Can World PVP Be Saved? [Constructive Ideas Please]

[AstralProjection]

I posted this in another thread, but would like to start a new thread for people to constructively criticise/suggest instead of flame.

 

I've been a PVPer as long as the genre has existed...we used to be called PK's back in the day. I've watched world PVP slowly die over the years. I'm not sure any company can resurrect it at this point. I think most of our fond memories of world PVP in the last decade are more or less catching lightning in a bottle.

 

I love TOR, I'm playing this game until they shut the servers down because I've always loved RPG's, and BioWare's are the best. World PVP though? I feel like I had to give up that dream a while ago. Why, you ask? Too many factors required for it to happen properly.

 

First off, new games are expected to be high quality, with updated graphics, visual effects, complex game mechanics (no one-button mashing - and please don't mention BH, I'm not starting a class debate here)...pretty much every game that has this and congregates more than 20 people in one location fighting anymore bogs down the map/server they're playing on. More people than that, and it can outright crash the server. Happened in WoW all the time. Their travesty of a PVP system and the way it was unveiled (many months later, with a flawed system of incentives - similar to TOR's, only many months later) caused mass slaughter of quest NPC's, and Zerg battles that made Ilum look like a joke. Sure, it was fun at first, until the servers started crashing. Eventually you got a dumbed down version that people keep referring to on these boards called Southshore vs. Tarren Mill, which only worked because it strung out combatants over the stretch of land in between the two towns, and eventually evaporated into thin air as engineers realized that sustainable PVP needed to be instanced to ensure lag-free, server-friendly experiences.

 

Next, for some reason we keep ending up with two faction games. The Korean style games that usually have RvR with high participation usually succeed because they know you need more than two factions to avoid population imbalances. While it is time consuming, and sometimes difficult when working with an IP, it's not impossible to create three well fleshed out factions and groups of classes. Most of the time people just don't seem to bother to plan it out well enough. Whether you want to admit it or not, the percentage of players like us that wish for meaningful world PVP is very small. Most of the people playing want to come across world PVP as an afterthought, say, "Oh, that was fun!", and then keep heading toward whatever instance they're about to do with their friends to get their shinies.

 

Finally, for some ridiculous reason, MMORPG developers keep trying to put player housing on the backburner, or kill it outright. The fact of the matter is, players care about the things they can shape in these worlds, and are more likely to fight over them when they own a stake in those worlds. In WoW and TOR, what can we shape? Just our paperdolls. Everything else is meaningless. So the games become a gear grind to make your character look pretty and play dress up. I enjoy it for a little bit, but when you run out of gear to get, what else is there to do? Log off, until it's time to do your dailies again, or go try to start a fight with people out in the world, and create your own meaningful PVP. Problem is, you're in a two faction game, so it's only a matter of time before 4x as many members of the opposite faction show up, lag the map to hell and slaughter you and your buddies and start camping you.

 

Player housing, guild bases, even instanced like in LOTRO, give players something to care about beyond a gear grind. I'm not saying every game needs to be a sandbox like SWG, but let's admit it, we all loved that part of SWG, but they do need to let you shape the world to avoid the players getting bored with their expensive "action figures". I sure hope this is coming down the line for TOR - at least we have the potential. 85 levels into WoW and you're still in a theme park.

 

While that doesn't have much to do with World PVP, it has to do with the removal of MEANINGFUL PVP, which is something we all miss. Base raids or town attacks like in SWG or Ultima Online, which was the original, even the simplicity of flipping towns to your faction in SWG created PVP that felt like you were doing something other than getting gear. That's the kind of "World PVP" we're really asking for in most cases, I think. Some of us long for great hardcore RvR like DaoC, but I think we'd be happy if you threw us a bone and gave us a compromise even a fraction of the way there.

