PvP Economy and Ranked Rewards Restructure for Game Update 3.3

[JaceMatai]

We are discussing if the titles and mount rewards should be BoL in future seasons. The crystals and weapons are already BoL in previous/current seasons and that will stay the same moving forward. We would like you hear y'alls thoughts on the subject. Does seeing a mount or title on character that (at the extreme) doesn't PvP at all hurt the significance and exclusivity of the reward? Or is it enough to know that someone in the Legacy of that character worked to get the reward?

 

In my opinion, all of the rewards should be BoL. Also, y'all said you wanted feedback on whether older seasons' rewards should be brought back, and I think they should. Some people who haven't been around while previous seasons were running would welcome this. c:

[buckman]

We are discussing if the titles and mount rewards should be BoL in future seasons. The crystals and weapons are already BoL in previous/current seasons and that will stay the same moving forward. We would like you hear y'alls thoughts on the subject. Does seeing a mount or title on character that (at the extreme) doesn't PvP at all hurt the significance and exclusivity of the reward? Or is it enough to know that someone in the Legacy of that character worked to get the reward?

 

I'd like to know that the person played that specific class to unlock that reward if it is a high level reward.

You guys can possibly make one reward out of the set of rewards BOP, so that people know that you had to unlock that reward on that character.

[Otaktey]

I think if you earn a reward, you should be able to use it the way you want. BoL. As far as the AOE argument goes, it will require more skill to hold a node, so I like it. I do think that an AOE skill should break the induction of the caster's target. Tank classes tend to have lots of AOE skills, and making the skill itself no longer break a capping inductions will hurt some classes. So I think that AOE skills still need to break the induction on the capper that is targeted.

One more item, move the bolsterizer to the combat training area on the fleets. This way, players getting started in the world of pvp, will go in to the unranked WZ's geared correctly while they earn their pvp gear. If you level up a toon, and have all 162 gear on, you still will not have 2018 expertise, you will come up 82 short. If you equip expertise crystals on your main and off hand items, bolster will not work for those two items. So if we see players enter with 1936 expertise, that means they haven't earned enough WZ comms to buy their weapons, or they bought other gear first.

[BowtieJones]

The AOE damage not breaking a cap is definitely something to test. May even download the PTS and take part. I do have a concern about it though, as the change is supposed to stop stalemates.

 

What about disarming the bomb? VS only takes three seconds to disarm an already planted bomb. So, bully for you, attackers! You planted a bomb. Now all I have to do is sometime in the next 20 seconds, get two or three of my team members to come and casually RP walk over to the door and disarm it. Stalemate. Every time. Am I missing something there?

 

As far as the ranked rewards being bind on legacy or not. I say go for it on everything except for the titles. I almost never show titles. In fact, the only title I regularly show is "The Risen" on my Guardian, because he's named after my dearly departed dog. Call me sentimental... you won't be wrong. This of course is beside the point, as I'm talking about ranked titles.

 

Whether you display your title or not, that title was earned. By that toon. Mounts are cosmetic, sure. Gear and weapons are cosmetic, absolutely. Trophies? Sure pay extra tokens and change the bronze to a gold or whatever. You're the only one probably that will see it, so if you want it to match you color scheme in your stronghold that nobody will see unless you invite them to come look at your wampa rug, more power to ya. the argument can be made that titles are as well, but there is something inherently identifying about a title. Are you that fantastically furious Operative? I can tell because you got that title. I don't want to wonder if you actually got it with a Sin or whatever happens to be deemed FOTM at the time.

 

Binding titles to legacy feels dishonest. If you see my Op walking around with armor and weapons from ranked, call me concerned about my appearance. If you see my Op walking around with a teir 1 title from last season, call me a liar. I didn't earn it. In fact, I **** the bed.

 

 

That was a long post, wasn't it? Yep. Too long.

[Ardifuswert]

but if aoe won't interrupt the cap, what if the intire team or at least 4 guys try to cap the objective... they eventually get it... so now all u have to do is make the intire team sprint to the voidstar doors and make them all cap at the same time.

[Ravenschild]

In Warzones, capturing an objective (on Alderaan or Voidstar, for example) will no longer be interrupted by AoE effects. This change should reduce the stagnation on objectives and allow for more diverse defensive strategies.

