Why I think PvP is not fun anymore...

[CommanderKeeva]

I've been wanting to start a thread like this for some time but I was actually holding out hope for pvp until today. However, after 5 hours of the virtual torture of PvP, I decided that I had had my fill and wanted to shout out my concerns to whomever will listen in the hope that something will be done to improve the current state of PvP.

 

I fully realize that these issues were already outlined in other great threads. However, I have not managed to find one that had a comprehensive list of all the current problems. Hence I'm making one, hoping that this will clarify what's wrong to whomever will read this.

 

1. PvP currently has no matchmaking system beyond 10-49 and 50

 

This is probably the single greatest problem I perceive at the moment. If I had to choose one single factor that killed all the fun in PvP for me, then it would be this.

 

I firmly believe that in the current state of PvP warzones are exteremely lopsided. I have talked to dozens of people about this issue and they all confirmed it: most of the time one side has absolutely 0 chance to win a match. I'm all for competition, I love competition and close matches but I believe that when the final result of the match is decided even before it begins, then we have a problem. I know a lot of people who were discouraged by this to the point that they stopped playing pvp altogether.

 

This means that people in vastly different gear/skill/valor level are pitted against each other without the slightest restriction on anything. Would you consider it fair if you let the Olympic champion swimming team compete against a high school sportsteam? Would you consider it fair if you let someone in a racecar compete against someone riding a bicycle?

 

This phenomenon has many sub issues and I have deliberately written only general analogies. I will attempt to examine the sub-problems in detail below.

 

2. The current PvP queue does not differentiate between solo and grouped players

 

Otherwise known as Premades roflstomping PuGs, which is already the hot topic of many threads. Here we need to consider two very much valid points of view. One is that an MMO game should not penalize players who choose to engage in activities with friends. The second is that players who queue solo should not be subjected to a vastly superior enemy team that has access to many in-game and out-of-game advantages a solo player cannot enjoy. I can only say to this that PvP is Player versus Player and not Group versus Group or Solo versus Solo. A solution should be reached where both arguments are taken into consideration.

 

Please know that shouting "Get friends, noob." or "L2P, scrub" does not help solve the situation. From what I have seen fresh 50s (people new to the game) solo queue most of the time at least until they get to know people in warzones. Then there can be other reasons why someone cannot get a group at a certain time (location, work etc.).

Also please note that most of the people who vocalize opinions like "get friends to pvp with" forget that it is exceedingly difficult to get accepted into PvP guilds because already professional players rarely want to "waste time" teaching new players that might not even pay off in the long run. Most PvP guilds have some kind of gear or valor requirement and those are often out of reach for fresh 50 players. If they do try to reach a certain valor rank or gear level alone, they might get discouraged by the constant string of losses they need to endure and decide that PvP is just not worth it. I personally know at least 2 dozen people who were in this exact same situation and left PvP altogether.

 

A possible solution would be what I have already suggested in issue No. 1: pair premades with pugs. 2/2/4 or 3/3/2 or 4/4 would provide for balanced teams. I believe I can safely say that both PuGs and Premades would not have an issue if team balancing increased queue times somewhat. I sure wouldn't complain if I had to wait for a match I can actually win.

 

EDIT: Someone suggested using a group finder-like queue with preset roles, which I think would be great in principle but I don't think servers have enough healers for each and every team.

 

3. Gear becomes one of the most (if not THE most important) determining factor

 

Another phenomenon that discouraged more people from PvP than I can count. I have heard this hundreds of times: "I would like to PvP, I believe I could be kinda good at it but sadly I don't have the time to grind two separate sets of gear. I won't play, when I know for a fact that I will only be cannon fodder for War Heroes."

