Is a good open-world PvP system too much to ask for?

[Zyanzor]

Instanced PVP themepark sit in a queue in the city AFK for welfare PVP gear.

 

That sounds exactly like WoW. That's why I hated Battlegrounds. Blizzard killed world PvP in WoW with battlegrounds. Too bad.

[Goretzu]

Considering Bioware have many Mythic Devs and had run WAR for 1.5 years before SWTORs release, I'm surprised PvP and RvR is as bad as it is.

 

Most of the lessons and successes for WAR would transfer straight across. Ok they can't have collision detections, but mirroring the WAR PvP CC system would fix a lot of SWTOR PvP problems.

[Ansultares]

I loved Warhammer. The PvP mechanics were deliciously fun and the fights were as big as I had seen since DaoC(albeit somewhat smaller). The problem was, that it was built on the fundamentally flawed based of World PvP. Institutionalized world PvP just doesn't work anymore.

Designated PvP zones or areas within zones don't really work.

 

DAoC pulled off RvR only through having an extensive dedicated PvP zone.

 

Mythic actually put out some interesting warzones in WAR; it's surprising so few made it over (not that I've even bothered with PvP in this game).

 

Anyway, world PvP is best generated organically by incidental random player convergence. Large scale RvR is by far the most difficult beast in the genre to tackle, both technically and creatively.

 

WoW did it right; Southshore/Tarren Mill, Scarlet Monastery, Tanaris...I could go on, but all of these world PvP spots grew from the design of the world.

 

And, honestly, it's not as much fun without three factions.

 

Basicly World PvP thrives on uneven numbers

********.

 

World PvP gives the greatest rush when you're outnumbered.

 

World PvP will ALWAYS come down to who has more people when the difference is that size.

I've been outnumbered 10:1. People I knew who played Horde in the earliest days of WoW never seemed to mind being outnumbered 2:1 or greater.

 

It's really only an issue when you're asked to organize and tackle objectives in a designated world PvP zone, where a zerg will just steamroll any objective and any opposition.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Ansultares

[VegaPhone]

The game engine cant handle real open world pvp. I am making this assumption due people complaining, and of course seeing some issues with performance myself in the game. The game does run well, but open world is more taxing on the system.

 

The only way they can do that is by first fixing their engine to offer a better performance for users. Like a lot of you said, its easy for them to add content for Illum, but it wont fix anything for those having issues with avg. PCs.

 

So they either need to make their engine better. Or have more options to tweak settings like removing physics and as much possible to remove the unnesscearry calculations. So that the environment will be detailed enough to look nice, with decent character model detail, and of course ability detail.

 

Otherwise them adding content for Open world at this point would be for high end machines, which would probably have to run the game on medium settings as well.

 

So the cost of them doing that at this point is not worth the implementation, or they would have had an Illum from the beginning with a lot of objectives.

 

That is my only explanationl for what actually happened, other than, they forgot to add something for Illum.

 

Also the other reasoning could be because they want us, as a already limited population per server to all play in the same circles or doing the same activities. So they make certain parts average enough (space comabt for example would be too epic as space pvp for launch and would divide the population) that we re-roll so that new players are playing with old players, or playing with the few 50s doing the same thing such as HM FPs. This might sound silly, but this is an issue with MMOs and how to segregate/consolidate populations.

 

Notice how we cant even choose which map we want. That is because the population for pvp is already limited that they have to do that. So by adding more stuff in swtor they further divide the population meaning there are less people per activity. The solution should be to increase the server population, and for certain circumstances such as instances draw from a population that comes from more than one server.

 

The fact that they intentionally want us to play only form one server for pvp, and we cant even chose which pvp map should be obvious that they knew there was going to be a problem with how the populations would be divided in end game... so what you see, is what was there solution, or you could assume a multi million project with professionals made a silly mistake that was not intentional for certain decisions.

Edited February 6, 2012 by VegaPhone

[dividedconker]

That sounds exactly like WoW. That's why I hated Battlegrounds. Blizzard killed world PvP in WoW with battlegrounds. Too bad.

 

What he said ^^

[Miffy]

Just make battlegrounds a real place in the world so you have to travel to get to them like when they first came out in WoW. To get into a queue for the instance you have to stay in the area and you get lots of world PVP around them or as people travel to them.

[BegaTasty]

I have been an active player since day one and upon hitting level 50 went to Ilum to try BioWare's take on open-world PvP--instantly unsatisfied.

