Why the Ettermoors are Fun... and Illum is Not

[EternalFinality]

Summary of Yesterday's Events:

 

Well yesterday I spent around two hours leading our forces in Illum. We were highly outnumbered, and attempting to take the center prooved to be suicidal, so we went and gained complete map control of everywhere but center. Other than a couple lone imperials this did not draw their forces out of the center.

 

Several people mentioned going and doing something else as a raid as we tried to pick up more numbers. They specifically asked if there was any PVE content we could do, to which the answer was obviously no. There was some discussion of doing EV at that point, but in general the raid just started losing members. I lead them around a bit more re-capping bases the solo imperials took before we regained members, and the imperial forces had finally bled out a bit from boredom I think. We then made 3 pushes in which were still outnumbered, and still lost, but at least traded a decent amount of kills. After the 3rd push the raid collapsed and went down to 5 to 6 members.

 

We went in a couple times, picked off lone armament hunters, then immediately retreated. After that they started catching on and moving as a group.

 

At this point we started making suicidal pushes at them. Their forces had apparently depleted as well at this point, and let me put in there that the group which included Faate, Rhilia, Omega-X, and some other brave souls who's names I can't recall were straight up pro. Though they still heavily outnumbered us we were somehow managing to get in more kills than we had members of our group before we went down. We did this a few times until people finished their weeklies/dailies and then the ops fell apart.

 

My Point

 

1. Obviously people asking if we could do things as a group. Directly relates to this topic. Had we been completely unable to take ANY keep in the moors I still could have said. "Yeah, lets go hit goldy." Or "Sure lets go kills some drakes." or "lets farm trees." or even "Lets go poison/cleanse the Hoardale." While this obviously isn't what we would want to do all night, it would give us something to do, to keep us occupied as we waited on more members.

 

2. People NEVER sit there at TA and watch all the other keeps fall like they sit there at center on Illum. The fact we were forced to hit center, or not have anyone to fight is ridiculous. Good open world PVP encourages map control not holding one point while the entire map falls as the stronger faction. A losing faction might hold out at a single point so as to sell their lives dearly, but the stronger faction never would. If Illum worked like the Moors I could have sent a scoundrel/shadow to keep tabs on their main forces while the rest of our group ninjaed a keep. And they would have actually given a damn. We would likely play a game of cat and mouse for awhile that would have ended in us holding at a more poorly guarded point we could take quickly (Like Isendeep or LC) and they would assault us there, or we would have ended up hiding out in something akin to elf camp if they had complete map control while they surrounded it and we traded fire.

 

Anyway I think my point is clear. Even in real warfare the smaller force when put up against the larger force would try to cut off supplies to the larger force and generally harass them, or take up a defensive position and wait for the larger force to come to them. Not continually throw themselves against the place where the larger force has dug in. Its ridiculous, and its a horrible model for open world PVP.

 

TL : DR I had fun last night, but not as much as I could have. These ideas would still greatly improve Illum.

 

Anyone with a brain can see the flaws in Ilum. THERE IS NO REASON TO LEAVE THE MIDDLE.

 

Worse, people entering the zone can teleport through a fly point near the middle and just join the zerg. There's no way to prevent reinforcements. There's no death penalties - they just respawn at a graveyard nearby and rejoin the zerg.

 

How anyone could think this was good design is beyond me. After playing 5 minutes in the zone I knew it was flawed to the core.

[Eclipso]

Whats up Eclipso? She told me. It's good to hear from you old friend.

 

As for the Moors vs Ilum debate, is there really one to begin with? Some things should be so clear as to not have the ability to spark a debate, and this is one of those instances.

 

MOORS>ILUM all day every day!

 

First and foremost, the control points in Ilum make zero sense to me. Why are we allowed to stand there and bazooka them to hell and back with zero resistance?

 

Exactly why do we need a notification system telling everyone in the zone where everyone else is? What purpose does it serve other than to lag the zone even further?

 

Why is there no voice in this game? People are talking as if there's some strategy involved in Ilum? Forgive me but I find it highly unlikely that a whole lot of strategy is being used out there without voice comms. Those groups using it are at a decided advantage. This is 2012 and there is ZERO excuse not to have voice in a game that cost this much to make.

 

Meh, I could go on forever with this really. The game is very young and I have patience, but there is much more that needs to be done in Ilum to make it as fun to be in as the Moors.

 

I agree with all of this, lets hope they continue to make strides forward and actually evolve it into something fun.

[Sylvannus]

... ok heres what needs to be done.

 

 

Take the title and change it to WoW

 

Take all the war zones out and insert battle grounds

 

Take out illum and add alterac valley.

 

 

now here the kicker... remove all the space ships and star wars stuff and make the game about elves and orcs and stuff. You can call then horde and alliance...

