Has Bioware already lost the PvP base?

[Talkative]

That's pretty much what my guild decided. Had this game gotten a few more months of development time the pvp might've been comparable to WoW. Maybe better.

 

Grinding to rank 60 in SWTOR on warzones and Ilum really made me appreciate WoW's BG maps and non instanced world. Never thought I'd say that.

I'm just biding my time right now because I haven't got my desktop with me. If I did, I'd be playing TERA with my 3v3 partners.

 

SWTOR has a lot to offer, excels at none of it (hazard of going themepark), but more damning is that it is worse at all of it than its intended primary competitor. Yes, it's a new game, but that isn't going to pay the bills forever. At some juncture it will have to prove it's doing something better at endgame than that other themepark MMO.

[golfwang]

le bump

[IlynPayne]

so yeah

 

im exactly 2 weeks without a bm token now. got 6 in total so far, opened about 60 bags. thats 10% chance for me.

 

while a friend of mine who hit bm a week ago already sports 1 more bm item than me now. and he opened exactly 16 bags.

 

guess i just have to accept im a statistical abnormality. the answer what brain capacity the pvp developer has who came up with a system like that is rhetoric i reckon.

[Senseistar]

there needs to be a ranked competition in SWTOR. simple as that. As of right now pvp is just a level grind on a different level bar. Thats it. Until you have ranked wzs or arenas, the pvp community will not enjoy it because we all want is competition and bragging rights. Right now our bragging rights is how much of a life we dont have.

[Eltohan]

Alot of my rl friends just canceled their subs due to the pvp. We're just waiting for the time on our subs to expire now...then we will probably return to WoW until we move on to GW2. This game seems like laggy WoW to me and without all the bells and whistles and poorly thought out game mechanics. The WZs bore me to death with 2/3s of them being less impressive copies of WoW WZs.

 

We were discussing it last night when everyone was deciding whether to stick it out or not, and it was pretty much consensus that we've lost our patience for ability delay issues and uninspiring combat. Someone said it best that "we joined the game a few patches too early." Sooo, our GM is logging on tonight to give guild control to one of the guys we met at launch, and we're moving on to different pastures.

 

^this

[Eltohan]

a normal day of pvping swtor :

1) get pvp dailies

2) go ilum and fall asleep while trying to get all 30 armaments along other 10+ ppl

3) join wz to get chain knockbacked in **** huttball that for some weird reason its still in the game and hasent been removed

4) rage even more with bioware's sense of class balance in game (decided to roll jugg for wz cause i thought since he has tanking spec, he ll have some good defense while playing pvp as dps....but that was the oposite...marauders got 7 defensive cds+spells while jugg has only 2 as dps speced.... and dont mention the heavy armor.. cause this is the most ridiculus thing here....heavy vs medium armor, is only 5% dmg reduction difference...

5) finally u get to open the bags, only to realise that this marvelous RNG system is working as intented and u dont get crap BM commendations out of bags for days, while ur friend got his BM set for his companion allready.

6) logs out to do something more interesting than this, regreting wasting money for a 2 month subscription..

Story of my life, except HuttBall. I despise VoidStar to death, Alderan is OK. HuttBall is wonderful (I play Marauder).

But overall pvp design is lacking to say the least, and gets old fast.

[Kabaal]

Out of 15-20 PvP'ers who have played various games together for the past 7 years ish, 2 still log in. That's my only point of reference.

[Eltohan]

Out of 15-20 PvP'ers who have played various games together for the past 7 years ish, 2 still log in. That's my only point of reference.

In our pvp guild we created together 2 weeks ago, out of 20 people recruted, we are only 10 at most still loggin in, including 2 that are pexing a reroll, and 3 that log on only 1h per day AT MOST.

 

Out of 50 people I befriended, I only see 15-20 often connected

[pmcubed]

I was 3rd BM and 1st War Hero on my server Pre- 1.1 patch - I pvp'ed my *** off and was good at it.

