Incoming SWTOR/GW2 Rant... but with suggestions as well... I will not be completely abandoning this game, but its becoming obvious that bioware just doesn't know what to do at this point. Look at the state of open world pvp at launch. It was horrendous. A pair of objectives was it, that you could trade back and forth and quickly was exploited. What was the fix? Lets throw a bunch of boxes people can fight over in the center. Weeee... Now whichever faction has the most people = auto win. What was the next fix, oh lets just yank any incentive to play open pvp at all. This is completely ridiculous when you consider the the PVP devs came from prior games with a very good pvp system (Even if the PVE was terrible). And I am sorry, the excuse for "we didn't expect pvp to be this big" is lame as all hell. Its a game with two opposing factions based on one the biggest if not the biggest IP ever created and you don't expect pvpers to flock to it Then we have warzones which can be a blast. 1-50 all in one pvp bracket at the start was laugh worthy and at least you fixed that, after again giving people an avenue to exploit a system to gain gear advantages over others... again. 1.2 comes along and I think quite a few people were happy, classes were fairly balanced out. some minor issues here and there, but it was getting close to how it should be. Only change that was truly needed was the server merges and we would have been getting there. Then you release 1.3 and so many unneeded class adjustments are made throwing everything out of whack. The whole match making system for rateds it absolutely wretched which has rated teams just quitting completing and those that do stick around get matched up against the same 2-3 sets of teams over and over and over and over. Losing is on thing but being forced against the same 3 teams and losing is demoralizing. Rateds should never have been added until cross server q's were in, but honestly I am also to blame for this as I pushed on the forums to see them added early and I am willing to admit that it was a bad idea. You could of course try lowbie 1-49 pvp but why bother? Unless you are rolling Snipers, Marauders or Vanguards whats the point? Today alone 95% of my matches on low level characters was my team with a bunch of tanks thrown against 6-7 DPS ranged. Maybe a system that autobalanced out the teams so that one team would not be overstacked with melee or ranged or whatever would be good. These balance issues are not as big of an issue when the team makeup is more evenly spread, but in an 8v8 environment it becomes majorly apparent. IMO rateds should be 5v5 or at most 6v6, you can keep 8v8 for normal qing. Also, normal Q's should ONLY allow people to q solo or if people group in 4 mans they should be split up randomly upon entering a warzone. Toss in some lowbie ranked pvp once cross server comes in and your looking pretty good. I just think that 8v8 in rateds even if you balance stuff closely is always going to be a stack FOTM class deal. The CC system in this game is just awful, resolve terrible and thats coming from someone who plays a class with CC flying out my butt. 1-2 seconds stuns are what we should have max. Get hit with ANY combo of CC moves x2 in a row and you are immune for 20 seconds. OR even better. CC in PVP should be useable ONCE per match. Make it so that using CC is a big decision, not a whim. The scoreboard/card on this game is terrible. It just promotes peoples doing their own thing more often than not. The scoreboard should be simplified so that the ONLY thing that grants you medals is objectives. Not healing, not dps, no guarding. Just objectives. You can have the numbers there for show but rewards should be based on objective based play only and as such, playing objectively on either the winning or losing side should be rewarded properly. Maybe this would promote teamwork instead of all the crap that goes on now. If you don't like GW2 thats fine, its not for everyone. But I have to say when I got access to BWE1 in GW2 I encountered less bug and glitches that I had in SWTOR up to that point. By the latest BWE3 the performance of GW2 on max setting was better than SWTOR on lowest settings, on either fleet at peak hours in areas in GW2 which were not only more detailed but had more people clustered together. I was wearing my fanboy goggles pretty hard up until about 2 months ago for this game, but the more I play the more I see its flaws glaring at me. Flaws that those in charge are feet dragging over and making bad choices to try and fix. I still enjoy TOR and as stated, I plan on keeping my account even with GW2, yes I plan on supporting and giving this game more time even though I shouldn't have to. A $200 million dollar game should be in better shape than this is. Maybe if they had tossed more money at features and bug fixing it wouldnt be in this state. This is Bioware, I always loved the way they innovated, but lets face it they spent more time trying to copy what was already done with TOR than trying to innovate or do their own thing. To much time spent trying to emulate a tired formula that was perfected and has become so stale they tried to inject life into it by adding... pandas... lol. Bioware you need to innovate in a positive way, stop copy pasting other games. Look at GW2, not to copy them but to inspire new ideas. This game is built on a tired formula that has been getting old since before WoW even came out something new and fresh is needed and with an IP like Star Wars you will have 'extra lives' to try and fix this game. However just remember that even though it is Star Wars it is NOT immune to mass amounts of people quitting for something that seems better to them, this game could easily become Star Wars Galaxies in the fail department.

