This. The faction imbalance is the biggest problem for World PvP in general. Before we at least used to see a couple of Reps try it on in Central Assault Ilum, but they stay well clear now because they know they'll get mobbed. Someone had the suggestion of being able to switch sides if your light-side points were pretty high or even Light V. Wouldn't save the game but I'd switch to add a bit of flavour and help balance things out.

Nerd-rage much? It's a poorly put together game in terms of PvP. There's no incentive to stay whatsoever unless you're rolling pre-mades and don't want to let people down. But if you're rolling pre-mades you should be smashing teams, anyways. All this chitter-chatter about 'weakest link ... applies to real life' wah waaah. 9/10 I'm going to be the top DPS on the chart. 1/10 I'm going to be second top. Takes mad skillz, BRAH! No. It's button mashing. Even when they bring out Rated WZs it'll keep people interested for a couple of weeks absolute tops because this game is EZ Mode. I play WZs for the Valor so I can hit 60, log off and just do my Dailies/ Weeklies. If we don't win, I get 30% or something less Valor. Sorry, kid. But post 50 is about the Valor grind, not 'fun'. When more people hit 50 and realise this they'll be gone. Now that they're throwing gear at people, they'll be gone faster b/c they'll have 20-30 levels of V left when they hit 50, have 20-25 by the time they've got full Champ and won't be able to justify the waste of time anymore for a 2% buff in stats by getting BM gear that looks pretty much identical to the rest of your kit.

Not really, it's just massively boring. People who are in the 10-49 bracket don't get it because when you get bored of WZs you go quest. When L50s get bored of WZs ... we look at our Valor ... time for more WZs. If the faction imbalance wasn't so staggering then World PvP would be a LOT more fun and add a bit of flavour to it. World PvP is such a faster way to level up Valor anyways. But it just doesn't exist. They may as well put the munitions crates in the Imperial Fleet to save us the 10mins worth of travel time both ways between Ilum.

BOOM. This. Every single Alderan I quit right at the start if some of my team goes MID. VS if they held us at the first doors and they get through the 1st set on their round I quit. Huttball, if we go 2 down, I quit. Never used to, but I'm bored of AFKers (STILL??) in the 50 bracket plus kids who will argue that you should take middle, etc. Generally I'm bored of the limited variety for PvP in general. Have 2 more levels of V to grind through until 60 then I'm doing my Dailys/ Weeklies and that's it. They made this game waaaay too easy to progress through. Think the metrics say around the 25% mark have already hit 50, some have hit it twice. It should take a lot longer than this. Scrap Ilum, introduce 2 new WZs for when you hit L50 for some variety Penalise me by putting a timer on before I can go in my 3-400th WZ? Oh no, please don't ...

Yup, I've been stacking those for my PT haha Looks like it's back to accuracy and aim, the **** I should have been stacking in the first place wah waaaah.

I don't think there's any problem them being clearer. There are a lot of new players and a very elitist MMO crowd. What many don't understand is that everyone had to start to pick things up at some point and you shouldn't make things like this inaccessible. Buff understanding, nerf EZ Mode/ Casuals' delight gameplay.

Agreed. The TORtanic's is going under if they don't fix soon.

The biggest problem is faction imbalance. It destroys any chance of OWPvP no matter how good or bad it would be

At this point ... just get rid of expertise. Buff the other stats in the gear, add extra cosmetic customisation to gear because Cent looks identical to Champ and the difference between Champ and BM is again a slightly different texture model. Gear was hilariously easy to get in this game in the first place (aside from BM Gear) now it's just a broken system. You can get full champ gear in a week. Soon they're going to have to buff the amounts of Valor you get in WZs because currently you're looking at 300-400hours of WZs to get V 60. You could literally get full Champ gear at R1 Valor. Most people will hit L50 between 20-30 V, from 50V you're looking at 8-12 hours per level because it starts going up exponentially. If BW think people are going to play their broken WZs that much for BM gear weeks and weeks after hitting R60 Valor and a 2% buff then they've got another thing coming. People wanted easy made even easier ... BW caved and now they've got an even bigger end-game gap to fill. Biggest issue ... they need to address the faction imbalance. How? No idea.

The only decent PvP is on the forums, anyway

The problem is, is that they will have thrown all their resources (or very much of them) into Ilum. You can't just think 'ok, well that sucked ... we'll go with Plan B'. There IS no plan B The biggest problem by far is the faction imbalance. It seems to be on nearly every server and that's what'll kill the game fastest and there are NO patches to fix that. There can't be.

