Yes Ilum is broken and stupid but...

[Loekii]

It just goes to show- don't try.

 

World pvp can't work- there's never going to be good balance- there never has been before, there never will be in the future.

 

I agree that currently, tech is not there to allow free form 'world pvp', but it might eventually get there.

 

 

For the time being, I feel developers need to put in more controls, to deal with the obvious issues, and work on better 'masking' those controls for the most part.

 

 

I would have been happier to have seen Illium be more of a mix of Warzone design and WAR PQ Quests.

 

 

I have also always felt that 'world PvP' needs to have some sort of 'kick out' when you are defeated, rather than just letting people zerg back from the respawn point. Basically once a World PVP event has started, and you have been 'killed', you are basically locked out of that 'event' until it completes with the winning team still standing.

 

The idea is to balance the timing of the events and have other options/events, so that when someone is killed, they are not 'benched' for hours.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Loekii

[AWDBAHL]

When we asked for objective based world PvP it was a given that we expected it to be balanced, functional and meaningful. It is none of those things. Also, the objectives are a joke. Blow up some walker to flip the point? What does that do? You get like 20 extra valor on kills? OOOOOOOOOOHH!

 

This feels phoned in. Im not about to offer Bioware my first born son just because they threw some garbage zone as a head fake to grab initial sales from PvPers.

 

When we asked for world PvP, Ilum was not what we had in mind.

[MorbidAri]

Some great discussion on this thread. This is the kind of conversation we need to help prompt the changes need to make Ilum work.

 

Another option to the faction imbalance is to offer free server transfers for high faction pops to servers with low faction pops with a bonus reward.

 

Tons of great ideas. Keep em coming.

[Hypernetic]

Ilum is a pile of ****. There is no point to the objectives. There is no point to winning it. The only reason people even go there is to do their daily quest.

[Ryvendale]

IMO, in order for world PvP to truly work, it is up to the community. Sure, the developers can implements control points, objectives etc etc, but if the players just trade and don’t fight… what’s the point. There is no viable way to control one sides population other than caps, which potentially does more harm than good.

 

That leaves the community to take advantage of the landscape and mechanics to make world PvP great.

 

I can only speak from the perspective of The Swiftsure server, probably the largest PvP server out there… during my play hours the action has been pretty constant. And guess what? For the most part it’s AWAY from the bases and spawn points. Why is this? Because the Op leaders direct their folks away from those points. Quite often you’ll see “gather at central and let them regroup”.

 

One other thing I’ve noticed, the Republic side on Ilum is growing in population, and at points during the past couple days they’ve outnumber Imperial by quite a bit… shocker I know, but a welcome one.

 

During peak times, there are fights going on at the control points on 2-4 Ilum instances (usually 2).

 

But this is coming from a large population server… when playing on a small pop server.. the #’s discrepancy is only worse and more apparent. Nothing really that BW can do about that… it’s up to the community to take advantage of the toys given.

 

I’ve been rolled, been part of the rolling, had some 1v1’s, had some small group fights, flanked, been flanked, seen groups take advantage of the terrain and high ground, practiced geurilla tactics, been hit by geurilla tactics, fought over control points, ninja’d control points and just overall have had a lot of fun the past couple days.

 

If you have people camping the republic base… that’s not BW’s fault, that’s the players’.

[MorbidAri]

IMO, in order for world PvP to truly work, it is up to the community. Sure, the developers can implements control points, objectives etc etc, but if the players just trade and don’t fight… what’s the point. There is no viable way to control one sides population other than caps, which potentially does more harm than good.

 

That leaves the community to take advantage of the landscape and mechanics to make world PvP great.

 

I can only speak from the perspective of The Swiftsure server, probably the largest PvP server out there… during my play hours the action has been pretty constant. And guess what? For the most part it’s AWAY from the bases and spawn points. Why is this? Because the Op leaders direct their folks away from those points. Quite often you’ll see “gather at central and let them regroup”.

 

One other thing I’ve noticed, the Republic side on Ilum is growing in population, and at points during the past couple days they’ve outnumber Imperial by quite a bit… shocker I know, but a welcome one.

 

During peak times, there are fights going on at the control points on 2-4 Ilum instances (usually 2).

 

But this is coming from a large population server… when playing on a small pop server.. the #’s discrepancy is only worse and more apparent. Nothing really that BW can do about that… it’s up to the community to take advantage of the toys given.

 

I’ve been rolled, been part of the rolling, had some 1v1’s, had some small group fights, flanked, been flanked, seen groups take advantage of the terrain and high ground, practiced geurilla tactics, been hit by geurilla tactics, fought over control points, ninja’d control points and just overall have had a lot of fun the past couple days.