Eh here are my thoughts atm. PVP in this game has IMO steadily declined and honestly, I have gotten to the point of zero expectations at this point. This game will get better, around the time people stop caring about it like every other MMO out there and the subs drop off. There are serious balance issues that continue to be ignored, OP classes that when stacked together are just ridiculous, go ahead and defend them, but lets face it when more and more people are constantly stacking the same classes in PVP its obvious there is an issue. Basically stack OP classes and win or stack as many stun heavy classes as you can and win. There are too many CC abilities in this game and it makes pvp very un-fun. This coming from a class that has a ton of CC utility, its just too much. The only Warzone in the game that required any skill is huttball and even that can be superseded by just stacking leapers and friendly pullers into the match. And I swear I lose more matches due to server side issues than the skill of the other team or the mistakes my team makes....Same bugs and performance issues 8+ months into retail Rateds are an absolute joke. Win several matches and gain like 8-12 or so in ranking, lose one match and lose double what you gained in a match. Get matched up against people several hundreds points above your rating constantly because cross server Q's are still not here. It was a good thing you stuck your fingers in yours ears about cross-server q's back in beta when we asked you for them, after we gave you valid reasons for having them in early. But what did you do? You flapped your hands at us like two nerds in a slap match and said we didn't need it, but here you are scrambling to get them into game now. Do you even know what your doing with open world pvp? I mean really you absorbed devs from Warhammer online which had a solid foundation for pvp (the pve was crap) and gave us objective trading... then box collecting... then you just yanked it out completely. $200 million dollar budget and you couldn't even have PVP as good as Warhammer even though most of your WZ system was based on that foundation, you managed to take 3 steps back. Meanwhile another game is under 2 months away that delivers not only on Warzone/Structured Match PVP but also a thriving Server Vs. Server Vs Server battleground for open pvp.... basically runs circles around your PVP and the game was developed at im guessing a fraction of your 200million... maybe next time spend more of that money on your QA and less on voice acting that the majority spacebar through. I really hope that you don't implement season 1 until you actual get your ducks in a row, because the game does has great potential, but honestly the only thing that currently keeps me logging in is the people in my guild and once 'this other game' arrives I am going to require some quality to keep my account active.

Nerf was not that drastic at all. OP needs to stuff a sock in his mouth. As a longtime Tankassin I have already adjusted to the minor nerf, which in reality I think brought us more in line where we should have been in the first place. I think we are fairly balanced here. 15 Ranked warzones tonight, lost only one do to an unfortunate player disconnect leaving us vulnerable on a defense. In nearly all of those I was still pulling in the top 3 medal earners while playing objectively. At some point you just need to learn to play, learn what you can't do it do something else instead of B&Ming on the forums all the time.

Huttball > Civil War > Novare > Void' IMO

Dumb effin idea. Look at these pvp forums, look at them. Look at how many people come here to piss and moan about class balance, about how X is overpowered and z needs to be nerfed because "OMG I CAN'T KILL HIM SOLO!" This will just bring more of that BS over to this forum causing more hasty nerfing of classes that really don't need to be nerfed. The PVP here is designed to be teambased, play it as intended, you want 1v1 go pick up <Insert Generic Console Fighting Game Here>. /thread

lol what? http://www.kaascity.com/forums/download/file.php?id=15 4 players at 70+ kills, 3 of them at 80+ This is what we called fully geared vs freshie farm/Incredibaddies

Its a bug, I have come out of matches on many occasions with 9999 biggest hit when the most I had gotten was like 4k on a crit in that match. Just another example of bad programming.

Sucks to hear of people being booted from the 'team', but I think most of us saw it coming a mile away. Good luck to those people in whatever they do next (Please learn from the obvious mistakes made here). As far as the new 'initiative', will believe t when I see the results. I hope I don't see the phrase 'maintenance mode' pop up anytime soon.

Very underwhelmed. As far as transfer go... Its a good thing to get it in. But please actually merge servers together first so you can keep the communities that already know each other together, then when that is done allow everyone one free server transfer, so those who may want to play somewhere else can. If my community splits of into 25 different directions because you didn't have the sense to try and keep the bulk of communities together during your transfers it will be the end of my account. Your legacy system, flashpoints, pvp, operations, classes etc ARE NOT what keeps me playing, its the people I have met in my server community.