 

Gear is probably the most tangible factor that can and will turn a new lvl50 away from PvP. It takes an incredible time to be competitive and successful, even if you don't want to run in rated groups. And by that I mean not die to anyone you happen to come across in a warzone. Almost everyone agrees, the first few days, weeks, months (depending on how much you play) will be a nightmare because Recruit simply does not cut it. Any Recruit will inevitably lose to any augmented Battlemaster and War Hero. The game is putting new people in a situation they cannot possibly hope to win. In a situation where no amount of skill, coordination and teamwork will negate the fact that you have 14-15k HP. Even if the enemy DPS only hits for 4-5k (and in case of Recruit vs WH be prepared to take 6-7k hits), the Recruit simply dies too fast to be able to do anything meaningful. This is an incredibly frustrating experience and kills all the fun in PvP. I think we can agree on that, too.

 

Here is the question many new players ask. "Do I need to suffer being someone's doormat until at some point, in the distant future, I will be able to do the same to other new players?" Do you enjoy playing FPS games with /godemode enabled? Because when you can kill anyone in less than 5 general cooldowns, then it's nothing short of godlike (and I have seen a Marauder today literally 2-shoot a poor Sage healer in Recruit gear.) Died in 2(!!!) general cooldowns that is, in about 3 seconds.

 

This experience does not and will not entice new people to play PvP on a regular basis. If with the Expertise system Bioware actually wanted to prevent hardcore PvE guilds dominating PvP, then they vastly overshot their goal to the point, where the "Expertise trauma" prevents new people from become active PvP'ers.

 

Possible solution: Level the playing field by removing Expertise or giving out armor with the same stats to everyone. Rewards could be and should be only cosmetic, that is, should not affect warzone performance. (Pets, Mounts, Titles, Item Shells. etc.) As someone cleverly put it: "When I play solo, I don't want my enemies to have any advantage beyond coordination/skill/vent and when I premade I don't need any advantage beyond coordination/skill/vent".

 

EDIT: Never mind the free armor to everyone, I take that back. A better system would be to have an expertise-less world where you can get the same gear via both aspects of the game. Interchangeable armor could mean that you switch between both aspects quickly and easily and there would not be a significant entry barrier once you become good at one aspect. Of course the stats and PvE sets progress more quickly than the stats on PvP sets, so something should be done to even that out.

 

EDIT: To some degree, PvP armor is already competitive in high-end PvE. War Hero (while definitely not best-in-slot) still lets you jump straight into Hard Mode Denova and skip previous tiers of PvE gear (some people in our guild who PvP'd a lot and got War Hero armor, actually used that until they got Campaign/Black Hole and we still beat the enrage timers without a problem.) The inverse is not true.

 

EDIT: Also I still don't get who the guy in charge of itemization is and why he is still in charge. My seven year old brother had better ideas on how to properly itemize new gear. Why can't we buy mods and enhancements directly? You know as well as we do that we are not going to use an armoring that has +55 Endurance and +51 Main Stat or an Enhancement that comes with a ridiculous amount of Accuracy and Endurance?

 

It's not rocket surgery to realize that, when DPS armor has the same amount or even less (like some Guardian/Jugg DPS items !) amount of main stat than the set for tanks, there is a problem.

 

4. Current Resolve system means that cc breakers are vastly inadequate for the amount of cc players are subjected to

 

Stun Wars: The CCld Republic?

 

Most classes have access to a vast array stuns, cc, knockbacks, roots, mezz, slow, sleep, whatever they are called, they are impeding your character from performing its role. And impeding often they do for sometimes (especially in Huttball against coordinated premades) PvP means not fighting but watching people fight around you. Resolve before 1.4 filled up so slowly or diminished so quickly that already many threads popped up that Resolve needed a major overhaul. And that they did in their usual style.

 

I never actually thought that I would ever want the 1.3 Resolve situation back. But I do now. After a few ranked games, I came to the conclusion that: when properly coordinated, cc abilities can reliably knock people out for 8 seconds every 10 seconds or so. In one Huttball match, I was very literally cc'd for half of the match. Stunned, killed, respawned, watched Resolve tick down to nothing, gate opened, stunned, killed.....