 

I unsubbed and uninstalled - I think I have only a few days left on it.

 

Warzoning was OK. But Ilum and what is has become is ridiculous. I consider myself a very hardcore PvP'er and this game is def. not worth playing atm.

[golfwang]

I was 3rd BM and 1st War Hero on my server Pre- 1.1 patch - I pvp'ed my *** off and was good at it.

 

I unsubbed and uninstalled - I think I have only a few days left on it.

 

Warzoning was OK. But Ilum and what is has become is ridiculous. I consider myself a very hardcore PvP'er and this game is def. not worth playing atm.

 

I think the first few people to BM on most servers burnt themselves out fast. The first BM on my server (Poison) hasn't logged on in forever :/

 

After a certain rank there just isn't any point...

[mrpuck]

This game never was about the PvP. How can you launch with 3 WZ's?!

Ilum is a complete joke. They should have just instanced it so it isn't a zerg fest.

Open world PvP? Where??

 

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for GW2 for the next good PvP game. Dare I say it but Warhammer Online had better PvP.

[golfwang]

This game never was about the PvP. How can you launch with 3 WZ's?!

Ilum is a complete joke. They should have just instanced it so it isn't a zerg fest.

Open world PvP? Where??

 

Unfortunately, we'll have to wait for GW2 for the next good PvP game. Dare I say it but Warhammer Online had better PvP.

 

Warhammer, despite all it's faults, was a more compelling pvp experience by far.

 

I'm done, and more than content to let this thread and my subscription die. It sucks, but this game was never going to have the pvp I or any pvp focused individual would have wanted. Perhaps in a year or so it'll be far better. I don't think most people are willing to wait around that long though, especially with the competition out this year. Gabe and his team had better be pulling out all the stops for people on the fence till March, really is their last chance to impress imo.

 

Onto GW2.

[Djhots]

There is nothing innovative about ToR besides it's extensive V.O. and class stories. These all end at cap though, so ToR loses its greatest strength once players hit 50. After that it's pretty much a WoW clone done poorly.

 

I don't mean to sell the leveling experience short by any means, it's the best of any MMO I've played...but it's obvious too much time and money went into quests many players are just space baring through (besides class quests) and not enough of polished, well developed endgame content (both pvp and pve-wise).

 

I could not have said this better. I absolutely have buyer's remorse at this point and do not see myself waiting the six months to a year before the pvp is at the lvl it should be at.

 

For myself the combat system and class imbalance is too much for me. Clunky play and horrible targeting system. Sigh... As much as I see ppl complain about wow pvp its what I did for many years at a high lvl and I miss the fluidity of it. The ability to flat out DO MORE in the alotted time of an encounter. By no means is it the standard, just what I was used to. The more I pvp in tor, the more I hate it.

 

To sum up: I was super excited about this game both pve and pvp. Leveling through story mode was quite enjoyable, although a sliver of doubt crept in. A few weeks after 50 and that doubt had grown into serious concern expressed by the ever present guild discussion, oh its only been a month...things will get better. If I hear someone say this again I might just vomit on their face. Then there is the last month. Where every day of pvp, what I do when my primarily pve guild is not raiding, took whatever hope I had for this game and irrevocably destroyed it. I am hanging on by a thread at this point. The Star Wars name and the small hope that patch 1.2 actually delievers a better tor pvp experience is the only thing keeping me in the game . However, I dont think it will. I think that will take the better part of a year as mention by the OP and I for one will not be around for THIS much longer.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Djhots

[ARMofGod]

Warhammer, despite all it's faults, was a more compelling pvp experience by far.

 

I'm done, and more than content to let this thread and my subscription die. It sucks, but this game was never going to have the pvp I or any pvp focused individual would have wanted. Perhaps in a year or so it'll be far better. I don't think most people are willing to wait around that long though, especially with the competition out this year. Gabe and his team had better be pulling out all the stops for people on the fence till March, really is their last chance to impress imo.

