The Qualities of a Sandbox MMO

Hello out there, I know it has been a while since I’ve written anything and for all the readers I might have, I do apologize. Had mostly family things come up, namely dealing with the fact my father getting sick and passing away, which I think many could understand would have an impact on anything I could write about. It’s been tough the past few weeks, and I miss him terribly, but I should at least look at things to try and keep my mind busy.

Anyways, not trying to bring anyone down and certainly don’t want to make this some sort of depressing rag about my life, so I decided to work on a topic I touch on a lot but I guess I never really describe at heart; what defines a sandbox game. This is something I feel that has been lost in the past few years, as the lines, for whatever reason, have become murky and ill defined, mostly because of preconceived notions created thanks mostly in part to World of Warcraft pretty much becoming the definitive MMO in the mindset of everyone out there. For an insight into where I am aiming at in this blog, I suggest watching MrBtongue’s YouTube episode (Un-Ruining the MMO) on this very subject. It’s definitely entertaining but hits all the right notes on exactly what I am discussing.

Needless to say, what defines a sandbox game, something MMOs were before, as MrBtongue would say, WoW ruined everything, is actually fairly easy to define. The problem is that people believe, falsely, that these elements exist in the modern MMO, but they don’t. The parlor trick of the modern MMO is cleverly, or not so cleverly, designed to forcefully direct players on a set path. Some developers go that extra mile by providing a secondary path towards to disguise the convergence, but the end result is the same. You are destined to go from point A to point B along this road and deviation from this path is not only frowned upon, it is highly discouraged, and in some instances, illegal to the point attempting to change your course could even result in penalties against your account.

Now, let me try and define what makes a sandbox game;

Number One: Freedom. This doesn’t just relate to freedom to create the character you want, though in reality, people have actually been tricked into believing that the carefully structured character classes in the modern MMO is freedom to build the character they want. This is both a lie and false advertising on many levels. But more on that later. Freedom implies that once I log in, get my bearings and figure out what in the hell is going on in this game world, I can sod off and do whatever I want. The modern MMO frowns upon this heavily doing everything it can from allowing us this freedom, such as, but not limited to, level gating content, restricting access to areas, and dead-ending experience gain from critters and other objectives so much that we are almost forcefully compelled to do the quests that the developers have created for us.

While people will make up excuses that this isn’t true, and pointing out outlying instances of people doing such and such to reach max level in a game (namely WoW) this is again, an outlying instance and proves the point excrutiatingly well. It was possible, but the player in question not only was inefficient about level gaining, but the time it took them to reach max level was many times longer than anyone just doing the set path. In past MMOs, a player was not required to do the quests, they were fun little activities as an aside and even gave a micro goal into the normal set of grinding, but players were free to choose whether they wanted that goal to kill wolves, or if they just wanted to kill wolves on their own without some NPC telling them to do it.

However, now the attempt to kill wolves without a quest is so highly frowned upon that the experience to advance your character required is dramatically lower. Developers do everything in their power to make sure that players follow the set path, even putting artificial barriers that the player doesn’t perceive consciously, but their subconscious can see. This gating even extends to exploring, though people may not realize it as the terrain is carefully constructed to guide players on the set path. In fact, it’s well known that if players find ways off the path, though developers will jokingly claim they love it when players do that, many actually do not and such methods tend to get fixed or altered so it’s not possible to do anymore. In short, if developers loved when players find things like these, they would not be so quick to alter them so players could not do them anymore.

Of course, this freedom also extends to how you want to play to. The current MMO thinking is everyone wants to be some heroic knight, or flame wielding wizard type to get anywhere. The truth of the matter is, no, they don’t. Now, I won’t disagree that the heroic knight is probably the first thing many people think of when they start playing this game, but as time goes on, people start gravitating towards what they really like to do. You can’t achieve this is a structured class system, of course. For instance, in my case, I want to craft. I want to make things and be useful that way to the game as a whole. But I can’t do that because most of the modern MMOs not only make crafting fundamentally useless because a crafters gear can’t keep up with loot off of critters, but because I can’t level my crafting unless I become an adventurer anyways, defeating the whole purpose of a crafting system to begin with.

For other people the freedom to explore is what they are after. But like I stated previously, MMOs are being “cleverly” designed (I am using the term loosely) to funnel people in a specific direction. Exploration itself is actually frowned upon by developers if you go outside of their defined parameters. While people, again, will claim this isn’t true you don’t have to look far to see that this isn’t the case. Areas are specifically level gated, you need prerequisite gear and items to compete, and any attempt to jump over that cliff is often met with an invisible barrier that doesn’t allow such things and glitching the terrain to do so can actually get you in trouble.

