[Constructive Feedback] What Ilum/Tatooine needs

[Celoth]

First of all, a disclaimer. I love this game! I think Bioware has done a bang-up job of creating a fantastic MMORPG experience and I'm looking forward to many years of enjoying it. Any perceived negativity from me is completely unintentional, an any negative responses are (frankly) counterproductive and demoralizing.

 

That being said, I do find the state of World PVP lacking, as I'm sure many do (including, likely, Bioware themselves). I think the zones are fantastic, but they are lacking enough incentive to get players involved. This is a problem that's popped up in many other MMOs (yes, especially 'that other game'), and I think there are lessons to be learned there.

 

Ilum

 

The Problem:

No one is fighting. Most players are ping-pong trading objectives. It's already been stated that player kills will now be needed for the Ilum Daily/Weekly Quests. Unfortunately, I don't think this is enough, and I feel like it's probably going to lead to less activity in Ilum on non-PVP servers, or servers with high faction imbalance.

 

The Solution:

Increase the reward. Currently, the only reason to do Ilum is for dailies and Valor, but these things ultimately have a fairly narrow appeal. Ilum needs a rewards system that has a broad appeal while not feeling necessary to those who solely want to progress in PVE. My solution would go something like this.

 

Make Ilum more difficult to be capped. After securing an objective, players would need to control the objective location (by staying in close proximity and defending it from counter-attack) for a period of time, after which that objective become invulnerable to attack during the current phase.

 

After that has been done, make it to where Ilum resets on a regular basis - say 1 hour - and once it *is* capped, it stays that way until it resets. During a time of control, players of the controlling faction have access to vendors with unique moddable gear and mounts. Also, a faction-wide buff is placed on players of the controlling faction for a moderate gain in combat abilities, exp gain, valor, etc.

 

The trick is to make capping an opponent's base seem more like an achievement, removing the ability to ping-pong for objective completions, and offer a rewards system that encourages players to participate.

 

 

Smuggler's Den

 

The Problem:

Currently, Smuggler's Den is an empty wasteland, devoid of player activity due to lack of incentive.

 

Solution:

Bring back resources nodes in this zone. Instead of providing mercenary commendations in chests, grant mercenary commendations from player kills in this zone (note: this could also work in Ilum).

 

A high concentration of valuable resource nodes gives the area a broad appeal to many players of all different walks, while the mercenary commendations give incentive to even high performing PVP players.

 

I also, personally, think this zone is ripe for King of the Hill style gameplay, with increasing rewards the longer you can hold an objective.

 

 

Anyone else feel the same way, or have anything else (constructive) to add?

Edited January 11, 2012 by Celoth

[thejaga]

Add a loot table to all players based on level and valor ranks. At a minimum, each player should drop some credits. However, there should also be a chance to drop PvP gear and other items. Gear drops should be commensurate with the players' level and valor ranking (i.e. a Level 50/Valor 60 player should drop better stuff than a Level 10 player).

 

Also add a debuff to recently killed players, so that you cannot farm those players for loot or valor. With the debuff active, the player will not drop any loot. (Don't need to display this on the buff bar -- we have enough garbage buffs we don't need to see already. If they do not drop loot, we will understand why.)

 

Finally, do not include loot drops in Warzones. You already receive commendations for participation. And if you include drops there, you kill the basis of the incentive to participate in open-world PvP.

 

Basic concept to bear in mind: Players will fight each other or fight over objectives if doing so will get them more stuff. So, give players stuff for fighting.

[thejaga]

The problem with this post getting action was using the words "contructive feedback" in the title.

[Celoth]

Is that a dig at the general negativity of MMO communities, or is that something that I actually shouldn't have posted in the title?

[Daeth]

I think champion / battlemaster bag drops (rare-ish, but not so rare that its not worth the effort... like 5% drop chance?) and consumable bag drops (20%?) would encourage open world PvP.

 

If they make it so the only reason to visit an area is for daily quests its going to fail. People want to have constant PvP and rewards in Ilum.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Daeth

[BlazingShadow]

Not that I don't enjoy instant rewards for killing players, but bear in mind, if you enable rewards for killing players you will simply bring another wretched idea into SWTOR:

 

Fightclubbing

 

THis is when you kill an alt or a willing enemy participant over and over (without a hassle) in order to farm the rewards that were intended to be earned through actual combat.

 

Even if killing your opponents over and over has diminishing returns on the amount of points/commendations/chancetoacquireabox, people will still club it. We had this in SWG, it sucked to see General-ranked players that have never been to Restuss/Battlefields.

 

It's hard to allow for any rewards in PVP that will not simply be clubbed to death. Ilum is a perfect example of this.

 

IMO, in order for rewards to have any reason to be fought for, rather than clubbed, there needs to be consequence for failure and different reward for success.

 

IE Not controlling Ilum should result in some negative effect serverwide (just an example) and some benefit serverwide for controlling it. THat would be plenty of reason to have to actually FIGHT for control of battlefields.

