Pvp philsophy and the lack of well-reasoned forum discussion

[Ahhmyface]

There are a few topics that seem to be pervasive around these forums, that warrant a more direct treatment than the tangential debates have yet to offer. I'll start with a few things:

 

1. There is no "real pvper". This is an example of the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy. The nature of pvp is mostly irrelevant. Any form of competition, even ones where players do not actively engage each other, is, in a sense, pvp. As long as one seeks to dominate the opponent, this is pvp.

 

2. Competition does not necessarily rely on equality. All the debates and bad sports analogies need to end. Athletes train to be physically superior before the contest ever begins, white always moves first in chess, and if you've ever played the card-game a-hole/scum, the "president" gets bonus cards for being president and starts first. If you ever played "king of the hill" as a child, the player on top has obvious advantages. SWTOR does NOT have to preserve equality. You are free to enjoy whatever type of game you wish, but recognize that there are a wide variety of competitions that deliberately incorporate inequality. For many players, this is FUN, both to dominate, and to win as the underdog.

 

3. The game is what it is. Given a set of rules R, maximize your wins. That is the only thing set in stone. If the next patch introduces new hoops, the competition will change. Your goal should be to maximize your wins, regardless of a changing ruleset. Many players mentally invent their own set of game rules, and then complain when their opponents take advantage of these opportunities. There is no point begrudging players these choices. If they got more datacrons, or battlemaster gear or whatever, be a good sport about it. In my opinion, your average player spends too much time blaming the framework, and not enough time trying to compete within that framework.

 

4. The best feedback, despite this forum's average tone, isn't rants, or whines, or assertions of what "real pvp" is or the way things "should be". Those things are meaningless. It is expressions of preferences. "I enjoy finding datacrons". "I dislike waiting for warzones". There is no point pretending to be objective, simply accept your bias, express yourself, and move on. "Champion token drop rates frustrate me", is a 100% valid, useful, and accurate piece of feedback. "Champion bags are broken, here is my anecdotal meaningless streak" is a loaded, and relatively useless whine only intent on generating more negativity.

 

 

5. Class balance isn't easy, nor obvious. It requires a detailed understanding of design objectives, and an exhaustive amount of real data to make any strong conclusions. This takes lots of time. Rest assured that nerfs and buffs will progress, albeit slowly. Howling for immediate sweeping changes is foolish and irresponsible.

 

6. A lot of good posts are drowned in barely literate trollsludge. What can we, as a community, do to bring the truth to the spotlight?

Edited February 6, 2012 by Ahhmyface

[Bloodtau]

The negative "trolls" aren't the worse thing on this forum. It's the "white knight" forum lurkers who reckon everything is fine and dandy in their little game, and flame anyone who tries to put an opinion across that doesn't suit their own.

[Delavager]

You are awesome and speak the truth!

 

I second everything you said.

 

Edit: YOU being the OP, not the second guy.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Delavager

[ihateyouall]

 

3. The game is what it is. Given a set of rules R, maximize your wins. That is the only thing set in stone. If the next patch introduces new hoops, the competition will change. Your goal should be to maximize your wins, regardless of a changing ruleset. Many players mentally invent their own set of game rules, and then complain when their opponents take advantage of these opportunities. There is no point begrudging players these choices. If they got more datacrons, or battlemaster gear or whatever, be a good sport about it. In my opinion, your average player spends too much time blaming the framework, and not enough time trying to compete within that framework.

 

 

Why does one want to maximize their wins when you are rewarded far better for maximizing your medals?

[BegaTasty]

Playing word games an trying to use the literal meaning of words is silly mate to be honest. There is "real pvp" that is pvp where you go out into the world an make your own. No GM hand holding an controlling/restricting fighting. Micromanaging is NOT pvp.

 

There is one reason for battlegrounds, it's cheap an easy way of keeping player retention.

 

Real pvpers = world pvp (obviously)

battleground farming for shinys = pve basically Simply because the end result of battlegrounds is shinys, shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys....'

