** Analysis of patch 1.1.5 PvP changes **

[Zaodon]

Here is my analysis of the 1.1.5 changes to PvP.

For reference: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=325047

 

* Players can now build credit towards the Battle for Ilum daily and weekly missions by playing Warzones.

 

This is a good change, even though it kills Ilum itself. This will have several positive effects on Warzones:

1. It will increase warzone frequency (i.e. shorter queue times).

2. It will give people a reason to stay in the warzone to completion and not quit, even if losing, to get more kills towards the Ilum daily/weekly.

3. It will give anyone on any server the ability to complete the Ilum dailies/weeklies regardless of faction imbalance.

 

* Medals are now worth 500 Valor and 10 Commendations. Players only earn Valor and Commendations for the first 4 medals earned each match.

 

This is also a good change.

 

1. That is a bonus of 2000 valor and 40 commendations just for medals. This is in addition to the valor and commendations for a Win or a Loss (see below). The current system would never reward so much valor (vast improvement), and the commendations are about the same as 8 medals in the current system, which is a great benefit to healers, and to people playing the objectives instead of medal farming.

2. It will have the effect of allowing people to play the warzone for objectives and not medal farming, as you'll basically auto-obtain 4 medals just playing for the win.

3. It will increase warzone frequency, because there is no longer any reason to stretch out a warzone for medal farming, you'll actually now be better off ending it ASAP to get into another warzone.

 

* Healers in Warzones now receive kill credit when a healed player kills an enemy.

 

Not really needed with the new 4-medal cap, but it does make it so healers can get that 4 medal cap without much worry. Overall, good change.

 

* Players affected by a Damage Over Time ability are no longer interrupted when interacting with objectives.

 

Major nerf to sorcs/sages, and to Scoundrel/Ops "DoT" spec. Was not needed due to Civil War speeder change below.

 

* Battlemaster and Champion Commendations are now available on the PvP Vendor for Warzone and Mercenary Commendations. Champion Gear Bags are still available.

 

Positive change for BM gear. Stupid addition for Champ gear, since its actually LESS efficient to buy them 1 at a time (840 Warzone Comms for 7 comms, vs a Bag which has 7 comms and costs only 800 WZ Comms).

 

* Valor gained from Warzones has been increased.

 

Again, decent change, encouraging people to COMPLETE and not QUIT, even if losing.

 

* Increased the Warzone AFK timeout from 60 seconds to 90 seconds.

 

This is more of a bandaid fix to the stupid long "speeder ride" in Voidstar for the 1st defending team. They should have just removed the speeder ride.

 

* Alderaan Civil War: The speeder bikes that transport players back to the battle now have a three-second activation time to increase the likelihood that an organized attacking team can successfully take the side turrets.

 

Makes it more interesting. Middle will again have some value. It gives options, and options are always good.

[Ozzone]

Be interesting to see how it works out. Definitely a major push away from Ilum to WZ queues.

[Maximilus]

Here is my analysis of the 1.1.5 changes to PvP.

For reference: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=325047

 

* Medals are now worth 500 Valor and 10 Commendations. Players only earn Valor and Commendations for the first 4 medals earned each match.

 

This is also a good change.

 

1. That is a bonus of 2000 valor and 40 commendations just for medals. This is in addition to the valor and commendations for a Win or a Loss (see below). The current system would never reward so much valor (vast improvement), and the commendations are about the same as 8 medals in the current system, which is a great benefit to healers, and to people playing the objectives instead of medal farming.

2. It will have the effect of allowing people to play the warzone for objectives and not medal farming, as you'll basically auto-obtain 4 medals just playing for the win.

3. It will increase warzone frequency, because there is no longer any reason to stretch out a warzone for medal farming, you'll actually now be better off ending it ASAP to get into another warzone.

 

 

You are confuse, wz's will ONLY give 2k valor and 40 comms, nothing more, see the notes again, the red part is obvious.

[lordkhouri]

the only this that bothers me is getting credit for ilum daily/weekly through warzones.

they really increased the value of warzones but kinda ruined ilum.

i play republic and actually enjoyed ilum til now, i hope i still can. though it looks like i'll get far more valor from warzones.

[Zaodon]

You are confuse, wz's will ONLY give 2k valor and 40 comms, nothing more, see the notes again, the red part is obvious.

 

False. If English is not your first language, I can understand your confusion.

 

Valor and Commendations are a reward for Warzones.

 

You receive Valor and Commendations from two sources:

1. Medals

2. A win or a loss.

 

i.e. Medals give you Valor + commendations, and a win or loss also gives Valor and Commendations which are completely separate from medals.

 

If you read the patch notes, you can CLEARLY SEE a note about an INCREASE to Valor for completing (win or lose) a Warzone.

