Fan Site Summit: PvP Impressions
During the Fan Summit, I was able to get my first taste of PVP in Star Wars: The Old Republic. After running through the Imperial Agent origin stories and crushing Black Talon, it was wonderful to get my hands on a brand new game system. Read on to see my personal thoughts on our first hands-on time with PVP in The Old Republic.
This article is focused entirely on my personal impressions of PVP in The Old Republic. I strongly suggest you read our General Information article beforehand, to better understand some of the references in this piece. Additionally, it should be noted that I focused a great deal of my time on learning how the cover system effects PVP, so the majority of this article is centered around the Imperial Agent. You have been warned.
Player versus player content is a long standing staple of the MMO genre and a make-or-break feature for many gamers looking forward to SWTOR. While I don't require PVP in the games I play, I always partake if the content is available. This is for a multitude of reasons, but the big one is how variable it can be. Video game AI continues to improve as games mature, but they are a long ways from reaching the quality of combat experienced when fighting another human. With this in mind, it is fair to say that I was excited to finally battle some actual players.
The first step was picking which class we would be using. There were sixteen demo stations set up for us to choose from, eight for each faction and one of each Advanced Class. When my turn came, I promptly headed to the closest Imperial Agent station so I could figure out how the cover mechanic worked in PVP. I hoped to choose the Sniper AC first, but instead ended up on the Operative.
I played the Imperial Agent for an entire day previously, so many of the skills were familiar. However, I quickly discovered that half of the icons on the two visible hot bars were new. My character, like the other fifteen stations, was level 20 and the number of active skills was impressive. Thankfully, they gave us a practice round to become more familiar with our new found abilities. During this warm up period, I was quickly drawn to three specific aspects of the Operative: stealth, heals, and melee skills.
The stealth worked precisely as is does in other popular MMOs. I was basically invisible and I could toggle it on or off outside of combat. Also, players on the opposing team could detect me if I moved too close to them. Compared to my experience in other MMOs, the range of this detection seemed rather long, and Republic forces always seemed to notice me sneaking by unless I gave them an extremely wide berth. However, I don't know if my character was speced to be stealthy, and I highly doubt the detection ranges in the current build are what we will see at launch.
Healing was very interesting as a stealth class. The level 20 Operative could use two different targeted heals. In addition to supporting my teammates, I would occasionally sneak behind enemy lines and use the heals to keep myself going against under-defended objectives. It was surprisingly easy to successfully use heals with multiple second casting times while in combat, and it added a good amount of survivability to a class with relatively low health and defense.
Finally, my Operative had multiple melee abilities that took advantage of the off hand dagger that Agents can equip. One ability was even a traditional Rogue-ish backstab that only worked when behind a target. Unfortunately for my stealthy Agent, targets were rarely unsuspecting enough for me to get behind them and their health bars were more then adequate to absorb a quick series of melee attacks.
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Posted 5/11/2011 2:37:23 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 4:44:31 PMI don't get this. So people that are on top of you simply can't touch you or something?
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Posted 5/7/2011 8:23:26 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 7:00:01 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 9:55:22 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/8/2011 9:05:56 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 6:26:42 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 4:32:02 AM"Similar to the deep health pools found in Warhammer Online, fighting a one on one battle lasted for quite some time, with opponents slowly whittling down each other's health."
Are you SURE you meant Warhammer Online? I recall getting insta blown up, and obliterating people in very short order. I think the longest 1v1 I had was on the order of 30 seconds. Most were less. I think you have a deeper health pool in Crysis 2, lol ( Unless of course you played an Iron Breaker. Invincible little gods. )
Edit: Broke this into 2 separate comments, as there seems to be a problem with the post displaying.
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Posted 5/6/2011 5:59:27 PMIn regards to the tanks guard...I SO hope if theres an AoE "taunt", that we don't see a repeat of the untouchable IB Guard + WP De-Taunt for 100% damage mitigation. ARGH. It's one thing to be doing 1200+ damage to someone and barely moving their life, versus hitting someone with your most powerful spell and seeing a big fat "0". /sigh
Everything else sounds great:)
Just 1 quick question: Will we be hearing from any of the others, perhaps someone that played the Inquisitor?
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Posted 5/6/2011 7:01:20 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 2:07:31 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/5/2011 7:35:04 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/6/2011 4:15:13 AMDon't go in solo. Clearly the operative, and likely other stealthers, have some support skills. A coordinated stealther attack would likely be extremely deadly.
Anyone that has played LoTRO in some sizable PVP raids, should know what a few coordinated wargs can do.
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Posted 5/10/2011 2:31:23 AM- View User Profile
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Posted 5/5/2011 7:08:37 PMAlso " the cover system would be second nature, and they would be much more comfortable with its ROLL in PVP. " - should be role.