Frequently Asked PvP Questions

[Rousso]

Wow... I can't believe what I've just read. Really, you're saying these things... now? Of all times, now? With ESO out next month, Wildstar out in June, WoW's WoD out soon you've literally just said "nothing you want is going to actually happen, you might aswell go and play another game". You'd have been safer just saying nothing, I mean - I appreciate the honesty here, but... damn. The "no" to everything has just broken my heart, is this all we're going to get for one of the best franchises to have ever been made?

[BraaxusKun]

Why is Bolster in Ranked PvP? Why not just require a high level of PvP gear?

 

1. The player needed to know that this is how PvP at max level worked.

2. The player needed to then get the gear and actually equip it.

 

We also want the Ranked population to be as high as possible within the Level 55 bracket so we have Bolster in place so more players can participate in the system.

 

-eric

 

Bolstering people with no substantial gear has absolutely zero effect on ranked queue times. The pve noobs that never pvp who you are trying to get to queue NEVER queue ranked, maybe it's happened like once ever, but seriously, the only thing bolster affects in ranked is the high end players that are already queuing and then exploiting it even further. Having bolster DOES NOT encourage noobs to queue for ranked, so as I said, bolster has 0 effect on increased ranked participation.

Edited March 23, 2014 by BraaxusKun

[Sangrar]

Bolstering people with no substantial gear has absolutely zero effect on ranked queue times. The pve noobs that never pvp who you are trying to get to queue NEVER queue ranked, maybe it's happened like once ever, but seriously, the only thing bolster affects in ranked is the high end players that are already queuing and then exploiting it even further. Having bolster DOES NOT encourage noobs to queue for ranked, so as I said, bolster has 0 effect on increased ranked participation.

 

actually I have seen a few guys in greens in solo que at the beginning of season 1 who when me and the rest of the team yelled at them for going into ranked with pve gear they told me "it doesn't matter with bolster". the point is, bolster is not helpful at all as it encourages those people who think that you will magically win with bad gear and low experience

Edited March 23, 2014 by Sangrar

[phalczen]

I've been watching this thread for several days now. I want to make a few points on topic to the discussion.

 

The reality is, for most so called good players, especially those that are already owners of full Obroan with min/maxed mods and enhancements, Bolster would have no effect. In truth the only reason why we would notice bolster at all is because it is currently bugged. If bolster worked out of the box the way it was intended, then no one would have any reason to complain or exploit it. Pvpers in full Obroan including weapons would still be top in terms of gear, which is how it should be.

 

TL;DR properly working unbugged bolster has no adverse effect on so-called good hardcore pvpers. It also has no effect on more casual pvpers who still have put in their time and earned full Obroan gear.

 

Furthermore, having Bolster encourages participation in the highest difficulty of pvp. Those people will be outperformed by good players in top tier gear, but a team who communicates and players who have learned will be able to have a fighting chance against a better geared group. Queue times might be shorter if there were more people in the queue. Encouraging people to participate ought to get more folks in the queue.

 

Now, the irony is that if the requirement to participate in ranked pvp was to be in full Obroan, it's nearly impossible to get full Obroan in a timely fashion without doing ranked war zones. The storage cap for ranked comms is 4500. You can get 700 of those from the daily 4's and 300 from the weekly 15. That leaves you with 3500 to acquire. If you had to convert those from regular comms exclusively, that would be 10500 regular comms you'd need to earn. Let's assume that this hypothetical player in question is a so-called "bad." So, for the purposes of calculation, they lose all their matches. So, they will get around 60 comms for a loss. Add in the regular comms from the dailies and weeklies, and if all you did was the number of matches needed for the dailies that would be 4220 regular comms. That's a deficit of nearly 6300 regular wz comms you still need to earn to reach your ranked cap. That's around 105 losses more you have to participate in. Average war zone is usually around 15 minutes, not counting quick two round arenas or backfilling. That's roughly 37 hours a week or about five and a half hours a day just spent pvping to get enough comms to reach cap. If I did ranked war zones, for the same amount of time, I'd earn about 8400 ranked comms.

 

TL;DR Doing only unranked war zones to get your Obroan gear takes substantially longer than doing ranked war zones, and so if you want more people with proper gear in the queues, you have every reason to want bolster to be present so that players can earn their gear more quickly.

 

What is my point? Bolster being in ranked 55 pvp is the LEAST of the problems here, and wouldn't even be a problem but for the current bugs, which are being fixed in 2.7. You people complaining about bolster being in ranked miss the point.

