★★★[ARENA] - benefits of adding ARENA to SWTOR★★★

[DarthSabreth]

I would be for it if it gave no rewards / better gear then regular WZ'S, but.... Arena is not good for mmorpg's. WOW devs openly admit adding arena was a mistake that they wish they could take back.

http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/11/13/blizzard-arenas-were-a-mistake/

 

The amount of nerfs and ballancing would be rediculous in this game, just look at all the QQ that we have with the very small and minimal nerfs that we have had already, if arena was implimented then the QQ would be legendary.

 

not to mention it would make the player base even more infuriated which are pve heavy, if their pve toons keep getting toyed with like in wow DUE TO ARENA then they will leave / have more motivation to leave.

 

I am a pvper and love my healer OP in PVP, but i would be more in favor of swoop racing or starship pvp battles based on the example it gives the player / pvper an goal and challange like arena with out all those nerfs / balancing issues.

[Telsnow]

Yeah sure that's why millions of people participate in and enjoy wow arena

 

Actually, some of WoW's best PvP'ers (like Reckful) quit WoW because Blizzard shifted their focus to rated battlegrounds. Arena is not nearly as popular as it once was, as many key contributors have moved on from the game because of this direction. But even at the height of WoW arena popularity, for the millions that enjoyed it, there were millions of people who hated it and still do. I don't think TOR needs another feature that will divide the community when Bioware hasnt fully developed rated warzones and world pvp, let alone implementing fresh new maps and game types. Maybe in the future, there will be a time and place for implementing arenas, but I don't think its going to be anytime soon.

[UberDuberSoldat]

Arena's should not be added as it would highlight 1v1 imbalances that are needed and necessary for 8v8 RWZ to function with proper balance.

 

Cliffnotes: Arenas will provide too much whining. Duel wherever you want for 1v1's, don't make it official.

[Devitiak]

If they add arena in swtor...im done with this game and going back to WoW where arenas are done properly.

[Daimoku]

Arenas are a different way to experience PvP and it's great. Those who do not like it can just choose not to play them.

[Thexremstar]

There are so many reasons to list, and I want to avoid wall of texts. I will try to organize this post as much as possible.

 

Since arenas were popularized in WoW, I will use that game as a comparison in most of the cases.

 

 

 

1. Arena is far more competitive and skill-oriented than rated warzones.

 

-First of all, there is no denying competitive players in general will like PvP more so than casual players (who will mostly stick with PvE). This is because by its nature, PvP is a COMPETITIVE activity. There is no question about the fact that PvPers ARE competitive.

 

 

-Arena is the ultimate solution to promote competition and provide PvPers with the drive.

 

 

-I dont see why some players believe that rated warzones will be the solution for the PvP of the game? Objective oriented PvP such as warzones will be nowhere NEAR skill-dependent and competitive compared to any arena, PERIOD. "Competitive" and "objective" sound like oil and water to me.

 

Warzones = objective oriented (casual) PvP. Arenas = survival/killing oriented (competitive) PvP.

 

What sounds more PvP-like?

 

 

-Objective oriented PvP doesn't give players any incentives to "play well". In warzones, you simply respawn if you are killed due to being outplayed or making mistakes. Arena is whole different story, where the focus is surviving, outplaying, and killing opponents.

 

 

-WZ's are also much less controlled environment compared arenas. 3 unskilled players can easily kill 1 skilled player, if his teammates are bad and doesn't back him up. This again, doesn't promote skill-oriented play and just encourages players to travel in groups.

 

 

 

 

2. Arenas will help keep PvPers subscribed to this game

 

-Motivation is what helps keep players subscribed to the game.

 

We know that most MMORPG designs expect people to stay addicted to the game and keep their subscription through gear progression models. While it is true that PVEers are motivated to play the game to constantly obtain better gears that are released in new flashpoint / operations, PVP'ers' brains work differently.

 

In long story short, PvE'ers are motivated by gear progression. PvP'ers are motivated by competition. (Mere gear progression is not enough)

 

You can't expect to keep many of the pvp playerbase subscribed to to this game without providing adequate motivation in the form of competition. Without a challenge to prevent them from being bored, most pvpers will simply move on to the next MMO that comes out that has decent PvP (guild wars 2 anyone?). To see why rated warzones will not be good enough, refer to my point #1.