 

If you have people camping the republic base… that’s not BW’s fault, that’s the players’.

 

This.

I play on Dark Reaper which is the 3rd or maybe 4th highest pop server (I could be wrong but it's up there with one of the highest pops.) Ilum here is just imps outside the pube base pull trading. Very boring.

 

Me and others have tried to turn the battle to north or south since the respawns are closer there. Usually to no success. You make a truly solid point. It's also up to us to make the community pull together and make this work.

 

In countless mmos there have been unspoken rules people catch on to, and aren't game mechanics but accepted as so. Let's work on the unspoken rule that mid is the fight zone. Just maybe we can make this work without much Dev help.

 

We need to prove to them that we want this and it's worth all of our time as well as theirs. They gave us what we wanted and instead of being butt hurt, we can help facilitate the changes Ilum needs to become what we want it to be.

[Gaidax]

It is too huge and it is too barren.

 

I hope next time Bio makes a PvP planet they will make it half the size of Ilum and make it look less bland by introducing mechs that actually move, hit things other mechs for actual damage and can be destroyed in addition to ground troops support actually assisting players on taking nodes by destroying defensive structures and mechs.

 

Heck they can make those NPC troops have like 2k HP and shoot for 50 damage, the point is to make it feel more like actual war, instead of having a couple of effectively indestructible and pointless mechs in the middle of nowhere.

 

There should be sieges, commanders, reinforcements and a map which is not a mirror.

 

Honestly, Blizzard really grasped this back in Vanilla with epic Alterac Valley 1.0 - QQ ruined that map, but honestly AV back then is what Ilum should have been.

 

Heck they have Mythic people in a team, those created an excellent RvR for WAR (despite the fact that it is very Zerg friendly), sure WAR failed, but it was due to balance and engine issues, not due to RvR. Why not do something like this in TOR?

[Ryvendale]

Here is another example of how server population can dictate the gameplay.

 

If Ilum was any smaller, it’d just be another arena on a large server. As it stands now, small groups actually play geurilla warfare, taking points, killing stragglers and trying to avoid the zerg on Swiftsure, there is space to hide, seldom used travel paths that small groups can take to remain hidden. There are fights across the map of all sizes. Make it smaller, it’d just be another warzone… not WORLD.

 

On a small population server, it may be more difficult to find people… I’ve seen this in other games as well.

 

What’s good for one server, may not be good for another.

[MorbidAri]

Here is another example of how server population can dictate the gameplay.

 

If Ilum was any smaller, it’d just be another arena on a large server. As it stands now, small groups actually play geurilla warfare, taking points, killing stragglers and trying to avoid the zerg on Swiftsure, there is space to hide, seldom used travel paths that small groups can take to remain hidden. There are fights across the map of all sizes. Make it smaller, it’d just be another warzone… not WORLD.

 

On a small population server, it may be more difficult to find people… I’ve seen this in other games as well.

 

What’s good for one server, may not be good for another.

 

Here is a good point. I myself thought of how much better Ilum would be if it was infact smaller. Thus more combat and less running back. But you do bring up a solid point about how this is actually good for gameplay.

[fungihoujo]

I agree that currently, tech is not there to allow free form 'world pvp', but it might eventually get there.

 

 

For the time being, I feel developers need to put in more controls, to deal with the obvious issues, and work on better 'masking' those controls for the most part.

 

 

I would have been happier to have seen Illium be more of a mix of Warzone design and WAR PQ Quests.

 

 

I have also always felt that 'world PvP' needs to have some sort of 'kick out' when you are defeated, rather than just letting people zerg back from the respawn point. Basically once a World PVP event has started, and you have been 'killed', you are basically locked out of that 'event' until it completes with the winning team still standing.

 

The idea is to balance the timing of the events and have other options/events, so that when someone is killed, they are not 'benched' for hours.

 

 

The problem is- controls are what makes WZ what they are- world pvp is supposed to not have controls- that's the entire purpose of it, and that's why nobody considers WG or TB to be world pvp- though WG at least had some nodes and objectives after fights, where it did become world pvp... TB on the other hand was the opposite- you weren't even force flagged in TB, which is just atrocious.

 

 

Furthermore- any mechanic that prevents someone from participating in something is a sure deathwish for a game. As much as I hated being outnumbered in Wintergrasp, when I server switched and instead found myself queued and often not getting to participate- it was far, far more frustrating.

 

 

If world pvp isn't something you can just go and do- it's not world pvp. Frankly, there is incentive to do Ilum- good gear, good valour, and dailies. So that's not the issue.