 

If BioWare takes the potential this game has and uses it instead of squandering it like WoW did, they could get the hardcore PVP market back and restore what's become a faithless game-hopping exercise in futility for most serious PVPers, as we wait for the chariot to come and carry us back to the promised land, what's become a mythical (no pun intended), fabled hope for a pvp game that might never exist again outside of Korea, a game where we fight with thousands of others over things we care about. It will absolutely take time. It does for every game that's not designed that way from the outset. But they have the chance to redeem themselves with this one, and I really hope they don't blow it.

 

I remember the guild capital ships that were dreamed of way back when, while we were still waiting for this game. Maybe even hints of ship vs. ship battles, that were never officially promised; but God, I'd love to board an enemy's base similar to the way City of Heroes let you raid other bases and really have it out with my rivals, which I seemed to have selected prior to launch for no reason other than friendly /waves after we kill each other. That's the *only* reason the PVPer in me is still here, aside from my friends in my guild, who haven't all unsubbed like yours.

 

You want to know the way to get the dream back? Become positive members of the community making constructive suggestions, and having the patience to let the devs read, listen, and respond. Once the launch woes wear off, and they always do, they'll be devoting more and more resources to making this a great game. Trust me, I've seen it happen tons of times now, I've seen every one of these games launch. The ones with resources and financial backing have infinite potential.

 

I know right now it seems like they're not listening, but it's because they have 2 million people screaming about bugs, demanding firings, and threatening or talking about how they cancelled - well, really it's only thousands - the rest are playing the game - but the forums right now are flooded with the negative criticisms instead of helpful suggestions. It's easy to say someone's code is sloppy on a forum and hide behind a half-baked, perceived knowledge of programming games. It's another thing to actually code a game of this scope in the real world.

 

Devs are human just like us - we all make mistakes. It's up to us to admit we have some responsibility toward how this whole thing pans out as well. Believe me, there's nobody out there twirling their handlebar mustache and snickering because they screwed you out of a PVP Daily win. If things aren't working now, take a little breather until they get PVP ranking and other features in the game, maybe level an alt, maybe do things IRL, and give them time to fix the problems. This game wasn't unfinished. They all have bugs, and lots of them when they launch.

 

BioWare - can you hear me? It's up to you to prove that you're listening. Some of the frustration here comes from the fact that people have reported or warned of issues since Beta that were never fixed, or came to rear their ugly heads just like we said they would. Please get Joveth some help, for God's sake. The money you keep on subs will pay his or her salary. Players want communication.

 

Taking surveys about what the players want that don't involve you having to unsub would go a long way too. Make it transparent too - let all the players really see what people are interested in so we don't have to have the ages old debate of how many people care about PVP versus raiding. It will help PVPers accept why we're always such low priority, if you show us the real results and they justify such action.

 

 

 

TL;DR - Game has promise, still a chance to save meaningful PVP. If we take the community in the right direction, maybe we can get it, and help this PVP team that seems to need direction at times.

Edited February 8, 2012 by AstralProjection

[AstralProjection]

Bump, in case anyone cares.

[ForceWelder]

I agree with you about the two faction system. One thing that Planetside showed us from years ago is that when one faction has the lead the other two tend to jump in to take them down a peg. Rarely would a group maintain control for long.

 

And the sad thing is that this game already has a third faction ... the cartels / Hutts. Bounty Hunters and Smugglers aren't Imp or Repubs. They are neutral. If anything those two classes should have been assigned as members of the cartel who can work with the other factions. As a BH myself, there were times I came across conflicts in light / dark choices simply because it was becoming obvious that my character wasn't truly Imperial and short term or long term benefits often were choices that didn't follow true to the Imperial goals or objectives.

 

But with that said, what can we do to fix this?

 

For starters, a third faction definately needs to be in the works. This gives some breathing room with warzones. No more Imps vs Imps. Now you have three pools of players to choose from instead of two. These means higher chances of other warzones popping to easy the burnout on the Imp players who face Huttball almost completely exclusively.