 

REWARDS: For those of us who HATE queued PvP, open-world is our home. However, how am I supposed to obtain my PvP gear without queuing for a Warzone and getting Huttball 10+ times in a row? The valor is good in open-world--yes--as well as the bonus from controlling bases, but Bioware cannot just leave us to the same three Warzones for a random queue, which sometimes takes an hour to join. The reward of Valor + a small number of PvP commendations per kill would ensure the ability to only open-world PvP.

 

BASES: Bases are incredibly too easy to capture, a solo player could take one over in under a minute and there are no defense (besides those turrets I have never seen used) to these nor any obstacles for that matter. The bonuses are a great aspect of possessing a base, however this is not enough to make me feel at home on Ilum. More realistic bases would also makes sense to the story of ToR; the Imperials and Republic are fighting for these bases because they are at war and need them for whatever purpose BioWare would say they served as.

 

POPULATION: Is that five enemies I see? All too often I go to Ilum to find a sparingly-few amount of players to thrust my saber into. I come from an eight-year subscription to Dark Age of Camelot, and to encounter a handful of enemies in open-world PvP makes me wonder how that is even possible. There are two factions to this game, whereas DAoC had three, and the open-world RvR (Realm vs Realm) on DAoC had hundreds of players fighting in them--even hundreds to a single battle at times. Again, with the addition of PvP commendations as rewards for a killing an enemy player, the populations would rise on Ilum.

 

SIZE: The open-world of DAoC had three zones, which connected by boat, and each zone was at least 20x the size of the Ilum battlefield. An increased size would enable more players to be on the field of battle as well as more bases.

 

 

 

By no means am I saying that ToR be a mirror to DAoC. However, DAoC population lived on the RvR system it had, and instead of queued Warzones had level-set Battlegrounds with a central base which was fought over. The open-world PvP on ToR is equivalent to the open-world of a third-world country. BioWare has slacked incredibly on the potential Ilum has as well as succumbed to every unskilled and impatient MMO players' dreams of an instant-gratification queuing system, whilst and open-world is just as fast, if not faster action than queuing, if population is at the right numbers.

 

I would just like to discuss on how players think the open-world could be improved. In all honesty, DAoC is a perfect example of PvP done exceedingly well.

 

Good to see theres someone els who gets it. I have been saying this for 3 months...an they ignore it.

[Tzou]

copy paste WAR,dont give up the game fast,balance servers=sucess.

 

ps:i quiited WAR and MOST PPL cause EA quitted it ...nothing more and nothing less.

[Obsydian_nl]

well i love open world pvp and i love warzones as well.

 

illum needs a few fixes, for sure. I play emp myself and hate just zerging the spawns.

i used to play WAR as well and it was great pvp wise.

 

If you where outnumberd you got an AAO (against all odd's) buff with gave you increased bonusses from kill's to such an extend that i went looking for outnumbered zones for the increased reward. right now in illum its exactly the other way around if you have more players you control more BO's hence more valor bonus.

 

that combined with the fact that there are nearly no roaming party's and its mostly one big zerg at central assault (because of those useless armament's for the illum daily), its nearly impossible to get even one kill before being overrun.

 

I say implement a zone lock for controlling all BO's that reset like every 30 min's or so and give you a one time valor bump (say 1600 valor thats increased by AAO and removing the valor from controlling more bo's ofc). This will also spread the larger faction over the multiple bo's to keep owning them for the lock bonus, thus making it easier for the outnumberd faction to get kill's against small parties rather than being zerged all the time.

 

keep player kill valor bonusses at controlled bo's, only at a greatly reduced amout (lets say max 40 bonus valor per kill) and give the outnumbered faction an incentive (AAO like in war). And put up armament's at all the BO's to add to the smaller parties and give the outnumberd faction a chance to finish their daily's faster.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Obsydian_nl

[Zlashie]

Actually they could create world pvp in a very easy way,

 

Why did World of warcraft have world pvp? Becasue the game required you to physically walk to the location of the instance. (And because of No flying mounts)

 

conclussion: Having shuttles for each instance at the fleet stations:

 

Worst Idea ever.

 

This game has no world pvp because Bioware made no reason for people to visit other planets again. There is absolutly no need to travel to other planets: The fleet has everything.

