Why Bioware is so hush hush for overall plans for open world pvp!

[Garbald]

Reread what you are writing.

 

"DAoC PvP is the best I have ever played..."

 

Perhaps it was; however, one thing needs to be mentioned here. Apparently enough players didn't think so or the game would still be a major player in the MMORPG market.

 

It's not. At some point, it failed. For all the positive remarks I have read about DAoC's PvP system, it was not popular enough to keep the power company paid to keep the light's on at the server's datacenter.

 

EQ1, for as old and crappy looking of a game as it is, still has the datacenter powered up.

 

Ponder on that. DAoC has been lauded several times on these forums, on Rift's forums and on WoW's forums as "the absolute best PvP ever" - yet, where is that game today? If it was so good - where is it now?

 

Pvp centric games are always only a niche in the mmo market.

Secondly daoc is still up and running, coupled with the numerous freeshards out there I would suspect no less then 100k players still playing it, which is together with eve online still the most successful pvp centric mmo out there.

[longgrassgrows]

Bioware is hush hush to just get a few more months of subscription payments from us because they have no real plans for pvp outside of warzones and ILUM.

 

 

Let's be honest here, at the guild summit no real information about open world pvp was given out except Ilum is being reworked.Most questions was answered with a, Yes we have thought about that, or yes thats on our wall of crazy ideas.

 

I think Bioware has no real plans for Open world PVP other than reworking Ilum and adding a warzone here and there. They designed the planets so you hardly see the other faction while leveling. There are no open world objectives on any of the other planets for pvp. They didn't mention adding open world objective except for ILUM.

 

I'm starting to think Bioware doesn't care for the pvp crowd.

 

it's a conspiracy theory now...man this pvp forum is hilarious

[Raeln]

Pvp centric games are always only a niche in the mmo market.

Secondly daoc is still up and running, coupled with the numerous freeshards out there I would suspect no less then 100k players still playing it, which is together with eve online still the most successful pvp centric mmo out there.

 

Well, it's too bad they can't afford to update the graphics for DAoC so all these "pro-PvPers" complaining about TOR, WoW, Rift, and the PvE-centric MMOs can go back to their pride and joy.

 

Which incidentally, if the PvP is so good there - I still don't understand why they are paying to post on TOR's forums.

[DarthOvertone]

What would you like to see a MMO developer do to encourage "world PvP"?

 

I would like to see Planetary PvP. Yes, an entire planet is in dispute, and for an entire year/expansion, factions fight for control of the planet. The planet is won through the accrual of combat victories attained during the campaign. Once the planet is won, then only the winning faction has access to its resources/quests/whatever from that point forward.

 

What would it involve?

 

PvP Space Combat

 

Players have to participate in space battles in order to get access to the planet. These space battles would involve objective-based instance combat missions pitting faction against faction. Space battle victories accrue over time in a small way to contribute to the final faction planetary victory tally. After completing their initial missions, players can continue to participate in space missions to help the war effort, but will not be required to do so in order to gain access to the planet.

 

 

Capital City Battles

 

After passing the test in space combat, players can then participate in ground fights for Capital City control. Controlling a Capital City involves essentially maintaining Guild control of several city sectors/hubs. The faction with the majority of city sectors controls the Capital City. The city sectors/hubs must be actively defended, mainly by the members of the controlling guild, but also by same faction representatives. Possessing a city sector/hub gives the Guild access to both offensive and defensive assets that can be used to maintain city control as well as lay siege to other cities. Capital City control contributes significantly to the accrual of combat victories in the final faction planetary victory tally.

 

 

City Versus City Warfare

 

City versus City warfare will involve the use of aggregated Capital City assets to lay siege to and defend other Capital Cities. City Warfare essentially amounts to a massive battle royale that requires intense organization by player guilds to both actively participate in the fighting and utilize their combat assets effectively. The structure of these fights should be such that if one City commits to laying siege to another, that they are left horribly vulnerable to attack should they lose, essentially requiring full faction player defense to hold a City against a counter-attack. City over City victories will be hallmark battles that heavily contribute to the final faction combat tally.

 

 

Combat Operations

 

Combat Operations are both opposition kill and objective-based scenarios that give players the opportunity to contribute to the overall faction's campaign victory tally while participating in smaller fights, both small group and individually. These would include Kill/Per Day quests, opposition resource appropriation, city sector acquisition, and the like. The contribution to the final faction combat tally from these activities would be small, but could still play a significant role in campaign victory if done in high enough volume by the players within a faction.