 

So here is whats going to happen with Voidstar as a result. People will get the bomb on the first door. Then the entire team will swarm the area to defuse the bomb(much like they do in mids and lows already). Because of a lack of AOE stopping a defuse (it is interacting with the cap just like a plant) and the way targeting is set up this will actually work. Ergo this will become the new strategy and nobody will get a door or people will rarely get a door much less all of them. Spam cap will become as common in Civil War and Voidstar as it is in Novare with everyone trying to cap (also much like it is in mids and lows because people seem to think all the warzones cap faster with multiple people rather than Novare being the oddity in that). To quote Episode IV "I've got a bad feeling about this".

Edited June 2, 2015 by Ravenschild

[cs_zoltan]

I find it disconcerting that there is no sign whatsoever that Bioware is heeding, or intends to heed, the feedback regarding the AOE cap changes.

 

Targeting is atrocious in this game. A cap should not be able to be zerged simply because target cycling fails to produce all the targets that are capping in a timely manner. That is what AOE damage abilities are for.

 

To the extent that this is actually a problem in producing stalemates (and I'm not certain that it is), the spammable AOE abilities need to be made less spammable.

 

You can still use AoE knockback or AoE stun to stop more than one capper. The longest AoE stun is 1min cd so 8 sentinel could stop caps once every 7.5 sec (resolve not counted). And that's the worst case. Also 8 man stacking up is begging to be obliterated by AoE even if it doesn't interrupt.

So less QQ and adapt more.

[Ravenschild]

You can still use AoE knockback or AoE stun to stop more than one capper. The longest AoE stun is 1min cd so 8 sentinel could stop caps once every 7.5 sec (resolve not counted). And that's the worst case. Also 8 man stacking up is begging to be obliterated by AoE even if it doesn't interrupt.

So less QQ and adapt more.

 

Resolve bar,vengence juggs and their guardian counterparts also doesnt assassin/shadow have an ability that makes them immune to stun for a certain amount of time?

Edited June 2, 2015 by Ravenschild

[Laheira]

What currency will you be able to purchase the ranked enhancements after the ranked comms are gone?

 

Sorry if this was answered, havent seen it yet though.

[OMGITSJAD]

Regarding new PvP gear costs: While I don't like that the gear that I worked to get is suddenly way way way easier to get, at least not only will more people be able to get pvp gear(rip 20k hits on pve geared squishies), but people can't complain about not having pvp gear anymore except by sheer incompetence or laziness. Plus this will raise PvP participation because people who don't play because they don't have the gear can do a few matches and get some pieces much faster, and more participation is always better(*wink* *wink* cross server).

 

Increased Warzone Rewards: Yay more money and a reason to PvP without losing a ton of EXP while 12x is active.

 

Legacy Lockbox: Thanks for listening to feedback. Maybe I will consider gearing out some more alts with the excess comms I will inevitably have.

 

Ranked Reward system: What I'm reading here is, slightly more ranked participation from people who might stop because once they get to a certain tier they don't care to play anymore, as well as the possibility for people who were already getting silver or bronze rewards not losing access to these rewards but also being able to maybe even give up a reward or two to be able to get a higher level reward if they happen to save up enough and like a certain reward enough. The main problem I see with this is the tokens required may be too steep. Having to get so many games to get enough tokens may mean that even if you "grind" out matches, you may still not even have enough tokens come the end of the season for a certain reward you want. Doing 5-10 matches a week per season is already a hard enough feat, especially for people on some certain servers with lower populations or less of a pvp focus, people who just can't put that much time into it for a number of reasons, and just the fact that ranked doesn't pop that much in the first place, especially at certain times of day. 60 a week is just about literally impossible.

Also classes that can't easily get max medals due to a lack of passive healing, off-healing, or taunting capabilities are going to inevitably have less medals and therefore less of a chance at getting more tokens when compared to others. Randomly choosing a Jugg and a Sniper with a very similar win/loss ratio, their overall medal counts are going to be radically different because a Sniper can't pop enraged defense or use taunts. Hopefully this is taken into account and maybe figured out so that each class has a more equal ability to gain max medals while giving their all.

 

Miscellaneous PvP Changes: On paper, this should make matches more dynamic because you can force caps/re-caps and bomb plants/defuses even while someone is just standing there spamming AoE...In-game may be a different story. I feel this needs further testing on the PTS and hopefully plenty of people will download and log over to get some matches going so we can provide proper feedback about this. Also thanks so much for the max expertise barrier to entry to ranked finally.