 

There should never been class balance, diversity is the reason for MMO's an always has been till blizzard killed the industry an turned it into 13 year old heaven ...

 

You need diversity in classes to have a real MMO, without it all you have is.... wow.

Edited February 6, 2012 by BegaTasty

[Delavager]

Why does one want to maximize their wins when you are rewarded far better for maximizing your medals?

 

I believe "wins" is symbolic and what you make of it. It don't believe it is to be taken as a literal win.

 

It could be a personal win of obtaining the most medals each go around for example.

[Bloodtau]

Playing word games an trying to use the literal meaning of words is silly mate to be honest. There is "real pvp" that is pvp where you go out into the world an make your own. No GM hand holding an controlling/restricting fighting. Micromanaging is NOT pvp.

 

There is one reason for battlegrounds, it's cheap an easy way of keeping player retention.

 

Real pvpers = world pvp (obviously)

battleground farming for shinys = pve basically Simply because the end result of battlegrounds is shinys, shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys....

 

Shame this game doesn't have any true world pvp. Just that joke called Illum where it's either spawn camp for kills or trade kills for more grinding.

[Vepyr]

There are a few topics that seem to be pervasive around these forums, that warrant a more direct treatment than the tangential debates have yet to offer. I'll start with a few things:

 

1. There is no "real pvper". This is an example of the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy. The nature of pvp is mostly irrelevant. Any form of competition, even ones where players do not actively engage each other, is, in a sense, pvp. As long as one seeks to dominate the opponent, this is pvp.

 

2. Competition does not necessarily rely on equality. All the debates and bad sports analogies need to end. Athletes train to be physically superior before the contest ever begins, white always moves first in chess, and if you've ever played the card-game a-hole/scum, the "president" gets bonus cards for being president and starts first. If you ever played "king of the hill" as a child, the player on top has obvious advantages. SWTOR does NOT have to preserve equality. You are free to enjoy whatever type of game you wish, but recognize that there are a wide variety of competitions that deliberately incorporate inequality. For many players, this is FUN, both to dominate, and to win as the underdog.

 

3. The game is what it is. Given a set of rules R, maximize your wins. That is the only thing set in stone. If the next patch introduces new hoops, the competition will change. Your goal should be to maximize your wins, regardless of a changing ruleset. Many players mentally invent their own set of game rules, and then complain when their opponents take advantage of these opportunities. There is no point begrudging players these choices. If they got more datacrons, or battlemaster gear or whatever, be a good sport about it. In my opinion, your average player spends too much time blaming the framework, and not enough time trying to compete within that framework.

 

4. The best feedback, despite this forum's average tone, isn't rants, or whines, or assertions of what "real pvp" is or the way things "should be". Those things are meaningless. It is expressions of preferences. "I enjoy finding datacrons". "I dislike waiting for warzones". There is no point pretending to be objective, simply accept your bias, express yourself, and move on. "Champion token drop rates frustrate me", is a 100% valid, useful, and accurate piece of feedback. "Champion bags are broken, here is my anecdotal meaningless streak" is a loaded, and relatively useless whine only intent on generating more negativity.

 

 

5. Class balance isn't easy, nor obvious. It requires a detailed understanding of design objectives, and an exhaustive amount of real data to make any strong conclusions. This takes lots of time. Rest assured that nerfs and buffs will progress, albeit slowly. Howling for immediate sweeping changes is foolish and irresponsible.

 

6. A lot of good posts are drowned in barely literate trollsludge. What can we, as a community, do to bring the truth to the spotlight?

 

 

This could be the best post I've ever read on any PvP forum. /salute

[Ahhmyface]

Playing word games an trying to use the literal meaning of words is silly mate to be honest. There is "real pvp" that is pvp where you go out into the world an make your own. No GM hand holding an controlling/restricting fighting. Micromanaging is NOT pvp..