Even the quests now are being designed that way. While people believe The Old Republic gives you RP freedom, it robs you of that. No matter your choice or desire, the outcome is always the same at the end. There is no real deviation from that course other than a few differences in dialog. This is the furthest from freedom, and this cinematic experience actually kills the whole world within a world aspect of the game. RP itself has been hopelessly destroyed because the very identity of the characters we wanted to create was completely removed and taken out of our hands. You have to follow the set path, by design, and any deviation from that not only penalizes your character, it may even restrict you from unlocking your characters full potential. And nowhere else can you see swift changes to a game because players attempted to deviate from that norm.

Take in stark contrast Skyrim. Now I know for some people that loved their Morrowind, this game is an abomination, for some reason, but let’s be factual; Skyrim is a sandbox game, only one step short of being an MMO. While at the beginning of the game we are given an objective that says go do this, we can basically say sod off and do anything else we feel like from that point onward. In stark contrast, TESO will not allow for this, as it is very purposely being linearly designed. A leveling treadmill is in place and players are expected to follow a set path. Yea, I’ve seen the leaked beta footage, and while graphics and such may get cleaned up, the core gameplay won’t change much from this, and since the emphasis, much like TOR, was on that personal story, you can bet your last dollar TESO is going to be yet another Theme Park in a long list of Theme Parks.

Number Two: Bigger is not Better: Another thing that makes the sandbox different from the theme park MMO is the inherent balance that is already within the system and the fact that people can equalize themselves to match the others within the system. Skill is actually the name of the game, not the gear worn. While gear is useful, and helpful in cases, it is not the end all be all of the gaming experience. This is not true in a theme park game, especially one following the WoW formula, whereas levels get higher, the gear has to progressively get better. The idea is that bigger numbers and bigger stats are always better. The skill of the player, while it can be a factor, is often only a small portion of that result. A very skilled player will more often than not, be beaten by a below average player who is better geared and equipped than they are.

This is also the case based on the class system these games often force down specific paths to. Like it or not, while some people will claim otherwise, there is always going to be a class that is easy mode in these systems for a specific thing. They tend to pump out tons of damage, and strangely enough have tons of defensive measures to boot to make sure they continue to deliver that damage. Nothing about this requires any actual skill to deliver, contrary to what many WoW rogues or TOR snipers might claim, because it is the easiest thing to do and a subpar player can do it without worry or consequence. If it actually required a lot of skill to do, players would not gravitate towards it so much, especially in the PvP environment. This is not to say that a person skilled in the class wouldn’t be deadly, they would be, but the application of skill required is less than that of another class.

In a sandbox game, gear is not a major factor and in fact player skill is the deciding factor in a long run. A player who just mashes buttons will find them increasingly outclassed by people who actually know when the best time to use their moves is and planning accordingly, instead of just blowing their entire wad in the first few seconds of combat. Timing is key, and gear is only a distant second fiddle to this. The same stun locking, button smashing rogue trying that in a game based on skill and tactics would find they are severely outclassed by players that actually understand timing and the fundamental rules of the game, and would turn the tide quickly on the rogue.

But in the end, in this type of system, dungeon loot is de-emphasized and crafted loot becomes the big prize. Though there will be things that dungeons would be required for, they would not be the end all be all of the game, left in the hands of those daring enough to traverse them for the materials for crafters, or explorers who think the risk is worth the reward. In basic, a player economy, and thus a community, is born because of this, and player loyalty is actually rewarded instead of punished.

Number Three: An Open World: This is similar to number one, but basically in a sandbox game, the world is open. It’s explorable, there is no corner you can’t go to to see what is In that nook or cranny, no invisible barrier blocking your progress, no level gating, the only thing determining your fate is your skill and your own wits to survive. Your death is determined either by your own hubris or stupidity. But this open world is not limited to just exploration, nope it also includes PvP.

The modern MMO has done a lot to try and push PvP out of the public eye of players, forcing the PvPers into carefully controlled arenas for their matches or shoving them into specific lake areas. Of course, the reason for this is because player killers (aka PKs) never really had a punishment that fit their crime before in games. But then again, many of the early attempts made the mistake of giving them too much freedom without any reprisals to be had. The worst that would happen is a PK couldn’t get into a town, but that was easily countered by alts or friends.

While it’s been instilled into the head of modern gamers that PvP is somehow evil, the truth of the matter is that it’s not. The same PvP jerks that talk smack are still talking smack in PvE. The difference now is that you’ve given them the power to do so and no one can reprise against them. What’s even funnier, most of the people that claim they hate smack talking in PvP are the people that do the smack talking, and generally acting like an ass most of the time. In short, hypocrites.