 

Two, create more warzones. The next warzone needs to be something along the lines of Huttball (free-for-all teams) instead of Voidstar or Alderaan (faction based). Create another faction based warzone and it will be just another warzone that the Imps end up not being able to play. Also, learn from Huttball. Huttball placates to just three skills - heavy armor tanks with high damage mitigation who can push the ball, speed runners who can run with the ball and clear obsticles with little damage, and grapplers who can pull people towards or away from the objective. Everyone else is secondary.

 

Three, do a complete revamp of Ilum. For starters put Ilum on a timer. Setup PVP matches for specific times and let both sides duke it out. And if faction ratios become an issue, let members of the more numerous faction change sides and work with the other faction. Then setup some benefit for the winning side. A planetary buff while they hold control, more reward items, etc. For the losers, given them fewer of the same rewards but make it worth their wild to stay for the whole event. This reduces the likelyhood of AfKers and deserters. Next change the Ilum battle area design. It was a mistake to put all three assaults in a line between the two bases. They should be at different locations so that someone who is switching assault control doesn't have to go down a strait line to hit every single one. Also make it so that it takes a group to take out the assaults. Have one guy with a missile launcher swap control in under 30 seconds isn't very heroic.

[BBCHiyde]

Dear Bioware:

 

Hire this man.

 

-H

 

P.S. The ONLY thing I'll disagree with you on is that LOTRO housing is anything meaningful. It was a good, unfinished start. 8 out of 10 homes in any neighborhood are locked due to failure to pay upkeep and no one goes to their houses any more. Storage was the biggest plus and now the game has oodles of it outside of housing. From the handful of MMO's I've played, I really liked AoC's system.

 

 

You want to know the way to get the dream back? Become positive members of the community making constructive suggestions, and having the patience to let the devs read, listen, and respond. Once the launch woes wear off, and they always do, they'll be devoting more and more resources to making this a great game. Trust me, I've seen it happen tons of times now, I've seen every one of these games launch. The ones with resources and financial backing have infinite potential.

Edited February 8, 2012 by BBCHiyde

[Mongrul]

the world pvp in this game is exactly the same as swg. so they thought thats what everyone wanted since everyone cried when swg shut down. they picked the most logical way to do it. they are not mind readers even though you expect them to be

[AstralProjection]

I agree with you about the two faction system. One thing that Planetside showed us from years ago is that when one faction has the lead the other two tend to jump in to take them down a peg. Rarely would a group maintain control for long.

 

And the sad thing is that this game already has a third faction ... the cartels / Hutts. Bounty Hunters and Smugglers aren't Imp or Repubs. They are neutral. If anything those two classes should have been assigned as members of the cartel who can work with the other factions. As a BH myself, there were times I came across conflicts in light / dark choices simply because it was becoming obvious that my character wasn't truly Imperial and short term or long term benefits often were choices that didn't follow true to the Imperial goals or objectives.

 

But with that said, what can we do to fix this?

 

For starters, a third faction definately needs to be in the works. This gives some breathing room with warzones. No more Imps vs Imps. Now you have three pools of players to choose from instead of two. These means higher chances of other warzones popping to easy the burnout on the Imp players who face Huttball almost completely exclusively.

 

Two, create more warzones. The next warzone needs to be something along the lines of Huttball (free-for-all teams) instead of Voidstar or Alderaan (faction based). Create another faction based warzone and it will be just another warzone that the Imps end up not being able to play. Also, learn from Huttball. Huttball placates to just three skills - heavy armor tanks with high damage mitigation who can push the ball, speed runners who can run with the ball and clear obsticles with little damage, and grapplers who can pull people towards or away from the objective. Everyone else is secondary.