 

 

The above is a short outline for an extended and prolonged Open World PvP War. As a PvPer, this is what I would like to see in the game. I want extended large scale, medium-sized, small group and individual fights. I want space battles, smaller territorial fights for control, and massive RvR-style contests. This would be a perfect expansion for this game. This would be Star Wars.

 

Unfortunately, I don't foresee that any of this is possible given the current faction imbalance that exists in game, and the fact that 1.2 will only encourage a wider gulf between the factions. Before anything like the above is possible, that issue would have to be addressed and remedied.

[Ritterific]

Yeah and warzones are griefing too because all you're trying to do is stop them from getting their valor

 

Since when did competing for an objective become griefing. People are so scared of any sort of competition these days. God forbid there is actually conflict and denial of resources in a game about a war.

 

Raeln nailed it about the warzones. I love warzones. You have to actively choose to join it, with the intent of participating (or in some people's cases finding a corner to afk in). They have active objectives which give players something to shoot for. They have rules set in place so that the PvP happening is actual PvP, not just steamrolling some undergeared player (which hopefully will be alleviated in the level 50 bracket with 1.2).

 

In fact, the whole point of my post was that open world PvP has nothing to do with competition. What are you competing over? The right to use a vendor or get to your spaceship? Are you competing over the treasure chest that those 3 npc's are guarding? If you kill someone who got to a resource node before you to take it from them, fine. But how is something like that an interesting game mechanic?

 

Ilum wasn't even really open world PvP. It had structure and objectives and guess what people ended up using it for? Earning easy valor, win trading etc. Having a free form open world PvP objective had nothing to do with it. It was about the rewards or one side having superior numbers and steamrolling the other faction to feel big about themselves. As I said before, open world PvP is not important, so I see no reason for Bioware to go out of their way to support it. I hope they don't.

[Talizzar]

PVP only games are very difficult to make successful. You need a strong base of pve or support type players as well. I have no clue why DAOC died as I did not play it. I have talked to many people who played it and thought it was pretty good up to a point where they did something that might have been a catastrophic mistake.

 

SWTOR cannot and will not ever succeed from a RVR or faction vs faction game unless the game was designed around the RVR aspect. SWTOR did not do this. They have attempted to throw some pvp thing on top of a decent pve engine and it is not working.

[Mr_Gallows]

I never said that WoW is "the MMO"; however, you can't talk about MMOs without addressing the elephant in the room. People love that game and that is not refutable. Every MMO that wants to be successful has to examine some of what they did.

 

There is one simple fact that you pro-PvP players cannot refute - it is difficult for a PvP-centric MMORPG to get traction in this genre. Them's the dice.

 

If DAoC was the "bee's knees", then it'd be more popular and DAoC 2 would have been made with the exact same ruleset and updated graphics. It wasn't because it wasn't that popular. There's a lot of rose-colored glasses going on here.

 

Regarding GW2 - meh, I've seen videos. I'm not impressed. I certainly hope it is what you guys are looking for though.

 

Ehh... no. Some people like the sound of bag pipes, althought most people won't enjoy it. That doesn't mean pop music is better music.

 

PvP centric games aren't big generally and it's most likely because they are much harder to do well, than PvE centric games. DAoC however had a system that was rewarding and fun, and you really felt like you were in a warzone. There were some great sieges and the game was a great PvP game. I just can't think of a game that beats the PvP in DAoC in terms of rule sets and general setup.

 

Popularity has nothing to do with quality... that's the mind set of sheep.

[sensiblepoast]

I think there will be world pvp in the not so distant future, but I think they really need to optimize the game first. My rig is a beast and I don't get the best of framerates with a mid sized zerg on zerg battle. Imagine how rad a huge battle would be complete with player driven vehicles, bases to destroy/conquer, etc. It's too much fun to ignore

 

No distant future is most likely a minimum of 4 months. Can't see myself playing warzones for that long for a vague "promise".

[ademnus]

Bioware is hush hush to just get a few more months of subscription payments from us because they have no real plans for pvp outside of warzones and ILUM.

 

lets get real. When it launched, Ilum was immediately abused. After it was made fair, it was low population -obviously not much interest. Now they've made it uneccessary and now its a ghost town.

 

Personally, I think they should convert it into a WZ and scrap any waste of resources on future world pvp that no one clearly really wants.

[Spyritwind]

I wouldn't wait for good pvp in this game or any rpg mmo. You can always come back if/when they actually do some thing, but I wouldn't hold your breath. This is a PvE game with PvP tacked on. Wanting it to be more is understandable, but I wouldn't waste time expecting it.