 

Anything that puts a player versus a player, whether it's a competition to brush your pony's hair better than your opponent, or who can rip out the other's eyes first... is still literally pvp. I am not the one playing word games, being literal is precisely the opposite of word games.

 

If you enjoy open-pvp, go ahead, but don't call it "real pvp". And micromanaging is still pvp, sorry. Your open pvp still might be fit into other groupings, like 'level-specific-gear-based-random-encounter-no-aim-targetbased-pvp', and it becomes obvious quickly that there are many many types of pvp.

Edited February 6, 2012 by Ahhmyface

[Evuke]

The negative "trolls" aren't the worse thing on this forum. It's the "white knight" forum lurkers who reckon everything is fine and dandy in their little game, and flame anyone who tries to put an opinion across that doesn't suit their own.

 

True this, the 2008/2009 joiners (not all of them obviously, just the rose-tinted glasses, deluded fanboi ones who flame anyone who offers any constructive criticism)

[PulseXXX]

Playing word games an trying to use the literal meaning of words is silly mate to be honest. There is "real pvp" that is pvp where you go out into the world an make your own. No GM hand holding an controlling/restricting fighting. Micromanaging is NOT pvp.

 

There is one reason for battlegrounds, it's cheap an easy way of keeping player retention.

 

Real pvpers = world pvp (obviously)

battleground farming for shinys = pve basically Simply because the end result of battlegrounds is shinys, shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys....'

 

There should never been class balance, diversity is the reason for MMO's an always has been till blizzard killed the industry an turned it into 13 year old heaven ...

 

You need diversity in classes to have a real MMO, without it all you have is.... wow.

 

Real PvP is EvE.

 

There is a reason there are less than 100k subs for EvE.

[Niaoru]

/Logic crits you for 20000K. You have been defeated.

[BegaTasty]

Shame this game doesn't have any true world pvp. Just that joke called Illum where it's either spawn camp for kills or trade kills for more grinding.

 

Agreed, even the guys I killed last night called me an "exploiter" for killing their heroic run. Had nothing to do with the fact they didn't protect their members. Sadly it's the state of gaming today.

[DreamPolice]

There are a few topics that seem to be pervasive around these forums, that warrant a more direct treatment than the tangential debates have yet to offer. I'll start with a few things:

 

1. There is no "real pvper". This is an example of the "no true scotsman" logical fallacy. The nature of pvp is mostly irrelevant. Any form of competition, even ones where players do not actively engage each other, is, in a sense, pvp. As long as one seeks to dominate the opponent, this is pvp.

 

2. Competition does not necessarily rely on equality. All the debates and bad sports analogies need to end. Athletes train to be physically superior before the contest ever begins, white always moves first in chess, and if you've ever played the card-game a-hole/scum, the "president" gets bonus cards for being president and starts first. If you ever played "king of the hill" as a child, the player on top has obvious advantages. SWTOR does NOT have to preserve equality. You are free to enjoy whatever type of game you wish, but recognize that there are a wide variety of competitions that deliberately incorporate inequality. For many players, this is FUN, both to dominate, and to win as the underdog.

 

3. The game is what it is. Given a set of rules R, maximize your wins. That is the only thing set in stone. If the next patch introduces new hoops, the competition will change. Your goal should be to maximize your wins, regardless of a changing ruleset. Many players mentally invent their own set of game rules, and then complain when their opponents take advantage of these opportunities. There is no point begrudging players these choices. If they got more datacrons, or battlemaster gear or whatever, be a good sport about it. In my opinion, your average player spends too much time blaming the framework, and not enough time trying to compete within that framework.

 

4. The best feedback, despite this forum's average tone, isn't rants, or whines, or assertions of what "real pvp" is or the way things "should be". Those things are meaningless. It is expressions of preferences. "I enjoy finding datacrons". "I dislike waiting for warzones". There is no point pretending to be objective, simply accept your bias, express yourself, and move on. "Champion token drop rates frustrate me", is a 100% valid, useful, and accurate piece of feedback. "Champion bags are broken, here is my anecdotal meaningless streak" is a loaded, and relatively useless whine only intent on generating more negativity.