 

 

-Arenas will help create a competitive scene and communities such as arenajunkies in WoW. Many of the players there and the top world class WoW players (reckful, hydra, etc) played ARENAS since season 1 of TBC, which is 7+ years. I can't even fathom how any of these players would have stayed with WoW that long, if Blizzard had not added arenas.

 

 

 

 

3. Arena will help balance this game's PvP

 

-First of all you don't seem to know how unbalanced WoW is. One thing that I was impressed with SWTOR as a game was that, for a new game, the classes were EXTREMELY balanced. I played WoW for years since TBC, and even 1v1-wise star wars is FAR more balanced than WoW ever was.

 

 

-So many of you complain that how "unbalanced" this game is. People claim that SWTOR can't have arenas because it is "unbalanced". But do you even know what makes this game so unbalanced, how is it unbalanced, or how can the game be fixed? Everyone has different opinion on what class is OP... every one whines about different things on pvp forums, everything is a huge mess.

 

 

-Arenas will provide both the players and developers with valuable statistics and numbers they need to see which classes and which aspects of the game are truly unbalanced. Arena ladder in my opinion should not only show you names / classes / ratings, but it should also publicly show all of these raw data to allow us to see the state of the game. Some of these include...

 

*We can compare the percentage distribution of the 8 classes on the top ~200 of the ladder, to the overall class population distribution.

 

*Most popular (FOTM) team comps on the ladder to study class synergies

 

*Win loss ratio % of every class vs class matchup (for 1v1 arena), to see which class is particularly overpowered vs another class.

 

*more

 

Although some of player opinions on the PvP forums are valuable, arenas will give us the numerical data that we can actually work with. It will answer all of these questions and give us an idea of how to solve them:

 

"How is the game unbalanced?"

"Which classes are most unbalanced?"

"How unbalanced is class X vs class Y?"

"How can we fix and balance this game?"

 

 

 

Would you rather have this game balanced around endless QQ'ers and whine threads on PvP forums? Or would you have the game balanced around TANGIBLE statistics and numbers? you decide...

 

 

 

4. Arenas are breeding ground for skilled players

 

-When I watch the most popular oldschool vanilla PvP movies (vurtne, drakedog, etc) back in 2005 and top rank1 players streams now, there isn't even a comparison between the skill level of players back then and now.

 

One may argue that as the game matured, the players had years to develop that kind of skill. However it is VERY important to note that although there was hardly any change of skill cap of PvP throughout entire vanilla WoW, with the addition of arenas in TBC, WoW saw an incredible amount increase in average skill of playerbase. Not to mention that arena is what motivated the most skilled of PvPers to stay with WoW after all those years.

 

 

-If I have to handpick the most skilled player in WoW, I have to choose reckful hands down. I consider reckful to be the "pinnacle" of all rogues in WoW in 7 years of its history. Here's reckful's video of himself hitting 3000 rating with 117-4 record, versus other top players in the world. In terms of reaction speed, decision making, multi-tasking, awareness, and execution of strategies it is simply flawless. This video is the result of years of breeding / pitting the best players against each other, and could be what future players of SWTOR can achieve if arenas are added to the game.

 

 

[P.S. This video also proves the popularity of arenas. This video has over 2 million views, which makes it by far one of THE most watched WoW videos out there - more views than any of the 'world first kill' videos by any top PVE guilds. If you also see the uploader's (compLexity gaming) channel, it also has more views than all of compLexity gaming's starcraft 2 videos COMBINED.]

 

 

 

5. SWTOR arena will be EASIER to balance than WoW

 

If you see most popular and overpowered comps throughout WoW, it is usually things such as rogue/mage/priest, rogue/warlock/shaman, paladin/hunter/death knight, mage/warlock/shaman, etc etc.

 

In SWTOR, we won't see that kind of 'overpowered comps' and "unbeatable synergy" in WoW. Reason why certain classes synergized so well in WoW is because of the CC's and shared diminishing returns system, which caused certain classes to synergize far better with others. Therefore some classes have more viable comps, stronger comps, and inevitable class imbalance.

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, SWTOR is based on resolve system, and every class has some sort of stun or CC (on a cooldown). So I dont expect to see such exceptionally strong class synergy between any particular classes. In general, I expect ALL comps to be fully viable and competitive, as long as classes are relatively balanced in 1v1! (important!)