All in all, the world of an MMO needs to be open. It needs to be open to exploration, it needs to be open to conflict, because that is what drives RP and story (sorry bar people, it’s true) and it needs to be open to the fact players don’t want to follow your set path.

These are my basic points of a sandbox MMO. Now I know this is only a small list, there is a lot more I know, but this article is already getting long and I feel it’s time to stop padding and start letting people read. I don’t know when I will put up a new blog, as I said I am currently still dealing with my father passing away, but hopefully it won’t be two months again before I do. Until then, take care and I hope people start inspiring developers to make sandbox games.

Please leave a comment below.

On Cheating in MMOs

PvP is a pretty straight forward affair. People that have been at it for a long time and experienced know the difference between good PvP and bad PvP. While opinions may vary, it can be easily placed that a game that doesn’t allow for PvP to be one or two shot game fests but doesn’t turn into forever lasting slugfests tend to be the most fun, which also end up utilizing more skills and abilities on the part of the player. However, this is also something to be weighed in on the MMO market to, where a game that only has a few useful builds or powers in PvP, then one can argue the game utterly failed at balance.

However, there is a darker side to PvP, one that is generally occupied by the less skilled who would rather do anything they can to win instead of actually doing the basic, most fundamental thing of gameplay; learning to actually play. These are the people that generally argue in favor of easy kill almost unavoidable mechanics or play whatever the cheapest load out combo is for near insta-gibbing of anyone regardless of build or spec. These are often the people you see using the words Learn2play as their battle cry most of all on the forums in defense of an obviously overpowered spec or ability.

Unfortunately, it’s also this crowd that tends to also produce the highest level of the worst type of players to encounter in a game experience like this; commonly called a hacker, but universally known as a cheater. Generally this is a catch all term for someone who will abuse bugs, exploits or third party programs to gain whatever unfair advantage they can in an environment. Their only goal is to win and they could care less about the actual rules or skill required or the actual challenge involved. They only care about the win in the end, not about actually proving they can play well.

Now the first thing I want to make clear. Not everyone that is better than you is a cheater. Some people just either know how to use their skills well, know how to place themselves better, or just many other factors. Even luck can boil down to who wins or doesn’t. So in the end if you get outplayed, then it might just be that, you got outplayed. If you are new, it might be confusing at first if you don’t understand how the various classes work or something, but in the end, you have to come to understand, there is always going to be someone better than you in the end. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who beats you isn’t doing it legitimately.

Now there are certain things one could universally say are bugs and exploits of broken mechanics, and the amount of action that will be taken in those cases is relative to the amount of dollars that a company will lose. In the Pay to Play environment (P2P) this, unfortunately, often leads to the game rarely taking action against these obvious game shattering exploits. This tends to also cause more harm than good, realistically, as instead of making examples and proving they are taking a stand, they allow these people to continue abusing said bugs and exploits and state common excuses like, “It was our fault, and we should not punish people for doing something.”  While I am certain in some instances this is true, such as if an entire class’s commonly used ability is the cause, this is not the case when an obscure ability or combo of abilities produces an obviously broken effect and only a small handful of people abuse it. And instead of actually immediately fixing the issue they let it linger. This produces the effect of no confidence in the developers and tends to hurt their longevity when it concerns the PvP arena, especially when no action is taken in the concern of this.

Exploiting a bug can be many forms, and almost all the time results in gaining an advantage that would otherwise never be had. For instance, abusing the stuck mechanics to avoid an otherwise lethal situation, especially in the realm of PvP or using a specific bug to allow a character to produce ludicrously high damage that even the most robust tank can’t withstand. Many try to claim that it’s just using the system to their advantage and sadly in many circumstances, instead of actually punishing the people abusing these exploits. Most game companies decide to weigh towards the dollar value and let it slide thus continuing to send a message that they allow this to happen instead of making an example of those people and maybe even curtailing some of the more fearful exploiters, and thus losing potential dollars and those who prefer a fair and even environment without having to rely on bugs and exploits for a level playing field don’t want to belong to. Hysterically, most of the people that abuse the bug will do whatever they can to defend it.

Now, the final type of cheater is the hacker type. They use third party programs, most of the time illegal, but sometimes legal, to actually gain an advantage that could not normally be had in the game. Anything from super bursts of speed, to inhuman levels of target, to even magically knowing where everything is in a game that no one without spending hours doing the timing themselves and setting up a clock could know. People abusing these types of programs sometimes are doing it to see how long they get caught. However, there are groups of people who go out of their way to find these cheats and the first question almost always asked is, “Is it detectable?”