 

So, you are simply wrong. You are not going to ONLY get 2k valor and 40 comms total. That is simply false.

 

You will get +2k valor, and +40 comms from Medals, IN ADDITION to the Valor and comms you get from a Win or Loss.

 

If English is your 1st language, then I don't know what to tell you, I hear Rosetta Stone has some good software to help learn a language.

[BobaFaceroll]

You are confuse, wz's will ONLY give 2k valor and 40 comms, nothing more, see the notes again, the red part is obvious.

 

It doesn't say all other Valor/Commendation rewards are being removed. It simply makes it clear that only the first 4 medals will give you 500 Valor and 10 Comms. That way no one says "*** I got 8 medals, why didn't I get 4000 Valor!!!"

[lethal_ghost]

good change to kill off any hopes of open world PvP

[Haeso]

Re World PvP:

 

It's dead, Jim.

[Xtrema]

* Medals are now worth 500 Valor and 10 Commendations. Players only earn Valor and Commendations for the first 4 medals earned each match.

 

This is also a good change.

 

1. That is a bonus of 2000 valor and 40 commendations just for medals. This is in addition to the valor and commendations for a Win or a Loss (see below). The current system would never reward so much valor (vast improvement), and the commendations are about the same as 8 medals in the current system, which is a great benefit to healers, and to people playing the objectives instead of medal farming.

2. It will have the effect of allowing people to play the warzone for objectives and not medal farming, as you'll basically auto-obtain 4 medals just playing for the win.

3. It will increase warzone frequency, because there is no longer any reason to stretch out a warzone for medal farming, you'll actually now be better off ending it ASAP to get into another warzone.

 

It may stop medal farming, which I think is great - couldnt stand it on EITHER side, but I can see people kill farming now instead of medal farming. It's a good fix with good intentions but potentially, and probably, introduce another way of farming.

[FINALBOSS]

The champion coms change is NOT a stupid decision...

 

 

You know how annoying it is trying to buy another piece only to realize you're 1 com short?

 

It's not meant to replace Bags, but allow you to get that extra 1-2 coms you need to buy a piece of gear.

[Valorn]

I like all of those changes. Keeps warzones competitive with Illum in terms of Valor.

 

The medal rewards will encourage people to play and not drop out of warzones.

 

Alderaan / dot capping change was needed.

 

The commendations on vendors are nice. Good change.

 

 

I know people are thinking the whole credit towards daily thing will Kill Ilum pvp but it really depends on how much credit they award. If 1 warzone = 1 armament...you're still going to want to do Ilum rather than 30 warzones each day.

 

The valor buff to warzones was also needed to keep it competitive with Ilum. The other alternative was to nerf Ilum's valor. I think buffing valor for the WZs was the right call.

[VoidJustice]

I get a kick out of how all these "PVP'ers" can only imagine pvp if there's "gear to earn"

 

without gear incentive then all the 1337 pvperz go home... (wannabe's)

 

Here's how to have open world pvp... go to illium, kill people there.

 

Ta-da

 

(although you'll find better pvp if you go to a leveling planet and start owning low levels flying popular guild tags)

Edited February 28, 2012 by VoidJustice

[Kyrandis]

Re World PvP:

 

It's dead, Jim.

 

Good bye Ilum!

 

I certainly won't miss it!

[LordbishopX]

Man I love the changes no more ILum BS maybe one day they can design a fun PVP open world iLum was horrible...

[Haeso]

I get a kick out of how all these "PVP'ers" can only imagine pvp if there's "gear to earn"

 

without gear incentive then all the 1337 pvperz go home... (wannabe's)

 

Here's how to have open world pvp... go to illium, kill people there.

 

Ta-da

 

(although you'll find better pvp if you go to a leveling planet and start owning low levels flying popular guild tags)

 

You know, I see this nonsense spouted off pretty often. Back in the day there wasn't necessarily a gear incentive, but there was almost always an incentive. Maybe you were fighting over territory so you could farm safely with your guild, or fighting over a keep to control part of the map, or maybe laying a Bane to crush your enemies. In all those games the rewards were there, they were just different, they meant something more than the gear grinds of today, there was a depth that is no longer present.

 

Sure sometimes you went out and killed people for the sake of killing them, but there was usually a motive behind PvP.

