Old Republic PvP Information

[Vasan]

The skill trees offer some interesting pvp choices too.

For the bounty hunter class you can choose from defensive (shield tech), healing (bodyguard) or dps trees. The dps trees further split it up into a moble ranged, sustained damage role with dots (firebug), a higher burst damage role with less mobility (arsenal) or a close in, ae utility role (advanced prototype).

It's a well thought out skill set in my view offering real and generally balanced choices. Having less classes and more roles in each seems to be a better way forward for online games, honestly.

[Vasan]

Ilum Overview

If there is one that is going to be hard to explain completely, it is Ilum. There is a lot that is still shrouded in mystery but it is a lot clearer than it was yesterday thanks to the presentation. Gabe started by showing off some of the capture points players can control, such as turrets that you can click to use. These turrets have a decreasing channel time that periodically fires a large bolt of energy down range. Turrets can also be destroyed by the other team, so players defending while using them should take note of this.

As the presentation progressed, Gabe displayed the several objective areas players will need to take as they continue to the opposing faction's base on the other end of the zone. Both sides will collide in the middle of the map where the objectives are for players to complete along the way. Each objective area has its own unique style of objective to capture. To progress the map, players have to take out the opposing side's walkers with a rocket launcher. The rocket launcher has quite a lengthy amount of time to lock on before the rocket actually launches at the targeted walker. During this time, a red light surrounds the player who attempts to use the rocket launcher and looks similar to the way the color loot system works today. This allows the opposing faction to easily find the person they need to target on a chaotic battlefield.

Once the rocket hits the targeted walker, it destroys it in one hit. Throughout the map, there are areas that you can use to avoid the walkers all together or use to flank the opposing faction. These areas are primarily valleys that surround some of the major objective points in the middle of the map. Once one of the sides takes down the opposing side's walkers, transport ships will drop walkers to progress the battle.

There are also several other non-controllable turrets that players can destroy in the same manner as the walkers. When the bigger turrets are destroyed, a swarm of bombers bombard the opposing faction's base. As the factions progress the objectives, quests count down the time in which they have to complete the battle before the objectives re-spawn. Players will have to make use of the momentum they gain when capturing the objectives because it appears that it can quickly turn in favor of the other faction. Gabe did mention during the Q&A that there is a limit to the amount of people that can be in this zone, but it is not one that they expect the area to reach. How the zone limit interacts with balance and server populations is a big, unanswered question.

There is still much to learn, but from what we saw, it looks like Ilum is progressing well. The only thing we could possibly nitpick about is that it felt a little sterile, but what they showed was really really early, so we're sure BioWare will have it polished before launch.

Open World PvP Q and A

In the open world zones, how are you doing population balance? For example, one side is really outnumbered than the other.

So that's why the mechanics is what it is. We went through and tested a bunch of different mechanics. It's five captures so you have to keep all five. If you're 100 vs 20, that 20 is going to get in somewhere. You have to spread out to keep them off, and the sort of war effort buff that you get. You get stacks and it gradually increases. How much you get for killing and how much you can get out of Warzones happens from defending at a place that you have and you can keep stacking it when you take new ones. So if there is a group of 20 vs. 100, they're sitting at one, they're keeping one, and if that whole 100 decides, hey, they're at the northern assault, they all start moving there, you guys can move elsewhere, so keep it spread out. But obviously we want to keep killing players because that's where the Valor is coming from.

One of the challenges of open world PvP is two factions -- what if one is not populated versus the other? Is there any sort of incentive or anything, any mechanics built in to help balance two faction populations.

That is the challenge with open-world PvP, and as soon as you start introducing systems, then it stops becoming open-world PvP to an extent. So what we decided to lean on, and of course we'll be moderating and we might adjust stuff afterwards, but we we're leaning on right now is the mechanics. And like I was saying is that there is five different objectives and you've got to keep all five to have control. If they're 100, they've got them all and they spread like 20 to each objective, and there's only 20 of you, then you're greatly outnumbered.

You can go have a fight at one of those objectives and you can have, theoretically, a fair fight at one of those objectives. As soon as they all start to shift over there, they're leaving some other place so you can go for that point, one of the other assaults, or another base or something to that effect. Now the war activity you have throughout, you keep stacking these war effort buffs, the war buffs enhance how much Valor you get from kills but it also enhances how much Valor you get in a bonus at the end of Warzones as well. So if you're there at 4 AM, and no one is in there, you're like, "Ah, I'm going to go in and take a couple objectives and then run some Warzones." It's like you can build up that buff regardless, so you have a purpose to go there whether there's people there or not.

- from darth hater

[Gisli]

I wonder if anyone will translate that into English from the original Gibberish?

In any case, this whole concept is hopeless. Think about it, there are only a limited number of ways to design a 2-faction open RvR system. I would like to hear someone come up with something radically different from the following three design approaches.