Blatant hacking is almost easy to see. People moving faster than it would be physically possible or healing impossibly fast or magically hitting you regardless of location are all examples of hacks that you could see. Hacks come in many forms and vary from game type to game type, but they all basically aim at one thing; to give a ludicrous advantage to make winning easier if not guaranteed. Hacks aren’t limited to just those, either, there are hacks designed to run and do errands for people and these are also universally riled.

At the end of the day, the reality is that cheaters are everywhere. They know they are doing it, and many try to cover up that fact. Some blatantly abuse bugs and exploits or third party programs and hover on excuses that they use them to make the devs fix them faster. However, I think it would be in developer’s best interest to start banning people more openly. If you don’t show the cheaters that your policy is actually something you back up they will basically just wipe their ass with whatever your terms state, and in the long run this will cost you more dollars in the end. Stop dancing around these problems and actually start doing something and backing up your claims of no tolerance. While I know that every claim of cheating or hacking needs to be investigated, if you were actually making examples of them you might have less than would actually appear.

PvP Tanking in SWTOR

I don't think I've made it a small secret that one of the things I love to do in MMOs is tank, and be the person to soak up all the hits and protect the rest of my team. I love SWTOR's tanking because, like WAR, it lets me actually be useful as a tank on the battlefield of PvP instead of being told to respec or reroll just so I can have some fun. I have uses, I can help protect the rest of my team, and with a few nice words placed here and there, I can pretty much get the rest of the enemy team on me ignoring my team as we ninja cap or get scores no problem. I love that last bit when an entire team dog piles me thinking they are hurting my ego when that's what I wanted them to do.

This next bit I am about to say, however, is going to be a bit of tangent concerning though. I play a shadow, and a tank at that. I have a lowbie vanguard alt, but that's not the issue. For me, I have to say whoever suggested the shadow design doc should feel ashamed. This is the most clunky, ill-designed, and busy body working tank class I have ever played as far as tanking, and I played a WoW warrior to boot. A goodly chunk of my Force and rotations are devoted to just keeping alive, and personally, if that is required in your button pressing, then there is a critical design flaw. Over all, though, I am making do with it, even though I know my vanguard tank is worlds better, I am enjoying myself and main tank a lot of stuff, including entire PvP teams hehe. Back to the scheduled blog post.

Needless to say PvP in SWTOR is a large amount of hitting and missing. Mostly missing because of the clunky, ill conceived system that BioWare has created at level 50. However, I am enjoying myself as a tank because I am a team protector, and I am filling in that role I love to play. How you play that role varies from game type to game type. Generally, if your team is working well together, you want to keep the squishy healers guarded and hope that they are actually healing. It's not exactly easy to tell, but it's a prayer.

Now, past guard you will have three other moves that are pretty much game changers if played right in any PvP arena; your main taunt, your AE taunt and you will have one, possibly two AE moves devoted to reducing your enemies damage or chance to hit. Taunts are powerful tools in PvP, as they reduce the enemies damage by 30% against anyone not you. That means that team member getting hit by that Operative, taunt them. Those heavy crits will melt into jokes fast. Ball carrier getting swamped, AE taunt, that will help give your healers some breathing room and maybe your ball carrier a chance to pass. Throw in your acc reducers and any other damage reducing abilities you have, you can effectively make the game very nice for your team, if you are playing your cards right.

Now first off, the thing that I think needs to be mentioned that I see all manner of tank specced people going into PvP are thinking. They think they are heavy DPS. Any tank specced person thinking they are going to do the monster damage, respec or reroll into a DPS spec or class. If all you are doing is trying to DPS and you're a tank on your team, stop. You are not helping your team and in fact you are being pretty much the weakest link. For instance: I can't count how many times I've seen a tank specced assassin or shadow come up to me and try to use shadow strike or the assassin equivalent. Stop. You are wasting 50 Force on a move that hits barely better than double strike. You will get more out of your project than you ever will out of shadow strike. Hell, I played infiltration as a while and mowed people down, and shadow strike was worthless in that spec to, so I suggestion people stop using it and start using things that actually aren't so reliant on random chance and timing.

Next on the list are people that say defensives don't work in PvP or they only work on certain moves and not others. Please, defense does work. You just need a lot more than 5% to actually have it matter. Same with shielding and absorb. Of course there are going to be certain moves you can't defend against, if you were immune to everything that would be ungodly overpowered. But people that say defense, shield and absorb are worthless in PvP are the same exact tanks I watch get face planted in less than 10 seconds while running the ball in Huttball. Think this is the same crowd of people that see a number and expect it to always be on or something or reduce things down by that much all the time. It's random chance, random is random. Of course, this would be the same group of people that think a 1% increase to critical is awesome. Oh and all attacks have a base of 105% chance to hit, so you need more than 10% defense to reduce those down.