 

 

Also, this is my piece of advice to the players that think they cannot succeed in arena without playing overpowered comps:

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Adding arenas will be FINANCIALLY productive for bioware

 

-Since its launch, Blizzard created 8 objective oriented battlegrounds like warzones in SWTOR. On average they have to constantly add 2~3 per expansion, and they aren't even that popular. Many players only play them to grind honor, and there are lot of bots and AFKers (theyre just that boring!)

 

 

-On the other hand, Blizzard added 3 arenas when they were launched in burning crusade expansion, and 2 more (which were unnecessary in my opinion) in WOTLK. Players have enjoyed these same maps for YEARS and they never got old. You never see players that claim arenas are boring and afk them.

 

 

-Overall, arena maps are much smaller and EASIER (and probably cheaper) to create than a whole new objective oriented warzone. Blizzard probably invested minuscule amount of capital into arenas compared to battlegrounds and open world PVP, and look what is more popular.

 

 

-Blizzard as a company, for some unknown reason, did not appear to like arenas. This is illustrated by their attempt to popularize rated battlegrounds in cataclysm. RBG's have been extremely unpopular in WoW btw, despite Blizzard's best efforts to increase player participation (awarding more conquest point in RBG's than arena per week, etc). Casuals don't like it because of amount of time and effort to find and set up a team. Pros don't like it because its nowhere near competitive as arenas. Despite Blizzard's "best efforts", RBG's have failed to "kill" arenas.

 

You can devote as much resources to design/program/add as many warzones as you want. They'll all eventually become 'stale' and repetitive after a while, and players will demand addition of new contents. However, every new arena game will appear fresh as players constantly face different opponents and new obstacles to overcome - even if they are held on the same map.

 

Logistically speaking arenas are cheaper, require less maintenance, and much more effective solution to satisfy PVPers needs than warzones are.

 

Bioware, just consider arenas as a ONE TIME INVESTMENT that will last for years to come.

 

Arenas would be awsome but until the PVP game is more balanced i think it would be a waste of time resourses.

As an X WoW player I miss arena thats all i miss from WoW. I think Arena Gear Rewards are A1 prizes for arena competetitors and would not compete for any thing other then bettter gear rewards. But As CC's and healing are out of balance and out of control in the pvp game Arena wouldnt go far. People are leaveing complaining about pvp daily this 1.4 patch didnt do alot for cc if anything made it easier for players to use CC. Any Ways hope SWTOR gets fixed It is a very good game exceptional graphics and solo feel to it when leveling but PVP is draging the anchor atm..

[Rikuson]

I have to agree with almost all of what has been said. I played wow from vanilla to the horrible mistake blizzard made with cataclysm. The only reason i didn't drop the game shortly after there cata expansion was that I did arena's with my friends. To be honest arena's were unbalanced in wow but the way swtor is that should not be a problem and yes i agree that there should not be any new points or different gear for arena players just adding arena matches to the weekly and daily with a smaller reward of points would be great. I have stated before I am getting to the point in the bg's were my brothers and myself are more frustrated then happy to play the game we don't pve other then a seldom op and cant stand it to be stuck in a warzone with people that cant seem to communicate and help each other that just want to guard or go afk during the match. I don't even want to think about how many times someone or myself has asked for a plan of attack before the match and you get the retard who say "win" or "slaughter them all" or some other idiotic nonsense, and the people who want to do warzones without pvp gear you cannot heal a guy even if he has 17 life if he only has a couple hundred expertise but they seem to think there isn't a problem because they have a higher crit rating or what ever stat they are after. Bottom line to those individuals your dps is ZERO when you are dead you are not helping anyone in fact you are hindering the rest of your team, but that is off target. Basically yes please add arena's it can only improve the game and give devoted pvp'ers a chance to have more control over there gaming experience which gives them a happier gaming experience and makes them want to stay and not give up the game to play something like guildwars 2 for the pvp or go back to wow for arena battles. im not sure how balanced you could get a 1v1 a healer has almost no chance of killing a skilled and well geared dps character but 2v2 3v3 and 4v4 should be fantastic. thank you for your time Edited October 25, 2012 by Rikuson
didn't finish rant lol

[Paulseph]

DO it bioware!!!! comon man!

[Brool]

a) Adding arena's will have ZERO say in my subscription status. I wont resub because they added Arena's. In fact, I wouldnt play any arena's. Personal preferance.

 

b) Calling an objective based game casual and a kill based game competitive is laughable at its finest. I'd like to point out that the most lucrative of all gaming tourneys has always been objective based.