 

GW2 is coming for pvp

[Raeln]

Ehh... no. Some people like the sound of bag pipes, althought most people won't enjoy it. That doesn't mean pop music is better music.

 

PvP centric games aren't big generally and it's most likely because they are much harder to do well, than PvE centric games. DAoC however had a system that was rewarding and fun, and you really felt like you were in a warzone. There were some great sieges and the game was a great PvP game. I just can't think of a game that beats the PvP in DAoC in terms of rule sets and general setup.

 

Popularity has nothing to do with quality... that's the mind set of sheep.

 

Popularity certainly has something to do with quality.

 

I could make the highest quality website ever and it wouldn't matter at all if no one ever used it.

 

I could design the highest quality car in the world and no one would buy it if it didn't suit their needs.

 

I could design the highest quality PvP content for any MMORPG ever and it wouldn't matter if people didn't even know about the game or cared enough about PvP in the first place.

 

Quality alone will not sell anything by itself and is actually a sliding factor. Consumers require a specific level of quality in their product. If there is more "quality" than they require, it is possible that the restrictive aspect that comes with "high quality" can actually become a detriment to the success of the product. Restrictive aspects of high quality are most easily identified as "high cost" and "low number of features".

 

I have no idea if DAoC was "high quality" or not. I get that several people think it had an awesome PvP system and a good RvR system with conquerable land ownership is something that would interest me but I'm telling you, something else was wrong with the game or it would have a larger market presence than it does. If it was all "old graphics", then EQ1 would be dead and WoW would have died years ago. There has to be something else keeping it from being a major player.

[Raeln]

I wouldn't wait for good pvp in this game or any rpg mmo. You can always come back if/when they actually do some thing, but I wouldn't hold your breath. This is a PvE game with PvP tacked on. Wanting it to be more is understandable, but I wouldn't waste time expecting it.

 

GW2 is coming for pvp

 

...and GW2 is not going to be a miracle pill for PvP.

 

The issue here is the "pro-open world PvPers" want their PvP to force changes on the open world environment through land ownership mechanics. Can't say that I blame them, honestly. Sounds fun.

 

The other side of the coin is that land ownership implies that someone else will not "own the land". This means that while the Republic owns "this" area of land, the Empire players will not be able to access it for questing, resources, or what have you. This tends to upset players when a portion of the game is barred from them.

 

A potential solution is to create an area for people to fight over that would not affect the other dudes that want to quest, farm, etc. The sounds eerily like what the intent of Ilum was except since this prevents the "pro-open world PvPers" from enforcing their will on people outside of the sanctioned PvP area, they deem it a failure.

 

This might be inflammatory but it really just comes down to open-world PvPs "success" and "failure" depends greatly on how much "grieving" the developers are willing to allow the open world PvP mechanics to inflict on the world environments. This is not even taking into account that ideally, world PvP requires a balance faction population on the server.

[da_krall]

Bioware is hush hush to just get a few more months of subscription payments from us because they have no real plans for pvp outside of warzones and ILUM.

 

 

Let's be honest here, at the guild summit no real information about open world pvp was given out except Ilum is being reworked.Most questions was answered with a, Yes we have thought about that, or yes thats on our wall of crazy ideas.

 

I think Bioware has no real plans for Open world PVP other than reworking Ilum and adding a warzone here and there. They designed the planets so you hardly see the other faction while leveling. There are no open world objectives on any of the other planets for pvp. They didn't mention adding open world objective except for ILUM.

 

I'm starting to think Bioware doesn't care for the pvp crowd.

 

Bioware has no intention to do anything for Open World PvP. If anyone is hanging around for OWPVP you are simply wasting your money and lining the pockets of EA fatcats.

 

Remember these are the same people who descirbed Ilum as an amwazing open pvp zone. Now think to yourself. Are they stupid? no matter what you think, the answer is most likley NO. They saw their open world pvp was terrible but knew they couldnt actually admit that otherwise they would miss out on 200,000 box sales and a couple month subscription. They have to make the inital outlay back first.

 

 

Leave. Find another game that has OWPVP and/or accept that Biowares SWTOR will only ever have sub standard instanced PvP, while having very good PvE (eventually they will get the PvE endgame right)

Edited March 14, 2012 by da_krall

[JFTremb]

...and GW2 is not going to be a miracle pill for PvP.

 

The issue here is the "pro-open world PvPers" want their PvP to force changes on the open world environment through land ownership mechanics. Can't say that I blame them, honestly. Sounds fun.