Now, onto other things. Life as a tank in PvP is a bit of a quandary. If you are going it alone you will find it rough because 9 out of 10 times you will find you are with people that think big yellow numbers are more important than actual team effort. This puts you, if you are tank minded and spec, at a huge disadvantage in PvP because you are in an uphill battle. Then of course you also have to contend with the DERPs who think throwing a guard on someone they don't even stick with is actually a good thing when it actually hurts your chances of protecting those individuals. I am not saying you shouldn't solo queue if that's what you enjoy for PvP, but it's going to be rougher if you are a tank.

Now, imagining you go with a friend and they are a healer, sticking with them and guarding them is pretty primary. Of course, every now and then you still get the derp who just likes to randomly throw shields on people, be sure to ask your partner to right click the guard off if it is not yours. Hell, I am a shadow tank and even my vanguard trooper has gotten guards for no blasted reason other than a derp thinks it will matter in the end.

Now, what happens from there is going to depend largely on the game you are playing. In Voidstar, generally I like to go out against one door while the rest of the team hits the other. Now, because I have a healer with me, this also puts a huge advantage on us and we can generally handle 4 or more imps wailing on us. Eventually it might even lure the imps into swarming us and give the other side an opportunity to tag the door. It doesn't always work. Some days we just plow through. It just all depends on the mood and how we feel we are going to do things.

In Alderaan Civil War, me and the healer go to the right node. There are a couple of reasons why. This node is bugged and has an instant damage tick. On top of that, it ticks slightly faster. What we end up doing is basically slowing Imps down from capping it while the rest of the team is out there to get the left and possibly the center nodes. And hell, if we play our cards right we even take the right node in the process. But the entire goal there is just to slow the imp cap of the right node down. It's a game changer node, basically, if allowed to go uncheck too long.

Huttball is actually a bit trickier to decipher. This is more touch and go type area. Now, for Vanguards and Shadow tanks, this place can be fun because we can pull people into traps and shadows can knock them into traps etc etc. But when it concerns guarding, well it's a judgment call there. On one hand you want to guard your healer, but on the other hand, if your healer isn't being attacked or being attacked by wet noodle DPS, it's best to guard the ball carrier, provided you can actually take the hits the ball carrier will be taking. Too many times have I seen derpy DPS try to guard a ball carrier only to watch them fall apart in seconds with the ball carrier going down shortly thereafter. And remember your taunt and AE taunt are life savers in these situations to.

Now, some people that tank imagine being the ball carrier most of the time in huttball, I actually don't like to be. One, I might be a tank, but that means that all my tools for helping the team are wasted such as my AE taunt. Two, guarding someone carrying the ball is better, because as a ball carrier it's smarter to take your guard off someone because soaking the damage of two people, and you will probably be doing that if you are guarding the healer, just increases the work load on your healer. And finally, as a tank you have some CC and peels, mostly, that can help out in the end. The aforementioned pulls that shadows and vanguards get, yea we can use those to instagib people that are being a nuisance by placing them in traps, and shadows can just AE knock people.

Really, as a tank, the best thing I found was to get the ball, pass it to someone else, then protect them smartly. Tanks as the ball carrier sounds great on paper, and works well against bad teams, but to me and against good teams, the tank should not be running the ball but be acting like the guards in football running along the ball carrier and knocking the other team out of the way maybe even going ahead of the ball carrier to get that quick toss for the win.

Anyways, that covers my view points on PvP tanking. I know many out there probably are still in the wow mentality of tanks suck in PvP and they are no good except in small situations. Well, don't discredit a tank. And a good tank is one that knows how to enrage the other team into always attacking them, regardless. And I do that regularly to hehe.

SWTOR PvP Tears

I don't think it can be argued one way or the other by anyone except the most diehard that PvP in SWTOR is absolutely broken. There are many issues that can point out why, but I think the biggest of all, for the level 50s anyways, is the Expertise stat. This is an archaic square peg in a round hole solution to item bloat that just shows that many developers are not really actually wanting to fix the issue as much as burry it in a stat and pretend it will go away on its own.

Why do I say this? Because now that SWTOR is bracketed off, just like in WAR, the 10 to 49 PvP game is actually fun. The PvP feels balanced and challenging. However, like in WAR, the top bracket is so gear dependant because of one stat that if you aren't geared for it, it's an uphill slog just to get that way. It's just despicably and badly set up. And this isn't even getting into the discussion of how bad Ilum was set up or the fact that anyone with half a brain could see how PvP was going to turn out before the 1.1.0 patch or how open world PvP would turn out with the 1.1.0 patch. There's no way that one could actually believe that BioWare was this dense, but realistically, the only way to call this is sheer and utter incompetence.