 

Onto GW2.

 

Warhammer PVP made SWTOR look like... well SWTOR is the new standard for complete garbage PVP, so I'll just say SWTOR. Warhammer had decent PVP, with good concepts and just a few bad implementations.

[Lord_Karsk]

Well i belive most PvP players will agree that these are the issues

making people stop playing SWTOR.

 

As much as i in many ways really enjoy TOR pvp.There are these issues.

 

1. Faction imbalance.

2. Nothing at endgame(Ilum is a joke)

3. WZ exploits/bots and bugs not getting fixed/banned.

4. Valor exploiting on Ilum not reset.

5. Complete lack on communication with the PvP playerbase.

6. End game PvP gear looks terrible and have little to nothing to do with star wars.

7. PvP is a stunlock hell.

8. Only 3 WZ. Need atlest 3 more fast( one is coming)

9. Little to no reason for world PvP outside Ilum.

10. Even thou there is a lvl 50 bracket lvl 10-16+ players in WZ is still getting crushed.

[Pystov]

After reading through like 7 pages of this **** I can only come to the conclusion that too many of you are ready to drive a stake in the game's heart.

 

It hasn't even been released a full 2 months yet! Yet here you sit complaining that it's the beginning of the end. Why? Because the game doesn't already have everything in it? That BW hasn't shown anything to you that it's going to improve? That there are bugs/imbalance issues to be worked out? Come on...

 

What we have here is an excellent foundation to be a great game. Does it need more endgame content? Sure, but if you think for a second that more content is not in the works then you are plain wrong. Every MMO wants to add content (pve and pvp), and this is no different. It takes time to develop. The devs don't wake up and check their mailbox to see if some magic package has arrived that yields this stuff.

 

To say that BW hasn't shown you that it is going to look at things and make changes or add to the game is plain ridiculous. The history of this game has shown us NOTHING, because there is yet to be any real history to go off of yet. If this was 6-8 months old and there was the same problems as one can expect at launch I would be more on board with you guys, but it is way too early to make this claim. In fact so far they have shown that they are indeed working on things. For example http://www.swtor.com/blog/incoming-changes-global-cooldown-ui

 

As far as bugs/imbalance it can be said for every MMO. There has not been even one MMO that I have played (starting playing MMO's in the mid 90's with EQ) that has never had bugs or imbalance issues from time to time. That is why all these games have to be taken down for maintenance and patches. Problems come up, and they look into it. It takes time. Again, some magic package does not arrive that has all the answers or fixes in it.

 

What I see here is what this world has come too. People who want everything right here, right now and heaven forbid if it's not. I got to level cap and now I want more stuff now, and while your at it change this and that, and oh yeah... Don't leave this out too. I bet most of you complaining about wanting this or that are the same people who complained that they rushed the game out too fast. There is no pleasing you people. You want it now, but are never happy with what you get. Give them time to build a history, and if the facts of that history are bad then grab your pitchforks. In essence, they cut you off in traffic and maybe deserve the finger at this point for some stuff, but you act like they broke into your home shot your puppy while making you watch... Relax.

[Roak]

After reading through like 7 pages of this **** I can only come to the conclusion that too many of you are ready to drive a stake in the game's heart.

 

It hasn't even been released a full 2 months yet! Yet here you sit complaining that it's the beginning of the end. Why? Because the game doesn't already have everything in it? That BW hasn't shown anything to you that it's going to improve? That there are bugs/imbalance issues to be worked out? Come on...

 

It's not that at all for me, and I already gave them a 2nd month against my better judgement. it is because no effort on their part was put into making endgame pvp worth anything, we have a bug/exploit riddled warzone system and an extremely poorly thought out and implemented pseudo-world pvp area. They offered hollow promises during development to keep pvp focussed mmo gamers on the hook and haven't delivered, the recent q&a saying how surprised they are at how popular pvp is only proves this.