 

 

The only true fix without making it a controlled zone is to add considerable levelling bonuses to affected servers on whichever side is outnumbered- advertise it on the server select screen too.

 

Xfers I doubt will work- not with how the story works.

 

Thing is, you first need to incenticize people to try a Republic character to 50- if you can manage that, you give the character opportunity to see the other side, perhaps make connections. If that doesn't keep them- well, so be it- but it might keep him.

 

Community's a big part of it too though- if the community Republic side isn't positive, people won't want to play it- who wants to hang out with a downer after all. Guilds can do a lot to help gear people or with levelling and flashpoints- it really depends on how much Republic wants balance.

 

If nobody's willing to take control into their own hands, nothing will change- doesn't matter what BW will do, the game is only half of the mmo- the community is the rest.

 

 

But, with posts about giving up on pvp mere hours after the Ilum patch due to it... I wonder if the Republic really wants this situation solved, or if they want something to use as an excuse to hate BW.

 

I frankly don't see world pvp becoming a success- it's unfortunate, but not unexpected. I think we'll see Ilum become Wintergrasp and just be another WZ after a while.

[MorbidAri]

It is too huge and it is too barren.

 

I hope next time Bio makes a PvP planet they will make it half the size of Ilum and make it look less bland by introducing mechs that actually move, hit things other mechs for actual damage and can be destroyed in addition to ground troops support actually assisting players on taking nodes by destroying defensive structures and mechs.

 

Heck they can make those NPC troops have like 2k HP and shoot for 50 damage, the point is to make it feel more like actual war, instead of having a couple of effectively indestructible and pointless mechs in the middle of nowhere.

 

There should be sieges, commanders, reinforcements and a map which is not a mirror.

 

Honestly, Blizzard really grasped this back in Vanilla with epic Alterac Valley 1.0 - QQ ruined that map, but honestly AV back then is what Ilum should have been.

 

Heck they have Mythic people in a team, those created an excellent RvR for WAR (despite the fact that it is very Zerg friendly), sure WAR failed, but it was due to balance and engine issues, not due to RvR. Why not do something like this in TOR?

 

I personally hope and pray they add RVR to this game. I loved War's RVR. The SW universe isn't even hard to imagine RVR in. They make it a planet with bases that you need to kill the commander of to take it like in War would be awesome.

 

Had many great RVR times in my mmo years. Would love for them to make their home here. Love this game and love the fact that it has it's own pvp team. Let's light a match under their ***** and make them implament these kinds of changes.

[fungihoujo]

 

There should be sieges, commanders, reinforcements and a map which is not a mirror.

 

 

Have you not been paying attention the last few weeks? Everything must be a perfect mirror or it's broken- You so much as have a single objective an inch closer to one base and you're going to see a dozen threads pop up on BW favours Empire in Ilum- look at video on spacing, it takes 21.3 seconds to run from Republic base to point A, but only 20.9 seconds to run from Imperial base to point C- BW shows their blatant Imperial favoritism again!

 

Guarantee.

[DDNitz]

Played since Vanilla till Cata. The problem with the BC/Wrath world pvp is that it had no point. Taking Halaa gave such a non-exsistant bonus/reward that there really is no point in doing it. That goes with Grizzly as well. Why bother even doing it for 74th level blues?

 

Ilum offers the second best pvp gear to those not BM, and the best gear available. Something that no other MMO has ever done. Offering good pvp rewards for world pvp. I suppose I should have mentioned that in my post.

 

You are correct in some of your points. But WoW killed world pvp regardless.

 

BW gave us world pvpers some love. We should share it.

 

p.s. BH as you mentioned isn't world pvp and still stands as the biggest failure in mmo pvp history.

 

Wow realized that they cannot have world pvp with 2 factions due to the imbalance. Something that Bioware is starting to realize but it is too late. This cannot be fixed. At this point going the Tol Barad route is probably the only option to balance it out. It sucks but in the end if they don't they will hemorrhage subs. To be honest I'm surprised the Republic is not boycotting Ilum like horde did for Alterac Valley back in the day.

[Lymain]

I'm liking Ilum, even in its unpolished state. There are always going to be problems with world PvP no matter what, and players will always be able to ruin it for themselves, but I enjoy doing my daily and will even stick around to help friends with theirs.

[MorbidAri]

Have you not been paying attention the last few weeks? Everything must be a perfect mirror or it's broken- You so much as have a single objective an inch closer to one base and you're going to see a dozen threads pop up on BW favours Empire in Ilum- look at video on spacing, it takes 21.3 seconds to run from Republic base to point A, but only 20.9 seconds to run from Imperial base to point C- BW shows their blatant Imperial favoritism again!