 

I wonder how the Bioware devs feel knowing all the time spent on creating these amazing planets are being wasted because people can just afk at the republic fleet.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Zlashie

[Tic-]

I'm going to imagine it is a whole lot easier for a developer to create an instanced room with three nodes to defend allowing 8 people in at a time, than it is an open PvP area with bases, with an unknown amount of people trying to take over said base, etc.

 

People gobble up the former, and say the latter "doesn't work". End of story.

 

As a developer, what would you make?

 

Sadly its this kind of thinking that gives us the same recycled pvp (and MMOs in general), we keep getting.

 

Some day, hopefully we hold developers to higher standards. For us as consumers to say, open pvp "doesn't work", and the the only "real" pvp is arena, and leave it at that, is only hindering MMOs overall. It gives us things like Ilum, which was suppose to "blow us away".

 

It worked in DAoC. Say what you will about other aspects of the game, the RvR worked pretty well. That was some 10 years ago. Warhammer tried it again, and failed on such basics parts of DAoC , its shocking it was made my the same developers.

 

 

I like both, open pvp, and "warzones", but it sure would be nice to have someone put some decent effort into making an open pvp/rvr, and get that other game out of their head.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Tic-

[Gformutorila]

Maybe there are just not enough people interested in world PvP. You say there are few people in Ilum maybe it's not BW's fault but the players fault.

[BegaTasty]

Maybe there are just not enough people interested in world PvP. You say there are few people in Ilum maybe it's not BW's fault but the players fault.

 

no its because the game was made to funnel people into farming an bott9ing BG's. remove any sort of progression from world pvp an the player base today will gravitate to BGs like flys on ****.

[Roak]

Actually they could create world pvp in a very easy way,

 

Why did World of warcraft have world pvp? Becasue the game required you to physically walk to the location of the instance. (And because of No flying mounts)

 

conclussion: Having shuttles for each instance at the fleet stations:

 

Worst Idea ever.

 

This game has no world pvp because Bioware made no reason for people to visit other planets again. There is absolutly no need to travel to other planets: The fleet has everything.

 

I wonder how the Bioware devs feel knowing all the time spent on creating these amazing planets are being wasted because people can just afk at the republic fleet.

 

this is part of the problem, modern mmolite endgame is a lobby (fleet) for instanced content. in mmorpg what happens out in the game world should count and both pve and pvp should be built into the game world at a core level. mmolite has pve built into the game world (mission hubs) and pvp tacked on as an afterthought (in tor's case: lolum)

Edited February 6, 2012 by Roak

[Tic-]

Maybe there are just not enough people interested in world PvP. You say there are few people in Ilum maybe it's not BW's fault but the players fault.

 

Perhaps, but it seems even folks who like world pvp find Ilum seriuosly lacking in the fun department.

 

Maybe if the developers started by making the area "fun" (subjective i know) we could get a better test on who's fault it is?

[VegaPhone]

Perhaps, but it seems even folks who like world pvp find Ilum seriuosly lacking in the fun department.

 

Maybe if the developers started by making the area "fun" (subjective i know) we could get a better test on who's fault it is?

 

Some people cant play due to the higher demand of playing on Illum. So that's part of the problem.

 

Also the main problem is there really is not objective to Illum.

 

And whatever objective players could create for themselves such as conquering the others base is impossible because its essentially griefing and was balanced by making it impossible to attempt now.

 

So a good way to fix that is by adding objectives which are pvp objectives and pve objectives. However the PVE objectives would be the core of the objective since it would be the pvp rewards and also would help to create an objective that does not lead to griefing.

[Zlashie]

Ilum isnt world pvp. Its a numbers game.

 

as for why Empire mostly outnumber republic, check the thread that concludes that this game isnt true mirrors. It has video proof that most "faulty mistakes" favour the empire

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=101553

 

-Z

[Tic-]

Some people cant play due to the higher demand of playing on Illum. So that's part of the problem.

 

Also the main problem is there really is not objective to Illum.

 

And whatever objective players could create for themselves such as conquering the others base is impossible because its essentially griefing and was balanced by making it impossible to attempt now.

 

So a good way to fix that is by adding objectives which are pvp objectives and pve objectives. However the PVE objectives would be the core of the objective since it would be the pvp rewards and also would help to create an objective that does not lead to griefing.

 

I think thats what i said...

 

Ilum just isn't fun. So why bother going? To do dailies to get gear? Great.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Tic-

[Tzou]

I'm going to imagine it is a whole lot easier for a developer to create an instanced room with three nodes to defend allowing 8 people in at a time, than it is an open PvP area with bases, with an unknown amount of people trying to take over said base, etc.