 

By the way, hopefully there are also some class balance changes in 3.3 as well instead of just changes to systems.(*cough* sniper defensive buffs pls especially if you go through with making suppressive fire a bit less useful and basically completely removing any reason to use Orbital Strike except in 1v1s versus stealth.....)

Edited June 2, 2015 by OMGITSJAD

[gocard]

Can I ask, is there data that prompted the AOE capping change? This seems like a fix that no one asked for. Personally, I haven't seen that capping (or lack thereof) has been an issue in PVP since the removal of ranked 8v8.

 

The other changes for 3.3 look great, and those changes felt like a good response to what was requested: preventing undergeared players from doing ranked, reducing gear grind, etc.

[OMGITSJAD]

What currency will you be able to purchase the ranked enhancements after the ranked comms are gone?

 

Sorry if this was answered, havent seen it yet though.

 

Ah! Enhancements are 150 Wz Comms for the 168s and 800 Wz Comms for the 174s.

5 char

[Fellow-Canadian]

I'm surprised that after 6 months only 2% of the population has dark reaver. Glad to see some changes to help folks with that grind then.

 

I already grinded my gear through warzones only because ranked has been ruined by terrible class balance since 3.0 came out. I didn't like the new class changes brought in with the expansion for any of the top3 classes so now I a main a non-fotm class. A terrible decision for me if I am considering ranked.

 

PVP class balance is still the biggest issue for me so it has to be a huge whopping carrot on a stick to get me to care about ranked again. I don't need the ranked comms because I already have a full set of min/max dark reaver so I am just in it for the rewards.

 

Bioware if you want players like me playing in ranked stop low balling me with really bad rewards. What it would take to get me to queue:

 

-Unique class PVP armor set (not reskinned ugly looking PVE crap and make it not buyable on the CM)

-Unique weapon set (not reskinned ugly looking PVE crap and make it not buyable on the CM )

-Unique to PVP mount (not another dressed up CM mount like every other season please)

 

If you use the same designers who made the last few seasons of gear then I'll stop ya right there and I won't bother. Nothing about any of the rewards in PVP except the rancor mount has impressed me. It's a shame I earned that on my vanguard who I don't play anymore so I never get to enjoy it. Make ranked mount rewards legacy wide please!

[Laheira]

5 char

 

 

TY for that.

 

 

Well, thats lame. Worked so hard to get all my gear and most of my ranked enhancements. Shoulda just took a break and came back for the update. No problems now.

[Nightblazer]

Its not perfect but I'm glad to see they are trying to make things better. I know it won't all be fixed right away and will have to make tweaks here and there to get it as good as possible, but I know they are trying to get it right which make me happy

[themachinemann]

Regarding the legacy binds, we can already do that with armor and weapons. I don't see the mounts as an issue.

 

 

Regarding the "60 games" issue; a lot of people seem to be missing the point. Tokens are more so that competitive players who play a lot of matches but miss tier 1 can manage higher tier rewards, and bad players can still get some rewards even after they tank their rating. Hopefully they'll learn how to play arenas in the process and be competitive next season.

The aim is not so that total scrubs can still get that tier 1 mount. The "60 matches a week" is meant to discourage that. Imagine if it was only 15. You'd get so many PvE players in queue aiming for that 15/week, not caring about gear or results. You tell them that they should get PvP gear before queueing, and they start arguing they've only got 5 matches to go for the week. Is that fair?

 

If your complaint is "I can't play 60 matches a week", you're aiming for rewards based on number of games rather than your rating. The PvP community is generally full of people who like to make irrelevant excuses for their lack of skill... season after season blaming "bad teams" for their low ratings, i.e. they're not getting carried enough.

 

Want to see what the difference is between top players and average complainers?

http://www.twitch.tv/mosh47/v/5623805

 

sure he gets mad sometimes. But he doesn't roll over and yell at his team when it looks like a lost match. He doesn't come to the forums and whinge about it, and most of his toons have quite a high rating as a result

 

 

edit. forgot to cover thoughts on the proposed aoe cap change.

Honestly I like it; I think it will result in more exciting matches, and avoid situations where a team will just spam force storm or similar to stop a cap.

