Why I think PvP is not fun anymore...

[Crawelc]

Kalfear where did you read there wouldnt be gear progression in ESO? All I read was that people would be made max level upon entering the pvp area, and that gear would upgrade as you use it. I never saw anything about gear level being normalized, just character level.

[JackNader]

Mmmm I started a thread way back in 1.1 to get expertise removed from the game but people kept insisting it needed to be this way. The most common point raised at the time was that it was there to prevent large guilds from farming the best gear then face rolling everyone else in warzones. This always made me chuckle as we were all getting facerolled by battlemasters anyway whilst we were trying to gind our way out of centurian.

 

Quite frankly, if the expertise stat does "need" to be in the game (I don't see it myself) I fail to understand why recruit and battlemaster have less expertise than warhero. Shouldn't all PVP gear have the exact same expertise and only vary in stats?

[Dnepr]

The issue with the lopsided teams I have seen lately have not necessarily been gear related, but class. Such as a team with 2 healers Vs. team with none.

 

That being said, I did have a surprisingly good game of Huttball yesterday on a team I never thought could win. We did not have a single force user on our team. All Bounty Hunters and Agents. I even commented on it at the start of the match thinking "oh great, another lopsided match". We won 1-0. I have to give that very determined team props.

[Eillack]

Nice post OP!

 

Subscribed to this thread.

[CommanderKeeva]

Thanks everyone for all the great ideas and suggestions. I will try to incorporate them into my post.

[keekee]

OP, I agree with most of your points.

 

My biggest pet peeve is the resolve system. I have stun locked and been stun locked to death. The simple solution is add a immunity timer of 6-8 seconds on the cc breaker ability. I should not have to wait until my resolve bar is close to full before using my cc breaker. I should not be cc'd immediately after using my cc breaker. I don't understand why this has not been implemented by now. It has been years since I have played World of Warcraft but they had this in place. Rift has this in place.

 

Also last time I checked, Leg shot which immobilizes a character was not even considered cc.

 

Lastly, Cross server PVE and PVP should have been implemented at launch or a month or two after. Many people were against this option being added but it should have been added anyway. The ability to get pve and pvp queue pops in seconds is a win in my opinion.

Edited November 6, 2012 by keekee

[MusicRider]

Other than class imbalance the rest of the arguments fall under either longer queues or l2p. Gear is NOT the most important factor but skill and team play. Embrace the opportunity that you cannot win against a "good" wh geared player on a 1v1 with your recruit and learn to defend and coordinate with your team. You will be surprised how many wh geared players are still noobs. PS: All of these have been posted a trillion times.

[SlimsPicken]

This thread was well written and points out many of the flaws in the current system.

 

That being said, INB4 apologists, fanbois, and general bundles of sticks try and refute everything you have written and defend a broken first come, first serve system where they are top dog, and dont want to have to compete to win.

[UncelSam]

I think healers or no healers are bigger issue than good/bad equipment.

[Solarenergy]

You make some very good points. But I just disagree with one tiny point. You can still be an asset to your team in Recruit gear if you are a healer. You can still do some decent healing and keep your teammates alive if you hide as much as possible from the enemy team so you don't get smashed to death in two blows. I was actually surprised how well I did in Recruit gear with my healer, a totally different experience than I'd had with my sniper and marauder when they were fresh level 50s. Edited November 6, 2012 by Solarenergy

[UncelSam]

Agree , healers are more important than gear.

[Jarfunkz]

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.

 

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.

 

tl;dr But I can tell you don't pvp often and when you do, you find a way for your team to lose.

[Lejune]

/signed

[Lejune]

tl;dr But I can tell you don't pvp often and when you do, you find a way for your team to lose.

 

*** is this....? Come on kid....really? Is that it? Lol

[CommanderKeeva]

Other than class imbalance the rest of the arguments fall under either longer queues or l2p. Gear is NOT the most important factor but skill and team play. Embrace the opportunity that you cannot win against a "good" wh geared player on a 1v1 with your recruit and learn to defend and coordinate with your team. You will be surprised how many wh geared players are still noobs. PS: All of these have been posted a trillion times.

 

I know I didn't write anything groundbreaking and that there were no great revelations and catharses in my post but until the devs actually listen to us and do something, I feel compelled to notify them however I can. Even if it's been done to death already.

 

I did not say that gear was the most important factor, I said it was one of the major factors that came into consideration. Personally, I came to accept the fact that early pvp is a pain but I fear that by creating artifical barriers and unevenly balanced teams, the new F2P players who come into a few warzones to see what they are like and if it's their style won't see anything but a giant stun and zergfest, where they die to better geared players and invariably lose the match. I really cannot see how pvp in its current form will be a fun and welcoming environment for them.

[CommanderKeeva]

tl;dr But I can tell you don't pvp often and when you do, you find a way for your team to lose.

 

Believe me 95% of the PuGs I come across are very professional in how to lose the match on their own and don't need any extra help in that regard.

[Lejune]

I know I didn't write anything groundbreaking and that there were no great revelations and catharses in my post but until the devs actually listen to us and do something, I feel compelled to notify them however I can. Even if it's been done to death already.

 

I did not say that gear was the most important factor, I said it was one of the major factors that came into consideration. Personally, I came to accept the fact that early pvp is a pain but I fear that by creating artifical barriers and unevenly balanced teams, the new F2P players who come into a few warzones to see what they are like and if it's their style won't see anything but a giant stun and zergfest, where they die to better geared players and invariably lose the match. I really cannot see how pvp in its current form will be a fun and welcoming environment for them.

