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GCW GU15 Mini-Review
Nebless
Member RarePosts: 1,871
Thought I'd move all my comments over this way from the Vet Trial Thread since I had gone off topic.
This is just what I've seen of the GU15 patch now that I'm playing on the free time.
Originally posted by clipwhite
The only thing you are required to be SF (pvp enabled) for is to kill the General in the defending city.
Well that's good to know. Never been much of a Pvp'er but always liked going against the NPC's coming in and now the attacking vehicles too. Just fun, mindless shoot 'em up's in a big environment. Thanks for the tip.
Originally posted 1/29
Well thanks to my oldest I've got a paid sub that'll go into the free vet time so I was able to get on early.
I now know why you get 4 weeks free play time as it took all my evening just finding where all my crap was scattered about at and re-setting up my toon. Probably would have gone quicker if my son hadn't robbed half my stuff to use as decorations in my house, his house, his ship etc..... LOL! Now I need to do my alt hahaha. I'd forgotten what a time sink just doing the simple stuff was.
Haven't made it to any of the cities yet so this is from what he's seen; gank squads are roaming the surrounding player cities looking for enemy players logging in at the shuttle ports. If they come in SF, than gank them there and if not they follow them into the city so they can't do any of the invasion missions (I'm guessing that means you have to go SF to do the missions). Once the invasion timer kicks in then the other side is out of the city and you can start setting up. He's done a couple of the fights and it is very laggy (SS server) and if a triple row buffed player doesn't kill you then there's always the lvl 110 elite NPC's attacking / defending.
Really sounds like all they did was set up the cities as timered battlegrounds vice the pre-CU live event NPC / Player invasions. He said they kind of feel like those battle droid invasions they'd run against Theed a few years back that would turn into massive Pvp furballs.
I stumbled across it once but it seems the cities are on a 3 hour cycle and then you get 30min to build defenses and then 30min of fighting before it goes back to the 3 hour calm and then starts over again.
Doesn't sound much like I was hoping for, more like the Restuess BG just moved around to different planets. Well we'll see this weekend.
Originally posted 1/29
Well now that was actually fun.
I took my lvl 72 commando alt to the Dearic defense since I figured it would be smaller than Bestine. Stayed just combatant to kill NPC's and went to town. Don't really know how many defenders / attackers there were. More than 6 on our side and atleast 1 on the other (I think there's a way to call it up but I didn't bother). I went over by my son's group guarding the hotel. Had a blast vs lvl 60 reb grunts until a roller droid parked in front of me and nuked me with a hailfire missile. A 1 shot trip to the clone center. After that I hung out by the starport's corner and blasted lvl 60's as they came in from the back of the starport. Finally got chased away by an elite lvl 90 so I hid beside one of our gun turrets and helped it kill him and an AT-RT (Reb's call them AX-RT's). Once they were gone I had a picnic in the park in front of the starport with a full helping of lvl 60 Reb's to munch on.
Like I said it was fun. AI-wise I'd even say it was better than the 2003 live event I did there. On the good side:
- No lag. Most likely because of the low number of players. Not too many NPC's either - scaled to the number of defenders?
- There were 4? attack avenue's into the city vice 1 large human wave tactic from 2003 so it gave it more of a tactical feel to it.
- Nice mix of NPC's; lvl 60's, elite 90's and a few gold elite 90s
Bad
- A few of the NPC's acted like they were on speed. For those that remember the old cartoon Speedy Gonzales - that's what it looked like, my tab button couldn't even get me a target lock on them!
- Not too many NPC's, not really much of an invasion. Came in groups of 3, 2 close together and a 3rd lagging behind when all 60's. Only 1 90 and 1 60 with the elite in the lead and the AT-RT's came in pairs. Everything was real spread out which was good and bad. The military in me shuddered at such poor tactic's, while the gamer thought it nice as I could work at my own pace.
All in all it will do for a month of free play time. Wouldn't pay for it as it'll get old real fast doing the samo-samo thing. The rest of the game is still the same, but if you have nothing to do on a weekend it's probably worth popping on and fighting in one of the cities. I'm going to do Dearic again with my main and then move both over to the other cities just to see how they all play.
Reminds me of the LotRO skirmish system they have now but on the games time schedule not yours. Pop in; fight a battle and then log off until the clock brings another fight time around.