Voidstar is perhaps the most frustrating one for AOE's. Too many times a team can be stuck in the situation where they've got 4 or 5 attacking a door - 1 or 2 trying to cap, the rest watching for opponents and inhibiting them by a stun. However a single stealth opponent can easily stop that cap with an aoe, buying a lot of time for the gate to open. Or a single sorc/sage can spam forcestorm/forcequake, then bubble (so they can't be killed or stunned) then force storm again right before the cap is complete.

 

I don't like to use 1 example to validate a whole change, but I feel a similar principal will apply to all maps.

Edited June 2, 2015 by themachinemann

[-Wes-]

We are discussing if the titles and mount rewards should be BoL in future seasons. The crystals and weapons are already BoL in previous/current seasons and that will stay the same moving forward. We would like you hear y'alls thoughts on the subject. Does seeing a mount or title on character that (at the extreme) doesn't PvP at all hurt the significance and exclusivity of the reward? Or is it enough to know that someone in the Legacy of that character worked to get the reward?

 

I don't think it affects exclusivity at all, assuming that these consumables remain a single-shot item. The player earned the reward, let them choose which of their characters use it.

 

Overall, I really like the proposed changes to PvP. Honestly, I burned out on the gear grind aspect a long time ago and rarely even bother queuing for level 60 zones any more. This change could reignite my casual interest in joining those queues now and again, and might even get me to try out ranked a time or two.

 

As with others, I have concerns about the AoE capping change, but I'm sure I'm stymied by that as much as afflicting others with it, so I'm willing to see how it pans out. I seem to recall a time, a long time ago, when it was possible to defuse a bomb in Voidstar. Now? No way, unless playing against really, really uncoordinated teams, in which case the outcome is already a foregone conclusion (so who cares about whether they actually faceroll their way through an objective point?).

[MeNaCe-NZ]

A lot of these changes seem geared towards attracting new players to PVP so one wonders why bother having a gear requirement for non ranked at all?

 

When I used to bother playing online competitive multi player games it was all about skill, not gear.

 

I get that people need something to strive for hence ranked gear but I really don't see why you would even bother with gear for casual/regular PVP. Just solely implement a pure bolster system so when people play regular PVP it ignores gear and just sets their stats based on their level and stats thus creating a level playing field and more enjoyable learning environment at that.

 

It just seems to me these changes are going half a step towards making PVP more user friendly when it's the gearing aspect of it ( not just getting gear also but ensuring you're wearing the "correct min/max" gear ) that is the annoyance in the first place for the casual player regardless of how easy it is to get gear.

 

I would be stoked if I could queue for PVP and know when it pops at least I'm not getting owned because people have better gear than me and grinded longer and it's solely because I suck and need to improve

 

Whilst it's a nice gesture to try make PVP more palatable I don't see it really achieving much extra in terms of PVP take up for us noobs unfortunately.

[Icykill_]

Attention PvP fans! Here's a glimpse into new changes coming with Game Update 3.3!

 

Read More

 

Awesome news...

 

Three points...

1.Will you be overhauling the medal system to be more fair, ie more team orientated and not just medal farming?

2. How will you prevent the win trading that is still going on?

3. Are you proposing Melee AOE damage also not interrupt caps? (This was tested by us the other night and without them, it will be impossible to stop a whole team rush capping)

Edited June 3, 2015 by Icykill_

[emeraldon]

We are discussing if the titles and mount rewards should be BoL in future seasons. The crystals and weapons are already BoL in previous/current seasons and that will stay the same moving forward. We would like you hear y'alls thoughts on the subject. Does seeing a mount or title on character that (at the extreme) doesn't PvP at all hurt the significance and exclusivity of the reward? Or is it enough to know that someone in the Legacy of that character worked to get the reward?

 

No, absolutely not. It would just make me and I'm sure others more interested in playing. For instance, I love pvping on my main, but he's already got Wings of the Architect which is the only mount I'll use for that character, while my alt is on republic side where the queues barely pop, so I'll probably never get the mount there. I'd love to be able to send him some mounts I get from my main.

[Monterone]

Thank you for these changes, I'm really excited. Simply, thank you.

 

And you wanted feedback on some of the features.

 

Kudos on removing ranked comms and increasing the cap on them. However, with removing ranked comms you're also removing the last part of the valor system, and there will be no requirement of valor 40 for any comms. Remove valor altogether or design some new perks for it. I would suggest a vendor with orange shells of all the pvp gear sets we used to be able to get through pvp. Only make the older looking gear require higher valor. So while last season's gear may require only valor 20, going back as far as battlemaster gear would require a much higher valor -- say, 10 per season.

