Comments on: A difficult game to balance for PVP

By: Whitewatcher

Whitewatcher — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:50:19 +0000

RE: “Tactics will play a key role with pvp in SWTOR. Hiding behind rocks, walls, trees, etc. will actually matter. Dodging, rolling, crouching will matter. Where you position yourself in relation to your allies will matter. You can avoid attacks manually, and that adds an awesome element to this MMO. It’s not going to be all about attack rotations anymore – it’s going to be all about how versatile a player you are.”

Yeah, in wow its called pillar humping, its a legit tactic.
Dodging/rolling/crouching is a FPS tactic, like hell it will matter THAT MUCH in a battlefield.

Anything that makes you lose control of your character in a game that focuses on NOT GETTING HIT means you die. Like a WoW clothy being stunlocked but worse probably.

Further more, rogues in wow showed that “stealth attack = win, non-stealth = loss” isn’t balanced, it does not work, period. You can’t have a class that absolutely must have stealth in order to win a fight be balanced. Either the papers will get destroyed every time, or the rogue is worthless in pvp.
It works in balance, but its sucks to play and its not fun.

By: David

David — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:07:24 +0000

Re: “when was there ever a fair fight in Star Wars anyway?”

Especially in the original trilogy, Jedi duels were one-on-one fights. That’d be the PvP precedent for the game, I’d think.

By: Robert Schultz

Robert Schultz — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:26:07 +0000

Bioware may have produced some great games in the past. But this is ‘Bioware-EA’ and EA usually fraks up everything it touches.

By: Dblade

Dblade — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:49:41 +0000

I think it’s too early to worry about it. We’d have to know how PvP plays and is structured, and more about the classes themselves before flaws can be apparent. The smuggler could be able to set up motion detectors in PvP for all we know to counterbalance stealth, or the trooper could have passive resistances to fire shortening the duration of the stun.

Every game though is never really balanced for PvP. Something is always screwed up though, and Bioware will be no exception.

By: Zubon

Zubon — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:53:22 +0000

No, I’d go with him wanting to be scissors versus rock instead of paper versus scissors. Change of pace.

By: Bhagpuss

Bhagpuss — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 21:04:21 +0000

I think you mean rock to anybody else’s scissors?

By: Stabs

Stabs — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:01:21 +0000

Nonsense.

I played Lotro when it came out and it launched with monster play. First thing I did at level 10 was try it out. It kinda sucked though without any players high enough to fight.

By: boatorious

boatorious — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:04:27 +0000

I’m right there with ya. WoW has always been rock-paper-scissors, and I hate being the paper to stealthy rogue scissors — much better to be the scissors to anybody else’s rock.

By: Jeromai

Jeromai — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:40:35 +0000

CoX’s problem with the phase shifting powers was both player culture (or lack of intelligence/situational awareness) and lack of clear /shifted/ indications or visual feedback.

You’d shift out half of a spawn of 17 mobs, and players would continue beating on the shifted mobs, not figuring out why their hits suddenly weren’t connecting. And they’d keep on doing this like a fly butting up against a window, until the skill’s duration wore off.

Telling them to change targets had as much chance of succeeding as “Don’t stand in the fire/lava/acid/green slime, etc!”

PvP-wise, I never quite figured out the factors for making CoH CC land successfully. There always seemed so many ways to resist, mostly because if it did land, it was horribly binary and lasted an eon.

Also seen as quite unpopular as once you get taken out of combat, you have nothing else to do but twiddle your thumbs and wait for the effect to wear off. Be they phase shifts or holds or confuses.

I think a ton more people got mileage out of an unintended use of confuse, wherein you’d get a friend on the other side to confuse you, so that you could turn around and backstab your own.

By: Julian

Julian — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:25:22 +0000

Can’t comment on CoX because I haven’t played it extensively, but in the case of Cyclone was it generally considered overpowered in arenas or BGs?

I can see the case for overpowered in arenas when Cyclone takes away 50%-15% of your team with one click, but I imagine in BGs it would have a lesser impact.