 

More concerning is a lack of an obvious vision for what SWTOR pvp is. Do they ever envision it welcoming open world pvp as formal content in a galaxy that is supposed to be at war? Will we ever feel immersed in the war, or will we sit in our luxurious near shaadaa apartments waiting to be teleported to flashes of conflict that have no real impact on the galaxy, then to be returned to the comfort of our homes? Cross server queues would be great for reducing queue times, but so would a working bolster, and neat rewards, and other carrots. But cross server queues will never by themselves make anyone feel like they a part of a larger war going on engulfing the galaxy. For a company branding their product on greatness of "story," where is the WAR STORY? A compelling reason to participate in this galaxy-encompassing conflict, beyond trinkets, will fill the queues more than cross server queuing.

 

What is their vision of what they want SWTOR pvp to become? A clone of popular features from wow? Or a defining aspect of this game?

Edited March 23, 2014 by phalczen
Spelling

[rlionherz]

the Rancor Mount belongs to the top notch GROUP Arena Players. to NO ONE else! (a NIM Version should go to the very few Progression Guilds but that drop has to be time limited)

 

dont get me wrong iam not even close to get one and ofc i would like to own one. right now i (and thousand other Players) just dont deserv it.

[TrooperEvan]

I think they used almost that exact phrase once upon a time when talking about guild ships.

The quote is from Eric Musco

 

 

Why can't we focus on serious issues here and bring to light problems pvp players get aggravated with swtor. I've left and come back to swtor many different times and you may say "well your not supporting the game so how can you expect it to get better?" I'd answer I've paid for an entire year subscription because i wanna believe it will get better. The real issues in swtor's pvp are three major topics.

 

1. Not enough people.

- low server populations

- no cross/server queues (Most MMO have this to prevent long wait times)

 

2. No choice in the game types we play.

- Hutt ball is a cool game type however sometimes when i pvp that's the last thing i want to do.

- Something i'd like to bring up that I see no one talking about is where is the low/mid level pvp development?

There literally has been no change to the low/mid level pvp since the beginning of the game.

- This is easy to do swtor already has a queue system in place they could use for pvp (flashpoint). So then why don't they do that if it would attract new players who play MMOs for just that? Because of topic 1 (population)

 

3. The lack of care to certain issues.

 

Will you be implementing Cross-server queuing?

 

We have no plans at this time to implement cross-server queues.

The quote is from Eric Musco

 

I'd like to make a point on how important pvp can be in MMO genre. On December 10, 2007 Jagex took pvp and many other things away from players in Runescape a well known free to play MMO. This flared a huge amount of players in anger and they lost 60,000 subscribers with in the following 3 months. The funny thing is runescape had a high peak of 225,000 players online earlier that summer. My point to this is pvp is a huge genre group of players and making them happy gets more players into the game which helps the game grow.

 

I'm sure there are many other issues and balancing out 4v4 DeathMatches is great and all but that is a little problem lets look at the things that discourages people from playing swtor. I love this game and just want to see it get better, I was part of this games beta and also part of the League Of Legends beta. Watching two different games grow from the beginning to where they are now saddens me that more people don't play swtor. pvp is very important and when people don't see it growing or getting better then move onto the next game.

 

 

sincerely, trooperevan

[JediMasterSLC]

The quote is from Eric Musco

 

 

Why can't we focus on serious issues here and bring to light problems pvp players get aggravated with swtor. I've left and come back to swtor many different times and you may say "well your not supporting the game so how can you expect it to get better?" I'd answer I've paid for an entire year subscription because i wanna believe it will get better. The real issues in swtor's pvp are three major topics.

 

1. Not enough people.

- low server populations

- no cross/server queues (Most MMO have this to prevent long wait times)

 

2. No choice in the game types we play.

- Hutt ball is a cool game type however sometimes when i pvp that's the last thing i want to do.

- Something i'd like to bring up that I see no one talking about is where is the low/mid level pvp development?

There literally has been no change to the low/mid level pvp since the beginning of the game.

- This is easy to do swtor already has a queue system in place they could use for pvp (flashpoint). So then why don't they do that if it would attract new players who play MMOs for just that? Because of topic 1 (population)

 

3. The lack of care to certain issues.

 

The quote is from Eric Musco

 

I'd like to make a point on how important pvp can be in MMO genre. On December 10, 2007 Jagex took pvp and many other things away from players in Runescape a well known free to play MMO. This flared a huge amount of players in anger and they lost 60,000 subscribers with in the following 3 months. The funny thing is runescape had a high peak of 225,000 players online earlier that summer. My point to this is pvp is a huge genre group of players and making them happy gets more players into the game which helps the game grow.