 

Legacy lockbox is a great idea, but as you can imagine transferring comms 99 per inventory space, when the cap will be 200,000 could get a bit difficult. Please consider making a few tiers of the lockboxes... 100, 500 and 1000 should work even better. If the goal is to make things more efficient, and it seems to be that way, make it that way right off the bat, please.

 

AoEs not interrupting will most likely be a disaster, but I will be testing it. Immediate issues I can think of are: zerg capping - an entire team just running up and capping all at once; stacked capping - everyone just sitting on top of each other so they cannot be clicked on, only tabbed to, and by the time you tab through all the right people the cap will be done; corner stacking etc. Also, not having line of sight on some maps will make things too easy to cap, Alderaan for example; a class with some mobility boost will be almost guaranteed the side node, no contest -- just get there fast and stand behind the node, preventing line of sight. It will make things such that certain classes must go for the native node because only they can get there fast enough (like operatives were preferred for sides in alderaan before roll was put on a cd), and eventually it will become futile to send anyone to enemy node at the start, you just can't make it, which could then make mid a boring death match all game. These are just some potential issues I see with this change, and none of them sound fun. AoE interrupting is not an issue right now at all, I have never heard anyone say it was. I hope you consider scrapping this change.

 

As for everything else, I can't thank you enough... you'll enable me to enjoy this game on all my alts. Actually, you will erase the idea of alts, since we will be able to gear them all equally and quickly, and main whatever we like, when we feel like it.

Edited June 2, 2015 by Monterone

[JourrnoRush]

No, absolutely not. It would just make me and I'm sure others more interested in playing. For instance, I love pvping on my main, but he's already got Wings of the Architect which is the only mount I'll use for that character, while my alt is on republic side where the queues barely pop, so I'll probably never get the mount there. I'd love to be able to send him some mounts I get from my main.

 

This is the major problem on ALL servers. If you don't play on a certain faction you have nearly ZERO chance of getting the top rewards. It only takes a quick glance at the leaderboards to notice one faction is dominating.

Making everything legacy bound will allow players to play on any toon and still get the rewards for their main or alt. I shouldn't have to hop servers at my own expense. I also shouldn't have to make a new character to try to get a reward for him when I really want it on another character. Keep up the support for all rewards being legacy bound!!

[Lundorff]

Just solely implement a pure bolster system so when people play regular PVP it ignores gear and just sets their stats based on their level and stats thus creating a level playing field and more enjoyable learning environment at that.

 

It just seems to me these changes are going half a step towards making PVP more user friendly when it's the gearing aspect of it ( not just getting gear also but ensuring you're wearing the "correct min/max" gear ) that is the annoyance in the first place for the casual player regardless of how easy it is to get gear.

 

I would be stoked if I could queue for PVP and know when it pops at least I'm not getting owned because people have better gear than me and grinded longer and it's solely because I suck and need to improve

 

This. This. This!

 

I have been saying the same thing for a long time. It would make PVP at all levels so much better, as everyone would have 2018 expertise and not be canon fodder.

 

Legacy lockbox is a great idea, but as you can imagine transferring comms 99 per inventory space, when the cap will be 200,000 could get a bit difficult. Please consider making a few tiers of the lockboxes... 100, 500 and 1000 should work even better. If the goal is to make things more efficient, and it seems to be that way, make it that way right off the bat, please.

 

Please yes. We are most certainly going to transfer comms between characters and 99 comms is... not a lot. I would rather have 1000 than 99 if diversity is too problematic.

[THEOTHER]

Just wanted to share some thoughts.

For the moment the main reason for players to grind in WZ is to get ranked gear. This is good. We have fast queues and big population. If ranked gear becomes relatively cheap and faster to get, there won't be so many players playing WZ anymore. Queues become longer.. like in fp.. It seems very possible that a lot of players will abandon WZs and move on to open world pvp and WZ games will be limited to 15 weekly games...

[linwei]

I think you need to define what you mean by AOE no longer prevent cap.

Some players seem to think it will affect melee chatacters while I believe things like Smash or Flame Sweep are not AOEs and woul still be usable to prevent objective capture.

Could you clarify, please?