 

Some classes and specs have access to 6,7 or 8 impeding abilities! How can one lousy CC breaker available every 1 or 2 minutes keep up with that? Stunned, used cc breaker, stunned, stunned, stunned, stunned.....you get the picture. It is a very frustrating and bewildering experience when a well coordinated enemy team simply prevents you from playing.

 

Solution: Seen many suggestions, chief among them, decrease the cooldown time on the cc breaker ability or remove some CC skills entirely. CC should be a tactical ability that you need to carefully consider when to use. Not CC every single player you come across.

 

5. Class Imbalance

 

Yep, it's one of those warzone matches, where you look at the scoreboard and realize that you played against 6 Rage Spec Warriors or 6 Pyro Powertechs again. Every single DPS on the enemy team used the same class. Why, you wonder? Because Bioware makes a habit of making already powerful classes super powerful. By that I mean performance not proportionate to the skill and effort involved.

 

I wipe away the tears from my eyes again when at the start of a Voidstar match 5 or 6 Rage-spec Warriors jump my team defending the door. 5-6-7k crits flying all around and suddenly "Alert...." I look at the timer....15 seconds have elapsed since the start of the match and 5 of my teammates are already in the spawning area along with me.

 

Or need I remind you of the super complex Assault Vanguard/Pyro PT rotation since 1.4? Mmm, those yummy Rail Shots.

 

It boggles my mind why Bioware would allow certain classes outshine every other. When was the last time you saw an Arsenal Merc in a warzone or a Vengeance Juggernaut or a Tactics Vanguard? Are they even still around?

 

Considering how ridiculously underpowered Commandos and Mercenaries are at the moment, I cannot comprehend why Bioware would make other classes unstoppable before bringing up the underperforming ones to speed. FOTM becomes a problem when it makes other classes simply not viable for PvP.

 

Solution: Players have recommended reasonable changes to each based on careful parsing and thorough calculations. Personally, I think they have far better ideas of what should be done than the devs. Of course, you'd have to listen to them then....

 

6. Ranked Warzones are not providing enough incentive for top players to play them

 

A.k.a. not popping. Why would they? They don't give titles, they don't give pets, they don't give speeders you can ride around in and brag about on the fleet. Even the armor you get is only a shiny recoloration of the regular armor. Rewards are extremely lackluster. Without cross server queues there are only a handful of teams anyway on each server that can play against each other. And that gets boring fast. Better to stomp pugs in min/maxed War Hero with your three like-minded basement dwellers in regular warzones and gear alts with the comms you get. At least it saves you from having to put Recruit on again, no? Well, the fresh 50s definitely disagree...

 

Solution:Fix your crappy tech, enable XServer queuing and give rewards worth pursuing for playing ranked!

 

7. World PvP is non-existent

 

World PvP is a lot fun. Or would be if it wasn't 30 Imps vs. 5 Pubs every time. And if we had more than 5 FPS per second when we have more than 20 people in one location. A massive faction imbalance killed World PvP on our server. Ilum was no fun when the enemy faction had 2 full ops groups (upwards of 48 people) against our meager 15. Lost interest pretty quickly. And the zergfest only favored ranged classes anyway. So much lightning.....

 

Solution: Not sure if anything can be done about world PvP now. Should have thought before about this. Should have used your own reliable game engine and balance the factions somehow. Does anyone wonder where the 200 million dollars went?

 

8. Lack of communication from the developers

 

And on top of everything, you, Mr. Devs, flat out ignore us. Despite all claims that you've been listening to player feedback, clearly you are not! You have systematically ignored pretty much all feedback on the PTS and let game breaking bugs and issues go live like the post 1.4 Resolve. You are asking for our opinion that you ignore that time and time again.

 

You change important aspects of the game without notifying us first. You don't need our warnings. You go into crisis after crisis and still haven't learned from any of them. People have recommended astoundingly precise and effective solutions to almost all problems in this game! Why are you not considering them? Or at least why are you not telling us whether or not you're considering them?