 

They still don't listen though, the only thing you will hear from bw regarding pvp in the next month is rated rated rated as that is obvious their new strategy to keep the wowvpers on the hook a while longer. And lets be honest, looking at the bugs the warzones currently have do you expect the rating system to be good out of the box?

 

If you really have faith that bw can (is allowed) to make something of this trainwreck, hang around a few more months until they prove to you they can't.

[Tanyala]

 

..../ UI Gloabl Cool Down

In fact so far they have shown that they are indeed working on things. For example http://www.swtor.com/blog/incoming-changes-global-cooldown-ui

....

 

 

You are kidding me, right? This is the fourth try to fix the UI Global Cool Down - the FOURTH try. If it takes them 4 tries for everything, good night SWTOR.

[Rylah]

After reading through like 7 pages of this **** I can only come to the conclusion that too many of you are ready to drive a stake in the game's heart.

 

It hasn't even been released a full 2 months yet! Yet here you sit complaining that it's the beginning of the end. Why? Because the game doesn't already have everything in it? That BW hasn't shown anything to you that it's going to improve? That there are bugs/imbalance issues to be worked out? Come on...

 

What we have here is an excellent foundation to be a great game. Does it need more endgame content? Sure, but if you think for a second that more content is not in the works then you are plain wrong. Every MMO wants to add content (pve and pvp), and this is no different. It takes time to develop. The devs don't wake up and check their mailbox to see if some magic package has arrived that yields this stuff.

 

I have no idea where you see the "excellent foundation". If there was one the PvP players would be much more calm. But unfortunately the foundation is crumbly at best.

 

The OP described that in quite some detail. The engine is horrible, the faction imbalance in numbers is ridiculous, the itemization is horrible, the gear acquisition is horrible (RNG > effort) and the only good point they have, namely making tanks somewhat useful in PvP is easily negated by the complete overkill in terms of CC.

 

These things are part of the foundation and not easily changed on a whim. You have to get that right in the beginning to have an "excellent foundation" and the possibility for a great game.

 

And generally your argument is flawed from the beginning anyway. A game which releases nowadays has to be complete and not an early beta which will eventually be fixed while people are already subscribed.

 

That is not to say that it cannot be and should not be extended and built upon, but what we have in SWTOR PvP are stubs at best and I severely doubt that they can be fixed in any reasonable timeframe with the biggest obstacles being the engine and the CC overkill. If they change the latter the PvE crowd will be affected, too and the outcry would be even bigger than it is now.

[AJMTL]

Waiting for Planetside 2/GW 2 to release.

 

This game offers no challenge or incentive to keep grinding.

[Pystov]

It's not that at all for me, and I already gave them a 2nd month against my better judgement. it is because no effort on their part was put into making endgame pvp worth anything, we have a bug/exploit riddled warzone system and an extremely poorly thought out and implemented pseudo-world pvp area. They offered hollow promises during development to keep pvp focussed mmo gamers on the hook and haven't delivered, the recent q&a saying how surprised they are at how popular pvp is only proves this.

 

They still don't listen though, the only thing you will hear from bw regarding pvp in the next month is rated rated rated as that is obvious their new strategy to keep the wowvpers on the hook a while longer. And lets be honest, looking at the bugs the warzones currently have do you expect the rating system to be good out of the box?

 

If you really have faith that bw can (is allowed) to make something of this trainwreck, hang around a few more months until they prove to you they can't.

 

Again, you are going off less then 2 months worth of facts. Then when they say they want to do something you put your nose in the air at it. People say that the changes to the bags are dumb (which I tend to agree), and that it leaves new 50's no choice but to go against the geared 50's. So they say they'll make rated, but no no. That's not good enough. Is it the end all answer? No, but it DOES show they to do listen (even if it's only to a certain degree) and want to give us something. That is what people should be concerning themselves with at this point. Is there anything to show that they are trying? The answer is yes. Again, doesn't solve all the problems, but the focus should be on the fact that they are attempting to fix the problems. It's when they stop trying that people should be up in arms.

