So far my stay in the galaxy far far away has been pretty decent. Sure there’s no Flashpoint finder or no meters to show how much threat is being generated or damage being down (Why the heck not?) but overall it’s been a some what refreshing break from that other MMO, you know the World of Warcraft. Still this game isn’t without it’s issues and mainly there’s huge issue with the Player vs Player aspect of the game.
I enjoy the PVP in most MMO’s, well not as much as a good old fashioned FPS session, but close enough. So when I started my venture into SWTOR’s pvp scene, I was saddened very quickly. Actually I guess I should back up a bit here and layout how pvp works in SWTOR.
Players are able to enter warzones once they hit level 10 and are able;ee to battle it out across 3 different warzones;]
Voidstar: An assault-style Warzone in which one side attempts to fight its way to access the ship’s data core, while the other side defends the ship and attempts to prevent the other side from reaching the data core. The battle takes places across multiple sections of the ship, through blast doors and across elevated bridge spans where taking a fall is almost always lethal. The attackers battle their way through each section, drawing ever closer to the ship’s data core, while the defenders seek to halt the attackers’ progress at various control points.
Huttball: Two teams meet inside the deadly confines of ‘The Pit,’ an arena unlike any other in the galaxy! The teams battle for control of a ball which appears in the center of the arena. Whichever team has the ball must run with it, pass it, or use whatever means necessary to get it across the opposing team’s goal line, while simultaneously battling the enemy team and avoiding the many fire, acid and anti-gravity traps that litter the playing field. At the end of the match, the team with the most points wins. It should also be noted that if there aren’t enough players from both factions available in queue then you can play against the same faction, so Republic vs Republic and Imperial vs Imperial.
Alderaan: Here both Republic and Imperial players clash on the scarred battlegrounds of the iconic world. High above the battlefield, two troop transports, one for each side, continuously supply their faction with reinforcements. In order to claim victory, one side must knock the other’s transport out of the sky. In order to do this, players must battle for control of three laser turrets that are spread out across the battlefield. Once one team takes control of a turret, it will open fire on the enemy transport! Once the enemy transport’s structural integrity is depleted, the ship will explode and the battle is over.
And there’s the open world pvp zone, Ilum that is accessible once the player gets access to their ship via their individual story line. Anyone can goto Ilum however the real fun doesn’t start until there are more high level players, but since I haven’t been to Ilum just yet I’ll leave that out. Well that and open world pvp tends to be more fun compared to warzones.
So now that you are aware of the warzones I’ll just get into why I’ve started to hate the pvp system in it’s current state.
No level Brackets
That’s right, no level brackets. So imagine you’re a new player to SWTOR, you finally reach level 10 and want to try out the pvp scene. Well my friends I’ll be the first to you know that you’re in for a real treat or depending the side you are on a lack of a treat. You see since there’s no level brackets it’s not uncommon for you to face off against several players of a higher level. And when I say higher level I mean player levels 40-50. I can only express my frustration when I constantly get ganked by a entire team of level 50 players when the highest player level on my team is level 20.
No you may think to yourself that player level doesn’t mean much, but let me break it down as simple as I can. If you are a level 50 you get access to higher level gear and weapons, a larger skill set and your attributes are higher. So image going against a level 50 in full Centurion Vindicator’s or Champion Vindicator’s gear……… yep it’s not a fun time.
Still I can understand why Bioware did this. The game is still retatively new and they didn’t factor in on so many people rushing to level 50 (can’t imagine why, I mean didn’t you look over the player base in WoW?) and didn’t implement brackets. However the word is they are going to be doing so in the future, however no time frame as of yet.
No Crowd Control Immunity
*Updated – A few people wrote in asking if I was aware of the PVP Resolve system. Yes I in fact very clear on how the system works, still I feel it needs to be tweak in order to be fessible. As it stands it remains buggy and the lack of explaination and understand is simply causing confusing. For those who don’t understand how it works, there’s a really nice read up on it here – http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=61363
Stun, Stun, Stun, Stun… I’m free.. no, wait I’m stunned again and now I’m dead. Perhaps the best pvp feature that Blizzard instituted in the World of Warcraft was diminishing returns / CC immunity, giving players a fighting chance, well unless they are ganked. In SWTOR however that handy feature is absent so it’s not uncommon to get stunned the entire duration of a fight. Most classes can’t handle that and die instantly, however lucky me I rolled a Trooper of the Vanguard AC and can handle a heavy ass kicking, but still it gets annoying fast.
You can’t pick your warzones
This I don’t understand. Why is it that we can’t queue for specific warzones, that should have been an option on day 1. I can’t stand it and I do get tired of having Hutball as my warzone nearly 70% when queuing up for pvp. It’s funny how two features that I’m grow accustomed to can influence my pvp play time in a completely different game and I’ll admit that perhaps it’s just me though I sincerely doubt it. Still I do enjoy the pvp when it’s evenly based and when my freaking team listens and actually functions like a team. I mean who wants to lose a battle of Alderaan simply cause everyone wants to rush to the mid point and die over and over or Hutball when people don’t understand why there’s a pass the ball option!
