shakezor Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Big post inc, with no tl;dr... Disclaimer – this is obviously just my own opinion. I'm sorry if people have brought any of these issues up already, but if they have then you can just add me to the list of people who would like them addressed. That said, if you're a Dev or someone who really likes PvP I encourage you to soldier through this Wall of Text and respond. I've tried to make it as legible and coherent as possible. For some background, I have a fair bit of PvP experience coming from DaoC and WoW, having done tons of world PvP, battlegrounds and achieved Gladiator in WoW arenas. Additionally, this is not meant to be a 'QQ my class isn't good enough' or 'QQ I lose all the time' thread – the group I PvP with wins a lot more than we lose and we generally have a good time playing. These are just some thoughts about the current state of PvP that I've noticed, that I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in - I just want to add my voice to the conversation. I'm not going to talk about class balance because everyone and their mother has their own opinions on what is broken and I'm sure the devs are paying attention to that. And I’m not going to talk about the desperate need for level brackets in PvP because I’m sure people have beaten that horse to death. What I want to talk about are game mechanics that appear broken. Maybe they're bugs, maybe they're just abilities that I don't understand. Perhaps people can clarify them for me. Anyways here goes... ******** Some bugs: - Why do I frequently see people with full resolve meters getting chain stunned and bounced around like ping pong balls? And no, it's not that their meter hasn't quite filled yet, it’s white and completely full, or even already in the process of depleting, and they're still 100% susceptible to stuns, knockbacks and grips. It doesn’t happen all the time but it does happen fairly frequently. Is this just a latency issue or what? - Perhaps this is also a latency issue, but why do I see certain stealth classes often plant bombs in Voidstar without coming out of stealth until their planting cast has completely finished? I've sat and stared at a door several times and seen absolutely nothing, only to see it suddenly turn purple with a bomb on it and a smuggler or something appear next to it out of thin air... Is this a bug? An ability? It doesn't strike me as an ability because my friends that play the same classes always come out of stealth the second they begin the cast. So is it an exploit? I don't get it. - Another strange thing I've seen happen a few times is that, during Huttball, classes with the ability to pull an enemy towards them can stand up on the ledge where their team spawns, and grab an enemy with the ball who is literally about to score, dragging them up to the ledge and instantly killing them. Now, the person with the ball passes the scoring line, but for whatever reason it doesn't count as a goal. Maybe it's just me, but I think that if an ally can pull you across the line for a goal with Extricate or an equivalent spell, an enemy doing the same thing should also count as a goal. - There are some huge issues with Warzone team balancing at the moment which is, in all honesty, really hurting the game. I'm not referring to class balance here, I'm talking about sheer numbers of players. How is it possible for Warzones to match 12 players up against 7? I've gotten into several Warzones lately where either our own team or the opponent's team has as many as 4 or 5 more people than the other, well past the “limit” of 8 people. This strikes me as a MAJOR bug that I'm frankly flabbergasted has not been addressed yet. Sometimes the Warzones end early because there aren't enough players, but more often the teams with less just get shafted. Trying to fight a battle 8v10 or 8v12 is silly. Does whatever script that forms these Warzones really not have the ability to simply cap a maximum number of players per team at 8? I think a problem that is exacerbating this issue is that there is currently no 'Deserter Debuff' in the game, or in other words, some mechanic that stops you from leaving a Warzone and immediately requeueing. As a result, people are frequently leaving Warzones the second things appear to be going south, since they can instantly requeue with a chance at a better game. A grace period if you quit a Warzone that’s still in progress wouldn’t be amiss, in my opinion. ******** Some balance thoughts: - I think there are some problems with the balancing of rewards in Warzones... There is currently not NEARLY enough incentive in the game to actually pursue the Warzone's objectives. It is VASTLY more efficient (in terms of farming medals and gaining commendations to buy pvp gear) to simply ignore the objectives and focus on fighting. This is particularly true for healers. Many DPS and Tank classes have abilities which allow them to EASILY get a couple of the healer medals (such as the 2.5k heal and 5k heal medals), whereas healers have to work comparatively harder just to get the 10/25 kills or 75k damage done medals themselves. And often, if they spend time trying to get those medals, they will not have enough time or resources to get the 300k healing medal, especially if the Warzone is somewhat lopsided and ends swiftly. Even though just 1 or 2 healers can COMPLETELY change the outcome of a Warzone, effectively allowing the DPS on their team to get as many as 12 or 13 medals, they are often rewarded with fewer than HALF that many medals themselves. - Additionally, it seems silly