According to the latest episode of the Darth Hater podcast, keep flipping has come to SWTOR's world PVP planet, Ilum.
The gang is playing on a server where they believe the Sith outnumber the Republic by 5 to 1 (probably in part because the Sith side on that server is home to the guys who spent 3 years recording 100+ episodes before the game even came out). The Republic has no chance to take objectives in a fair fight, which means that the Sith has no opportunity to claim the incentive rewards for taking the objectives back.
As a result, when a lone Republic player shows up, the majority of the Sith do not attack that character, and berate those on their faction who do so. This creates the opportunity for one of the hosts to grief his own faction ... by doing what the Sith are supposed to do and defending their territory from the Republic.
Here's a tip for Bioware from the PVD history office: The last time a new release MMO by the Mythic half of Bioware-Mythic had a keep flipping problem, they responded by blaming WoW for letting players who would do such a thing into the genre. Hopefully you guys have a better approach?
P.S. People who reach the level cap in the first month can always expect some rough edges, but the Darth Hater crew seems unusually downcast/concerned by the state of the endgame. Raiders are reporting the content easy but buggy and threatening to leave. While I think it's possible that retaining players in the traditional MMO endgame is just less important to the game's strategy than having them play through all eight carefully crafted storylines, I hope this isn't Bioware's best effort.
I think the basic problem arises when keep flipping is the main source of PvP rewards. Even when sides are pretty even, the best way to generate points is a gentleman's agreement where keep control rotates between factions. If you heavily incentivise holding keeps, the underdog faction on any given server will tend to get shut out entirely.
ReplyDeleteI can think of a few solutions, but they all seem pretty clunky to me. Really, that sort of thing only works well when you either have three (DAoC, Planetside) or more (EVE) factions in my experience. Anyone treating that planet as the primary endgame of SWTOR is likely going to be disappointed.
We've been warned in our guild not to do this because apparently players are being banned for participating in a match where keep flipping occurs.
ReplyDeleteI think they were banned for bringing low level characters to do the keep flipping.
ReplyDeletei found the darth hater podcast to be worse on my ears than fingernails on a chalkboard. in the handfull of episodes i listened to, i don't think there was a single topic that at least one of them didn't complain/whine about. to hear that they're unhappy with something doesn't surprise me in the least.
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