 

Three, do a complete revamp of Ilum. For starters put Ilum on a timer. Setup PVP matches for specific times and let both sides duke it out. And if faction ratios become an issue, let members of the more numerous faction change sides and work with the other faction. Then setup some benefit for the winning side. A planetary buff while they hold control, more reward items, etc. For the losers, given them fewer of the same rewards but make it worth their wild to stay for the whole event. This reduces the likelyhood of AfKers and deserters. Next change the Ilum battle area design. It was a mistake to put all three assaults in a line between the two bases. They should be at different locations so that someone who is switching assault control doesn't have to go down a strait line to hit every single one. Also make it so that it takes a group to take out the assaults. Have one guy with a missile launcher swap control in under 30 seconds isn't very heroic.

 

Those are all quality suggestions - I'm sure new Warzones are already in design. As far as revamping Ilum, I'd like to see that, as well as a couple other similar zones down the line to spread max-level population out across them. Someone's going to have to solve the lag issues - since Worldservers are sharded already, I don't see why making them overblown Warzones would be all that bad. Cap the population at a slightly smaller number and let people queue to get there once more of the Warzones have been added.

 

Make an "Open World Warzone" where same-faction is allowed as well for those servers with major balance issues.

 

I totally agree about the Third faction - The Hutts/Mandalorians are already here. It would not be a stretch in Lore to work them in as a third faction. Developments in game and pre-launch have already hinted at the possibility. The way Mandalorians work is conducive to easy development - they're accepting all races and backgrounds and uniting under a common goal. It leaves lots of room for race expansion.

 

Another suggestion that may be possible is creating a second "zone" for world servers that *is* sandbox based. Allow housing/base development and even base raiding on those map zones. I don't see that as being too farfetched.

[Geewiz]

Yoda race+ yoda saber for repub only to fix faction imbalance. A host of sandbox features to save the end game. Otherwise the best you can hope for is wow in space.

[AstralProjection]

Dear Bioware:

 

Hire this man.

 

-H

 

P.S. The ONLY thing I'll disagree with you on is that LOTRO housing is anything meaningful. It was a good, unfinished start. 8 out of 10 homes in any neighborhood are locked due to failure to pay upkeep and no one goes to their houses any more. Storage was the biggest plus and now the game has oodles of it outside of housing. From the handful of MMO's I've played, I really liked AoC's system.

 

Yeah, I agree with you there. I still think ANYTHING is better than nothing - TOR has an IP with more long term staying power than LOTRO did. Not that LOTR isn't one of the best pieces of fiction ever told - there are just less people dying to roleplay wizards than there are Jedi/Space Marines anymore. I also think AOC had a similar failure - decent game, but if you aren't REALLY into the IP, why stay? We all thought Conan was cool, just not sure if we thought it was cool enough to live a portion of our lives in his world. The game needs mass appeal too, and this one is lucky enough to have it.

 

If the housing was "instanced", I'd like to see it instanced on a level where both factions can get to it - at least the bases, to attempt capture/seige.

Edited February 8, 2012 by AstralProjection

[AstralProjection]

the world pvp in this game is exactly the same as swg. so they thought thats what everyone wanted since everyone cried when swg shut down. they picked the most logical way to do it. they are not mind readers even though you expect them to be

 

See, I think right now even SWG had us beat by a longshot - I can't build bases here, or attack them (the missing sandbox element). I also can't flip planets to my faction - even THAT was more meaningful than what WoW/TOR, the big guns, are offering us.

[AstralProjection]

Yoda race+ yoda saber for repub only to fix faction imbalance. A host of sandbox features to save the end game. Otherwise the best you can hope for is wow in space.

 

Heh, yeah, I think it could really transform this game into something insanely cool just by adding a new faction with a few new races. Lots of people would reroll to try new races since the leveling experience is actually good in this game. Before you knew it you'd have fun, meaningful, more unpredictable PVP on all fronts.

[Yogurt]

Nope. Fail WZ exploits, Fail *** Ilum Exploits, Fail World PvP, Fail Inbalance population, and Fail *** Class Balance = Fail *** Game. I can not believe how this game got 10/10 5/5 scores on G4, Magazines, and etc. Money is being put in their pockets.

 

Fail *** game.