 

 

what do you guys think?

 

 

 

Seriously, if you want this game to be like another game you played, GO PLAY THAT GAME AND STOP WHINING TO CHANGE THIS ONE!

[Tinmancreeping]

If you think the open world PVP in Ettenmoors is good, you haven't played Dark Age of Camelot, lol.

 

Ettenmoors is the closest thing to Ilum to compare to, And that's about as good as it;s going to get for "open" world pvp in the modern MMOs. I ve had better pvp exeriences but the werent instanced pvp like ilum/moors. But LoTro did turn around the pvp in that game and I would spend hours playing pvp (creep, Reaver) where as I rarely go to ilum and when I do it's to NinJa some armaments.,

[Quesadilla]

The 'moors worked because there were multiple locations where you could choose to fight. If there was a giant zerg vs. a fellowship you'd fight in TA, the most heavily defended keep. If things were relatively even you could fight in the open field or somewhere like Orc Camp or Elf Camp with lots of weak NPCs. Did this keep the fighting raging on constantly? No, one side would still grow bored of either 1-2 renown/infamy per kills, or the other side would get tired of hardly any kills at all. It was encouraged to fight somewhere where the NUMBERS were more normalized. This meant the greatest battles were often done on the forums and not actually in the game.

 

Frequently, from my experience anyway, the side with fewer numbers would still be able to wipe the greater side based on their sheer skill, which encouraged the side with bigger numbers to just sit in NPCs until the other side came and wiped in them because of the number discrepancy.

 

The fact of the matter with Ilum is there is no incentive to fight anywhere other than the middle, because that's where the quest items are. Does the middle actually provide a tactical advantage for either the losing or winning team? No. I think a simple fix to Ilum would be to give the walkers and crawlers in each control point a significant health pool and make them fight back, then make the quest objectives to kill these or people trying to kill them. Currently they're stationary and their only purpose is for you to whip out a rocket from your pocket and kill them. It would encourage fighting at all of the control points and give incentive for both sides to group up and defend as well as attack.

 

The one change I would want to see to Ilum the soonest would be a significant increase to performance. I wonder how big fights would be different if everyone was able to actually move and use their skills when they want to, and hopefully I will see that soon before I quit going to Ilum like so many already have.

 

I also think voice chat would be a good implementation. Leaders of ops can't really lead effectively unless they want to do nothing but type commands for a fight that moves at 3-4 frames per second. This will be helped some with the targeting windows that have been promised in 1.2, but if you're only moving at 4 FPS then there's only so much these will help you.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Quesadilla

[svartalfimposter]

If you think the open world PVP in Ettenmoors is good, you haven't played Dark Age of Camelot, lol.

 

If you think open world PVP in Dark Age of Camelot is good, you didn't play Warhammer just pre 1.4 (seriously, it was good then).

 

I have long ago given up on seeing DAoC2 Now I just accept the sucking of open world PvP. Also, I blame WoW.

 

Vanilla Epic 30 hour Alterac Valleys were great.

Edited February 17, 2012 by svartalfimposter

[Lugh]

Then you have never been in a Raid lead by me , COBRA. I Raid Ilum everyday. What does that tell me?? You have no idea what you are talking about b/c you have never even given it a try.

 

 

 

Just wondering what is your valor rank?

 

This is truth.

 

All hail Cobra commander!

[Lugh]

If anything they should take a page from Age of Conans book.

 

Add each point needing to be 'assaulted' by a stationary immobile siege gun, call in a Howitzer.

 

Have that Howitzer announce that it is 'pounding' x position. Make that howitzer able to be killed by opposing players, make the defense positions repairable using consumables of another sort and so on.

[Fomorii]

what the hell is op talking about? what the **** is ettermoors, please everyone stop using stuf from other games, we talk about SWTOR here, not everyone has played every game in the world (yes im angry about everyone using wow references because i dont understand 90% of them)

 

If you don't understand something that is being talked about then go beg to the Google gods for enlightenment. Another option is not talking, considering this isn't a topic you can talk about. Other games can be excellent reference points or have comparable content. Developers don't often have wholly original ideas, but, instead, use pre-existing content in other games to build upon. The same goes for improving content that's already in game. Derp.

[Cathendral]

 

What Needs To Be Done: I think my opinion should be pretty clear by now for anyone who read the whole topic. Add strong guards to control points and in general just make taking them over a lengthier more challenging and involved process. Add quests to the Illum PVP area that can be repeated every hour or so in quantities that you can quest in Illum all day if you want to. Give them a worthwhile reward like credits, merc commendations, or daily commendations. Add NPCs, resources, and perhaps widen the Illum PVP area and spread out existing control points, or add more.

 

TL-DR: Make control points harder to take, give PVE sidecontent to spread out forces and promote random encounters when one side has a massive zerg.