Originally posted 1/30
Well that's more like it. So I do 2 battles today, both at Dearic.
The 1st was at 9am PST. I'm pretty sure I was the only defender. As soon as battle start time hit I see about 10 to 12 Reb Pvp attackers go running by me followed by elite 90 NPC's. They got the general and the whole battle was over in about 5min tops.
2nd battle 1pm PST - this time I'm outside with the attackers. There were 3 of us at the camp I was at. Maybe 4 or 5 Imp attackers tops. Once in the city it looked like there were 16 to 20 Reb defenders. Found a few lvl 60 NPC's but after a bit they stopped being attackable by me. Maybe at a certain time in the cycle they become just Pvp NPC's?
From a tell I got prior to the battle it appears that there are only enough Imp players (on SS) to really fight just 1 battle at a time. That morning it was Bestine and the 2nd was at Keren.
So 2 strikes against this latest chapter: - not enough players to spread out amongst 3 battles (which SOE run's all at the same time as their fix for the massive lag problems) so that one defeats the other - only enough to do 1 battle at a time which causes massive lag, but the fix is to have all battles at the same time to spread out the players & fix the lag but only enough to do 1 battle at a tiime which casues massive lag and around we go.
Heck of an idea I'll give them points for that but the execution just didn't pan out ....... again. Oh well.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Comments
From last nights battle:
Bestine Defenders side.
I'm happy to say that the only lag I hit was when I first came out of the starport and all the toons / NPC's loaded. As that's a normal lag spot it wasn't a biggie. After that no lag.
Quite alot of players present as you'd expect for Bestine. I think I only saw 1 or 2 Reb Pvp'ers and 1 Reb Combatant for the whole battle.
I had my lvl 72 again and went to man the cantina barricades, took a spot up the hill to I'd be out of the way. Very nice fight, only got killed once and with the clone center right there I was back in the action in no time.
Had a 'Kill 10 vehicles mini-quest' from one of the other fights but no matter how many I assisted in killing it never changed. I also picked up the 'Defend the barricades' mini-quest at some point but when the battle ended the barricades all went away and I got a pop up 'you are out of position you have 10sec to return'. Well since I couldn't tell you where those things were exactly I tried to get close but got a fail on it.
Now when I had first logged in, my toon was in Dearic and there was 1min left before the actual battle started so I hauled butt to the starport and jumped to Bestine. Got there and was outside when the comm window came up with 'the attack is starting man your places'. Didn't make the building phase but was there for the entire 30min fight so even though I was there - when it ended (we won) I didn't get any of those tokens. Not that I have much use for them but even in Dearic I got 10 for being on the losing side and I had only killed a few NPC's there. In Bestine I helped with a good 8 AX-RT's and over a dozen elite 90 Reb's. Strange.
Vehicles. The patch notes made a big fuss about attacking vehicles but so far all I've seen is gold elites clone roller droids with the missiles and the AX-RT's (a sportier model of the AT-RT! hahaha). Where are the lower end ones? Could be it's all based on what the other side builds but having some lvl 60 grunts and vehicles in the mix would make the battles accessible to the lower levels.
All in all I'll give Bestine Defense a thumbs up. I'll try to get over to Keren for the next one.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
And for my final report since I made it to Keren this evening.
Once again Imps were the attackers and only had maybe 6 players vs a min of 12 Reb's (and that was just at the long bridge).
So when the battle started it was just me, my droid, an AT-AT and 6 AT-RT's vs the heavily held Reb barricades at the end of the long bridge. Died once but we finally blasted through. Of course being only combatant all the Reb's were yelling for me to go SF so they could hammer me - yea right and I've got some beach front property in Az. to sell you.
Finally crossed the bridge, died 4 times, shot up a few GCW NPC's, items and killed a bunch of the normal Reb NPC spawns that are always in town. Meh, with the execption of the bridge fight which was neat to pull the camera WAY back and watch, nothing really special.
I did experience a weird from of lag. At no point did anything effect my screen view (no slide show) but there was a time when I couldn't target any GCW stuff, could vs the normal spawns but not GCW. Since I figured that at some point in the battle combatants were out and only SF could play I went SF to test it. Still had the problem. At one point me and 2 Reb players stood there staring at each other and I told them flat out I couldn't target them and they couldn't target me either. Strange. After a bit it would catch up? / clear? and I'd be OK to fight normal.
