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Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR PvP rant 2013
I will not pretend that I see the whole picture. All I can see is the situation presented to me. And from my perspective, PvP in Star Wars: The Old Republic is broken. This decision doesn't come lightly. I don't believe that I'm making a hyperbolic statement, either. The flaws within SWTOR PvP exceed and trample on the positive parts of the PvP game. Despite being one of the most balanced and fun parts of the game in December of 2011, changes to the system have caused this part of the game to become less and less fun over time. What happened? If PvP used to be enjoyable and now it's just a drag, what changed? The unfortunate answer to that question isn't a simple one. We can't point to one action or one flaw that broke the system that everyone used to enjoy. I went so far as to say that the team at BioWare needs to stop working on PvP because it's taking the team away from expanding on the things that actually work. In fact, PvP changes ruined high-end PvE for some classes like Shadow/Assassin tanks. From my perspective, the team working on PvP is focused on the wrong aspects of the game. I will break it down the best I can.
Hyperspace Beacon: The summer of SWTOR
Every time I listen to the BioWare developers talk about Star Wars: The Old Republic, I am impressed with how passionate they are about the game. When Producer Bruce Maclean, Executive Producer Jeff Hickman, and Community Manager Eric Musco spoke to us yesterday, they sat on the edge of their seats because of how excited they were about telling us about the next updates coming to their game. Despite the game being a year and a half old, these three appeared to be riding the same hype-train the game launched with. Although these three BioWare employees suggested that the majority of the conversation on the livestream would feature discussion about Game Update 2.2, they ended up highlighting features and events taking place beyond the next patch. The questions they answered, filtered from the forum, Twitter, Facebook and the chatroom, jumped all over the place, but I believe they can be narrowed down to three major categories of concern: events, PvP changes, and the valued subscriber.
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR's stunlocked
How many times have you booted up Star Wars: The Old Republic to have a little fun in PvP only to be frustrated by certain mechanics? How many times have you been playing the Alderaan warzone, or worse, the Ancient Hypergate warzone, and you are about to cap the node but are suddenly impeded because your character has fallen asleep? Of course, you know there's an Assassin or Shadow there using Mind Trap or Mind Maze. Your first instinct is to set yourself free using your stun break, but it occurs to you that if you use your stun break, then the opponent is just going to use that ability again, and then you won't have any way to break free. However, if you don't break free, then he will cap the node you're supposed to be guarding. It looks to me as if your enemy just hit his I-win button. If it isn't already obvious, today I'd like to talk about stuns and other movement-impairing effects in SWTOR. Although it'd be really easy to write these abilities off as broken, I believe that there are some misunderstandings about the resolve system and a couple of simple fixes would make the system more palatable to the average player.
The Soapbox: League of Legends is the new World of Warcraft
Disclaimer: The Soapbox column is entirely the opinion of this week's writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of Massively as a whole. If you're afraid of opinions other than your own, you might want to skip this column. Every now and then, a game comes out of nowhere with such incredible financial success that it causes the games industry to completely lose perspective. All it takes is one game to start raking in the millions for developers, publishers and investors to stumble around with dollar signs in their eyes for years to come. Innovation grinds to a halt and everyone starts blindly copying whichever game just hit the jackpot. It's like some huge industry-wide superstition takes over and convinces people that if they do the same dance the same way, it'll rain again. World of Warcraft has consistently had this effect since shortly after its launch in 2004. To this day, several studios per year excitedly announce yet another fantasy MMO that lifts its entire feature set and every gameplay mechanic wholesale from World of Warcraft as if it were a model for automatic success. The same thing is happening again in online gaming today, not from MMOs but from MOBAs, a new genre based on the competitive gaming classic DotA. Developers are still chasing the massive money made by yet another hugely successful game, and this time it's League of Legends.