 

 

5. Class balance isn't easy, nor obvious. It requires a detailed understanding of design objectives, and an exhaustive amount of real data to make any strong conclusions. This takes lots of time. Rest assured that nerfs and buffs will progress, albeit slowly. Howling for immediate sweeping changes is foolish and irresponsible.

 

6. A lot of good posts are drowned in barely literate trollsludge. What can we, as a community, do to bring the truth to the spotlight?

 

Greatest thing I've ever read on any PvP forum anywhere, ever. 100% agree; props to you, sir.

[Delavager]

Playing word games an trying to use the literal meaning of words is silly mate to be honest. There is "real pvp" that is pvp where you go out into the world an make your own. No GM hand holding an controlling/restricting fighting. Micromanaging is NOT pvp.

 

There is one reason for battlegrounds, it's cheap an easy way of keeping player retention.

 

Real pvpers = world pvp (obviously)

battleground farming for shinys = pve basically Simply because the end result of battlegrounds is shinys, shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys to gain shinys....'

 

There should never been class balance, diversity is the reason for MMO's an always has been till blizzard killed the industry an turned it into 13 year old heaven ...

 

You need diversity in classes to have a real MMO, without it all you have is.... wow.

 

What you describe is your OPINION of "real pvp". The definition of PvP is as the OP said, "Player vs Player". Anything where you have one or more player(s) vs one of more player(s) = pvp. PvP doesn't not assume skill level or global sized or anything.

 

What you say is only half of it. Why do you think they made warzones in order to "keep player retention"? World PvP as you call it is great, but it's rare. The barrier to entry for World PvP is too high for it to be viable. If players have to coordinate with 30 other people and travel to Ilum (or wherever) and tell the other team that hey we're going to be here at 9 so be ready, etc. etc., then there would rarely ever be world PvP. It's too much effort to coordinate, especially for those without hours on hours of time. Thus warzones organizes PvP for you so that you can PvP "immediately" without need for all the coordination and effort. It's just another medium of PvP just like Ilum.

 

If you took away warzones, World PvP wouldn't suddenly take flight. What would happen is everybody would quit lol. If players want to World PvP they are more than welcome to, there is nothing preventing them. The fact that it isn't happening and Tatooine is empty is pretty evident to the effort required to World PvP.

 

Basically it's just not that popular and doesn't happen often enough. The Idea is great, but the execution just doesn't happen.

 

You need diversity in classes to have a real MMO, without it all you have is.... wow.[/Quote]

 

Is that why you call it "Battlegrounds" instead of Warzones? Maybe if you didn't like WoW you should stop trying to turn SWTOR into WoW by calling it WoW terminologies.

[Roak]

this forum isn't for constructive feedback, that would require an open dialogue with the developers, it's for either venting frustration or blindly supporting the game.

[dexterryu]

Great OP. The thing is, though that I think BW is doing a pretty good job of fixing what it can fix.

 

Bags are going to be better by this time tomorrow. Bugs are getting ironed out. Class Balance is getting ironed out.

 

Really the only complaint that I have is the lack of foresight with what happened in Ilum. It used to be a good way to get daily/weekly quests done to bolster bags and gearing. Now it's either a dead zone or a kill trading zone for easy valor.

 

Other than that, I enjoy the hell out of the three battlegrounds when 2 equal teams face off. This is happening more and more as people are hitting 50 and starting to get a little big of gear.

[thanealpha]

I believe "wins" is symbolic and what you make of it. It don't believe it is to be taken as a literal win.

 

It could be a personal win of obtaining the most medals each go around for example.

 

This is the problem with PvP in this game.

 

Winning is often a selfish pursuit rather than a team pursuit, even within the TEAM environments of warzones.

 

BW has a LOOOONG way to go to proper incentivizations. For warzones, and for Illum.