 

You're saying to add NPC's to a PVP area, in what way is that PVP? How about you protect it yourself and if you can't do it alone, rally the troops. And if that doesn't work queue up for some WZ's and hope it's better when you get out. There is no reason for this change. And if you ever see Cobra in Ilum that's your best bet, our guild will go out there for 30 min and finish our weekly, some of the most fun I've had in game.

 

Sincerely,

Someone who as well hasn't played as much as Cobra

[Vokagimlet]

So interesting. Just tuned in.

 

Hi Luc & Jayne. Froderick here.

 

The moors was fun with all its flaws. But the core problem of everything I see here is still balance. Which the Moors ultimately fails at as well. The difference is in the Moors there were places to "hide" from the zerg, and still accomplish something.

 

The solution to the balance problem for both games is queues (a bit more for LotRO as explained later). The difference in numbers can never be more than X. Y of faction A/B must enter zone before any more of opposite can enter.

 

PvP should also be on dedicated servers, that allow cross "world" entry, so that all of the SWTOR community is in the same PvP queue. Let "groups" of friends enter the queue, but they may wait a little longer for entry due to numbers balance rules.

 

SWTOR has something LotRO will, it seems, never have: Both factions have to level their toons, and have the same opportunities for gear, etc, with the same combat system and similar skills on both sides. The faction balance is already there. Its the numbers balance that needs work. Much easier to fix I think.

 

I came to SWTOR for good PvP, understanding it will need to be tweeked over time. Unlike the moors, it does not require a complete rewrite of underlying toon creation and combat system to fix the imbalances. If BioWare fails to fix the balance issues, then they are incompetent, and can't see past the end of their noses.

 

In-game chat would help. Glad my guild has a vent server.

 

Cheers,

Voka

(AKA Froderick, Froderod, Froderex, Vokagimlet, Eyegor - of Landroval)

Edited March 1, 2012 by Vokagimlet

[Sullydog]

OP - You have some good points and I agree wholeheartedly.

 

The problem is two fold - Bioware has refused to acknowledge how absolutely terrible Ilum is. It's been completely avoided in both patches and dev discussion for months now except for /stuck which was allowed to persist for months before being fixed. Either Bioware thinks Ilum is fine and great or they have decided at this point it would require a major revamp (not small tweaks as some have tried to argue) and its not worth their time/energy.

 

Next is there is a small segment of the population that fully supports Ilum for reasons I can't comprehend. They are the vocal minority that will hijack your post, that will insult you personally, insult your ideas and praise bioware for Ilum's creation.

 

I am a veteran gamer going back a long way and Ilum has been one of the worst open world pvp areas I've ever seen. From performance to mechanics the whole place is broken and terribly designed.

 

Open world PvP is a lost cause in this game...I hate saying it but thats the way it is. In a game based on such a famous IP for its good vs evil, dark vs light, jedi vs sith storyline with such potential for epic pvp we instead are given huttball and Ilum.

Edited March 1, 2012 by Sullydog

[DerangedOne]

Just give us classic emain macha...

 

Amen !!!!

 

They could rework illum to something like emaine use to be by setting up defendable points ( like the old keeps ) so you would get more of a chance against the zerg and create some chokepoint fights Ahh ye old Lord room how i miss thee

[LeonidasSith]

Not sure about you but I had a blast in Ilum yesterday. Two full ops groups on each side going at each other for an hour and walked out with 109 kills and 15k~ valor. The objective portion of the map is stupid because people just fight at center regardless, but the mass PvP is fun (if your sever isn't lopsided I guess).

 

The latest patch brought noticeable performance increase and I'm not getting any more micro second freezes on valor screen updates.

 

My Illum experience. Empire outnumber Republic 4:1.

First night, I got my 30 kills after 2.5 hours (I play republic), there were 5 to 8 Republic players and about 20-30 Imps.

 

Second night, there were tons of people there. About 30 Republic, and I'm guessing about 70 imps. I got kills quickly, but my computer could barely handle it. I reduced all graphics to low, however the memory leaks got the best of my pc. after 30 minutes my FPS dropped from 5 to 0.05 and then it mercifully crashed to desktop with an error.

 

This is a 2 year old PC. Fun, fun fun!

 

Hero engine + Ilum = lagfest. They know it's broken, and they know they can't fix it, which is why they're moving away from Ilum pvp.

Disabling the canon to improve performance? Cute!

Edited March 1, 2012 by LeonidasSith

[Abye]

Bioware has refused to acknowledge how absolutely terrible Ilum is.

 

Oh they did, check the test server patch. Ilum is dead

[Nervix]

Id love Ilum, if anyone actually went there. My server is lucky to see 4v4 due to our microscopic population

They just need to get server transfers up so we can all move to a high pop server.