SWTOR Game Update 1.2 Patch Notes: PvP

It’s hard to imagine PvP’ers aren’t pleased to see a lot of the changes below:

PvP

General

  • Aurak Base and outlying Republic-controlled areas on Hoth have received reinforcements in the form of PvP guards.
  • Certain PvP abilities are no longer removed when a duel finishes.
  • Republic Guardpost Beta on Belsavis is now entirely considered Republic territory.
  • The throne room of Lord Jordan Thul is now considered Empire territory.
  • The medcenter in the Lower Flamewood area of The Old Paths on Voss is now a Sanctuary.
  • Republic Troopers now protect Ken-La Outpost.
  • The buff for the PvP Overcharge powerup now has the correct tooltip.
  • The Warzone Commendation cap has been increased to 2000 (up from 1000).
  • PvP stats, such as kills, Group Rating, Solo Rating, MVP votes received, total Warzone wins, and more are now tracked and can be seen on the Warzone Window. Highest Solo and Group Ratings can also be seen on the Character page. Highest Solo and Group Ratings can also be seen on the “Who” list.

Warzones

General

  • Players in Warzones may now flag another player on the team as potentially AFK by right-clicking their name in the Operation Group window and selecting “Vote to Kick from Warzone.” Once enough team members have flagged a player in this way, the player is given a warning and a small window to begin playing or they are removed from the Warzone.
  • The amount of Valor and Commendations awarded at the end of a Warzone is now based on your team’s score, with a bonus for the winning team. Experience rewards are still based on the amount of time spent in the Warzone.
  • Warzone daily missions while leveling have been condensed to one mission that is always equal to the level of the player.
  • Players who are removed from Warzones for being AFK are now returned to their original locations (instead of to the Fleet).
  • Vendors are no longer available inside Warzones.
  • Credit rewards for Warzones have been rebalanced.
  • The Scoreboard displayed at the end of a Warzone now displays the correct faction icons in same-faction Warzone matches.
  • The Scoreboard’s Objective column now correctly tracks a player’s offensive and defensive objective contribution. Additionally, players now receive notification during the match when their actions have accrued offensive or defensive objective points.
  • Level 50 Warzone daily and weekly missions now reward Warzone Commendations.
  • New medals are now awarded to the winning team based on how quickly they win (up to 6 medals for the fastest victories).
  • New medals are now awarded for offensive and defensive objective actions. There are now 6 offensive and 6 defensive medals awarded for performing Warzone-specific objective actions.
  • The Warzone reward medal cap has been increased to 8.
  • Rewards per medal earned have been rebalanced considering the new medals available.
  • Players who earn few to no medals now have overall rewards reduced (for instance, an AFK player would receive no rewards).

Ranked Warzones

  • Pre-Season One of Ranked Warzones has begun!Participate for more competitive matches and greater rewards.
  • Level 50 players can queue solo or in a group of up to 8 players via the Queue Solo Ranked and Queue Group Ranked buttons in the Warzone Queue Window.
  • After a Ranked Warzone has ended, your Solo Rating or Group Rating will be adjusted based on the outcome of the match and the ratings of all players participating.
  • Players are rewarded Ranked Warzone Commendations based on performance; these Commendations can be used to purchase the new War Hero PvP gear.
  • Players with high ratings can purchase Rated War Hero gear and vehicles. Rated War Hero gear has the same stats as War Hero gear, but has a more prestigious appearance.

Novare Coast

  • The Republic and Empire are locked in a brutal conflict by air and sea on the new planet, Denova. An Imperial dropship has crash-landed near the Republic coastal base and quickly established a fortification.
  • Teams need to turn the mortar cannons on the opponent’s fortification to bring it down. However, both fortifications are shielded and one mortar cannon is not enough to disable the shield. A team must control at least two cannons in order to damage the enemy fortification.
  • This is a majority 3-point domination map with tug-of-war style objective control.
  • Control progress is saved when interrupted and can be resumed by a player on the same team or fought back by a player of the opposing team. The more players involved, the faster control shifts.
  • A training simulation-themed variant of the Warzone supports same faction matches.

Alderaan Civil War

  • Several performance improvements have been made throughout the Warzone.
  • The objective cannons’ rate of fire has been slowed down. The amount of damage dealt by the large turret blasts has been increased proportionally to maintain the same overall score rate.
  • Empire-controlled objective markers now appear purple.
  • Travel time for speeder bikes for the side objectives has been increased. The time it takes to interact with speeder bikes is once again instantaneous.