[Lectro]

the world pvp in this game is exactly the same as swg. so they thought thats what everyone wanted since everyone cried when swg shut down. they picked the most logical way to do it. they are not mind readers even though you expect them to be

 

Not even close to SWG PVP, except the fact they both suck. I think the PVP system designer needs to be job hunting.

[Darklyn]

It was saved with the last patch. They modified the Ilum bugs.

[AstralProjection]

It was saved with the last patch. They modified the Ilum bugs.

 

I still think the best fix for Ilum, or anything other than Warzones, is to remove the gear tied to them. People stop taking what goes on there so personally, and start having fun.

 

Doing that, + adding meaningful faction vs. faction, guild vs. guild buildings would be great. Part of the problem is that the only thing meaningful in these games right now is the gear.

 

In both this, and WoW, gear isn't just the only thing meaningful in the game besides your friends - it IS the game.

 

The bugs with Ilum and the tweaks with Ilum are 99% due to balancing quests and items associated with gaining gear - which is why people get so furious when they don't work.

 

Easy fix - take the gear out, make it for fun. The gear takes the fun out of the game. I'm not saying you don't need it - but that's what grinding warzones - somewhat "balanced" matches, are for. Once you get ranked warzones, premade vs. premade, which will certainly come, that will be the BEST forum for earning gear.

 

World PVP has always been about bashing each other's brains out and having a good time - and feeling like you're a part of a real world instead of a theme park.

[kuthroat]

I come from the perspective of games like shadowbane and ultima online whereby you can PK anyone anytime and you can build your own houses/castles and have wars with other guilds whereby you can destroy their castle (shadowbane). All nonequiped items on the person were the spoils for the Pk'er. That was the most fun and I understand that most people do not like this and people won't invest in a pvp game like this in the future. That being said, I do enjoy the pvp in this game as far as the mechanics of fighting.

 

The facts are for myself and guildies:

1. warzones are just not going to cut it. I dont care how many you add. Once I get my gear farm done they will cease to hold my interest. There is nothing at stake.

2. The way ilum is set up is ridiculous. You could limit the amount of people in the zone but anyplace where there is more than 30 people in a mass fighting, it is just not fun for me. I do not enjoy zerg fests.

 

I would like to see

1. A system where there is truly open world pvp everywhere and you get valor everywhere in the world. With an extremely rare chance for a corpse spawn and unique items dropping maybe....(obviously this is limited to the pvp type of server I play on) You could put strong champion mobs in towns and yes you can have the empire camping a town. So what, I like this (I am republic)

2. Arenas: Sorry, and I could care less if they even consider balancing the game or putting time into caring about how teams are balanced but I enjoy the close style combat between limited amounts of people. Arenas will keep my interest for a long time given the fact that all the other games out there including this one just don't do pvp like the old days.

 

(there is a shadowbane emulator coming soon though and I am excited for that)

[Seyyal]

the world pvp in this game is exactly the same as swg. so they thought thats what everyone wanted since everyone cried when swg shut down. they picked the most logical way to do it. they are not mind readers even though you expect them to be

 

huh?

 

oh i remember know youre talking about that one planet put the battleground on later.

 

 

my first thought was wth are you talking about.

SWg had faction points you could use to buy and place youre own base to defend, you could create cities with bases and create hotspots that way, they also had planetary control mechanics for each planet which tracked the status of the war and let you know who was winning.

 

The was also a time where SWG had pvp rankings for jedi which was cool (but exploited)

oh and player bounties which i loved.

[FodderofCannon]

Yes a post with constructive feedback! Nice work, great idea. I’m not cynical or anything but I expect it to fall on deaf ears since most of this community just complains or is complaining about complainers. Seems to be the rule in MMO forums:

 

1. QQ

2. L2P you QQ'er!

3. goto 1

 

Moving on...