 

I'm sure there are many other issues and balancing out 4v4 DeathMatches is great and all but that is a little problem lets look at the things that discourages people from playing swtor. I love this game and just want to see it get better, I was part of this games beta and also part of the League Of Legends beta. Watching two different games grow from the beginning to where they are now saddens me that more people don't play swtor. pvp is very important and when people don't see it growing or getting better then move onto the next game.

 

 

sincerely, trooperevan

 

Stopped reading when you said lowbie pvp needs development. One thing this game doesn't need to worry about is the leveling process. The problem has always been max level content.

[IceCrowned]

this is the single most disturbing post to pvp. Why would you just deny your fanbase all together are you trying to tank this mmo?

[chillshock]

And that's how carebear this game is. If you want the best PvE gear you have to do NiM, the same logic should apply for PvP. Want rated gear? Play rated arenas.

 

Totally agree - if the rated gear is pure vanity.

 

Or is it too carebearish to consider PvP only fun if the stats provide a fair fight?

[DarthMaulUK]

Most of you moan like old woman but yet continue to support the game - fine if you PvE lots. After the devs post on PvP , its a lame duck and it won't change, even when server pops dwindle. Good luck flogging this dead horse and the rest of you, cya in Wildstar where X-server and CHOICE is alive and well

[kloma]

very dissapointed in the post. nice to have dev interaction but when it looks like it's been posted by grumpy cat "no" "no" "nope" it takes away the will to stick with PVP.

[ronniehenlau]

I'll post my unsub screenie closer to wildstar.

 

This game will do until then, but I wonder - how big of an impact will this, combined with wildstar, have on subs?

 

Changed my mind

[cycao]

Totally agree - if the rated gear is pure vanity.

 

Or is it too carebearish to consider PvP only fun if the stats provide a fair fight?

 

You can be more than competitive with min/maxed conq or using bolster if you understand how it works.

[chillshock]

You know what's funny? How many people are asking for cross server stuff, when I'm sitting here KNOWING I'll unsub the moment that this community-destroying feature gets implemented. xD

 

MAYBE if they add it in a way where at least YOUR team is to be assembled from your server and the enemy team can be from any other server... that could work. Kind of. But the moment I get thrown into FPs with the sh*t-talking egomaniacs that populate the anonymity of cross-server-queues... needing everything... pulling-and-leaving... flaming... NO THANKS.

 

And btw: It doesn't help all that much in PvE... way less than it destroys:

- No server has an abundancy of the specs you are waiting for. Healer and Tank.

- Qualified healers and Tanks WONT random queue often if you end up with the smacktards of dps. And there's always "that hunter". Really.

- They've done it in Warcraft and drove me to go "I'll tank for any full guild group, but as soon as we random-queue: I'm DPS." Why? Because being a tank for dumb*sses is just ... cr*p. You think anyone want's to spend their casual time doing that?

- In cross-server-grind-as-fast-as-possible-queues you don't get to find people that are good, that you'd queue more often with. It just doesn't happen. You end up with guild-or-crap.

 

Cross-Server-teams screw the quality of the experience. So while a lot of voices want these queue's I suggest you look carefully at the tone these 'suggestions' mostly get "demanded". *sigh* THOSE are the players you'd get stuck with. Yes, the ones using f*ck on a regular basis... those that 'lol' is the official ending of a sentence.

 

Meh. Now I'm ranting. But so far - be it for technical reasons or for actually thought-through ones - I am really glad that there is no cross-server stuff in swtor.

[cycao]

You know what's funny? How many people are asking for cross server stuff, when I'm sitting here KNOWING I'll unsub the moment that this community-destroying feature gets implemented. xD

 

MAYBE if they add it in a way where at least YOUR team is to be assembled from your server and the enemy team can be from any other server... that could work. Kind of. But the moment I get thrown into FPs with the sh*t-talking egomaniacs that populate the anonymity of cross-server-queues... needing everything... pulling-and-leaving... flaming... NO THANKS.

 

And btw: It doesn't help all that much in PvE... way less than it destroys:

- No server has an abundancy of the specs you are waiting for. Healer and Tank.

- Qualified healers and Tanks WONT random queue often if you end up with the smacktards of dps. And there's always "that hunter". Really.

- They've done it in Warcraft and drove me to go "I'll tank for any full guild group, but as soon as we random-queue: I'm DPS." Why? Because being a tank for dumb*sses is just ... cr*p. You think anyone want's to spend their casual time doing that?

- In cross-server-grind-as-fast-as-possible-queues you don't get to find people that are good, that you'd queue more often with. It just doesn't happen. You end up with guild-or-crap.