to me that completing objectives gets you absolutely nothing in terms of medals or commendations. Why is there no medal for scoring a goal in Huttball? Or for making a pass that results in a score within 3 seconds, or something similar? Why is there no medal for planting a bomb that successfully detonates a door in Voidstar? Truthfully the only Warzone that seems close to appropriately balanced in this regard is Civil War, as people can get Defender medals for fighting near a point. - Expanding on this issue, one thing I have seen a LOT of people complaining about lately are teams that go up by 5 points in Huttball, and then spend 12 minutes farming the other team for medals. I will confess that we have done this several times ourselves. The reason is that there is absolutely no incentive to actually win the game. In fact, because of the occasional “6-0” bug that prevents you from getting credit for a Warzone win (yes, as of this morning it still exists) there is MORE risk associated with winning the game than with farming until time runs out. Why is there no extra valor for winning quickly? Or extra medals for scoring all 6 goals instead of just letting time run out? This could pretty easily be addressed, but until it is, you will see teams continue to score 5 times in the first 3 minutes and then farm kills and medals for the remaining 12, infuriating and wasting the other team’s time. - Without meaning to start a huge debate about the fact that “this isn’t WoW blah blah blah” … the fact is that there are ways to improve the game, and lessons that can be learned from other games that have come before. It took WoW a long time to implement extra honor gain in PvP from fighting near control points… Why not do something similar and add some multiplier to the amount of valor you get from enemies if you are within range of a defense point? This would encourage people to actually defend the points, rather than immediately leaving once it's capped to go fight a group of people in the middle of nowhere. ******** Lastly, the system for collecting PvP gear seems … for lack of a better word … bad. I have heard that some changes to this system are coming down the pipe relatively soon, but I’ll mention my concerns anyways. Obviously, acquiring Champion PvP gear right now is almost entirely luck-dependent, unless you have already hit Valor Rank 60. However, in the grand scheme of SWTOR players, very few people have actually done that yet. I have one friend who has gotten incredibly lucky with drops, and in his first several bags, acquired 4 piece Champion gear, an earpiece and both implants. He’s only Valor Rank 20. What if his lucky streak continues and, by the time he reaches Valor Rank 30, he has ALL the Champion gear he can acquire? He can’t just start taking Battlemaster bags and saving them, because for some bizarre reason, they’re unique, so he could only save 1. Therefore he can ONLY continue to take Champion bags, which will either give him redundant pieces of gear, or Centurion commendations which are almost entirely useless to him since he has all Champion gear already. If there were a way to trade commendations up for higher tier commendations, obviously at a costly rate (similar to Warzone -> Mercenary commendations) then that would be one thing but as it stands I don’t think you can do that. On the flip side, I have another friend who has gotten unbelievably UNLUCKY with Champion bag drops. He's almost Valor Rank 40 and through more than 45 Champion gear bags has only gotten 3 items, one of which was the same item a second time (implant), and the other was a relic, which are currently almost useless anyways right now. Now, obviously he was getting lots of Centurion commendations but if you buy gear with those you’re running the risk of wasting commendations on a piece that you might get the Champion version of in the very next bag. This is, in fact, exactly what happened to him – he got the Champion implant first, then nothing for a long time, then bought a second Centurion implant with his commendations only to get a second Champion implant in the very next bag, making the Centurion commendations he just spent a total waste. All in all this just seems like way too random of a system that benefits some people hugely and completely shafts others, entirely because of dice rolls. I think that one of two things could help this - either a commendation trade-up mechanic like I mentioned before, which would really benefit the current system and lesson the sting of poor luck; or allowing people to stock pile Battlemaster bags for future use rather than forcing them to get Champion bags. In conclusion, I would like to say that I really am enjoying the game a lot and I see a huge amount of potential for it in PvP. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that can’t be improved or changed for the better. If you have any answers for some of the questions I’ve listed, or just disagree with any of the points I’ve brought up, I’d definitely be interested in hearing what you have to say and your reasons for saying it. Thanks for reading this enormous Wall of Text. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