A few days before Diablo III my servers pvp started dying, we would normally have several 50 Q's going till 3am estish, sometimes longer sometimes a bit less... Lately there are half the people on the fleet or less and Qs are taking too long. I have barely logged in because currently pvp is all I do and lately its just... meh. This is what happens when you drop the ball, will they pick it back up in time? Who knows at this point. But the longer they wait on server merges and transfers the more its going to hurt the game. Guild Wars 2, Terra, Elder Scrolls Online (luls) these will not kill The Old Republic, the devs are doing a good job of that on their own.

I don't see any way they can make one patch a savior patch. Sure they can finally get their ducks in a row and patch the game to get rid of most of the bugs and add new content, the problem is people have already left and there are several high profile games around the corner that will draw away some more TOR players. I think people are expecting way to much out of 1.3. ...1.2 Should have have been 'the savior' patch and it was nothing but an utter disappointment. 1.3 will be more of the same. What needs to be done is just get the current game fixed without making promises that they WILL fail to deliver on yet again. Just fix all the crap that is wrong then work on an expansion, the only thing high profile enough IMO to draw people back and garner more interest will be a proper expansion, but if the core of the game is not fixed before then, then whatever. I enjoy this game, but not enough to spend time here when certain games come out, certain games which have BETA's that are more polished than a 200 million dollar game that has almost been out 6 months now.

Elder Scrolls Online will take everything that people like about Elder Scroll and crap all over it. Its going to be a pretty version of WoW with ES lore. As far as SWTOR being saved, of course it could be saved. Will it? Who knows, with the way things are going lately its like they want players to go find other games to play.

The devs are all playing Diable III, like everyone else, have you seen server populations this week? Sure its because alot of people are getting their fill of a fresh game, but lets face it, a percentage of players always drop off when a new game comes out just due to sheer bordom. Will be interesting to see what happens to this games population when a few upcoming games with 'good' pvp come out this summer.

Because they are 'baddies' in the MMO field.

I think they would implement it and it would break 50 other features.

Seems you need to find a game genre where 1v1 is what the game is balanced for. I suggest Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter or a host of other games that are designed around this.

More like... Too Late

I will tell you how. I play for fun and the reward is just a bonus. Now that I have all my War Hero I still play, for fun. Reward is just a bonus.

Needed

IMO Huttball > Civil War > Novare Coast > Voidstar (The most horrid designed warzone around)

There is nothing wrong with huttball how it is. I used to piss and moan about Marauders and Juggs all the time. Then guess what? I learned how to counter them. They can be countered and one of the simplist form of countering them is NOT being a moron and NOT walking right to an edge when you know one is in the pit. The problem, people are dumb plain and simple. I see the same people 5 months into the game complaining about how OP they are when they are always the ones walking right to the ledge and giving them a leap point. Sage pulls a ball carrier up, I pull them back down or knock them back down. Countered Marauder jumps up to moron player, I knock him back down and jump off ledge. Countered You have the means in the game to counter this. I get so many matches against these 2 classes you seem to think are so OP and guess what? We win the vast majority because we learned to counter them. The biggest problem is random players in a warzone, they are casual more often than not and just do not pay attention, they leave themselves open to everything and are get all butthurt if told to do something for the good of the team. Get some friends and learn to play, I don't say that meanly, its what you need to do. Learn to play, learn to counter and wait for 8 mans so all the puggies will get stuck in their baddie vs baddie matches.

2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks it don't matter. If something has not been implement there will always be someone who will ask the same questions over and over. Your 'two week' thing is not going to stop. There are plenty of questions you could answer, problem is they are questions you DON'T WANT to answer.

I have no kill order. Healers do not take precedence over dps or tanks or anything. I see who is on the battlefield and I figure out who is going to cause the most issues and I kill them first, if I can't kill them I lock them down in any other way I can. You get to know who is dangerous on your server if you pvp enough and actually pay attention. If I notice someone low on HP that I do not have to go out of my way to hit I will quickly swap targets then Assassinate > Shock kill to wipe them out, then back to who I was fighting. 1 less person on the field is always good. So yes this means I even target baddies and squishies that I know to make less enemies in the area. IMO having a set rotation is not nearly as good as just playing situationaly

How much longer till 1.3

Spot on IMO. I played the BWE a few weekends ago and omg it was a blast. I still enjoy TOR but check this out. I can have TOR and GW2 and pay one sub fee. Yes, I will play both for sure, but for a few months you are right, I will be playing GW2 like a maniac, it delivered to my expectations in the beta weekend alone. TOR still has not.