Encrypted Text: Finesse in PVP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. World of Warcraft is more than just a game. Over the years, an entire ecosystem surrounding the game has developed, created by the gaming community. I've read a few WoW novels and comic books, seen fanfics and fan art featured on the community portal, and I've enjoyed so many awesome pieces of WoW machinima. It's actually quite common for the community to influence the game itself, as we've has seen countless changes implemented after community demand. The fan-created Leeroy Jenkins video, for example, still represents WoW for most of the world. When I first started playing the rogue, I watched a lot of rogue-centric machinima. Boss encounter videos weren't very popular then, and so most of the machinima was based in PVP. I watched in awe as Grim annihilated everything in his path. I laughed as Happyminti stomped on characters who were 10 levels higher than himself. I sat agape as Hector leaped off of the tower of Karazahn after a mage who tried to escape. My style of rogue PVP has always been colored by the finesse and grace of these rogues, and that still holds true today.
The Daily Grind: What do you think about stealth?
I remember back when Warhammer Online was in development and the issue arose of stealth in the game. At first, the devs were adamant that stealth was a cheesy PvP tactic that had no place in WAR. This stance lasted for some time until they abruptly did an about-face and introduced a couple of stealth classes, much to the dismay of players looking forward to a PvP title free of the feature. So we learned that stealth comes to most all MMOs, whether we like it or not. For some, stealth is an empowering ability that allows players to bend the rules of mob engagement and attack them on their own terms. For others, stealth is an infuriating tactic in PvP battles that is usually followed up by stuns, massive damage and death. So what do you think about stealth? Is it a great feature or a horrible one? Is it so standard that all MMOs must include it from here on out? Do you enjoy playing stealth classes or secretly loathe them? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Funcom publishing Stunlock's 'Bloodline Champions'
Age of Conan and The Secret World publisher Funcom has announced a publishing deal with Sweden-based Stunlock Studios AB for the PC multiplayer arena game Bloodline Champions. Under the deal, Funcom will operate and provide support for the 10-player online combat game. The deal has more significance than just bringing Bloodline Champions to audiences, though. While Stunlock will retain ownership of Bloodline, Funcom has also agreed to purchase a minority stake in Stunlock. It seems likely, then, that it will work with Funcom for future titles. If you'd like to see what Funcom's money is going into, you can try to get into the current Bloodline Champions beta here. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until "late 2010."
How I learned to stop worrying and love Cyclone
You'd have expected a little more in-depth Arena discussion from the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational. You'd have been wrong, but you'd have expected it. We've covered the new Arena maps, but something from the Question and Answer periods really stuck out for me. What's the future of the Arena going to be like...for crowd control? Should we expect more, less, or about the same? What's going to happen to that naughty little Cyclone?The answer from Tom Chilton was predictable -- without crowd control in its various forms, Arena matches become little more than DPS races. Crowd control (and its cousin line of sight) helps Arena fights take a little longer, and introduces viable strategies that are based all around controlling the other team. (As opposed to just blowing them to heck.) But the forums are alive - alive! - with complaints about Cyclone, Sap, Sheep, and hell, even Scatter Shot. No sir, folks don't like crowd control. Often, it seems like they'd rather get killed than sheeped.I think it comes down to a pretty basic thing -- we have fun in these games by controlling our characters. Anything that jeopardizes the control of our characters on either a short-term or a long-term basis is therefore anathema. No one wants to stand there, helpless, while some Rogue performs their billionth stun on you. It seems to me (in my rosy-glassed retrospect) that we heard less complaints about insta-kill POM+Pyro than we do about a 3 second stun. Your mileage may vary, but I think until Blizzard finds some way around that dichotomy -- CC is good for interesting fights, bad for fun -- we're going to continue to see tumultuous forum fights about the issue. I'm forced to agree with Chilton -- crowd control adds a layer of strategy and depth to the tactics of the Arena. Still, I hope they do something about it.
Encrypted Text: The art of the stunlock
When I was but a young rogue, I shunned stunlocking in all its forms. "Only cowards stun their enemies," I would say. "I prefer to face the enemy head on." Then again, I also leveled to 60 as a dagger rogue who Sinister Struck and wouldn't stun, which serves as strong anecdotal evidence that I was stupid. Then one day a kind fellow rogue took me under his wing and showed me that stunlocking can actually be an effective way of killing enemies, not to mention getting behind them once in a while to throw a Backstab or two. Eventually, I realized that stunning wasn't cheap -- it was the only way for rogues to survive. So for the benefit of my past self, and any other overly ethical rogues out there, I present a guide to the art of the stunlock.