 

c) Saying that arena's will balance out the game is another opinion and one I completely disagree with. Balancing pvp around 2v2, 3v3, 1v1 will absolutly throw out the balance of pve and regular warzones. Any information that can be gathered from arenas can already be gathered from regular warzone play. Saying that the game is balanced around the forum qq because we dont have arenas and only have warzones is laughable. this game needs to be balanced for 8v8 not 1v1, and balancing a game for 1v1 =/= 8v8 balance as well.

 

d)talking about the compLexity gaming video and channel and seeling it as being popular because of arenas. Totally and unequivocally false. compLexity is a gaming community that was forumed during the cs 1.6 hayday, they have had years of followers watching anything and everything put out by that group. Its 2 million views doesnt prove the popularity of arenas it proves the popularity of clan.

[madtycoon]

They aren't going to add arenas, at least not any time soon. Have they even added the new warzone yet? The one they had on the PTR in early summer?

 

Theres no question that it would be better, even with people not playing them. More content (even lol world pvp content) would make the game more attractive. But honestly, how easy would it be to put a dueling area in fleet? And how much sense does that make? But its still not there, so i'm pretty sure arenas are low on the totem pole.

 

And people talking about balancing the game around 8v8 compared to like 3v3. The game isn't even close to balanced around 8v8, which is generally easier to do, because theres more room to work with. I used to think wow arena balance was pretty bad in cata, with resto shamans ruling the brackets. Then I played swtor and realized wow has always been pretty balanced in previous seasons. Even now with warriors and BM hunters (lesser extent mages) all over the brackets, its still more balanced then this game.

 

Swtor arenas would be fun to play every now and again, but really if you want this kind of mmo pvp gameplay (because wow and swtor are basically the same type of gameplay) and want to be rewarded by general skill (better awareness, quickness, communication) wow arena will always be better unless some huge changes are made.

 

I mean swtor doesn't even have a working targetting system or a useable focus frame yet. LOL

[Warlord_Maliken]

Honeslty I bet you Bioware/EA already has these things in mind brother. They are first establishing the foundation for the game. For instance, they have been fixing serious issues with imbalancing and just rotation flow in general. In 1.4, the rage warrior was fixed in this regard, even though the smash dmg is out of control the rotation feels right finally. They have some other fish to fry as well before Arena could be considered, such as the Mercenary class being a complete joke when melee engage you (gameplay wise). Its pathetic, but i'm sure they'll fix it. After free to play goes live they should have alot more money to focus on these things and tackle the game's top issues such as GLOBAL COOLDOWN BUG (you hit an ability, only it doesn't go off and gives you a global cooldown for no reason; your toon begins the animation but doesnt go through with it all the way). You simply can't have that bug happening in an arena pvp match, it can be the difference between a win or a loss.

I wouldn't want to see Arena PvP in this game just yet with the issues above still festering. However the game is getting very close to having competitive arena pvp as a possibility. A few good 'chess moves' by the company and it will be well upon the way.

 

P.S. I like your post and agree with everything. I watched the full 10 minute video of that WoW Rogue icon you admire. I played WoW for like 7 years competitively and couldn't get above 1900 rating as an Arms warrior lol. I LOVE that this game doesn't have macro's or addons by the way. It's probably my favorite thing about SWTOR.

Edited October 25, 2012 by Warlord_Maliken

[LordExozone]

The day they add arena over open world pvp is the day I quit for good. That said, when they have finished implementing all the other far more important things in the game like more immersive planets with day & night cycles, more options to customize our characters, a revamped ilum, some additional warzones, more story content, the revamped space part etc..etc..then I wouldn't mind if they added some arena's for those who secretly want to play WoW but under a layer of starwars.

[Givemedanger]

It's the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.

 

Pvp in this game is far from balanced. To be honest i don't think it will ever be balanced with so little people playing and with no cross-server option.

 

Only burst damage would matter in arenas.

 

I say remove all the worst pvp classes from the game (or from pvp) like sorc and ofc merc. They suck and you know it.

 

Leave only the OP classes (with highest burst and ofc op/gs healers).

Edited October 25, 2012 by Givemedanger

[Rubberfeet]

Wow, so many misconceptions here, first off it is really hard to call a class "OP" in a big pvp area like Warzones, The big healing or damage or control Class A does, might seem really good but its coupled with a bunch of different classes too, and my favorite is that everyone has their own opinion on what is OP and UP. I feel like every class has a strong place in a 2vs2 and 3vs3 setting when they don't have 8 people backing them, and the goal is killing the other person/ccing someone long enough to kill their team mate and not a flag/node/points or w/e. Do I think there are certain line ups that would be really strong? Yeah for sure, but I promise there would be another strong line up that would counter the first. It's the way PvP works.