Edited January 11, 2012 by BlazingShadow

[Tohrazer]

i disagree, i think outlaws den should give more than crafting nodes as rewards, perhaps keep the merc commendations and also have it spawn rare things in chests, perhaps even some super rare things with like a 1% droprate (purple crystals, special mounts/pets, maybe even lower droprates on something even better?) the better the rewards, the more you ensure that it remains camped by people and that people fight over it constantly, kinda like how people camped the spawns in SWG for the possibility of legendaries etc

 

great way to foster conflict - also server faction inbalance wont mean anything in outlaws den

[xMrBill]

Valor needs to matter. That is one of the big issues with SWTOR PVP or OWPVP I have seen. The only non-cosmetic importance for valor right now is strictly binary. You are either over 60 or under 60. Once beyond valor 60 it is a useless reward. Making Ilum "the place" to farm valor doesn't do any good for encouraging people valor rank 60 or higher to PVP.

 

I could not imagine what would entice someone to keep up the grind once they are geared in BM. DAoC did it right. Even something as small as a +1 endurance bonus per valor rank could help encourage the higher ranked players to go run the new Ilum (post patch).

[Tohrazer]

Valor needs to matter. That is one of the big issues with SWTOR PVP or OWPVP I have seen. The only non-cosmetic importance for valor right now is strictly binary. You are either over 60 or under 60. Once beyond valor 60 it is a useless reward. Making Ilum "the place" to farm valor doesn't do any good for encouraging people valor rank 60 or higher to PVP.

 

I could not imagine what would entice someone to keep up the grind once they are geared in BM. DAoC did it right. Even something as small as a +1 endurance bonus per valor rank could help encourage the higher ranked players to go run the new Ilum (post patch).

 

i think we should get something like that aswell, also new titles all the way up to 80 if we dont have those already, additionally killmails would be great - i love that world pvp is going to have loot drops aswell, hopefully they wont be green rubbish

[scfs]

How2fix Ilum, by terribad forum guy.

 

Add a monthly quest to kill 500 players in Ilum.

 

Reward - something obscene.

 

WAHLAH!

 

 

 

Just seems to me they need to make ilum a world warzone, you need to get guilds going there and fighting each other, while providing defenses of some sort so the underdogs can get good kills while outnumbered.

Now i'm not talking tenacity, the defense turrets seem like lovely idea, but with how faction imbalances go, you'd probably need more of them or something since having Sith camping the republic spawn areas would suck ><

[Tekterra]

Ilum, only one solution. Make it a battle ground. 16 v 16, 32 v 32 winner gets the reward. The only reason people will fight in warzone is because you get no credit for win on the daily. It force you to fight at your best to win in order to get credit.

 

Ilum turn into a battleground large scale warzone will do nicely. You already have tatooine as open world.

 

Othterwise, you have to come up with a consequence/reward on the objectives. Holding it has to do something and losing it has to do something too. It has to be enough to motivate people to want to hold it or take it over.

 

Here is an example, let say your side owns the map more than 50% of the day, thats considered dominating or winning. Your side get 1 champion commendation every day. This motivate the whole faction to want to win the map. Might be too much but you get the idea.

 

Personally, instanced larger scale pvp is better than zerg world pvp. There is a reason why people do 32 v 32 first person shooter matches. It's more balanced, controled, and few people suck bad won't be as big a problem compare to warzone 8 v 8.

[BlazingShadow]

Titles are a pretty neat reward, IMO, and they don't affect anyone in a tangible way if theyre farmed.

 

A ranking system for PvP for all damage done / deaths (negative rank if you die alot, like "the weak" or "Bantha Fodder") healing done / protection given / objectives accomplished ETC. would go a long ways in making pvp meaningful and fun.

 

In SWG, at the end, we had a ranking system where the top 10 players on the server recieve a title that only lasts if they kept it past the first week. It was pretty fun, in order to keep up you had to pvp day to day (diminishing returns sunk in for how many leader points you could earn in a day) it was exploited with baseclubbers n siege city clubbers but it... was hellafun.

[Erudain]

Yes the idea of getting resources/vendors/special items by holding Illum objectives would be a good way to avoid cap trading.

 

Question since I haven't gone to Illum yet. Are the maps phased? with a max number of players allowed to each side trying to cap/defend an objective?

 

Because if it's open pvp with no caps, this could create a problem with inbalanced servers.

We happens if the Empire/Rep. holds Ilum resources/vendors/special items for...lets say...3 months because of superior numbers?

[Celoth]

Yes the idea of getting resources/vendors/special items by holding Illum objectives would be a good way to avoid cap trading.

 

Question since I haven't gone to Illum yet. Are the maps phased? with a max number of players allowed to each side trying to cap/defend an objective?

 

Because if it's open pvp with no caps, this could create a problem with inbalanced servers.

We happens if the Empire/Rep. holds Ilum resources/vendors/special items for...lets say...3 months because of superior numbers?

 

I do believe they're phased, and that you're placed in a phase based on how many of your faction is there. I was there a few days ago and a guildie was there, but we were in different phases, both of which had very few republic players.