 

I can't said it enough... It's been less then 2 months... They tried, and failed in some areas. This is true, but to expect that they can just make the correct changes by snapping their fingers is just wrong. As I said before, if this were the state of the game after 6-8 months of release I would be standing next to those people with a torch in hand. It takes time to look over data, figure out how to do the actual changes, write/change code, and apply it. That is why there is a test server, because they if it were possible to write the fix and know that 100% without a doubt that it would work there would be no reason for one. It's a process.

[Pystov]

You are kidding me, right? This is the fourth try to fix the UI Global Cool Down - the FOURTH try. If it takes them 4 tries for everything, good night SWTOR.

 

I was just useing that as an example that they do look at things. I never said they were perfect. I actually wanted to use the fix they were working on for the abilities not working when it said they were off CD, but was lazy. Like I said though... example. They do look and try which means they care. It's when they stop caring that's people should raise a sh*t fit.

[Pystov]

I have no idea where you see the "excellent foundation". If there was one the PvP players would be much more calm. But unfortunately the foundation is crumbly at best.

 

The OP described that in quite some detail. The engine is horrible, the faction imbalance in numbers is ridiculous, the itemization is horrible, the gear acquisition is horrible (RNG > effort) and the only good point they have, namely making tanks somewhat useful in PvP is easily negated by the complete overkill in terms of CC.

 

These things are part of the foundation and not easily changed on a whim. You have to get that right in the beginning to have an "excellent foundation" and the possibility for a great game.

 

And generally your argument is flawed from the beginning anyway. A game which releases nowadays has to be complete and not an early beta which will eventually be fixed while people are already subscribed.

 

That is not to say that it cannot be and should not be extended and built upon, but what we have in SWTOR PvP are stubs at best and I severely doubt that they can be fixed in any reasonable timeframe with the biggest obstacles being the engine and the CC overkill. If they change the latter the PvE crowd will be affected, too and the outcry would be even bigger than it is now.

 

When I say foundation I am referring to the "thought or idea" behind how it was thought to be. Just to be clear, I am not defending the current pvp status. I am just against people saying that BW has shown us they plan on doing nothing about it. 2 months in the length of MMO's is a blink of an eye. There are changes to be made for sure, but to expect them to have them all solved by 8am tomorrow morning is wrong.

 

Saying my argument is flawed because they should of had all the bugs worked out is also wrong. Game's have bugs. Period. We all want the bugs to be at a minimum, but they are going to be there. No MMO, and I don't care what one you look at, had bugs and continues to have bugs. They are more noticeable right after launch for a couple reasons. One, there are things that happen that dev's don't expect (happens to all mmo's), and two in the gaming industry everything is judged against a more polished product (in case that would prolly considered WoW). So, i'll repeat myself again, if the state of an mmo is in the same state as launch, in terms of bugs/issues, 6-8 months after the release... Then there is a problem. We are less then 2 months in....

[HamishI]

Agree with poster completely. PvP requires major reconfiguration to be successful.

[ragnarz]

Just because something is labeled PVP, doesn't make it so. If you think a WZ is the be all/end all of PVP, I have a bridge to sell you. EveOnline still reigns as the PVP game. If only people could get over the interface, lol. Heck, the ettenmoors(LOTRO) as flawed as it is, provides more pvp enjoyment.

 

If BW threw out all their pvp concepts and code and started fresh right now then they could have something in 18 months. Ain't gunna happen.

 

Time will tell if this game survives as a PVE game. As mentioned repeatedly, 1-49 innovative; @50 same old, same old.

 

For me the crying shame is in the horrible use of such a budget. Failure on this scale just makes it harder for the next bunch of innovators to get funding for their great idea.

 

Only lasting positive thing I got out of this game so far is short selling EA stock.