Yeah, very true. Things like Huttball are pretty awesome at first and may be construed as innovative? But the discussion and 'whining' in the PvP forums should be about class imbalances, sorcs shouldn't do this/ ops should do that etc. There shouldn't be discussions so early as to the fundamental lack of/ broken PvP content. When people say 'PvP shouldn't be about gear grind!', well what else is it about? What else CAN it be about in this game? And now even that's a joke seeing as you can get your full Champ gear in a week tops by playing super casually Having the titles don't mean anything - they don't say I've been a real asset to my faction in this super novic sized galactic duel between the good and evil, light and dark ... probably just traded-kills/ went into a comatose state and ground through broken WZs lol. For the faction imbalance, why not just allow the underdogs to summon companions in those instances until (or if) it became more balanced? Couldn't they have picked somewhere much better than Ilum? This game has so many beautiful locations and they have to pick one which has no semblance on the original story? Why would Coruscant have been such a bad idea as the OWPvP climax? The first trailer was about seemingly dozens of Jedi v dozens of Sith in Coruscant. I can't even GO there as a member of the baddies ... so many places rich in lore which may have added dimension to the OWPvP and we get Ilum? where the f- is Ilum?? The only thing Ilum will be infamous for is an awfully macabre farming experience and memories of driving around my electric-scooter-speed mount for an hour each day in circles farming munitions that don't count for anything.

How can you fix the none-existent? It's not as if Ilum has a staggering amount of PvP related themes, things to do, etc. and they're just broken. It just hasn't anything there. So they'd have to release a ton of content and THEN fix it. They can't even do simple glitch fixes on Ilum, much less the overhaul that the OWPvP needs. Beyond all this, there's could be NO patch for the faction imbalance on pretty much every server. That's the main problem behind all of this. If that doesn't change then this could be the greatest MMO experience in the World on paper but it will always be a staggering fail.

TBH, he does have a point. The problem is, MMOs generally don't require skill. Especially not when you can post the highest scores consistently by mashing teh buttonz So there's no learning curve particularly, or it's very shallow at least. Gear gives the false impression of development or progression. IMO, the gear grind will always be there until they make MMO combat skill based (or attempt to) but they won't because the money is with the casual gamers who take one hiding and get bored. Such is the future direction of the gaming industry I'm afraid. Just look at COD lol ... easiest FPS series ever made = smashed all selling records. Meh ...

Dude, that's a pretty redundant argument. You could say 'walk up and down this street 100times'. You're never going to perfectly imitate the same action 100times over. Sometimes you'll take 47 steps, sometimes 48 or 45. Either way, you're doing the same basic thing and it's god-awful boring. Generally speaking it's rare for anyone to enjoy WZs after they hit 50 so I'm assuming you haven't yet or if you have are low Valor. We all go through that stage of loving the WZs and then we just hit the wall. There's very little variety for how these things are played, hence to do 'well' in this game it's based on experience and work-rate rather than skill. There is no skill in this game. Skill is what makes something like this dynamic. You run into 2 guys who've got similar armour to you and are merely competent players ... you're going to die, I'd say pretty much 99% of the time. If you don't it isn't because of your skill, it's because one of them made some massive error. When you can boast about knowing these things inside out it's down to one of two things. The maps offer very little 'dynamism' or you play them far too frequently in the playlists. In SWTOR's case - both. The latter being because there's nothing else in the playlists.

But wait, Jebi! Alderan has dynamism! Up until you hit the spawn point, see 3 people go for Mid and realise you've already lost There's a surprising amount of L50s who you have to explain to what the extra speeders are for ... I just tell them the right one takes you to a datacron. Stupid a**holes.

How are WZs dynamic? Every Huttball either my team will dominate, be dominated or it'll be a close 2-1 Match. Every Huttball I'll hit around 10-11 medals and get around 350K damage by mashing the buttons. Alderan - take the side turrets or you lose, end of. 10-11 medals, around 300K because I run between turrets a lot. VS, the game always ends both attacking and defending on the first doors because the spawn timer is too short and everyone has all their CCs and AoEs at L50. Usually 400-450K damage because you just stand in one spot and mash buttons, 10-11 medals. Rinse/ repeat. The GW2 comment, the guy you're replying to simply asked how a guy knew it would suck (someone who'd catagorically said people would be disappointed). It's a fair point. No one knows, IMO it looks a lot of fun. So did SWTOR before launch so go figure! May be a huge flop, may be a great success - there's no harm speculating and hoping that something can revive a flailing MMO genre.