 

SUGGESTION FOR HOW TO FIX ILUM

 

- Game cant handle large amounts of players at the same time. It's sad, but the facts are it can't. Maybe it's just people don’t have all the latest tech in their computers or this engine cant handle it, but unless something drastic happens its not going to be pleasant experience for most.

- So, given this: you need to remove the necessity to Zerg on Ilum. How do you do this? Its actually really very easy. You create WAY more points/objectives that are spread out but require team coordination in SEPERATE locations. I mean you basically have 4 nodes on Ilum and they are positioned sequentially, this makes the zerg the best tactic and that’s what Ilum turns into. If you have like 20 or 40 points to capture and make them difficult to get to, not like easy run down a big open plain to get to it, you would force groups to split up, and limit the effectiveness of the zerg. In fact a large zerg would be at a disadvantage if the map was designed properly. I could make this map you need help BW...

 

- Don't make it exclusively about the number of points, but make it about the locations and strategy of those points. Perhaps some points capture timers can be determined by what other points you control around them, sort of like supply. For instance if you capture all points surrounding one particular node when you do try to take it , it will reward you with shorter time required to cap it. This would obviously require much increased cap times than what is happening right now. Think World war 2 online. In fact ww2 online has some good pvp mechanics that could work well in a game like this.

 

The effect of this is to create sort of virtual war-zones of fighting instead huge zerg fests that most people cant even participate in because of lag, and aren’t really that much fun for anyone else save aoe range spammers and snipers.

 

MELEE NEEDS TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE

 

Cover. Cover. Cover. Ranged is easy. Melee is hard. In order to make these points fun they need lots of areas where ranged has to work harder (cause right now its EZ mode for them) make some bottlenecks. Create a ice cavern node, that has pillars and stuff. Make MORE random boulders and stuff in open plains not just nice looking ice walls.

 

FACTION IMBALANCE

 

- without introducing a third faction (big change that is hard to implement properly) the best way to solve this is to reward smaller tactical teams over big zergs. You can have lots of guys but if the other side is good they can set up traps, get your zerg to chase, ect.. With this kind of system the smaller side might actually have the advantage because its easier to coordinate smaller teams over many points and mindless zerg wont get you very far.

Spawn timer: this might be unpopular, but if your side has more players an easy way to even the odds is to increase the time it takes to get back into the fight. Either by increasing the time it takes to re-spawn, or have a death penalty that lasts longer for the large pop side. Nothing huge here, but even 20-30 secs more for the larger side will make a difference when trying to capture a major objective. Also will create a more cautious approach by the "zerg" side since they know they will be out of the fight longer if they die.

 

REWARDS

 

- Yes you should get a small reward for killing someone. You should get a much bigger reward for taking objectives and fighting at objectives.

Edited February 8, 2012 by FodderofCannon

[AstralProjection]

Cover. Cover. Cover. Ranged is easy. Melee is hard. In order to make these points fun they need lots of areas where ranged has to work harder (cause right now its EZ mode for them) make some bottlenecks. Create a ice cavern node, that has pillars and stuff. Make MORE random boulders and stuff in open plains not just nice looking ice walls.

 

FACTION IMBALANCE

 

- without introducing a third faction (big change that is hard to implement properly) the best way to solve this is to reward smaller tactical teams over big zergs. You can have lots of guys but if the other side is good they can set up traps, get your zerg to chase, ect.. With this kind of system the smaller side might actually have the advantage because its easier to coordinate smaller teams over many points and mindless zerg wont get you very far.

Spawn timer: this might be unpopular, but if your side has more players an easy way to even the odds is to increase the time it takes to get back into the fight. Either by increasing the time it takes to re-spawn, or have a death penalty that lasts longer for the large pop side. Nothing huge here, but even 20-30 secs more for the larger side will make a difference when trying to capture a major objective. Also will create a more cautious approach by the "zerg" side since they know they will be out of the fight longer if they die.

 

REWARDS

 

- Yes you should get a small reward for killing someone. You should get a much bigger reward for taking objectives are fighting at objectives.