 

All we get is: "Soon." "Can't go into details." "Planning but no ETA." and to be frank, most of us are fed up with the lack of response on major issues (read up.) Why keep a whole forum team if they don't bother to acknowledge or respond to threads with over 10k views?

 

I'm not sure if it's a case of being ignorant or incompetent.

 

 

Anyways, I'm too tired now, been typing this for a while. Finish up tomorrow. Sorry I'm too tired to check for gramatical errors. Will clean it up tomorrow.

Edited November 6, 2012 by CommanderKeeva

[Lord_Karsk]

Quote Spock:

You speak the truth.

[dejavy]

Oh, man... BW never showed their interest in OUR opinions. I wait for my commando changes since 1.2 ending. The only thing i see is that my mando is getting only worse. So, i gave up playing him. I'm gunslinger now but daaamn i miss my commando!!! Still i'm hopeless about balance. Glowstickers rule the game, what can i say... pffff...

[roiskade]

A very good post, a very good post indeed

 

Sums up nicely the problems we have at the moment and OP even pointed out possible solutions to them - you don't see that every day! But sadly I fear it all falls to deaf ears, just like OP pointed out. What I mean is, these issues shouldn't be big news to anyone, they've been around for a while, yet all we've had so far is the usual silent-treatment from BW - minus a post or two from AllisonBerryman .

I get a feeling like we PvPers are 2nd class players to the devs. When the game launched they were surprised how popular PvP was - well they got that one fixed alright.

 

I hate to be all gloomy and stuff about the game, because I really, really, really want to see this game succeed, but with the current way they've been handling their customers and the decisions they've been making (at least about PvP that is), I just don't see that's possible. Things must change about how they communicate with us, starting from the fact that they, well, start communicating with us!

 

We've got the problems listed along with possible solutions to them, now just wait for the miracle of them paying attention to them

[Darth-Rammstein]

That was a very well constructed post OP. That covered most of the problems with pvp which also contribute to the higher queues. People will get discouraged because of one or more of the points you listed and will quit queuing altogether. It also doesn't help with some of the "elitist jerks" that only talk to their team not to coordinate or call out incs but to trash talk their own team and whine that everyone are "baddies" except for them...funny how it's always everyone else BUT them. Edited November 6, 2012 by Darth-Rammstein

[Antipodes]

Nice post. I don't agree with all of your points, but what you've written is way better than this garbage thread

 

 

1. PvP currently has no matchmaking system beyond 10-49 and 50

 

The population is not high enough to support brackets. The general idea is good, and would have helped the longevity of the game if there were brackets AND cross-server queuing at launch.

 

 

2. The current PvP queue does not differentiate between solo and grouped players

 

I disagree with this. MMOs are a social game and there should be some advantage of queuing as a group. Keep in mind that the max pre-made group is 4 people. There is always a chance that you'll be paired with a pre-made as a pugger, and a chance the a pre-made group gets paired with bad puggers. I've played plenty of games where fighting a pre-made group was no harder than fighting a pug.

 

3. Gear becomes one of the most (if not THE most important) determining factor

 

This comment seems to have a PvE bias (you mention people can't bother with having two gear sets).

 

As someone who only PvPs, I actually think expertise should be removed all-together, as long as the best gear can be obtained through PvE and PvP.

 

 

4. Current Resolve system means that cc breakers are vastly inadequate for the amount of cc players are subjected to

 

BW had many good changes with 1.4, but then squandered it with the resolve changes, bubble stuns, and focus/rage buffs. I'd like to see all of these things reverted to pre-1.4 and buff sages in a different manner.

 

 

5. Class Imbalance

 

Class balance is never perfect, but people make it out to be much worse than it is. I play four classes in RWZs and I feel 7/8 classes have at least one spec that is very competitive (sorry Mercs).