1) The side with more numbers gets an advantage. The way you win is to get more people together, thus making the core of the game be about long-term morale building for your side. Aion was essentially this.The problem is when one side just doesn't have the same player base as the other to draw from. Which tends to be a negative feedback loop -- those who are losing quite playing. So it never seems sustainable in the long run.

2) The natural flow of the action pushes the losing side back onto itself, consolidating its strength, while extending the supply line for the winning side (and so making them weaker). The result is to make things self-balancing. This means, almost by definition, that things always stalemate at some balance point, with the balance point depending on the relative strengths of the two sides at a given point in time. Perhaps that could be made to work, but I haven't seen much attempt to implement anything like this. DAOC had some element of this, in that a relic campaign consolidated the defenders into their relic keeps. But it generally worked out, since there was still an advantage to the stronger side. But this has its limits. The gibberish above about 20-vs-100 sounds a little bit like this. Unfortunately, if it really were true (remember, things didn't work out that way in Warhammer), then nobody could ever "win" the (temporary) endgame. If 100-vs-20 is really a challenge for the 100 to complete, then obviously 100-vs-40 is impossible. Unless there is some automated rebalancing system. Which leads us to...

3) Weaker numbers are "boosted" to compensate. This idea sounds great on the surface. But it would become a social nightmare. It is completely untenable as a game system, because the "hotshots" would demand that anyone not-so-hot-a-shot as they are go away so that they can become even hotter.

Aside from the vague hope that (2) could be made to work, I just don't see any prospect for making a two-faction open RvR game work in the long run. I just do not see how open world RvR can succeed with less than three factions (which tends to make things move toward a balance). I don't know that three is optimum, perhaps 4 or 5 would be best. Or "lots" (as in, every guild or alliance for themselves). But 2 has proved over and over not to work. Why don't game designers learn this?

[Vasan]

Agreed, this two sided design won't work, and they should know that. Perhaps that accounts for the dev's frenzied rambling when confronted with basic pvp questions. You really need a good answer while your pvp system will succeed with no population balancing controls. Expect the question, and have an answer that makes sense. Valor buffs alone is NOT a population balancing system. No idea why ToR is bravely re-treading failed pvp paths.

Anyway Ilum might work better if pulled from multiple servers and filled to the population cap. Right now this a is a pretty unworkable system, even for pvp lite. Even the numbers and lower the amount of active instances will help. Won't be real open world pvp then, but debatable if it's that as designed right now.

Guild Wars 2 rotating servers, three way combat and objectives to capture offers a much better chance of success. A simple system that allows for a fresh battleground every week or so, and allows you to get your guild together to capture a small objectives and work with other guilds to capture stronger ones.

[Isak]

Sounds like they haven't learned from Warhammer at all. Hopefully it will still be a good distraction at the least and at most they learn and fix throughout the last month of beta before launch.

[Vasan]

Here is hoping tor has a pretty aggressive fine tune and finish content schedule post launch.

Bright side is, some issues are indeed get fixed as they get closer to launch. Hear bounty hunters and troopers got a re-adjust, as did some melee classes, and they adjusted cover based combat to be less, not so good. So progress there at least. And the game's combat system is still involving, and the story based pve is fun to run through.

[ellyiana]

Vasan,
Do you know if there is a website out there looking at items for weaponry and armor. You know I am bad at what items are required for my character. I really don't want to get someone furious in something. I like to get to know more of the items that is required ahead. Let me know if you know anything good websites for the items.

[Vasan]

I don't currently know a site that lists weaponry and armor. Prehaps someone else knows or one can be found after launch.

However, the quick guide to gear is to examine the rating of an item, it will be listed as 52 armor (Rating 12) or 35.0 - 52.0 Energy Damage (Rating 18). If the item you have equipped has a lower rating, you may want to switch to the better rated item. Like your armor of 52 (Rating 12) would be replaced by an armor of 82 (Rating 19) you got from a quest. Otherwise, if the rating are similar, pick the one that has the better stats for your specific class.

As you build up currency from flashpoints or pvp, it should pretty easy to just look over the items and pick the ones offered for your class. Just pick the similar weapon or armor you are using, but with a higher rating!

Best bet when you pick your character type (advanced class too) is to just ask any specific questions you have. Easy to say when the game launches something like run XXX dungeon (flashpoint) a bunch of times and pick up the awesome XXX sniper rifle for your sniper from that dungeon via drops or currency.

Hope that helps at least a bit! Don't forget to allocate your skill points past 10! =)

And if anyone gets mad at you, tell them to relax. The Old Republic is a casual came, it's not as difficult as others for the most part.

Oh, seems darth hater has a database of items between the article and talent calculator. So there is that.