upzie Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 pretty solid, great post. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Invitcted Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 The part of your post about gearing highlights although doesn't directly mention why the current pvp gearing system is broken. Having such a high chance (or any chance at all) to drop the tier 2 (1.2) pvp gear means that people have entirely discounted the tier 1 (1.1) gear (both pve and pvp), both centurion and tionese gear has such a high cost per piece relative to drops from the champ bags that even people who have been criminally unlucky from drops are still reluctant to use their centurion commendations in case they get a duplicate drop. Come the next content tier this system has to be revised so that it's still possible for pvpers to get champ gear quickly(ish) but to stop pvers from exploiting it's ease of access to skip gearing and to completely invalidate centurion gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oogadishou Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Bump. Probably the best thread on the page right now, but nobody will read because it's "too long." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoarPowar Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Can I get this in laminated spiral bound? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drom Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 agree and add ilum pvp zone - fail carebear farming grounds, tatooine PvP zone - epic fail, world PvP - not existing It's pathetic, that there is pretty much no difference between PvP and PvE servers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rablenof Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Bump. Probably the best thread on the page right now, but nobody will read because it's "too long." Sadly most people will probably indeed skip reading the whole post just because it is too damn long, which is a real shame because its a great post that covers alot of things that is currently annoying about SWTOR's pvp system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quesa Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 (edited) Some bugs: - Why do I frequently see people with full resolve meters getting chain stunned and bounced around like ping pong balls? And no, it's not that their meter hasn't quite filled yet, it’s white and completely full, or even already in the process of depleting, and they're still 100% susceptible to stuns, knockbacks and grips. It doesn’t happen all the time but it does happen fairly frequently. Is this just a latency issue or what? I've noticed this too and first hand. - Perhaps this is also a latency issue, but why do I see certain stealth classes often plant bombs in Voidstar without coming out of stealth until their planting cast has completely finished? I've sat and stared at a door several times and seen absolutely nothing, only to see it suddenly turn purple with a bomb on it and a smuggler or something appear next to it out of thin air... Is this a bug? An ability? It doesn't strike me as an ability because my friends that play the same classes always come out of stealth the second they begin the cast. So is it an exploit? I don't get it. I recently watched someone on my team do this - surprising considering early beta testers are stating this was reported all through beta. - Another strange thing I've seen happen a few times is that, during Huttball, classes with the ability to pull an enemy towards them can stand up on the ledge where their team spawns, and grab an enemy with the ball who is literally about to score, dragging them up to the ledge and instantly killing them. Now, the person with the ball passes the scoring line, but for whatever reason it doesn't count as a goal. Maybe it's just me, but I think that if an ally can pull you across the line for a goal with Extricate or an equivalent spell, an enemy doing the same thing should also count as a goal. I do this to people all the time but I completely agree with you. The ball does cross the line and should be counted as a score. Furthermore, you shouldn't be insta killed for being pulled up by someone. The death area should be inside the shielded area and not the ledge. It's not a protected area because people can shoot from and be shot while on that ledge. - There are some huge issues with Warzone team balancing at the moment which is, in all honesty, really hurting the game. I'm not referring to class balance here, I'm talking about sheer numbers of players. How is it possible for Warzones to match 12 players up against 7? I've gotten into several Warzones lately where either our own team or the opponent's team has as many as 4 or 5 more people than the other, well past the “limit” of 8 people. This strikes me as a MAJOR bug that I'm frankly flabbergasted has not been addressed yet. Sometimes the Warzones end early because there aren't enough players, but more often the teams with less just get shafted. Trying to fight a battle 8v10 or 8v12 is silly. Does whatever script that forms these Warzones really not have the ability to simply cap a maximum number of players per team at 8? Seen this many times. I think a problem that is exacerbating this issue is that there is currently no 'Deserter Debuff' in the game, or in other words, some mechanic that stops you from leaving a Warzone and immediately requeueing. As a result, people are frequently leaving Warzones the second things appear to be going south, since they can instantly requeue with a chance at a better game. A grace period if you quit a Warzone that’s still in progress wouldn’t be amiss, in my opinion. I'm for and against this system - mostly because of all the bugs you just listed. The state of PvP, in general, is pretty atrocious and to have a deserter debuff just makes it more unattractive. Eventually, there needs to be one but at this time it would hurt PvP. Aside from that, they need to work out a system that rewards