 

Cross-Server-teams screw the quality of the experience. So while a lot of voices want these queue's I suggest you look carefully at the tone these 'suggestions' mostly get "demanded". *sigh* THOSE are the players you'd get stuck with. Yes, the ones using f*ck on a regular basis... those that 'lol' is the official ending of a sentence.

 

Meh. Now I'm ranting. But so far - be it for technical reasons or for actually thought-through ones - I am really glad that there is no cross-server stuff in swtor.

 

What the **** lol.

[NRN_Hawk]

I always have to lmao when I see people talking about rewards only belong to the TOP ELITE UBER PVP MOFOS WORLD DFSGSDG!!!!!ONEELEVEN!!!

 

Rating in this game's version of pvp means absolutely NOTHING. I know some rancor rating pvpers and they don't impress me a single bit when I meet them in regs or solos. Most of those can only ruin my score or throw matches for their buddies so my rating is total bs now.

 

As for the FAQ: HAHAHAHA! like I said somewhere up there I unsubbed the day I've read it and tell you what I've had A BLAST playing Wildstar beta. It my look cartoony but it has better Graphics and a way better concept and performance that SWTOR will ever have.

 

So yeah no matter what they add I'll stay unsubbed for a while now, BW / EA rape the Star Wars setting hardcore...

 

Don't get me wrong I do enjoy warzones etc. from time to time, but I don't see anything good on the horizon.

 

Leap bug, animation bugs from Beta... TERRITERRITEEEEEERRIBAD game performce!

 

inb4 get a better comp: Wildstar beta was on a US server, with 200ish ms I had even 80 ms more than swtor and it ran smooth and loading a battleground etc. took about 1ms to 1 second max.

 

Yeah, this is a laugh. Go home BW and do Singleplayer again.

 

And @ EA: congrats on getting the triple soon!

[LyndaeshaFreykaa]

*snip*

 

Why are you even in this section of the forums?

[chillshock]

You can be more than competitive with min/maxed conq or using bolster if you understand how it works.

 

Sure. And all that in an evening entertainment game. Or is there a comprehensive "this is the good gear" solution in the game? Because - as strange as it might seem - the CLASS SET is not properly min/maxed. I wish it were. Because it is one of the least enjoyable things (for me) ingame to min/max some numbers. And I used to be different and enjoy it a lot... the numbercrunching... But with work comes less time and more coins. So...

 

WTB perfect stat distribution on one set of gear that I can get without "swapping mod 28A for 28B in order to increase crit to 15% while keeping power Z to ... blablablablabalbalabl" ... I do it, because I must. But it's not enjoyable. Actually... at the bottom line... I just want to play pvp and make my Sith look a bit cool and enjoy the evening. Not calculate complex formula and read meta-game-content und guides and parses.

 

So if they truely want to improve something, they should change the feakin sets.

At an example for Juggernaut:

PvP Immortal Set - from the Juggernaut Immortal PvP Vendor.

If completed gives the perfect stat combination for playing PvP with an immortal specced Juggernaut.

 

PvP Vengeance Set - from a Juggernaut Vengeance PvP Vendor.

If completed gives the perfect stat combination for playing PvP with an Vengeance specced Juggernaut.

 

PvP Rage Set - from a Juggernaut Rage PvP Vendor.

If completed gives the perfect stat combination for playing PvP with an Rage specced Juggernaut.

 

Yes, with names like that. Yes with perfect stat distribution for PvP. And yes without any more meta-gaming-effort to 'play the game right'.

 

New season? Put the stuff as schematics into the regular pvp stuff vendor (put it in crates!). Add a new look for the next tier. If stats must improve, just improve them, but keep the distribution correct (don't overcrit the vengeance gear, i.e.).

 

Now... add a bit of progression that gradually improves this. At least now players can focus on playing and have a chance to get the gear they need. Right now it feels like min/maxing is ~25% of the gears quality. WAY over the top.

[chillshock]

Why are you even in this section of the forums?

 

To participate in the discussion while my code is compiling.

[foxmob]

Sure. And all that in an evening entertainment game. Or is there a comprehensive "this is the good gear" solution in the game? Because - as strange as it might seem - the CLASS SET is not properly min/maxed. I wish it were. Because it is one of the least enjoyable things (for me) ingame to min/max some numbers. And I used to be different and enjoy it a lot... the numbercrunching... But with work comes less time and more coins. So... .

 

buddy, it costs as much to buy one individual enhancement (to replace something with alacrity, which literally no AC in the game wants in PVP but almost every PVP set comes with) as it does to buy an entire piece of gear (which comes with armor, mod, enh). there's a difference between fostering a grind for min/maxing and then just sticking the finger to the person who wants appropriate gear. that's wrong. I don't care whether it's pve or pvp. that's just wrong. it's a pretty transparent ploy to artificially prolong the gear grind.