 

The other side of the coin is that land ownership implies that someone else will not "own the land". This means that while the Republic owns "this" area of land, the Empire players will not be able to access it for questing, resources, or what have you. This tends to upset players when a portion of the game is barred from them.

 

A potential solution is to create an area for people to fight over that would not affect the other dudes that want to quest, farm, etc. The sounds eerily like what the intent of Ilum was except since this prevents the "pro-open world PvPers" from enforcing their will on people outside of the sanctioned PvP area, they deem it a failure.

 

This might be inflammatory but it really just comes down to open-world PvPs "success" and "failure" depends greatly on how much "grieving" the developers are willing to allow the open world PvP mechanics to inflict on the world environments. This is not even taking into account that ideally, world PvP requires a balance faction population on the server.

 

I agree with you completely, people are always complaining about open world pvp but they need a carrot on the stick to go out and do it. Smuggler's Den and now Illum are pretty much empty canvas where the players can set up w/e they want, a lot of servers now are doing tournaments in Den (3v3, Guild v Guild, etc) which i believe is the intent for that zone.

 

People always cry about "we need incentive for OPVP" "specific rewards for controlling bases or a planet", let's not forget what happened in 1.1 when Ilum had the tiniest of objective and the Imps farmed the hell out of the Reps due to faction imbalance across all servers. We can't have rewards for Open world PVP, look at Aion for example with the forts in the abyss, most server were dominated by 1 faction for about 6 to 8 months untill most people quit the game and they merged all the servers together to make a total of 3 servers. Open world PVP with rewards in a 2 faction MMO does not work, you will always have imbalance, you will always have 1 side dominating the other and most people on the losing side will leave.

 

What needs to change in Swtor for OPVP to at least happen more frequently is more areas where both faction meet up while leveling. I've leveled 3 characters to 50 by now, I've ran into Imps while leveling on Tatooine mostly. Alderaan, Voss, Belsavis and Corellia are too big, rarely ran into Imps there.

 

Quick fix, Corellia Dailys in 1.2, either the same quests or objective on both sides or very close to each other so that Reps and Imps encounter each other constantly. Same goes for that new planet they adding for 1.2, w/e we do there make sure we run into the opposing faction.

Edited March 14, 2012 by JFTremb

[Aedilous]

I don't even need to read the post. They don't say anything cause most of you are so whiny and flip out at the slightest news. I watch people dissect every little word in a dev post and only pull negative out of it. I wouldn't tell you anything either because honestly the way most PVPers act is so childish you don't deserve the privilege of information.

 

That's a pretty arrogant and disrespectful response. I'm going to assume that you don't play PvP much, if at all, or you'd have a different outlook. And to say that people don't deserve the privelege of information about where the game they pay a monthly fee to play is going is just ridiculous. When my money goes into paying for the development of new features for the game that I play then I damn well have every right to ask what the game is going to offer in the near future that will make me want to keep paying. The fact that you say you didn't even read the post says to me that you enjoy staying ingnorant and dislike having any type of discussion that may not agree with your point of view.

 

As for people only taking negative aspects away from developer notes and forum posts the only thing that I can say is that sometimes it's warranted. Most of what Bioware has done recently makes me want to stop playing the game entirely. I classify myself as a PvP player who enjoys that PvE/Story aspects that ToR could offer. In my opinion ToR is the best MMO currently on the market, based solely off of its PvE merits (Voice overs, story that pulls you in and decisions that make a difference). However, after 1.2 it will be a much different story and I may not continue playing.

 

I'd mention the PvP gear changes in 1.2 and how they seem to me to be based off of PvE players complaints but that's for a different thread entirely so I won't waste peoples time here. But don't call all PvP players childish because they disagree with you.

[da_krall]

I agree with you completely, people are always complaining about open world pvp but they need a carrot on the stick to go out and do it. Smuggler's Den and now Illum are pretty much empty canvas where the players can set up w/e they want, a lot of servers now are doing tournaments in Den (3v3, Guild v Guild, etc) which i believe is the intent for that zone.

 

 

Thats not OWPVP though is it, thats arena or touneys or whatever other name you want to give in that just happens to be taking place in the open world.

[Raeln]

Thats not OWPVP though is it, thats arena or touneys or whatever other name you want to give in that just happens to be taking place in the open world.

 

The open world PvP that many seem to want for this game (and other MMOs) can be quite destructive to the server's playerbase, especially due to the "Internet anonymity" aspect of online gaming.

 

Games take too much to develop (not just TOR) and developers are hesitant to put in these mechanics that will undoubtedly frustrate some portion of the playerbase into quitting over them. It's difficult to justify open world PvP when warzones/battlegrounds are just over there and can be balanced - both population and gear wise through queuing tools.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Raeln

[Chaosmagistrate]

Popularity certainly has something to do with quality.