I'm not looking for a PvP 'dream', just a decent-variety of PvP that can be built on. Ilum just doesn't count, and 3 WZs is spreading themselves very thin. That isn't just end-game PvP, it's the WHOLE game PvP. pre-L50 you get used to AFKers, whatcha gonna do? Post-L50 it's just a gear-grind if you choose to take part in it. People say 'you should use skill not gear' ... it's an MMO, what 'skill' is there to be found? Button Mash. But something that would encourage some tactical element, or team work beyond 'LEFT' - 'GO MID!' on the same 3 worn out maps would bring so much more to this game. Currently it's basically a flat, 3rd person RPG with occassional co-op and a lack-lustre attempt at anything even resembling competitive play. It's never going to be hardcore because the casual masses would pull their subs, but it could be more than the Valor grind - medal whoring that it currently is.

People won't put up with grinds, period. Gaming doesn't have the same stigmas attached that it used to = more potential clientel. How do you hook them? Don't make a game where anyone can excel outside a comfortable deviation, and one where no-one can do that badly. Most people will quit something if they can't do it. The watchword for the instant-gratification ADHD generation is 'convenience'. The money is with the casual crowd so you have to keep them happy because of the revenue required to produce games now. COD's as big as it is by being one of the easiest FPS games to ever hit shelves. Personally, I'd like something with an edge again the industry will move to where the money's at. Pander to the highest bidding demographic, in other words. For the purpose of the PvP in this game though, it seems more the lack than anything. There seems little point applying the example of WoW's release 7 years on. You obviously want room for your game to grow so trying to match something like WoW for volume of content would be stupid. But a seriously broken OWPvP system and 3 jinxed WZs? I'd even take 'bad' for the OWPvP but just broken and none-existent? That doesn't leave much to build on bar a scrapping and fresh attempt which just isn't going to happen.

Agree. It's kind of ... we've made all these amazingly beautiful planets, introduced so many interesting species etc ... UNFORTUNATELY, you're going to get to see them for around 2-3 hours each whilst you're levelling and for your entire end-game experience look forwards to the Imperial Fleet and the most depressing-looking of all the locations we could possibly conjure

They're doing both. Structured and WvWvW. For the WvWvW if one faction has a LOT compared to the other 2, the smaller ones can team up ... or the big one and a smaller one and batter the left over but the WvWvW PvP looks a lot of fun w/ actual objectives and some meaning behind it. The random world bosses do too, tbh, difficulty levelling to how many people join up to take it on. It may turn out to be awful but a claw-hammer to the face > SWTOR

But this kind of isn't an MMO ... it's basically a third person RPG with occassional co-op and some slap-dash (awesome saying I'm going to be using more often) attempt at competitive multiplayer. If they took Ilum out altogether, which is meant to be the jewel in the crown of BW's OWPvP experience, then it no-one would be that bothered. I don't dispute your points, but this just feels like an RPG with quick slots.

I think many are (I'll admit I am) still in the denial phase that an MMO can die this fast which has a StarWars label. 5 years = 20 months per WZ for the team PvP ... you seriously think Huttball vindicates 20months worth of work?

How much can you actually progress ... ? The balance issues for GW2 they've said are going to be addressed. Maybe they will, maybe they won't but speculation about how good/bad GW2 will or won't be doesn't take away from the fact that this game's PvP is AWFUL. 'Meh meh meh ... PvPers looking for experience that'll never happen ... meh meh meh' Not reeeally but 3 WZs and no OWPvP (Ilum doesn't count as anything apart from a free migraine)? The Devs MAY have said this would be a story-driven MMO. They also said we'd be blown away by the OWPvP element. I'm certainly something by the OWPvP but blown away or in any good direction is not it!

But there's NO end game content bar Ilum and everyone agrees that it's awful. They've lost a LOT of money from poor sales so how are they going to overhaul it the PvP system? It's not that this game feels unpolished but just incomplete. Feels like a Beta. You hit L50 and for a PvPer feel ... 'Ok, that was fun now where's the rest of the game?' or 'This game has a lot of potential for when the full-version is released!' WoW is currently the most successful MMORPG ever. From a BUSINESS perspective I'd look at them, see what they do good and want to do it better. Match the competition and do what they do better. Simple stuff. This game is just full of holes, though. Guild banks, etc. Why isn't this standard? Guilds are a pointless thing currently apart from making it easier to find people to do heroics with pre-50 or make pre-mades for PvP. If this didn't have the 'StarWars' label then it'd already be dead.