 

Arena would be more than good for PvP in ToR, all of these well made/clutch abilities to set up amazing opportunities are almost completely wasted in a big unorganized PvP area that is WZs and RWZs. As for "Wah, I played wow and they nerfed my class cause I was OP in pvp and then I sucked at PvE!!111one" I don't think it was ever as bad as you're crying, and even if it was, I'm slightly offended that you don't think Bioware would see those patterns and learn from them beforehand. Blizzard added PvP power and resilience, so they could keep PvP and PvE balancing fairly separate. While it took them a while to do this, we have Expertise and this could alleviate a ton of balancing in pvp issues. CC balancing has always been pretty easily PvP focused, give people a really long CC to help with big PvE pulls and they're good to go. But the damage and utility abilities would be much easier to balance by tweaking what expertise did for that ability or class. example: Ability A does too much burst in PvP but in PvE the class is balanced around the ability, Ability A now only stacks 80% with expertise, a PvP only stat.

 

As far as the gear goes in PvP versus PvE, that is easily solvable too. To avoid people farming Arenas for PvE gear, you scale back the main stats a bunch and put a lot of expertise to make it do comprable dmg, and high dmg reduction in PvP and far weaker in PvE, this is a non-issue imo. Expertise could be buffed/nerfed on a whole, or class wide as need be.

 

Honestly, I love the pvp in this game, I feel like everyone is pretty resilient and has their niche. I love all the counter play and quick reaction abilities that exist in the game, but I feel like 95% is wasted in a big unorganized area where it matters very little, because chances are everyone spammed their abilites and maxed their resolve, or everyone is blowing up the ball carrier or w/e and your dmg was like peeing into the ocean.

 

I'm not saying I want Arenas tomorrow, I just want them to at least be talked about by the Devs, everything the OP said I agree with, it was incredibly competitive and the reason I kept playing so long after I got bored with the same ole grind. If implemented correctly, arenas would pump a ton of life into a PvP community for ToR.

[Brool]

Wow, so many misconceptions here, first off it is really hard to call a class "OP" in a big pvp area like Warzones, The big healing or damage or control Class A does, might seem really good but its coupled with a bunch of different classes too, and my favorite is that everyone has their own opinion on what is OP and UP. I feel like every class has a strong place in a 2vs2 and 3vs3 setting when they don't have 8 people backing them, and the goal is killing the other person/ccing someone long enough to kill their team mate and not a flag/node/points or w/e. Do I think there are certain line ups that would be really strong? Yeah for sure, but I promise there would be another strong line up that would counter the first. It's the way PvP works.

 

Arena would be more than good for PvP in ToR, all of these well made/clutch abilities to set up amazing opportunities are almost completely wasted in a big unorganized PvP area that is WZs and RWZs. As for "Wah, I played wow and they nerfed my class cause I was OP in pvp and then I sucked at PvE!!111one" I don't think it was ever as bad as you're crying, and even if it was, I'm slightly offended that you don't think Bioware would see those patterns and learn from them beforehand. Blizzard added PvP power and resilience, so they could keep PvP and PvE balancing fairly separate. While it took them a while to do this, we have Expertise and this could alleviate a ton of balancing in pvp issues. CC balancing has always been pretty easily PvP focused, give people a really long CC to help with big PvE pulls and they're good to go. But the damage and utility abilities would be much easier to balance by tweaking what expertise did for that ability or class. example: Ability A does too much burst in PvP but in PvE the class is balanced around the ability, Ability A now only stacks 80% with expertise, a PvP only stat.

 

As far as the gear goes in PvP versus PvE, that is easily solvable too. To avoid people farming Arenas for PvE gear, you scale back the main stats a bunch and put a lot of expertise to make it do comprable dmg, and high dmg reduction in PvP and far weaker in PvE, this is a non-issue imo. Expertise could be buffed/nerfed on a whole, or class wide as need be.

 

Honestly, I love the pvp in this game, I feel like everyone is pretty resilient and has their niche. I love all the counter play and quick reaction abilities that exist in the game, but I feel like 95% is wasted in a big unorganized area where it matters very little, because chances are everyone spammed their abilites and maxed their resolve, or everyone is blowing up the ball carrier or w/e and your dmg was like peeing into the ocean.