 

Lets take a more recent game, say, Darkfall. There wasn't lowbie ganking to a great extent for a simple reason: Lowbies had **** gear nobody really wanted. If you came across one you'd kill him and take all of his stuff, sure. But you didn't roam around looking for bluebies with paltry amounts of gold on them and junk loot you'd just delete later. Groups fought over important mob spawns and chest locations. The majority of PvP happened while people were PvEing. This is something that is true throughout the majority of oldschool PvP games, and it's something critical, something that has been forgotten - PvP was only 'scheduled' or 'organized' for the largest events like relic sieges, banes, etc. The majority of it was spontaneous and between two groups, usually one or both trying to accomplish some PvE goal, and the PvP being a byproduct. And most people that have experienced this type of PvP with an open mind - they prefer it. I've found many people who are initially resistant to it, come to enjoy it even - some of our crafters in Darkfall hated the fact that they lost all their resources when they got ganked.

 

So you know what they did? A few quit. The majority? They started gathering in groups, they started learning to fight back, they learned to make frequent trips, they learned where the safest spots where, how to scout out enemies - gathering went from being a mundane task you did by yourself while watching TV, a movie, or even playing another game, to a group activity that provided a constant threat and was a good source of PvP - you were gathering a valuable material everyone wanted, and for every few groups gathering materials like that, there'd be another group looking for these people to try and kill them to take their materials, it made most time you went out to gather resources an adventure and exciting.

 

 

But bioware actively discouraged interaction between the factions while leveling, and segregated the majority of PvP to PvP only areas. They removed the spontaneity, risks, and most of the fun in the process.

 

 

 

Anyone who doesn't enjoy world PvP never experienced it as it was intended, or simply doesn't enjoy PvP.

 

 

 

TL:DR there are many people who enjoy PvP, many who even love it - but over the years only a very small percentage of players in even PvP centric games only PvPed for the sake it. Most of old school PvP was spontaneous and a byproduct of open worlds and PvE, the minority was those of us who did nothing but look for PvP, the PKs. We *never* were the majority, but we did in a way, make PvP something the rest of the playerbase experienced and most enjoyed, to varying degrees based on the title. But overall this is an accurate summation.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Haeso

[PostalTwinkie]

Thank god they are effectively killing Ilum with this patch! I already spend a great deal of my time in WZ's so this is a boon to that! Now they just need to add a couple more WZ's, maybe make Ilum a big one, and get rid of Voidstar.

 

Bioware is heading in the right direction, which is awesome. I am still going to ***** about other things though! Thanks for letting me BW!

[MPagano]

This effectively reduces any potential pvp in this game to warzone matches. It's good in the sense that it's easier to get gear now and close the outrageous gap that exists, but it's bad in the sense that there's only going to be warzones.

[Trisma]

The dot fix is a major nerf to sorcs? Uh. No.

You can use one ability once, and your target is effectively controlled from doing the pvp objectives for 20 some seconds.

Even if he beats you in the fight, he still can't continue with his objectives, buying an absurd amount of time for reinforcements to arrive.

This isn't a nerf to anyone, it's a change to the meta-game to make pvp more tactical.

[Gakkenfeld]

The healer change was more than likely to allow healers to complete the daily/weekly kill quests, not to get them to 4 medals in WZ's.

 

Good change to keep the few healers out there healing instead of trying to get their 30 kills for the day.

[Haeso]

Know what made the meta game more tactical? Cleansing dots. I hear all three classes that can heal can do this. I also hear Sin/Shadow can self cleanse. Fully half the classes in the game there...

[Jontar]

Players only earn Valor and Commendations for the first 4 medals earned each match.

 

This needs clarified, because if I am only gaining 40commendations per match then something is wrong. You need 4000 warzone comms for one bm token, at 40per match... 100 matches for one bm token.. that is bad, real bad.

[Iite]

This needs clarified, because if I am only gaining 40commendations per match then something is wrong. You need 4000 warzone comms for one bm token, at 40per match... 100 matches for one bm token.. that is bad, real bad.

 

You still get comms for warzone win/loss and MVP votes. All that changes (from the information thus far) is that any medals gained from objectives or performance cap at a maximum of 4.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Iite

[OrionDammit]

The champion coms change is NOT a stupid decision...

 

 

You know how annoying it is trying to buy another piece only to realize you're 1 com short?

 

It's not meant to replace Bags, but allow you to get that extra 1-2 coms you need to buy a piece of gear.

 

This x 1000

[Dadydimsum]

This needs clarified, because if I am only gaining 40commendations per match then something is wrong. You need 4000 warzone comms for one bm token, at 40per match... 100 matches for one bm token.. that is bad, real bad.

 

Where does it say it is 4000 warzone comms for one bm token? I thought 1000 comms was max you can get at a time

[Trisma]

Know what made the meta game more tactical? Cleansing dots. I hear all three classes that can heal can do this. I also hear Sin/Shadow can self cleanse. Fully half the classes in the game there...

 

Right now voidstar is all about dots and cleansing dots. If you really think that is a better pvp experience than both teams being free to use abilities other than, you know, dot and remove dot, then you are wrong.