Now I know many will undoubtedly think I am being unfair and harsh in my assessment, but I am not. This is not forgivable anymore. This is 2012, mistakes like these in an established industry of MMOs are no longer and should no longer be forgiven. In the early heyday of UO, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot and maybe even the first year of World of Warcraft, things like this could be understood and forgiven because MMOs, for the most part, were still testing the waters for many things and certain things had yet to be established, but it's been now over 15 years since MMOs have gone mainstream, and MMOs have had longer than that behind the scenes. Many people don't even have cars half that old.

Many of the developers in SWTOR have had experience on previous titles as far back as Ultima Online in fact, some were developers on WAR, and many other MMO titles out there. Little known fact for many people, the development industry is constantly shifting, developers move games and companies regularly. If they were to be likened to anything, it was a publicly traded stock. I know in my tenure over at UO I saw no less than 4 completely new UO teams before I quit and I know WoW and DAoC have undergone similar situations.

However, back on track to me these mistakes with SWTOR are just not excusable anymore. This is 2012, Ilum should not have been launched how it was, they had a solid model for open world PvP to look on with WAR, the Exerptise stat was unnecessary and should have never been added, it just added bloat onto the game all because they wanted to appease PvPers too lazy to play the game any other way, and to appease PvErs who wanted to not let their egos be interrupted b the fact that PvP gear might be able to rival what they can get in dungeons. Realistically, if we were to fix this issue, they would have statted the gear appropriately for PvP and PvE, since one set of stats isn't good for one particular game play area versus the other. After all, my level 50 shadow would prefer more crit and surge for PvP but more Power and Accuracy for PvE. This whole expertise thing was just plain unneeded and tells me the devs would rather try to fit a square peg into a round hole instead of working in a real solution to this.

It's sad to me that myself and many others pretty unanimously agree that the pre 50 game is the most fun for PvP because of no expertise stat. Outside of a few fringe cases, the game feels balanced. But once expertise is thrown into the mix, you end up with basically a cluster fuck of stupid and incompetence as the developers would undoubtedly spend more time trying to balance the crap out and the end result, much like Blizzard, PvP is only accessible to the people with the gear, while the people without it are up a creek.

And that's another issue with this whole system; The PvP loot in general. Now, intelligent people would say if you put the work in you should be rewarded for your effort. SWTOR says hell no, not only do you have to work for it, you need to rely on a RNG mechanic for your loot. I know, personally, my luck hasn't been the greatest. It took me over 30 bags before I finally got my first piece of set armor for PvP, with either a lot of air in those bags or repeat copies of those (pre 1.1) useless relics. On the other hand, others were getting near full sets within a few bags. I know some people had it worse than me, while many others have reported having their complete set within opening a few bags. This was clearly not thought out, basically.

The sad part, I did the Eternity Vault Operation and within completing that run I had my full armor set plus extra accessories in one run. That's many levels of messed up.

Now, onto Ilum, I think people have said as much as they could. I agree with most of them to. The planet needs to be shut down, period. It's job has failed. The instances on the planet can be moved out to the stations, for whatever reason, but the rest of the planet needs to be just shut down until a real solution is given or the entire PvP area just blocked off. This area just needs to be shut down, it's purpose has failed and there is no reason to even bother with it outside of those that like easy mode, and quite frankly there are people that play that way, hence all the QQ and tears over operatives.

Anyways, on that note, SWTOR's PvP is just bad at 50. PvE is ok and the game provides entertainment there and probably will for some time. PvP, on the other hand, will need some drastic work and fast to salvage it. Things that should be done, Expertise get removed, gear redone to be more PvP centric instead of just PvE gear with expertise on it and a lowering of endurance and the main stat and Ilum should be made into a PvP lake with conquerable objectives and keep like game play with siege weaponry. That would go a hell of a lot further.

PvP: Yes, I do actually PvP, and here are my views on it

You know, one of the most hilarious things I get to listen to a lot as an MMO player, and not exactly one who sits and boasts or brags about my gaming experience (sarcasm), one of the funniest things I actually get to hear (other than being called a nub) is that I am a care bear. This always strikes me odd considering the fact I am almost always pro PvP in games, unless the system is just horribly skewed and completely broken to the point that even bothering to PvP is just a massive waste of time (more than it normally is). Of course, then when it concerns this and I actually do PvP a lot of these people, especially the ones that think they are among the best of the best, I typically end up railroading them, and then they start calling me cheap, I wasn't playing fair, etc, etc, etc.