 

I'm not saying I want Arenas tomorrow, I just want them to at least be talked about by the Devs, everything the OP said I agree with, it was incredibly competitive and the reason I kept playing so long after I got bored with the same ole grind. If implemented correctly, arenas would pump a ton of life into a PvP community for ToR.

 

First the warzones are not big, secondly ranked warzones when not pugging are far from unorganized.

[MidichIorian]

First, I wouldnt necessarily call Arenas "more competitive" because a good deal of games have objective modes in their pro leagues.

 

That said, there are a couple of pros and cons. The first con, which possible can lead to a pro, is that it won't take long before you'll only see two classes in Arenas. The possible outcomes, the pros, is that BW can't ignore this and has to fix it and that we will see less of these classes in the normal warzones until they've been fixed, since they're all playing Arena instead.

 

The biggest con is that it will cut the current PvP population in half, with less people queue'ing for each mode. Tolerable with x-server queues, not so cool with single server queues.

Edited October 27, 2012 by MidichIorian

[beyondkilling]

i played wow for 6 years doing only arena i agree infact im not logging in until arena is added unsubbed alrdy just counting down now

[Brool]

i played wow for 6 years doing only arena i agree infact im not logging in until arena is added unsubbed alrdy just counting down now

 

Curious will you still post here when you're sub is up?

[Thexremstar]

In OP, I pointed out all the reasons why arena should be added to this game.

 

This post is my thoughts on HOW arena should be added, and how it should be different from WoW.

 

 

 

1. Arena SHOULD NOT reward players with better gear or advantages of any kind

 

WoW's battleground gear (honor point gear) was one tier below that of arena gear (conquest point gear)

 

WoW awarded people with high arena rating with better gear (tier 2 weapon at 2200+ rating etc).

 

DON'T DO THAT. People don't play arenas for gears. People play arenas for competition. Rewarding gears based on rating would not be good for competition and would cause casual players to become antagonized against arena.

 

I believe arenas should reward no better gear than warzones. In fact it should be made so that it does not award commendation or valor of any kind.

 

Warzones should be the platform where people grind their gear. Arena should be a place where people can put their character to the test, once its geared.

 

 

 

 

 

2. Arena dailies / weeklies

 

Since SWTOR arena doesn't reward arena points, adding it to the current daily system would be a good idea to encourage participation from large majority of population.

 

Having large majority of players participate will have two benefits:

 

*The top players on the ladder can gauge their performance in comparison to all other players.

 

*More data is generated to see the current state of balance in the game

 

 

For this purpose, arena daily/weekly should be something that should be quick and not time consuming - "Win one arena match a day / 5 arena match a week" should suffice.

 

So in the end, one daily for ilum, one for warzone, and one for arena. Sounds fair.

 

 

 

3. Arena SHOULD reward players with titles and cosmetic changes.

 

Self explanatory...

 

 

 

4. publicly available data

 

This coincides with point #3 of my original post.

 

WoW's arena armory only shows players, teams, and their ratings on the ladder.

 

But for SWTOR, I think it would be beneficial to show all of the following data publically.

 

*Rankings of 8 classes according to: percentage frequency in top200 (or whatever rank), DIVIDED overall percentage frequency of class representation on ladder.

 

 

 

*List of most popular team comps on top200 to study class synergies

 

*Win loss ratio % of every class vs class matchup (for 1v1 arena). There are 8 classes, and therefore 36 (8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1=36) different matchups, including mirrors. This ratio should be updated close to real time and be used as a "balance weight" in 1v1 ladder (explained below!)

 

*To avoid accounting for data from older balance patches, the data should either be wiped after every major content patch, or it should only show data less than ~1 week old.

 

 

 

 

 

LASTLY...

 

5. 1v1 arenas

 

The goal of 1v1 ladder would be to provide data to help shape 1v1 balance of the game.

 

I firmly believe given enough time and effort from playerbase/bioware, all 36 matchups in this game can be maintained close to 50:50 (at most 60:40) ratio as possible

 

1v1 ladder itself can potentially be 'extremely balanced' with weighted point gain/loss system, even if not all matchups are 50:50 balanced (explained below!)

 

 

 

1v1 in this game is not completely balanced, and some classes such as tank assassins and marauders are very powerful in 1v1. How powerful are they? We won't know until we have some numbers generated from 1v1 arenas.