Problems with the whole battle thing. With not enough players to go around; a ingame chat channel announcing where the main player concentration would be, would really be nice. Reb's would still be able to spread out, but the Imp's could then get together to have a half way decent fight.
Well I see this concept growing old as so as the novelty wears off (just like Restuess and those facities battlegrounds). Also I guess there had been a steady decline in Imp players before GU15 and with them getting beat more and more it will probably keep going. The RP'ers are already ticked off because they used to get together and go SF to run their scenario's but now when they do they show up on the GCW terminals and the Pvp'ers come out to play shoot 'em up. From reading their forums I guess a ST troop was going to run a SF patrol so the Reb's could ambush them as part of a story, but they couldn't get started with all the Pvp'ers decending on them.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
Nice write up, thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
I'm waiting for SOE to re-activate my accounts with the Feb 2nd Free Month Offer, as soon as they do I will definitely be checking out the new GU.
Thanks for sharing your experiences with the rest of us. Quite enlightening.
All the GCW update to SWG is, is an alternative non-pvp method for attaining officer ranks.
The current PVP model for ranking up, that was implemented several months ago, works even better with less lag imo.
I agree that the way the battles work is ok and once the battle starts their can be allot fun action. Even traders and ent are part of the program.
However, their are many long tern downsides that SOE better address or overall it will be another failure.
First off I think it is not smart to have multiple battles at the same time. While it might help with lag to some degree, it decentralizes the effort and makes it allot less fun for anyone that wants the PVP aspect.
SOE is not attemptimg to fix the lag, only to minimize it and that is going to be an overall fail. More over, i think the lag at the battle sites when all the NPCs are going is worse than the PVP zone at Restuss. Which, for the most part defeats the purpose and just hoses PVP overall for the duration of the battle.
The other negative is that planets that were lag free, like Naboo and Talus, are now lag fests that people are looking to abandon. Thus, the other player housing planets are going to get worse.
Considering that KoToR looks like an arcade space game that some one is throwing a fail SW skin onto, SWG has a great opportunity to increase it's presence. I just hope LA / SOE don't fail to take advantage of it. Despite SWG's age, I have yet to try an MMO since it's release that offers as much.
IMHO.
Too too true. While GU15 was billed as a GCW update, too many think it was meant as a Pvp update, which is just T-ing off all of the Pvp'ers. I saw this last night with the hugh mass of Imp Pvp'ers waiting to play, only to behold 6-8 Reb combatant's destroying all they had built and not being able to do a thing about it. When 3 Reb SF's showed up at the starport it was like throwing raw meat into a shark tank! 1 Jedi managed to break out and broke the land speed record in getting away, another I guess died inside and the 3rd lasted until battle end and then made a suicide run into 20+ Imps.
While they can be fun, they really only are if the numbers are close to even and everyone plays the same game. I attacked Dearic as a combatant and the Reb traders were there repairing what I shot up. If they would have benn combat SF's, it wouldn't have been as fun.
As it is alot of the Pvp'ers do just go into PK mode if they see other Pvp'ers and throw the whole battle plan thing out the window.
I fear once again SOE will provide a few months of fun and then it will just become another battleground a la Restuess.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
As I mentioned in my most recent Rodo Report , The total number of participates in the GWC was about 10k two year ago and a couple weeks ago was under 7k.
Well , with the update and the return of the NGE vets for this months free play the total is /drumroll 8031! /golfclap. Isn't that special!
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The GCW salute doesn't count unranked players, and returning vets will need at least a week to hit Lieutenant status. Just sayin.
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The GCW salute doesn't count unranked players, and returning vets will need at least a week to hit Lieutenant status. Just sayin.
True, but keep in mind that many of the vet accounts currently activated also belong to current players. I would go as far to say that the current player vet accounts make up an increasing portion of all activated vet accounts each time a vet trial is offered. It is hard to say how many 'unique' accounts (subscribers) are actually active, how many toons per account are actually utilized, etc., but obviously for a game that once had well over 250k players, 8031 participants is rather an abysmal number.