 

They need to encourage team play and NOT quitting and NOT afking in warzones.

They need to encourage dynamic, aggressive, and competative open pvp in Illum, NOT collusion, zerging, and static fights.

[Bnol]

Great post OP. But the post will likely fall off the front page because it isn't about Sorc or Tracer Missle Nerfs.

[Delavager]

this forum isn't for constructive feedback, that would require an open dialogue with the developers, it's for either venting frustration or blindly supporting the game.

 

A) could you show me the definition of constructive feedback where it says you need open dialogue, because I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist.

B) In addition to constructive feedback it is also for constructive DISCUSSION with fellow players of the game.

[dlouismartin]

The OP makes some good points, and his approach to debate is founded in good logic. Equality has nothing to do with competition, but creating a game in an attempt to attract people who are willing to part with their money will ultimately cause a company to embrace as much equality as possible. Being an underdog, in my opinion, is fun. Just as it is fun to sometimes be the “king of the hill”. I prefer a variety with variations that fall somewhere in between.

 

Expressions of preferences are certainly tiresome. Having been “knocked back” numerous times during Huttball, I have come to find Huttball MUCH less enjoyable. It would be silly to rattle off why (I think) it’s “broken” or “op” or whatever else I want to label it as. I have to decide if I want to continue to play Huttball, knowing that this is something that will continue to happen until I alter my play style, or avoid the game all together.

 

One question though—

What is class balance? How is it quantified, and can it be logically explained?

Edited February 6, 2012 by dlouismartin

[Ahhmyface]

This is the problem with PvP in this game.

 

Winning is often a selfish pursuit rather than a team pursuit, even within the TEAM environments of warzones.

 

BW has a LOOOONG way to go to proper incentivizations. For warzones, and for Illum.

 

They need to encourage team play and NOT quitting and NOT afking in warzones.

They need to encourage dynamic, aggressive, and competative open pvp in Illum, NOT collusion, zerging, and static fights.

 

I agree with you, but I wouldn't put it that way. Too many "they need" instead of "i want"

[dlouismartin]

agreed

[Aroidan]

Nice job OP It would be great if we could get more REAL data around a lot of these discussions as opposed to the flame nerf whines we have now. Unfortunately in order for that to happen BW needs to implement damage logs.

 

Also I like your inclusion of chess as an example of inequality. Every move black makes is in response to white. Blacks goal to start the match is to try and maintain an equiluibrium with white until white makes a mistake. Once that happens black must take advantage of said mistake. Same thing can be said for EVERY class in pvp.

 

I have been able to beat EVERY class at equal level to me with both my guardian and vanguard. I have also had my *** handed to me by every class in the game. Usually this is because either I made a mistake or they didn't make a mistake and got the drop on me. Also some classes are just plain harder for me to beat 1 on 1 and other classes are easier to beat 1 on 1. Typically if I am in a fight with someone I know is going to be harder to fight I try to kite them to the rest of the group to get some aid (Why rely on perfect play when a 2 vs 1 situation should always go to the 2).

 

There is certainly some class imbalance and some things that plain don't work but it is not as blown up as some people make it out to be. Most of it ends up being players that don't know how to play or help the team. I can't count the number of times that I have been fighting a 2 on 1 situation only to have 2 or 3 allies run right through the fight as opposed to stopping and helping out (happens in huttball all the time).

[bahgaggaga]

I'm not sure why people have such a love affair with open world PvP. I understand it is fun to randomly engage out in the world when you were not expecting it. However, 99% of the time it turns into who can bring the most friends and just pure outnumber the other side. If anything, world pvp takes the least amount of skill because you can just zerg the other side. (see Ilum).

 

I like warzones because it pushes people to complete objectives that reward combat within a given time frame. Getting people in open world PvP to do anything together is like herding cats.

 

At the end of the day you have to enjoy PvP for the mere aspect of the competition. I enjoy it and the gear is just a bonus.