Huttball

  • Giradda the Hutt now sees to it that any player standing on the ball stand when the ball respawns are slain.
  • The damage hazards deal is now a set percentage of total player health and is elemental damage.

Voidstar

  • The Voidstar can now be played by two teams of the same faction.
  • Players on the defending team are no longer placed on the speeder path if its duration would make them arrive late to the start of the match.
  • The map on the loading screen for the Voidstar has been updated.
  • In the case of both teams reaching the same objective in their respective attacking rounds, the team who reached the objective in the shortest time now wins the match.
  • The game now ends as soon as the Round 2 attacker’s progress exceeds the progress made by the other team in Round 1.

World PvP

Ilum

  • The Battle of Ilum daily and weekly missions have been removed from the game.

The Outlaws’ Den (Tatooine)

  • Quick Travel items that transport players to the hub near Outlaw’s Den are now available from PvP vendors found on the Republic and Imperial Fleets.

Interview: BioWare’s Gabe Amatangelo on PvP, Server Transfers

As part of the local launch festivities, I had the opportunity for a one-on-one with Gabe Amatangelo, SWTOR’s Lead PvP designer. We had a bunch of great questions from the Oceanic community, and we managed to ask pretty much all of them. We also threw in a question about the delay with free server transfers.

Gabe was a friendly guy and it shows in his answers, so without further ado, here’s the interview:

If you had difficulty hearing all of the questions, the legends over at Torboard have done a nice summary:

Gear/Warzone/Commendation Changes

  • Lesser end-game commendations (Champion, Centurion, etc.) will not be exchangable.
  • There will be two levels of warzones. Regular and Ranked warzones.
  • Regular warzones will give out regular WZ commendations, and Ranked warzones will give out ranked WZ commendations.
  • New intro PVP set for new level 50 players to fill gap in gear.
  • There will be some “fun” uses for commendations you dont need anymore.

Ranked PVP

  • Phase one will be server specific.
  • Phase two (coming in the future) will have cross-server queuing.

General/UI Changes

  • Combat log coming soon.
  • DPS meters/Parsers will be done by 3rd party addons via combat log.
  • Free/Paid Server transfers are being worked on but no date provided. They want to make sure the process is perfect before releasing this.

Cross-Server Queuing

  • Coming in phase two of pvp changes (later than 1.2)
  • Priority is on playing with people from your own server.
  • As soon as you start choosing certain things (which warzone, ranked, etc.). It becomes more difficult for you to get a WZ with server players so you go into the cross-server queue.
Also – if you’re an RP’er or want a wider perspective on stuff from Gabe – definitely check out this brilliant piece from Ganden over at SWTOR-RP, which was completed yesterday as well. Some excellent info in there to say the least!
And for the record, here are the questions that were asked:

Are there any plans to allow lesser PVP tokens (Centurion etc) to be traded in for higher tokens (Champion etc) at a ratio? (Like Warzone tokens into Mercenary Commendations).
What is the outlook for Bioware’s rated pvp, are you aiming for an e-sport paradigm or something more casual.

When, when, when are dps meters coming out?!?!?!?

What are your impressions on the current PvP Warzones and what have you learned going forward for their future?

Are there any plans to allow trading up of Planetary Commendations like Daily’s or higher level planet commendations, I don’t think im ever going to use my 56 Tattooine Commendations anytime soon.

I heard we maybe going cross-server for warzones. How is that going to be handled? Are we going to be using battlegroups, or preferably RvR (realm vs realm)? With RvR, it’d at least keep that sense of community with your server.

Any chance we will see a larger scale instanced objective based Warzone? (Something along the lines of the epicness of Vanilla WoW Alterac Valley)

As I see it, the single biggest problem with Ilum PvP is the large scale kill trading. Why aren’t the organisers of KT (if not all participants of KT ops) banned for boosting / exploiting?

With the announcement of server transfers now not occurring until late April, there’s been some griping giving the assumption was made it’d be earlier. Is the delay due to the free transfers being part of the wider roll-out of transfers throughout the game?

Over to you: what did you think of Gabe’s answers?

Also a big thanks to Jodie at EA for videoing the interview.

Getting grief in open-world PvP? The Angwe Story

angwe storyWhat is there to say about the Angwe story. I just had to share this little piece of fun from WoW. Like SWTOR, WoW has PvP servers and based on this web page, some people don’t like being ganked on a regular basis. One such ganker, Angwe, has gone to the trouble to create a page documenting the aggro he causes.

There’s some funny stuff in there as well as some semi-disturbing threats made against a legitimate if not honourable means of playing the game. And yes, we know this is an older site but what the hell.

Have a look at it for yourself.