 

However 1v1 in this game is nowhere near unbalanced as it is on WoW. "Hard counters" exist in WoW - i.e. cataclysm warlock has 0% chance to win against DK, no matter how skilled he is.

 

I've played and watched streams of many "dueling tournaments" in SWTOR, and haven't seen any such "hard counters". On my focus guardian I've faced and beaten every good tank shadows and sentinels on my server. My belief is that if played correctly without mistakes, all class in game have a fighting chance against any other class in the game. This is why I think 1v1 arena will work in SWTOR although it won't in WoW.

 

Adding 1v1 arena will be beneficial for promoting 1v1 balance, since we would have raw data and know specifically which matchups are the least balanced. Why should we balance 1v1? If you balance something in a smaller scale, it will most likely be balanced on larger scale. Same reason holds for why all new products of science / technology are experimented and produced on smaller scale before being produced on larger industrial scale.

 

Thus if something is balanced in 1v1 set up, there is a pretty good chance it will also balanced in 2v2, 3v3, and 8v8. The converse is not true.

 

 

 

Next question is how to balance the 1v1 LADDER (not necessarily the classes) as closely as possible? WEIGHT system!

 

 

 

A class is "rewarded" for winning a harder battle vs its counter class. Likewise, reward is less if a class ends up beating the class it counters. This approach would allow class distribution on the ladder to be roughly equal even if the matchups themselves aren't completely balanced.

 

This approach is only valid in 1v1, since there are only 8 classes / 36 matchups to balance. It would be much harder to implement this even in 2v2, since number of comps and matchups increases exponentially with more players.

 

 

When balancing actual classes, prioritize fixing most unbalanced matchups first, then see how changes affect other matchups

 

50:50 = perfect balance - mirror matchup

60:40 = pretty good balance - leave things as is (minimum target goal for all 36 matchups)

70:30 = unbalanced - there are issues to be looked into

>80:<20 = very unbalanced - needs to be fixed first

 

just a short note on the blizzcon winners this year(all the good players had already left wow)

 

I want arena to be introduced to SWTOR have been mentioning all year. Would love to have arena!

[jdubbbz]

Arena pvp would be awesome!

I have so many friends that would join if this feature was implemented.

[WIM-]

TOR could benefit hugely by implementing some e-sport friendliness. Arenas would be a huge step in the right direction.

[tekhiun]

No arenas please. Fix what we have now first. Then think about putting more experimental stuff. This game is not WoW with lightsabers. If you miss playing arenas go back to wow.

[TimeBandit_Debel]

although i liked the arena in wow I am inclined to disagree on this idea in swtor. I will make few points why:

 

1. The game isn't designed for arena to be included.

2. Stuns and mezzes are handled differently in swtor compared to wow.

3. It will have many imbalances because of how the game is designed. This will lead to unnecessary balance changes which again will lead to imbalance in objective based pvp and pve(pretty much the same thing happened in wow).

4. More elitists.

Edited February 5, 2013 by TimeBandit_Debel

[LordExozone]

No arena's. Huge Republic vs Empire warzones(alterac valley/island of blood style) yes!

[DCVAN]

although i liked the arena in wow I am inclined to disagree on this idea in swtor. I will make few points why:

 

1. The game isn't designed for arena to be included.

2. Stuns and mezzes are handled differently in swtor compared to wow.

3. It will have many imbalances because of how the game is designed. This will lead to unnecessary balance changes which again will lead to imbalance in objective based pvp and pve(pretty much the same thing happened in wow).

4. More elitists.

 

1. Neither was WoW.

 

2. I dont really know what you mean, unless you are talking about diminishing returns. I actually like the resolve system in swtor better. It was a pain to try and keep track of enemies and what kind of cc had been used on them recently.

 

3.The whole balance argument is kind of silly in my opinion. They can balance around whatever aspect of the game they choose. WoW only said arenas made it a nightmare to balance because wow had no competitive pvp before arenas, and it was primarily a pve game. It made it hard to balance pvp with pve. In swtor, we already have competitive pvp that they are balancing with pve.

 

4. Can't argue with that. Unfortunately that comes with the competitive nature.

 

This is just my opinion. I really love small scale, competitive pvp. Its fast paced and easy to organize a team. I honestly think this game engine is more suited for arenas than large scale pvp, but I understand that a lot of people like large scale. Large scale has that Star Wars feel to it.