objective-oriented players and not Ronin's because that's what the game is about. ******** Some balance thoughts: - I think there are some problems with the balancing of rewards in Warzones... There is currently not NEARLY enough incentive in the game to actually pursue the Warzone's objectives. It is VASTLY more efficient (in terms of farming medals and gaining commendations to buy pvp gear) to simply ignore the objectives and focus on fighting. This is particularly true for healers. Many DPS and Tank classes have abilities which allow them to EASILY get a couple of the healer medals (such as the 2.5k heal and 5k heal medals), whereas healers have to work comparatively harder just to get the 10/25 kills or 75k damage done medals themselves. And often, if they spend time trying to get those medals, they will not have enough time or resources to get the 300k healing medal, especially if the Warzone is somewhat lopsided and ends swiftly. Even though just 1 or 2 healers can COMPLETELY change the outcome of a Warzone, effectively allowing the DPS on their team to get as many as 12 or 13 medals, they are often rewarded with fewer than HALF that many medals themselves. - Additionally, it seems silly to me that completing objectives gets you absolutely nothing in terms of medals or commendations. Why is there no medal for scoring a goal in Huttball? Or for making a pass that results in a score within 3 seconds, or something similar? Why is there no medal for planting a bomb that successfully detonates a door in Voidstar? Truthfully the only Warzone that seems close to appropriately balanced in this regard is Civil War, as people can get Defender medals for fighting near a point. Completely agree, as stated above. I've personally armed all 3 door levels in Voidstar but didn't kill a sole but got the lowest points of the group - even though my actions alone resulted in a win. - Expanding on this issue, one thing I have seen a LOT of people complaining about lately are teams that go up by 5 points in Huttball, and then spend 12 minutes farming the other team for medals. I will confess that we have done this several times ourselves. The reason is that there is absolutely no incentive to actually win the game. In fact, because of the occasional “6-0” bug that prevents you from getting credit for a Warzone win (yes, as of this morning it still exists) there is MORE risk associated with winning the game than with farming until time runs out. Why is there no extra valor for winning quickly? Or extra medals for scoring all 6 goals instead of just letting time run out? This could pretty easily be addressed, but until it is, you will see teams continue to score 5 times in the first 3 minutes and then farm kills and medals for the remaining 12, infuriating and wasting the other team’s time. Bug's not withstanding, it's pretty poor form to farm a group regardless of incentives. - Without meaning to start a huge debate about the fact that “this isn’t WoW blah blah blah” … the fact is that there are ways to improve the game, and lessons that can be learned from other games that have come before. It took WoW a long time to implement extra honor gain in PvP from fighting near control points… Why not do something similar and add some multiplier to the amount of valor you get from enemies if you are within range of a defense point? This would encourage people to actually defend the points, rather than immediately leaving once it's capped to go fight a group of people in the middle of nowhere. I agree, 110%. There were so many lessons that were learned in WoW over the, near decade, of iterations to PvP and it seems that BioWare is comfortable doing most of them over again - seems arrogant. ******** Lastly, the system for collecting PvP gear seems … for lack of a better word … bad. I have heard that some changes to this system are coming down the pipe relatively soon, but I’ll mention my concerns anyways. Obviously, acquiring Champion PvP gear right now is almost entirely luck-dependent, unless you have already hit Valor Rank 60. However, in the grand scheme of SWTOR players, very few people have actually done that yet. I have one friend who has gotten incredibly lucky with drops, and in his first several bags, acquired 4 piece Champion gear, an earpiece and both implants. He’s only Valor Rank 20. What if his lucky streak continues and, by the time he reaches Valor Rank 30, he has ALL the Champion gear he can acquire? He can’t just start taking Battlemaster bags and saving them, because for some bizarre reason, they’re unique, so he could only save 1. Therefore he can ONLY continue to take Champion bags, which will either give him redundant pieces of gear, or Centurion commendations which are almost entirely useless to him since he has all Champion gear already. If there were a way to trade commendations up for higher tier commendations, obviously at a costly rate (similar to Warzone -> Mercenary commendations) then that would be one thing but as it stands I don’t think you can do that. On the flip side, I have another friend who has gotten unbelievably UNLUCKY with Champion bag drops. He's almost Valor Rank 40 and through more than 45 Champion gear bags has only gotten 3 items, one of which was the same item a second time (implant), and the other was a relic, which are currently almost useless anyways right now. Now, obviously he was getting lots of Centurion commendations but if you buy gear with those you’re running the risk of wasting commendations on a piece that you might get the Champion version of in the very next bag. This is, in fact, exactly