 

The F2P players will definitely cry over it, but atm I'm more worry about the returning players. All my friends have left and when I ask when will they return.... First thing they ask is did they fix the pvp.... I want to lie and tell them that they added a resolve system and it stopped the chain stuns lol but I don't even bring it up. But F2P will bring back old players and the pvp will be 2x as bad for them with an even larger gear gap. /uninstalled again I know they won't give a 3rd chance.

[Smashbrother]

I enjoy the gear grind. It gives me something to work towards. If there was no gear grind, I'd probably not pvp that much, get bored sooner, and eventually stop playing all together. That is why I'm against giving everyone a standard set of gear. I'm also against removing expertise to make one set of gear because it's impossible to balance the rate at which you get your gear between pvp and pve. And your wrong about pve gear being useless in pvp. A full campaign/black hole geared player will do better than recruit geared players.

 

Having said that, I also enjoy rolling alts, and plan on rolling one of each AC eventually to see their stories. I don't want to grind pvp gear on every single one of them. I think that BW should change it so when you get a piece of gear on one char, it unlocks a legacy that allows you to get gear for all subsequent chars easily. So basically my alts could buy WH gear for credits. If that is too much, a discount or something would work too which would lessen the grind. Also, since I enjoy playing different specs on my classes, it would be nice to have all gear sets available when I unlock one. It sucks having to grind a healer set and dps set, or dps and tanking set.

Edited November 6, 2012 by Smashbrother

[DarthSabreth]

OP this is a wonderful thread, however i feel it will fall apon deaf ears. I agree the PVCC in this game is atrocious and i thought i would never wish for pre 1.4 resolve ever. In my opinion they increased the CC in this game because they have no idea how to ballance the classes at the moment, so if more CC was used they would rather players would be complaining about that more than the FOTOMS. but they are wrong if they think that. 6+ K AOE's, pt's / vg's ultra high burst dps. I would almost imageon that the devs are buffing em so they can play them.

 

Also the point that you made about the matchmaking system in pvp, it would be imposible for them to do this with out having a cross server que in place, and they flat out refuse to put one in despite the fact that most major mmos have one. either they cant figure out how to do it or they feel the cross server que would make the game look bad somehow.

 

Either way, I love the pve aspect of the game, the story, the attention to detail on the environment is second to none, but the pvp which is what i like to do is so beyond agrivating with the CC and the ultra powerful classes at the moment it just leads me back to lvling alts. the only thing that will change the FOTOMS is if every single player rolled and stuck to a rage warior or PT, BW would have no choice but to make a change to save the game if that was all that was played.

[Darth-Rammstein]

You make some very good points. But I just disagree with one tiny point. You can still be an asset to your team in Recruit gear if you are a healer. You can still do some decent healing and keep your teammates alive if you hide as much as possible from the enemy team so you don't get smashed to death in two blows. I was actually surprised how well I did in Recruit gear with my healer, a totally different experience than I'd had with my sniper and marauder when they were fresh level 50s.

 

Yeah, but that can only be said about healers. A healer in recruit gear can still do well over 300k healing but try to see a dps in recruit hit over 300k damage, they'll hit like a wet noodle and like you said smashed to death in two hits.

[Darth-Rammstein]

I enjoy the gear grind. It gives me something to work towards. If there was no gear grind, I'd probably not pvp that much, get bored sooner, and eventually stop playing all together. That is why I'm against giving everyone a standard set of gear. I'm also against removing expertise to make one set of gear because it's impossible to balance the rate at which you get your gear between pvp and pve. And your wrong about pve gear being useless in pvp. A full campaign/black hole geared player will do better than recruit geared players.

 

Having said that, I also enjoy rolling alts, and plan on rolling one of each AC eventually to see their stories. I don't want to grind pvp gear on every single one of them. I think that BW should change it so when you get a piece of gear on one char, it unlocks a legacy that allows you to get gear for all subsequent chars easily. So basically my alts could buy WH gear for credits. If that is too much, a discount or something would work too which would lessen the grind. Also, since I enjoy playing different specs on my classes, it would be nice to have all gear sets available when I unlock one. It sucks having to grind a healer set and dps set, or dps and tanking set.

 

I'd be in favor of removing gear from pvp and making it a pure skill based game. As it is now pvp is gear>skill. Standard wow model, I wish that someone would have the guts to stray from the design and innovate it somehow.

[Antipodes]

I'd be in favor of removing gear from pvp and making it a pure skill based game. As it is now pvp is gear>skill. Standard wow model, I wish that someone would have the guts to stray from the design and innovate it somehow.

 

GW2's dying tournament PvP says "hi".

[beshannon]

Good post and right on target

 

I have read and experienced the same things in every other MMORPG I have played and these issues never get resolved

 

Best just to try and get what fun you can out of the game before moving to the next game with these same issues

[Technohic]

The part I do not agree with is eliminating gear grind. It's the carrot for chasing and what makes a persistent MMO live on. Making it a little more competitive by matchmaking makes removing PvP gear unnecessary.

[Smashbrother]

I'd be in favor of removing gear from pvp and making it a pure skill based game. As it is now pvp is gear>skill. Standard wow model, I wish that someone would have the guts to stray from the design and innovate it somehow.

 

If I wanted to play a game based purely on skill, I'd be playing the many games that already exist: CoD, Starcraft 2, Street Fighter, etc. I play an MMORPG because I want my gear to matter because I enjoy chasing new shinies. The whole gear>skill thing is not the standard WoW model. Almost every MMO that has had pvp in it had something that separates pvp and pve. DAOC--which is believed by many to be the best pvp mmo of all time--had realm ranks that gave you new abilities when you got higher. Essentially a higher ranked player would almost always beat a lower ranked player. SWTOR is no difference with it's expertise and gear.