 

Guarantee.

 

Okay I have to adress this. People say BW favors Imperials. Some evidence points to that. I cannot nor will not argue those perfectly sound and proven arguments.

 

What I will say is that since Imperials outnumber Republics, wouldn't then them showing favoritism to the Imps being actually pandering to their biggest pop and group of paying customers.

 

I am not going to try and defend BW and their choices. As an Imperial player I will admit that most of these discrepencies actually make me frustrated. I usually play the under-dog in most mmos. This one was an exception because playing a Sith has been a dream since I was 5 years old when I saw SW for the first time. (Emperor fan here, not as much Vader though.)

 

The faction differences has been adressed and I hope will be fixed. Fingers crossed.

[MorbidAri]

Wow realized that they cannot have world pvp with 2 factions due to the imbalance. Something that Bioware is starting to realize but it is too late. This cannot be fixed. At this point going the Tol Barad route is probably the only option to balance it out. It sucks but in the end if they don't they will hemorrhage subs. To be honest I'm surprised the Republic is not boycotting Ilum like horde did for Alterac Valley back in the day.

 

This is a valid point. Ironically enough on my Battle group it was the Ally who boycotted AV not the horde.

 

Though I see your point, I still thank BW for adding world pvp after we all asked for it. That's the point.

 

Now lets work together to make it work.

[Godbane]

1) The world pvp objective should be winnable. There needs to be meaning for a victory. The +valor per kill in ilum/match is simply not enough incentive to keep the points. WoW accomplished this by having a raid (something of interest to both pve and pvp players) and a global buff.

 

2) The world pvp objective needs to be on a timer to concentrate everyone at certain times, instead of spread out so there is never enough going on at a single time. This is the reason WoW did this for Wintergrasp and Tol Barad

 

3) There needs to be some sort of population balance mechanism (or incentive). WoW eventually introduced capping the maximum of players for each side to be equal. I personally would rather see an incentive system (+valor gain or something), but whatever is needed.

 

There are my suggestions.

 

I wouldn't have mentioned WoW so much if not for the fact that Blizzard has examined PVP and developed solutions to deal with similar problems in the past.

 

I am very disappointed at the state of Ilum. Every time I have gone there as Imperial there is nothing to do but do circles around the Central Assault picking up crates, which takes a while since there are many other Imperials doing the same thing. Rarely have I seen another Republic player. I also can't help but think that Bioware could have anticpiated these problems and designed a fun, engaging, and deep PVP experience.

 

I expected more from a developer of the caliber of Bioware/Mythic especially considering the vast resources at Bioware's disposal.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Godbane

[Soulaufein]

Yes, we all know Ilum has its issues - the bigger ones being the technical problems, the big lag etc - BUT it can be made more interesting. BW needs to somehow find a way to make the whole combat experience on Ilum minimally fluent.

 

But let's imagine for a couple of minutes that there are no technical issues whatsoever, or that they have been fixed.

 

As a Republic player that has witnessed the countless times the usual Imp zerg, I can help but feel the whole experience could be made far more pleasant:

 

> Open parties/Warbands. It was the first thing I missed as soon as I set foot on Ilum. For any of those that played WAR, we can all agree this was a GREAT feature. Over time, people in WBs actually respected - most of the time - a single voice which was really key in keeping the band and the people in the area together.

 

> Lots of times the Imps camp their zerg outside the Rep Base. IMO, for Republic to have a fighting chance - and some some fun - , we need to be able to BREAK that zerg into smaller warbands/groups. That can be done by making some decisions.

 

Just a couple of suggestions that could work:

 

A) Creating objectives spread all over the map that reward its "owners" - and by reward I mean advantages and direct buffs to the parties that claim those objectives. This would help turn Ilum from a massive zerg and lagfest into smaller, more tactical skirmishing and create some actually interesting fights. Having say, 4 groups of 5 people each constantly moving and fighting all over the map. Something like this would reward mobility, coordination and actually SKILLS in smaller, but relevant fights.

 

B) Lets say the 100000 imps are camping the base exit in a staring contest with the 4 or 5 Reps in the Rep base like so many of us have seen. Other 2 Reps suddenly take one or two objective points and that, lets say, reinforces the Rep Base defenses. 3 or 4 Turrets that cover both the entrance and the are right next to the Rep AA canons pop up and start hammering the zerg. That would force the imps to both drop the camping - or give the defending party free valor - and to actually split up to take two different points if they want to keep the starting contest up, therefore breaking the zerg and giving the smaller Republic groups a fighting chance.