what happened to him – he got the Champion implant first, then nothing for a long time, then bought a second Centurion implant with his commendations only to get a second Champion implant in the very next bag, making the Centurion commendations he just spent a total waste. All in all this just seems like way too random of a system that benefits some people hugely and completely shafts others, entirely because of dice rolls. I think that one of two things could help this - either a commendation trade-up mechanic like I mentioned before, which would really benefit the current system and lesson the sting of poor luck; or allowing people to stock pile Battlemaster bags for future use rather than forcing them to get Champion bags. My stance on this issue is mostly unpopular by people who call themselves PvP'ers because I believe PvP should be more about Players/Teams versus Players/Teams and that the gear disparity takes away from that competition. Gear makes such a huge difference in these games and that may be great for PvE but not for an organized and competitive group environment. Gear progression is for PvE, NOT PvP. I want to play the player, not that players gear. In conclusion, I would like to say that I really am enjoying the game a lot and I see a huge amount of potential for it in PvP. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that can’t be improved or changed for the better. If you have any answers for some of the questions I’ve listed, or just disagree with any of the points I’ve brought up, I’d definitely be interested in hearing what you have to say and your reasons for saying it. Thanks for reading this enormous Wall of Text. Thank you for the well thought out post! Edited January 18, 2012 by Quesa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToastyToci Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Bump. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
memoriesofprey Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 First comprehensive post on PvP I've seen that I can almost wholeheartedly agree with. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grokgore Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 bump! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GetTrolledOn Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Agreed, Bump. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shakezor Posted January 18, 2012 Author Share Posted January 18, 2012 My stance on this issue is mostly unpopular by people who call themselves PvP'ers because I believe PvP should be more about Players/Teams versus Players/Teams and that the gear disparity takes away from that competition. Gear makes such a huge difference in these games and that may be great for PvE but not for an organized and competitive group environment. Heh I kind of associate this with the attitude that resilience killed PvP in WoW. Which, as a classic vanilla player, I semi-agree with, but only in a nostalgic way. When I actually think about it, I see why it really needed to be implemented. If you're going to have a PvP system that heavily utilizes a specifically designed PvP "stat" - Expertise - then it seems okay to design a tiered structure for acquiring the gear that has it. It just seems like Bioware's method for this at the moment is: Tier 1: Easy to acquire but not very good. Tier 2: Utterly random to acquire and totally irrelevant once you get Valor Rank 60. Tier 3: Impossible to acquire until you have sunk dozens of hours into PvP, possibly while stuck with Tier 1 gear because Tier 2 is so random. So at the moment I just don't see the point of Champion gear. Might as well just take it out altogether, as all it really is is a 'bonus' for people who get lucky with bag drops, and a 'screw you' to people who don't, until they all hit Valor Rank 60. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brogar Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Good post. The best point was why the heck they dont give medals for hut all scores and assists/voidstar bomb planting and disarming, it is a huge oversite. I dont know how they manage to not easily hotfix something like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belgaram Posted January 18, 2012 Share Posted January 18, 2012 Probably the most articulate, to the point, non-flaming post I've read in a long long time. I am really enjoying this game (much to my wife's dismay) but I completely agree with just about every point made. There is actually another little cheat (but it's Huttball and cheating is encouraged) that I've seen and I literally fell out of my chair laughing... If you have the ball at the opposing end zone and throw it up at an enemy on the ledge... Insta-gib and it's AOE! I saw a guy from my team throw the ball up as he was about to score at 2 guys that were shooting at him from the ledge... The ball hit them, they both died, we got the ball back at the end zone and scored... I laughed for 20 minutes! Had it happened to me, I think I'd still have fallen out laughing. Probably would have shouted that was ******** first though. Well written post! I actually hope they see and read this one. I think it addresses legitimate concerns in a respectful, non-flaming manner. Kudos to the OP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shakezor Posted January 19, 2012 Author Share Posted January 19, 2012 lol that does sound ridiculous. Usually when I see someone get gripped or die on the ledge with the ball, the ball resets to the middle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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