 

Sentinel, Vanguard, Scoundrel healer, Guardian tank, and Shadow tank are all a bit strong currently, to the point of them being required. Still, that's 5/8 classes, and having a Sage DPS/healer and/or Gunslinger rounds out the team very nicely.

 

 

6. Ranked Warzones are not providing enough incentive for top players to play them

 

Yup, I agree. To really compete in RWZs, you need close to full WH gear. Then where is the incentive to keep playing if your team starts losing? The rewards simply aren't attractive enough. My server, the Bastion, had tons of PvP guilds playing the first week of RWZs. It seemed as if 80% of the guilds quit within a week or two when they realized they couldn't compete

 

 

6. World PvP is non-existent

 

Yep, it sucks. As stupid as it is to have two warring factions sharing neutral towns and quests in WoW, at least it raised the tension by putting opposite factions in the same general vicinity. The questing areas in SWTOR are too large and segregated. Population balance needs to be managed better too.

 

 

7. Lack of communication from the developers

 

I'm kinda split on this one. On one hand, I think it's good to have a healthy discussion from the developers on their goals with PvP. On the other hand, it also promotes people to whine for attention. This forum has been dead wrong about balance changes in the past (see complains about Mercs/Sorcs/Ops a month into release) and there's nothing that will make people more mad if the developers tell them that they are wrong, regardless if it is the right course of action.

Edited November 6, 2012 by Antipodes

[Thexremstar]

That was a very well constructed post OP. That covered most of the problems with pvp which also contribute to the higher queues. People will get discouraged because of one or more of the points you listed and will quit queuing altogether. It also doesn't help with some of the "elitist jerks" that only talk to their team not to coordinate or call out incs but to trash talk their own team and whine that everyone are "baddies" except for them...funny how it's always everyone else BUT them.

 

there is no "I" in Team and a team games needs a team effort, takes 1 or 2 non team players tomake a wz go bad for the entire team?

[ACTroyan]

I agree with most of these points. I believe your gear cure could use a little shaping though. we should all get access to the same "mod/enhancement pool" to allow for experimentation/personalization. I dont think it ahould be given away freely though maybe like a 2week effort to avg gamers (like 150wz comms per mod/enhancement ~450 total for each piece of armor)therwise it isnt a reward for working hard. leave recruit freebees to start off. reward various levels of aesthetic custom armor speeders pets for rank/extra comms. i think the gearing of a free steam game called global agenda is a good example the gear needed to be earned/bought but didnt take long. the top pvp guilds had varying levels of holo armor (holo projections from the armor giving it cool looks that stood out against avg players)

[CommanderKeeva]

3. Gear becomes one of the most (if not THE most important) determining factor

 

This comment seems to have a PvE bias (you mention people can't bother with having two gear sets).

 

As someone who only PvPs, I actually think expertise should be removed all-together, as long as the best gear can be obtained through PvE and PvP.

 

Yes, I was actually thinking about this but I was too tired to properly get the idea across. Blizzard stated a while back that if they could change one thing about their game, it would be the separation of PvE and PvP gear. SWTOR has too small a population to have artificial barriers like expertise. It would be very nice to get only new mods/enhancements/armorings etc which each new patch and to make the exact same mods accessible via both PvE and PvP. And both aspects could have unique looking armor but one that does not affect player performance.

 

Then I could get major pieces in Operations and min/max the various mods through PvP. That would be too good to be true. I'm really glad that a lot people from both aspects of the game agree that expertise needlessly creates division between both aspects of the game and reduced the amount of potential players who can engange in each.