 

People gobble up the former, and say the latter "doesn't work". End of story.

 

As a developer, what would you make?

 

Sadly its this kind of thinking that gives us the same recycled pvp (and MMOs in general), we keep getting.

 

Some day, hopefully we hold developers to higher standards. For us as consumers to say, open pvp "doesn't work", and the the only "real" pvp is arena, and leave it at that, is only hindering MMOs overall. It gives us things like Ilum, which was suppose to "blow us away".

 

It worked in DAoC. Say what you will about other aspects of the game, the RvR worked pretty well. That was some 10 years ago. Warhammer tried it again, and failed on such basics parts of DAoC , its shocking it was made my the same developers.

 

 

I like both, open pvp, and "warzones", but it sure would be nice to have someone put some decent effort into making an open pvp/rvr, and get that other game out of their head.

 

u are confused randomly world pvp is NOT open dedicated pvp.

 

wow had world dedicated PVP till patch 1.4 ..after that never again.

[Tic-]

u are confused randomly world pvp is NOT open dedicated pvp.

 

wow had world dedicated PVP till patch 1.4 ..after that never again.

 

Well, we could probably break PvP down to 47 diffent types if we wanted. Most people just call Ilum open world PvP, and that what the OP is talking about, as opposed to instanced.

 

been playing MMOs since UO, i don't even know what half the stuff is anymore, as peoples interpitations are so varied.

 

/shrug

Edited February 6, 2012 by Tic-

[Zlashie]

Well, we could probably break PvP down to 47 diffent types if we wanted. Most people just call Ilum open world PvP, as opposed to instanced.

 

been playing MMOs since UO, i don't even know what half the stuff is anymore, as peoples interpitations are so varied.

 

/shrug

 

To me world pvp is any kind of random pvp at a zone that was not originally ment for pvp or a "freelancers pvp zone".

 

Ilum is a location dedicated to pvp and thus it doesnt become world pvp but rather an instance that simulates it.

 

But its just my opinion really.

 

-Z

[Kanana]

To me, "World PvP" means "Ganking". There's nothing world pvp offers to me that does not boil down to "uneven fights".

 

I don't pvp to gank, or to get ganked. I pvp to have an even fight. WZs work better to get an even fight than "open PvP".

[Briljin]

The only way to encourage open-world pvp is to remove warzones. The reason why people do not participate in open-world action, is because warzones are more convenient and a more steady supply of valor/token, when you get into a game you know there will be opponents to kill.

 

Sorry but taking away the only relatively balanced PvP an under dog side has is not going to boost world PvP, it will just cause more to quit. You can not have meaningful world PvP without balanced factions. Coming from Aion (a game designed around fluid world PvP) I hate the total lack of world PvP in SWTOR but if it wasn't for the WZs, most Republic players would have no chance at all.

[sjmc]

To me, "World PvP" means "Ganking". There's nothing world pvp offers to me that does not boil down to "uneven fights". I don't pvp to gank, or to get ganked. I pvp to have an even fight. WZs work better to get an even fight than "open PvP".

I have not had that experience at all on Jung Ma. Almost all "world PVP" fights that I have had while levelling were encounters with solo players around my level. Almost never have I been "ganked" (by either high levels or a group). (EDIT: A level 30 attacking a level 30 is not "ganking", even if they do it from stealth while you are fighting mobs).

 

That said, I recently arrived on Voss and there are a lot of enemies running around (what is the deal with the Shrine of Healing?) -- but again, they are still generally "fair" encounters (there are friendlies around too -- although we could be more organized)

 

EDIT: There is the occasional group that takes over an enemy base and kills people from a position of superiority. But again, they are usually of the appropriate level for the area and can be countered by gathering a posse to drive them out.

Edited February 6, 2012 by sjmc

[damolawler]

Actually they could create world pvp in a very easy way,

 

Why did World of warcraft have world pvp? Becasue the game required you to physically walk to the location of the instance. (And because of No flying mounts)

 

conclussion: Having shuttles for each instance at the fleet stations:

 

Worst Idea ever.

 

This game has no world pvp because Bioware made no reason for people to visit other planets again. There is absolutly no need to travel to other planets: The fleet has everything.

 

I wonder how the Bioware devs feel knowing all the time spent on creating these amazing planets are being wasted because people can just afk at the republic fleet.

 

 

This!