PvP is always a fascinating subject to me because, in the grand scheme of things, as long as you are winning, the game is balanced. But the minute someone comes along and wallops you, the game needs to be rebalanced and fine tuned. I don't care what type of person you think you are, the minute you get beat, you are screaming at your screen, or holding back screaming at it, and sitting there saying something was cheap, that is broken, or the best of them all, the person that just walloped you is hacking. Of course, this is not to deny the fact that there are situations where this occurs, and in some areas, occurs more frequently than it should, but in general, the first instinct of a player, no matter how cool or collected, is to rage at just having been defeated at something. Depending on company, their composure may hold back, but as time wears on, that composure slowly fades away as they end up getting beat more often than they think is possible.

Now this thought came about when I was looking over the cliff notes on TOR's PvP system they have set up, and I will say, on paper, I like it because I reminds me of WAR's PvP system, which was, in my opinion, is one of the better PvP MMO systems on the market. Of course, that is about all that WAR does, as it's PvE is absolute rubbish. And this got me thinking over the various years, for nearly 14 years since the early days of UO, how I just find it funny how people call me a care bear or something because I don't sit there and boast about PvP being the only thing that matters. Of course, my personal point of view is that for a good sandbox game, PvP would need to be a pivotal aspect, however, due to the highly immature nature of PvPers in this day and age of internet gaming, the mass market will probably never actually grow to accept PvP in that capacity, so it will always need to be regulated and controlled as long as the average MMO PvPer has the mentality and self control of a four year old who's been fed several dozen pixie sticks.

Is that an unfair approximation of PvPers? Yes, and no. Yes, because not all PvPers act this way. No, because, quite frankly, more act that way than the more "civilized" PvPers would like to believe. On average, for every one decent acting PvPer, you can probably wager at least three others are gibbering, hooting dick holes that aren't worth your time. This is the result of the competitive nature of PvP mixed with the anonymity of the internet allowing people to do what they can't normally do in the real world, even though they would do it in a heartbeat if they were allowed to. And the sad part is, while most people will profile these people as being under the age of eighteen, the startling reality of it is, many of these people will be in their late twenties to mid thirties. And no, that isn't even made up, that is a factual statistic concerning MMOs in general. The average age of an MMO gamer falling around thirty.

But enough of that, the point of this blog really wasn't about PvPer mentality and such, but the fact that I just wanted to talk about PvP, and just generally share with the fact that I actually do enjoy to PvP, even if I don't sit there and shut my life away inside a PvP zone every minute of my log in time of any game I am playing. Of course, some of the excuses some PvPers make for reasons why they don't PvE in games also is some of the funniest non-sense I've heard to, but we will get to more of that later.

Following up my views from my last blog about APB:R, something I will put forward. Do I think APB:R is going survive it's second incarnation? Short answer? No. Long answer, speaking as a PvPer, the game is just too flawed. The imbalance is monumentally obvious in that game, enough so that even an outsider can identify the flaws straight away, the servers are still unstable, memory leaks are still prevalent, lag spikes are phenomenally bad, and people just can't be bothered to even play the game for free from what I can see. Seriously, if the game has any following it won't be much higher than when Real Time Worlds was running it, because GamersFirst has cocked the whole thing up so badly that the game just isn't the fun that was originally delivered. And they expect people to pay money for the premium stuff. At best, they will probably make money on people with the clothing editor (make being generously stated), but past that, people will most likely stick with Team Fortress 2 or even Brink instead of APB:R and I don't see the servers having great populations on them. There is just too much monumentally wrong with the game now, and a lot of it was just created recently.

Now, as far as my PvP experience goes, I am not a major FPS person, or shooter in general. The reason for this is because I don't have the money or time to constantly keep upgrading my system every other month just to keep ahead of the curve that most of these hardcore serious FPS PvPers do. My latency is always superb, but people depend their ability in an FPS on perfect FPS rates as well as millisecond times, that becomes too much, and I just don't care to try and keep up with that non-sense. That is too expensive and for something that only provides enjoyment based on that moment, it isn't worth the time to me. The modern FPS relies on twitch factors that are more machine based than actual person based and the end result relies less on strategy these days and just more on hardware performance. That's all and well for the muscle machine enthusiasts, but just isn't my cup of tea.

On the other hand, I love to PvP in MMOs and strategy based games. There, your latency is more key as well as your actual thinking, planning and strategy. Of course, there comes the rub. Unlike an FPS shooter (mostly) MMO and strategy based games rely more on the actual game being balanced towards certain aspects. One thing off results in the entire system being cocked up instantly and the cries of nerf can be heard across the universe. Well you will hear that anyways anytime someone gets whooped in PvP by someone with more skill than another person, but we are talking blatantly obvious imbalances. Things like powers that are making someone immune to damage completely, or attacks that decimate entire fields in one shot, or even powers that let you do things that weren't originally intended, like getting into a keep without having to break the front door down.