Edited November 6, 2012 by CommanderKeeva

[CommanderKeeva]

I agree with most of these points. I believe your gear cure could use a little shaping though. we should all get access to the same "mod/enhancement pool" to allow for experimentation/personalization. I dont think it ahould be given away freely though maybe like a 2week effort to avg gamers (like 150wz comms per mod/enhancement ~450 total for each piece of armor)therwise it isnt a reward for working hard. leave recruit freebees to start off. reward various levels of aesthetic custom armor speeders pets for rank/extra comms. i think the gearing of a free steam game called global agenda is a good example the gear needed to be earned/bought but didnt take long. the top pvp guilds had varying levels of holo armor (holo projections from the armor giving it cool looks that stood out against avg players)

 

Yeah sorry I did not mean to imply that effort should not be rewarded. I totally agree with what you said, in my ideal PvP world, players would be able to purchase mods directly with comms instead of getting a piece of armor that has an enhancement and an armoring you are never going to use.

[xxIncubixx]

premades fight other premades when its possible if not it goes against pugs, what u want anyway ? premades to stand there for hours without any pop?

[LenrocNewDawn]

Very good post!

I agreed with all your points but would like to add that the 4th one regarding CC derives from your 1-3 points, meaning unbalanced matches where you get the short stick you'll fight outnumbered almost every time thus u get CCed into oblivion. Sadly it's a slippery slope.

Also on the gear disparity I would like to add an idea. Standardize all War Zone gear stats wise (not aspect), let's call it military gear, and give only e-peen awards (possibility to personalize it ?!), but in the same time put gear rewards in Open World PvP so people that enjoy min-maxing have their slice of cake too. Wanna join the army? "OK Sir, this is your gear." Wanna do a mercenary job? Bring your own gear.

 

Grats again for a good and thoughtful post o7.

 

Edited : That was what I used to think too xxIncubixx. But I honestly don't think that is the case. Or the system is so crude that it will pit a 4 man pre against a 2 man pre considering them as equal .

Edited November 6, 2012 by LenrocNewDawn

[Scathe]

A very good post, a very good post indeed

 

Sums up nicely the problems we have at the moment and OP even pointed out possible solutions to them - you don't see that every day! But sadly I fear it all falls to deaf ears, just like OP pointed out. What I mean is, these issues shouldn't be big news to anyone, they've been around for a while, yet all we've had so far is the usual silent-treatment from BW - minus a post or two from AllisonBerryman .

I get a feeling like we PvPers are 2nd class players to the devs. When the game launched they were surprised how popular PvP was - well they got that one fixed alright.

 

I hate to be all gloomy and stuff about the game, because I really, really, really want to see this game succeed, but with the current way they've been handling their customers and the decisions they've been making (at least about PvP that is), I just don't see that's possible. Things must change about how they communicate with us, starting from the fact that they, well, start communicating with us!

 

We've got the problems listed along with possible solutions to them, now just wait for the miracle of them paying attention to them

 

It was this one line in your post that struck out at me. I hate to say it, especially on the PvP board since I do enjoy an occasional WZ or two every now and then, but yes ... PvPers are second class in this game.

 

NOW WAIT A SECOND AND HEAR ME OUT! Let's not get the flame wars going yet.

 

SWTOR was billed as a Story centric MMO, a rather unique approach to the MMO setting in the way they introduced classes and PvE. I honestly believe that the Devs didn't take into account how popular PvP was going to be, or how strong the PvP community was going to be simply because they didn't have enough foresight to see that people would go "Yeah, story is great, but I like to beat people to death with my Lightsaber." It seems like the Devs were honestly sitting back going "Our class stories and quest stories are awesome! They'll make even the PvP crowd focus on something else." Again, they didn't have a lot of foresight, so when the massive influx of PvPers came rolling in, the BW Devs were shocked because suddenly it wasn't "Wow awesome PvE story keeps me from focusing on PvP", it was "I'm a bored 50 and there's no story anymore. PvP? PvP."

 

This later translated to people with alts and those not wanting to go through the main class story (Which boggles my mind, since the stories are pretty damn well done) and instead wanted to just go straight to beating people to death with Lightsabers or bashing people in the face with heavy cannons or whatever your preferred method of PvP slaughter is. Keep in mind that this game doesn't seem to be balanced around any sort of PvP system, especially with Ilum being the mess it is. It feels like they were trying, and not fully succeeding, in making it a story based PvE game with a fun "PvP when you can because it's there" secondary.