 

I could make the highest quality website ever and it wouldn't matter at all if no one ever used it.

 

I could design the highest quality car in the world and no one would buy it if it didn't suit their needs.

 

I could design the highest quality PvP content for any MMORPG ever and it wouldn't matter if people didn't even know about the game or cared enough about PvP in the first place.

 

Quality alone will not sell anything by itself and is actually a sliding factor. Consumers require a specific level of quality in their product. If there is more "quality" than they require, it is possible that the restrictive aspect that comes with "high quality" can actually become a detriment to the success of the product. Restrictive aspects of high quality are most easily identified as "high cost" and "low number of features".

 

I have no idea if DAoC was "high quality" or not. I get that several people think it had an awesome PvP system and a good RvR system with conquerable land ownership is something that would interest me but I'm telling you, something else was wrong with the game or it would have a larger market presence than it does. If it was all "old graphics", then EQ1 would be dead and WoW would have died years ago. There has to be something else keeping it from being a major player.

 

Good post. Too many people thinking with nostalgia about the "good old games".

[JFTremb]

Thats not OWPVP though is it, thats arena or touneys or whatever other name you want to give in that just happens to be taking place in the open world.

 

The examples are not OWPVP, but its still an empty canvas where anything could happen.

 

For example, lets say your server is doing some 3v3 tourney this weekend... and while the tourney is going on you decide to take your whole guild there and disrupt everything and kill everyone. It will cause chaos (im sure a lot of crying and whining) and will lead to a massive free for all.

 

Not ideal OWPVP for some people, but it could be very entertaining and fun.

Edited March 14, 2012 by JFTremb

[Hellapain]

The problem is that many players do not just want Open World PvP fights just for the sake of good PvP fun. Most want rewards/incentives for doing so and therein lies the major challenge.

 

We have already seen certain elements of the playerbase exploit the previous systems like trading kills etc.

 

Implementing Open World PvP areas is easy and it is and has always been available in SWTOR. Implementing rewards based Open World PvP that cannot be exploited is a whole different ballgame.

 

I've seen many complaints but zero viable suggestions for rewards based Open World PvP systems that cannot be exploited.

 

Many say we just want open world fights but apparently that is not what most really want because if all they wanted was the fights than ILUM would be full of players.

 

Edit: In WoW at Tauren Mill was the last time I experienced open world PvP on a largescale just for fun before the BGs/Arena were implemented.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Hellapain

[TheVoidStalker]

And the Guild Ward 2 obsession makes no sense to me. Why would the sequel to an embarrassingly poorly managed game give anyone hope?

[Ulltramagns]

Every single discussion involving world pvp is stupid because no matter what the point in world pvp is, it will always be zerg vs zerg bigger zerg wins, no strategy or skill involved, most brainless stupid form of pvp there is.

[TheVoidStalker]

Every single discussion involving world pvp is stupid because no matter what the point in world pvp is, it will always be zerg vs zerg bigger zerg wins, no strategy or skill involved, most brainless stupid form of pvp there is.

 

Not always, stupid always loses no matter how large.

 

Since we all seem to have played DAoC, on my server, a ~70 man relic raid once got wiped by 3 guys. Only 2 of those guys were 50, they happened to be power leveling a third guy at the time.

[Dego_Locc]

Every single discussion involving world pvp is stupid because no matter what the point in world pvp is, it will always be zerg vs zerg bigger zerg wins, no strategy or skill involved, most brainless stupid form of pvp there is.

 

I have fun with open world PVP siege engines, win or LOSE, it's still a blast. Much more of a blast that the same old 8 v 8 in one of 3 small shards.

PVP in this game is a joke. 1.2 is a result of the carebear stare for equal gear for fresh 50's.

 

Take away carrot, watch ppl unsub in droves. smh, haven't you devs learned anything in the last 8 years? WOW was lighting it won't strike again in the same place ever. Ppl are bored of wow, and come to this game for a different experience are bored before they even started because this game IS a wannabe wow, and people who come here from games like pre cu SWG, and DAoC, are let down by the carebear linear boringness that is the Tortanic.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Dego_Locc

[CrunkShizzle]

Good thing we have Gw2 coming out most likely before any Ilum and world pvp issues are ever resolved lulz....

 

gw2 and tera

 

 

pretty much your looking at where the serious pvpers are going to be at that are playing right now if the pvp doesnt improve greatly before then