MMOs are complicated, many times more than FPS games or single player or even their multi-player variants. It only takes one bad power or such to just throw everything out of whack and the cries for a nerf to come crawling in. Of course, on the flip side is the hilarity that the people that do abuse the obviously broken stuff will go out of their way to make claims that it is indeed balanced, even though it is plain obvious to anyone that a power that basically says "IWIN" is in no way balanced. This makes the gulf between a PvE and PvP player very large because neither camp want the other to interfere with each other, but both camps like to believe their side of the fence exists in a vacuum.

Now, my personal PvP experience (when I started online computer stuff since I been technically PvPing since consoles and arcades as a young child with games like Killer Instinct and such) started in UO in 97. Needless to say the concept of an MMO was new to the world in general, let alone me. At first, I didn't like it, because I lost everything and such and all that I worked for was gone. But eventually, I came around and started to work and get better at it and pace myself. Of course in the early, burgeoning days of UO, PvP was very much hit or miss because only a handful had broadband and 56k was still the big thing. Eventually that changed and of course the world changes almost overnight when you get broadband.

As time went on I learned how to only carry what I needed then and there and I have to say, became a rather proficient PK hunter and a master mage duelist. But that was ages ago in the MMO world of things. In today's MMO world, PvP is relegated to back corners and such to avoid offending the eyes of people who think PvP is a stupid waste of time, and to me they are closed minded. Of course, I also think of PvPers that think of PvE as a stupid waste of time being equally as closed minded, since in my experience a player can be even more predictable than a computer program AI. But that's another point entirely.

Now, if I were to rate MMOs based solely on their PvP experience, the list would probably be a quite long one. No game has quite nailed it and PvP is something that's always being adjusted and changed and rebalanced all because of a few people that go out of their way not only to min max builds, but to find broken powers to make things unbelievably unbalanced. These type of people, of course, generally hide behind excuses like they are trying to make the devs fix it faster and such, or that the power is not broken than people just need to learn to play or other such rubbish. So, instead of actually listing a list of MMOs, I am going to list MMOs based on what I think, at the time when i played them, were the most fun and balanced PvP systems, the worst PvP system, and the cock up of the year award.

Now, considering how I have stated in various places this, it should come as no surprise, but I consider WAR to have one of the best PvP systems, when I played it. Now, the rub here. Why did I stop playing WAR? Well frankly all there was was PvP in that game. The PvE game was dreadful, to say the least, and if you tried leveling up straight through PvP you will be grinding hardcore. Not to mention, because they followed the WoW model (despite Warcraft was a blatant rip off of Warhammer) even a minute gear difference pretty much cocked balance up especially in the lower level ranges. But given MMOs in general, this was the most fun and balanced of my PvP experiences in MMOs to date.

Now, PvP systems in general go, I'd have to say the worst PvP experience on the market goes to Cryptic. Sorry Cryptic, but you guys just seem to make a PvP system then give up on it. Things are always so horribly broken or imbalanced. If I were to rate the three games as they stand from best of the worst to worst of the worst, City of Heroes would be the best, (better before the stupid i13 changes) with the absolute worst being Champions Online. There is no sense of balance and only a tiny sliver of builds are even valid in any of it, which just is atrocious planning. A lot thought needs to be taken in but honestly, I think Cryptic has just given up over all concerning PvP for Champions, and probably Star Trek Online as well. They don't control City of Heroes anymore (and I haven't played since the i13 patch), but I know that PvP is even worse than ever.

And finally for the cock up of the year award, this will go to GamersFirst for completely, boldly, and bluntly fucking up the entire APB experience. The game is hugely imbalanced, they removed fun aspects (car chases for instance), and have done nothing major to address the startling major issues and concerns, and also trying to throw the wool over the eyes of the populace as a whole concerning the major issue of hackers. The servers are unstable, the game has a HUGE memory leak, and the balance is just plain non-existant. Key advice, you don't try to take a system that was perfectly balanced before (minus a few problems) and try to improve it. You fuck it up.

Now, that all that is out of the way, I will say after reading the info on TOR's PvP systems, it has caught my interest there. The rest of TOR is debatable. I love to actually PvP. I like to PvP quite a lot. I am nowhere near as good as I use to be, and strangely enough, some people actually think I am making some bold claim that I am some goddess of PvP. But having the experience and such throughout the years of MMO PvP, I do have a bit of knowledge concerning what is balanced and what isn't in an MMO, and this allows me to spot a power more easily based on what it does as being imbalanced and planning a basic set up with it. A lot of people don't like that it seems, and ironically they love to claimt hey want to balance such things. And it still does amuse me when people call me cheap because I beat them because they think I am a care bear and they find out differently.

Anyways, please leave comments below, I would like to hear them.