 

Thanks for more good suggestions. There are no right or wrong answers!

 

I love your suggestions at the end here - for instance, while Cover benefits melee, it also benefits ranged, e.g. snipers/gunslingers...if the terrain is more intelligently thought out, you allow for some pretty excellent places to set ambushes. What obscures LOS for ranged also keeps people from spotting you until it's too late if you're a sniper ; )

 

I also agree about taking objectives should reward you more than kills - it fixes the zerg problem somewhat. Problem is the expoiters. The original Ilum allows for one-click or a couple click flipping of objectives that only needs a person or two to do quickly.

 

So how do you fix it? My idea is making objectives flip with a minimum of 4-8 person team standing on them perhaps, similar to older-style domination games...Make it cap SLIGHTLY faster for each group of 4 you add to the raid to make the zerg mentality less effective. Population balance can still mess with this - but it makes the objectives meaningful again without making them too easy to exploit. (Numbers of players could be tweaked, I'm just throwing them out there). This would encourage small groups of players banding together to go around and cap objectives.

 

Also add more sub-objectives to Ilum to disperse the population, similar to AV (one of the things AV did right in WoW) and give people alternatives not only to the zerging - but to finding enemies that aren't in large groups trying to accomplish something and thwarting them.

 

Population imbalances will always mess with PVP zones - but they're not insurmountable.

 

I agree that a third faction is a hard change to implement - but I think the investment vs. reward for the health of the game makes it something BioWare REALLY needs to consider to help this game hit true longevity marks of 5+ and 10 years with lots of subs.

[FodderofCannon]

Thanks for more good suggestions. There are no right or wrong answers!

 

I love your suggestions at the end here - for instance, while Cover benefits melee, it also benefits ranged, e.g. snipers/gunslingers...if the terrain is more intelligently thought out, you allow for some pretty excellent places to set ambushes. What obscures LOS for ranged also keeps people from spotting you until it's too late if you're a sniper ; )

 

I also agree about taking objectives should reward you more than kills - it fixes the zerg problem somewhat. Problem is the expoiters. The original Ilum allows for one-click or a couple click flipping of objectives that only needs a person or two to do quickly.

 

So how do you fix it? My idea is making objectives flip with a minimum of 4-8 person team standing on them perhaps, similar to older-style domination games...Make it cap SLIGHTLY faster for each group of 4 you add to the raid to make the zerg mentality less effective. Population balance can still mess with this - but it makes the objectives meaningful again without making them too easy to exploit. (Numbers of players could be tweaked, I'm just throwing them out there). This would encourage small groups of players banding together to go around and cap objectives.

 

Also add more sub-objectives to Ilum to disperse the population, similar to AV (one of the things AV did right in WoW) and give people alternatives not only to the zerging - but to finding enemies that aren't in large groups trying to accomplish something and thwarting them.

 

Population imbalances will always mess with PVP zones - but they're not insurmountable.

 

I agree that a third faction is a hard change to implement - but I think the investment vs. reward for the health of the game makes it something BioWare REALLY needs to consider to help this game hit true longevity marks of 5+ and 10 years with lots of subs.

 

I think if you just added to the time it takes to take objectives, and at the same time warn the opposing side that that objective is being captured a lot of exploit stuff would be gone, the more players the faster it caps as you say, but it still should be possible for one or two to ninja a point but it just takes A LOT LONGER to do, I mean like minutes for lone cappers, all the while the other side gets the warning to send reinforcements. Longer cap times encourage responsive defense. This would need to be play tested to get the timers right.

 

Also I think you should be rewarded when you sort of take a major objective (but you cant take the major ones without some or the majority of the minor ones) but not necessarily for a single cap. Maybe get a tentative reward if your faction takes the larger objective, you get extra for taking a point.

[Drunkenpig]

The populations on the servers is too low. When there are only 20 Repubics on Alderaan, how can you engage in PvP? Perhaps the servers cant handle more, but that is a real deficiency in this game.

