you feel like "omg, look, I want this too!")
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Gear based games will never be fun, only addicting.
Also the pvp is dull ... and dull.
Three tiny battlemaps, open world pvp barely ever occurs.
And the CC's ... jesus ... i always feel like i play on a machine with a 1000ms ping ... but it's all the damn stuns and slows that make me stagger and lag around.
I agree with most of this. I wish they'd fix the damn resolve bar
Like WoW, PvP in TOR will adapt and change over time.
Hopefully more towards variety and reason/incentive towards open world PvP.
First it's really distressing that we amatures end up telling "professional" game designers how to do their job of designing a great realm vs realm conflict feature.
Second...the best RVR game ever made...is "Dark Age of Camelot".It's treasure trove of what to do and not do for realm conflict
Third..if you're not committed to doing it "right" don't do it at all..and just say so..don't promise what you are not committed to deliver..."in spades".
(for me realm vs realm conflict is the focus/the driving force to my pve progression.Its why I level up and shape my character.I'm currently of the opinion Bioware is not motivated or capable of developing this feature.I have stopped playing and am very disappointed)