 

And with that said, I give you all permission to flame me. Just know, I couldn't resist making my post.

[Drudenfusz]

premades fight other premades when its possible if not it goes against pugs, what u want anyway ? premades to stand there for hours without any pop?

Cross server warzones could help to ensure that teams play only against other teams and not against PUGs.

[Shrilokka]

I'm going to be honest here. On the whole gear situation... i complained a lot about it to. "REMOVE EXPERTISE!" I said. Meanwhile as I worked through the tears I climbed up to 1300 expertise and now I am on par with if not better geared than most of the people I PVP with, and I can honestly say I'd probably be a little pissy if they removed expertise now after all the suffering I did. You just need to fight your way to that better gear, get over that initial barrier of entry into PVP and then it's a blast.

[Hett]

You have two no. 6 on your list pal :>

 

1. PvP currently has no matchmaking system beyond 10-49 and 50

2. The current PvP queue does not differentiate between solo and grouped players

3. Gear becomes one of the most (if not THE most important) determining factor

True. Some dev work on this can surely add fun to the system, dragging also people in the system itself, people that don't play pvp as they get constantly facerolled. I guess it would be "easy" to use the expertise rating to build equally powerful teams (up to players' skill to win or lose the game, then). Obviously some kind of lock mechanism is needed for one's gear on wz queing (to prevent cheaters queing naked and then wear their EWH once inside the wz). A Group Finder-like system would also be great to make teams' composition balanced (I often find myself in only-tanks groups, invincibile in huttball, useless in the others).

 

4. Current Resolve system means that cc breakers are vastly inadequate for the amount of cc players are subjected to

 

This is really a pain. After the resolve revamp of late the system's even less functional.

 

5. Class Imbalance

 

This can be addressed somewhat with the proposed solutions of issues no. 1,2,3. I also think this to be far less important atm.

 

6. Ranked Warzones are not providing enough incentive for top players to play them

 

Well, once you give rwz comms to anyone doing just normal wz it's pretty straightforward people will just do that. rwz comms should be rwz only, that's it.

 

As a matter of fact the problem is people is now WH geared, so you cannot change this, unless you create a new pvp-commendation tier needed to buy a new and better pvp set, and obtainable only with rwz. 4-men queuing for rwz would be useful too, as well as Xserver queuing.

 

6. World PvP is non-existent

 

Yeah. I remember that keynote when Dr. Greg and Dr. Ray announced SW:TOR. They told us "full featured MMO with dungeons, raids and RvR". Still waitin for the RvR to happen. Guess it's already too late.

 

7. Lack of communication from the developers

 

/agree

[Soull]

if only they didn't separate pvp and pve gear. then maybe i could go into one of the new operations with my war hero gear, instead of being laughed at that i only have columni. who's running HM/NiM EV/KP these days? none that i can see.

 

ya sure, you can conceivably grind pvp gear all day long to get the best gear and not need to raid, or make raiding easier. thing is, if you're doing that, you're not raiding. so you're not really going to be tilting the world firsts in your favor. get rid of expertise. make wh/campaign gear stats equal. and for heaven's sakes, make tanking stats worthwhile in pvp.

 

they already got rid of the crapshoot that was the pvp bags that could work in someone's favor, (my first 3 champion bags had the MH, OH and chest. i was full BM by valor 63) that you actually have to grind a bit to get gear. it might be slower getting all your BiS gear through raiding, but maybe, just maybe it'd give raiders something to log on for than just raid night.

Edited November 6, 2012 by Soull

[johnyangelo]

Most of those points cannot be solved without cross-server warzoning.

[Rassuro]

Great post, well written and you make a lot of good points.

