What do you think about the current state of SWTOR PvP? I was just talking with a guild member about this earlier. The funny thing about SWTOR is that it began as a game where no one expected PvP to be a big aspect of it. Sure, some players would enjoy it but it would not be the main premise of playing. Yet now, there are many players who PvP every day and some who admit they only keep the game subscription because of the PvP. I think BioWare noticed fairly quickly they would need to rethink PvP a little and maybe even revamp the way they were doing things.
After game update 1.2, we saw many changes and upgrades to SWTOR. All were meant for the better but in all honestly, there were some that just don’t seem to make sense or that cause us to question why BioWare made certain changes that they did.
Massively sat down to talk to James Ohlen about some of these changes; specially, certain nerfs to PvP.
To address these issues in patch 1.2, we increased the gap between PvE and PvP on the new War Hero gear, sacrificing a greater percentage of stats and giving more expertise in return. We also extended this to the modification and enhancement item mods, introducing expertise there and further increasing the total expertise budget. In fact, the final expertise budget on War Hero was so high that we had to retroactively add some “bonus” expertise to the existing PvP gear in order to avoid creating too much of a gap between the top and bottom end PvP players.
Unfortunately, this also meant that players stepping into PvP with a fresh level 50 who has no expertise will be destroyed by players with expertise, leading to a very frustrating experience (and this experience was already pretty rough prior to patch 1.2). To address this, we introduced a relatively cheap “recruit” set of PvP gear designed to give them enough expertise to get into the PvP game and allow them to starting earning the good stuff. As PvP gear continues to advance in future seasons, new “recruit” sets will be introduced to ensure fresh 50s always start at a reasonable point.
My guild is a primary PvP guild and I gotta say most were not happy at all with the changes. But I do see that it can make it easier to understand and to adjust to if you know why the changes happened. If it’s for the overall greater good and future of the game, then I think most reasonable players can agree to some nerfs here and there. But it all depends on what direction the PvP of the game continues to take and how future nerfs and changes will affect it.
What do you think?