 

I honestly doubt that BW can handle the technical part of Zerg vs well, Republic. And even if we could get 30-40 FPS in a 150 vs 50 fight, what the hell is so fun in mass AOE spam?

So I sincerely hope that by taking small steps like the ones sugested, BW can make Ilum interesting. Because it CAN be done. It just needs smart design and WILL to test it out.

 

EDIT: Forgot to say something about the population balance. Can only be solved in two ways: direct action - forbidding the creation of Empire characters, which is not good for the game IMO - or once again, by being smart. By PUNISHING the mindless zerg and rewarding spread out, coordinated fights.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Soulaufein

[Gunzwei]

Ilum offers the second best pvp gear to those not BM, and the best gear available. Something that no other MMO has ever done. Offering good pvp rewards for world pvp. I suppose I should have mentioned that in my post.

 

RFO and UO come to mind. Even early EQ pvp servers ring a bell as well. All WoW did was take all the risk out of PvP and make it "Reward vs less Reward". If anything they had taken an idea that Guild Wars had already shown was working ,"instanced PvP".

-

 

How to fix Illum?

 

Give it the Outlaw's Den ruleset allowing anyone to attack anyone else.

[Hawox]

OP has a point but... i dont usually take my car to the carage to get it broken down even more...

[Pandamime]

So before we all go jumping on BW we have to remember that they tried. Thank you for listening to people who wanted world pvp and implamenting it. Even if it sucks you've done more than WoW has since Vanilla. /discuss

 

First off this isnt WoW and shouldn't even be compared. BW should be listening to the CUSTOMERS of a NEW game, the problem is they don't test things before they change them. The nerf coming to agents is just ridiculous, less armor penetration effects "ALL" our FIGHTING SKILLS and 20% less dps effects how we can compete now........ Plus the Ilum mess... this game is heading down the toilet faster then a turd on taco night.

[Soulaufein]

Sorry don't want an actually constructive thread about Ilum to go down in history.

 

Shameless bump, and keep it alive :=)

[Thiussat]

Ilum has only one real issue, faction balance.

 

^ This. After 1.1 (and the subsequent emergency fix), I think Ilum is fine mechanics wise. The only problem is the fact it's 5:1 Imps on most servers and even worse on others.

[_Banewolf_]

BW actually gave us objective based world PVP. WoW hasn't done this since Vanilla. Don't even bother calling WG and the single worst pvp zone ever invented BH in wow as world pvp. It's just a WF/BG with a 2 hour wait.

 

Even if Ilum is broken, thanks BW for even caring enough about the pvp community to even add world pvp. Other mmos gave up on it but even if it sucks, you tried. Which is more than I can say for other games. In fact WoW even killed world pvp with flying mounts.

 

So before we all go jumping on BW we have to remember that they tried. Thank you for listening to people who wanted world pvp and implamenting it. Even if it sucks you've done more than WoW has since Vanilla.

 

Now instead of flaming BW for giving us what we want. Let's brainstorm fixes.

 

Best idea for a fix is bringing back the Objective trading along with the current pvp. That way it stops the Imps from standing outside the pube's base, and pulls the pvp back to the objectives again.

 

/discuss

 

Its completly daft!

Quote!

PvP – We have an entire team dedicated to adding content and features to player vs. player. We have some of the most experienced PvP developers in the world on this team. So far very few people have seen, or know much about the stunning Open World PVP on Ilum; when you get to the high levels prepare to be blown away! In addition to that high level PVP content, expect new Warzones and new PvP features on a regular basis.

 

 

I do not recall or can find anything even close to that written by Blizz.

I dont even recall Blizzard proclaiming to be hardcore RvR game.

open RvR aye but focus on PVe.

So comparison is not even close.

Also if you had knowledge you ´d know that Blizz was prevented by Mythic to develop the pvp/rvr they wanted.

I might be wrong and in that case prove it.

Now...When you go out with a statement like that you have to be bloody sure to actually deliver.

Now i ask me whats been blown away?

prob most of the experienced players...whats left is those who linger due to friends and guilds.

Im pretty sure BW have feelt the decline in resubs.

And to be honest the only game that pretty mch been giving a a good or will give a good RvR will be a 3 factioned one.

Daoc thats a really really old game is better then Swtor in RvR by miles.

In length your comparison is way of and your conclusion lacks depth and probably you havent even played many games at all.

Ilum isnt Broken its not finished....Classes arent rdy objectives ar non eexistent,patches comming out arent tested or the community is ignored.

The list goes on.

Ive said my peace.

[pogmahone]

I agree completely