[SithEBM-Reborn]

Totally agree - if the rated gear is pure vanity.

 

Or is it too carebearish to consider PvP only fun if the stats provide a fair fight?

 

Get PvP gear if you want a fair fight.

[Jadescythe]

You know what's funny? How many people are asking for cross server stuff, when I'm sitting here KNOWING I'll unsub the moment that this community-destroying feature gets implemented. xD

 

MAYBE if they add it in a way where at least YOUR team is to be assembled from your server and the enemy team can be from any other server... that could work. Kind of. But the moment I get thrown into FPs with the sh*t-talking egomaniacs that populate the anonymity of cross-server-queues... needing everything... pulling-and-leaving... flaming... NO THANKS.

 

And btw: It doesn't help all that much in PvE... way less than it destroys:

- No server has an abundancy of the specs you are waiting for. Healer and Tank.

- Qualified healers and Tanks WONT random queue often if you end up with the smacktards of dps. And there's always "that hunter". Really.

- They've done it in Warcraft and drove me to go "I'll tank for any full guild group, but as soon as we random-queue: I'm DPS." Why? Because being a tank for dumb*sses is just ... cr*p. You think anyone want's to spend their casual time doing that?

- In cross-server-grind-as-fast-as-possible-queues you don't get to find people that are good, that you'd queue more often with. It just doesn't happen. You end up with guild-or-crap.

 

Cross-Server-teams screw the quality of the experience. So while a lot of voices want these queue's I suggest you look carefully at the tone these 'suggestions' mostly get "demanded". *sigh* THOSE are the players you'd get stuck with. Yes, the ones using f*ck on a regular basis... those that 'lol' is the official ending of a sentence.

 

Meh. Now I'm ranting. But so far - be it for technical reasons or for actually thought-through ones - I am really glad that there is no cross-server stuff in swtor.

 

First of all, no one cares about PvE cross-server. This is the PvP forums, we talk about PvP.

 

Second of all, you sound like the BW devs at launch who specifically left cross-server out because it would "ruin the community". Which I guess made sense to them when 2 million people bought the game. Now there are only 25k people participating in ranked warzones split between 10 or so servers, which isn't enough to get games going. There is no PvP community to ruin at this point.

 

Lastly, idiots are going to be idiots. If someone is going to ninja your uber gear for an alt when you needed it, they'll do it regardless of cross-server queuing. PvPers could care less about your PvE problems though, so feel free to not have cross-server for PvE.

[SithEBM-Reborn]

You know what's funny? How many people are asking for cross server stuff, when I'm sitting here KNOWING I'll unsub the moment that this community-destroying feature gets implemented. xD

There isn't a PvP community to begin with. Most of the "Skilled PvPers" unsubscribed.

MAYBE if they add it in a way where at least YOUR team is to be assembled from your server and the enemy team can be from any other server... that could work. Kind of. But the moment I get thrown into FPs with the sh*t-talking egomaniacs that populate the anonymity of cross-server-queues... needing everything... pulling-and-leaving... flaming... NO THANKS.

We're talking about PvP, not PvE.

 

Bunch of PvE stuff

 

 

Cross-Server-teams screw the quality of the experience. So while a lot of voices want these queue's I suggest you look carefully at the tone these 'suggestions' mostly get "demanded". *sigh* THOSE are the players you'd get stuck with. Yes, the ones using f*ck on a regular basis... those that 'lol' is the official ending of a sentence.

This is PvP we're talking about.

Meh. Now I'm ranting. But so far - be it for technical reasons or for actually thought-through ones - I am really glad that there is no cross-server stuff in swtor.

This is PvP we're talking about.

[chillshock]

And you truely believe this would be implemented in pvp and NOT pve?

 

Well, tbh, I don't PvE beyond money-making-stuff in swtor right now. It would make me respec constantly... AND 'grind' a second set of gear (Tank) AND learn to play yet another spec.

 

So I meet people in PvP. And I try to remember the good ones. And I am happy when I see them again... drop a few lines in chat... yes, I like seeing good people several times.

[SithEBM-Reborn]

And you truely believe this would be implemented in pvp and NOT pve?

Well, I don't see too many people complaining about the lack of PvE queue pops.

 

PvE talk

 

 

So I meet people in PvP. And I try to remember the good ones. And I am happy when I see them again... drop a few lines in chat... yes, I like seeing good people several times.

 

When you say good ones, are you referring to all of the skilled PvPers that unsubscribed?