a bit of a long post i know longer than i first intended:
So I have been hearing a lot about PvP and how recruit gear is just worthless in pvp and you have no chance against war hero gear and I have experienced this on my scoundrel and juggapants, gearing up from recruit up to full BM starting on war hero now. People have asked well how can we make this better? So I have been thinking and discussing this with some of my guild mates and this is what we came up with as possible solutions. But first to get solutions we have to fully appreciate the problems.
Some Problems
As a fresh 50 being put up against vastly superior geared players is neither fun nor challenging for either player, as the higher geared player will be able to make some mistakes and still win without an issue, this is not challenging nor fun pvp. The under geared player already knows he has no chance to win against this “God of war” and just finds the whole experience frustrating and will come away with the opinion of “pvp is broken here”.
Now that is one problem Gear but here in my opinion is the greatest issue for all PvP fans with the F2P coming closer and a hopeful influx of new blood to play with, what happens when they get to 50 with their X amount of WZ a week, do you think they will hang about and continue pvp when they have no chance of beating players due to the horrid gear based pvp? I love pvp and I would like to see these new F2P players come in and enjoy the pvp experience so that they actually stay and maybe pay for extra WZ or actually start to Sub!! Enriching the pvp environment with more people to enjoy it. sadly I just don’t see this happening in the games current state.
Team balance, so many times I have looked round and seen ¾ of the people in my wz in recruit gear then when we get down in the wz and the opposition has a premade team of 4 WH o.O as Connor Macleod once said “there can be only one” outcome!
With the mentioning of a new gear set and Recruit mk2 gear coming this is meant to help the situation now hear is a wild assumption on my part as to how it will fit in
Recruit
Battlemaster
Recruit mk2
Warhero
New set
Why do I think this? Well if mk2 was not as good as BM then its not going to help much against WH never mind the new tier set and if they were to put it on par with WH the WH’s would be incensed at the outrage that someone has the same gear as them without having worked for it. But you are still going to have the issue of the people already in WH will straight away be getting their first couple of items from the new set and the more casual pvper’s will be working towards WH by the time these are fully kitted out the F2P will still be in MK2 and getting spanked which will not entice them to continue playing. This is assuming the gear gaps are comparable to todays and I have no facts to base this on, they could do it totally different.
So how can we make pvp a better experience for ALL! Not just the pvp dedicated. Here are some possible solutions and issues with said solutions. This is for normal PvP not Rated WZ as that is a different kettle of fish
1: Brackets,
these would be based on the amount of expertise the player has or the highest amount of expertise possessed by a player in a group. For example <1000 expertise, 1001-1200, >1201 (these numbers are off top of my head as an example and not to be taken as what I suggest the brackets should be)
Pros – people would be evenly matched and bring back the skill factor into pvp instead of my gear beats yours
Cons – this system would not work well if there are not many people queuing in one of the brackets causing longer queue times, the only real way this would work is with x-server queuing.
EDIT: I que naked, have 0 exp, getting with other pve maniacs who want to pvp in their rakatas, then I switch to pimped and augumented War hero.
2: The Bolster system,
This would bolster every player to the same standing, meaning that instanced pvp (warzones) would be fair and skill based, every marauder would have the same stats, every sniper would have the same stats and so on. As 10-49 pvp is so much fun as its is an even playing field (to a degree) a level 20 can defeat in 1v1 a lvl 49 if they play their class right. However you would still get the different gear sets right! So open world pvp you would still have an advantage over a lower geared player just like if that lvl 20 met up with that lvl 49 in open world pvp you would not expect as the level 20 to be able to beat that lvl 49. Thus you still have an incentive to get the gear and improve but also making warzones fun for everyone.
Pros – the bolster system is already there! All they need to do is tweak it for level 50 bracket (how much tweaking I don’t know mind)
You would still have a reason to gain gear and improve your pvp set
New players might stay longer as they are not getting a reality check once they leave the 10-49 bracket
If the classes are all performing in PvE fine but one is slightly op in pvp they could tweak the bolster system so that class is brought inline without effecting the PvE players.
Yes I know IF you play every day for a week you can get your BM gear, but please remember not everyone can do this I’m lucky/unlucky depending how you look at it and I can play most days and have done, others have a family, school or two jobs and don’t have time to play as much as some of us and this option would make it a better experience for them, meaning they may stay longer in the game and get friends to join them which can only be good for the TOR community and the game most of us still here still love.
Rated WZ would still work as they currently do as this is more of an e-sport so having the ability to min-max your gear and tweak your stuff to suit your role in your team would still be desired.
Having this would mean that player skill comes into play more so than now, all the WH players are more than likely good players as they have put in the time to get the gear they must have honed their skills while doing so, so if they are beating other players at least they have the feel good factor that they won on merit of skill.
Cons – It would also require that we actually get some good open world pvp put back into the game so you can actually utilise the gear you are getting.
Using the bolster system to bring all classes in line for pvp would only work for instanced pvp and not open world if a class is over/under performing by a large degree adjusting the bolster system would not be the answer and adjusting the appropriate skills would be needed.
People that like to min-max would not have to do so for instanced pvp but can still do this for rated WZ.
3: close the gap in gear
Pretty much that adjust the stats on the gear to bring them closer together, recruit mk2 WH and the new set would have to be a minimal difference, not just in Expertise but in stats and health too.
Pros – not huge amount of work to be done when compared to the other two solutions?
Still gives people something to work towards.
Cons – get the gaps wrong and you end up with the same problem we have now.
I would like PvP to get better for the good of the game and to bring new players in, Now I know there will be mixed opinions on this and not everyone will agree, if you have any other suggestions of how they can improve the pvp experience or feedback then your thoughts would be welcome, but if we can please keep it civil and constructive.
Thanks
TLDR: Make pvp more skill based instead of gear = greater chance of f2p players buying more WZ or subbing = greater pvp community = happy pvp players = happy bioware/EA
in the beta i was playing on a US server and im in England, i was getting ping of 100ms as was not an issue from what i saw while playing PvE and PvP hope this helps