I remember in WoW when it first came out, before battlegrounds, there would be areas where perhaps 200 people would join for a huge pvp battle. That was fun. Or we would form multiguild raids on one of the other side's capital cities

I know that there are a few areas where some pvp occurs, but at level 30-40, world pvp is a waste of time. And the key is the terribly small number of people on each world at one time. And the server will be showing a heavy load. But then I log on and find 25 people on the entire planet. And maybe see 3 or 4 if Im lucky.

 

This needs to be fixed. Merge the populations on the servers and bulk up their capabilities.

[FodderofCannon]

Oh and one more thing, for third faction you could just allow smugglers and BH to choose which side they are on when they enter Ilum and then they have to remain that way for a whole day (24hrs). Perhaps they could get credits for kills if they pick the smaller faction?? Edited February 8, 2012 by FodderofCannon

[Proto]

How can world pvp be saved when it was never alive to begin with? Dead game = dead.

[kuthroat]

SUGGESTION FOR HOW TO FIX ILUM

 

- Game cant handle large amounts of players at the same time. It's sad, but the facts are it can't. Maybe it's just people don’t have all the latest tech in their computers or this engine cant handle it, but unless something drastic happens its not going to be pleasant experience for most.

- So, given this: you need to remove the necessity to Zerg on Ilum. How do you do this? Its actually really very easy. You create WAY more points/objectives that are spread out but require team coordination in SEPERATE locations. I mean you basically have 4 nodes on Ilum and they are positioned sequentially, this makes the zerg the best tactic and that’s what Ilum turns into. If you have like 20 or 40 points to capture and make them difficult to get to, not like easy run down a big open plain to get to it, you would force groups to split up, and limit the effectiveness of the zerg. In fact a large zerg would be at a disadvantage if the map was designed properly. I could make this map you need help BW...

 

- Don't make it exclusively about the number of points, but make it about the locations and strategy of those points. Perhaps some points capture timers can be determined by what other points you control around them, sort of like supply. For instance if you capture all points surrounding one particular node when you do try to take it , it will reward you with shorter time required to cap it. This would obviously require much increased cap times than what is happening right now. Think World war 2 online. In fact ww2 online has some good pvp mechanics that could work well in a game like this.

 

The effect of this is to create sort of virtual war-zones of fighting instead huge zerg fests that most people cant even participate in because of lag, and aren’t really that much fun for anyone else save aoe range spammers and snipers.

.

 

love these ideas to fix ilum

[prosidehacker]

I've been talking with my compatriots for a while about this and our consensus has been that for Ilum to be salvaged, it should be modified into a phased instance. This would take the idea that others have tossed around and bring it to the next logical step; you go to fleet, queue up at a shuttle/dropship/warroom, etc. and when an appropriate (read as: "balanced") number of players join the queue from both sides, a new, persistant instance of the Ilum battleground is created. This would be different from a warzone in that the instance would stick around until one side or the other is victorious. Players would be able to leave and join this same instance, so long as the proper Rep/Imp ratio is maintained.

 

On victory: the North and South camps should be raidable (perhaps with a zone boss w/drop). This would allow for powerful/unbalanced instances to be ended and reorganized by allowing more powerful forces to end the zone and start anew. The aforementioned boss drop is the motivation for dominating forces to end their farming. Middle ground points should provide a bonus to defeating the opposing factions camp. This would help rationalize the excessive (but meaningless) pew-pew that is going on at all times; i.e. the more points you control, the more fire is directed at the enemy's camp. Maybe even a shield generator/defense turret HP system that is reduced/reparied by controlling points.

 

Keep in mind that this does not necessitate that the "real" Ilum instance be done away with, only that if you queue from fleet, you go to a balanced Ilum instance. Open-world PvP Ilum can still exist in its current form.

[prosidehacker]

love these ideas to fix ilum

 

I also think these are very good ideas. Combining this with a more competitive queue system would be very entertaining.