 

The only thing I disagree with is number 3, regarding gear.

 

Yeah, getting rid of expertise would make it so that people who have top tier PVE gear would be able to go into PVP without any gear disadvantage, but this could even end up making things even worse for people who do not play enough to get top tier gear in the first place. At the moment the only option those players have, if they don't want to play with a permanent gear disadvantage, is to stick to 10-49.

 

So what you're doing then is you are inviting in people who aren't really that interested in PVP in the first place, while at the same time further pushing away players who are very interested but do not have the time to play enough to keep themselves up-to-date with top tier gear.

[CommanderKeeva]

You have two no. 6 on your list pal :>

 

Yeah I was a bit tired yesterday, sorry. Corrected now. Though truth be told I never really liked math...

[CommanderKeeva]

I'm going to be honest here. On the whole gear situation... i complained a lot about it to. "REMOVE EXPERTISE!" I said. Meanwhile as I worked through the tears I climbed up to 1300 expertise and now I am on par with if not better geared than most of the people I PVP with, and I can honestly say I'd probably be a little pissy if they removed expertise now after all the suffering I did. You just need to fight your way to that better gear, get over that initial barrier of entry into PVP and then it's a blast.

 

Yes but my question is.....does it really have to be suffering at first? Is there no way to make pvp experience somewhat less traumatic to newcomers? F2P could bring new players to the table but I'm beginning to wonder what they will think of PvP when they see what they have to endure. I would hate losing another potential player base.

[Karkais]

3. Gear becomes one of the most (if not THE most important) determining factor

 

Welcome to MMO PVP

 

pvp is not very fun when people don't know what they are doing.

 

ps. Ive been a proponent of removing expertise since day one.

Edited November 6, 2012 by Karkais

[Kalfear]

Yeah OP, Ive been PVPing less and less myself as its just not enjoyable many days.

 

Ive started to spend more time on the PVE aspect of the game and checking out Elder Scrolls Online articles as they will have DAoC style RVR (3 factions) and will NOT have pvp gear progression of any type.

 

Im still PVPing abit but Ive eliminated Huttaball completely (I just drop when it comes up....which seems like 50% of the queues for me).

 

At most I do my dailies and then stop for PVP

 

Its just gotten boring to be honest.

 

Ill do it occationally now but mostly im done till EA starts addressing the many glareing issues (my top 3 are pre mades vrs pugs, gear progression imbalance, and the latest craze of hacking thats getting more and more blatant and obvious...despite the suspect calls saying otherwise on all 3 topics).

 

As for Expertise. I think a guildie had it right! Remove the bonus damage and healing from expertise but keep the damage reduction as a bonus for WZ gear and then add a 50% drop in all stats and armor outside of wargrounds so PVP gear can not be used to replace pve gear.

 

You cant wear PVE gear into a warzone currently with out taking a huge hit in damage, healing, damage reduction

yet you can wear battlemaster into hardmode flashpoints and ops with no negative hit.

 

Doesnt make any sense at all.Either allow both styles with no negatives or keep them completely seperate from each other.

 

As for open world PVP, Illum should be TORs version of DAoC complete with capturable (and defendable) outposts and bases complete with relic bases to store factional relics.

 

But that boat seems to have sailed already

[yOuNgEaRtH]

Why not join a pvp guild and group with good players? At least that will make it more interesting. I have alot more fun when I play with people I know. For instance I was in a three man group one novare coast match and we assaulted mid the entire match while our team held east and west. We never capped mid but we stayed alive the entire wz just trolling the other team. You cant have that kind of fun queing solo you may as well expect to have a hard time winning most matches.

[Technohic]

I agree with the OP for the most part. At least as far as the problems go.

 

Telling people to play differently or to accept things as are is the answer I anticipate for most of the OP; but that does not lend to a thriving community. To do that, the matchmaking idea is probably the most important. iIronically, you need a lot of players for that to work well, while it would also be what would keep players queuing