SWTOR Patch 1.1 came out today, and it brought with it a great disturbance in the force — or so the masses would have you think. Some terribly untrue rumors were spread about Ilum. Gabe Amantangelo has come out and set the record straight. My guild members have also tested and clarified that what Gabe said is true.
Let’s dispel some rumors from SWTOR Patch 1.1.
Rumor: Turrets in Ilum “safe” bases give valor and can be farmed. FALSE!
Rumor: Players farmed in the spawn point gave valor without diminishing returns. FALSE!
Rumor: NPCs farmed in the safe bases give valor. FALSE!
Rumor: Imperials outnumber the Republic and spawn camped the crap out of them, thus making for some horrible experiences. TRUE!
Turns out, there wasn’t some big valor exploit. Not every Imperial is Battlemaster Valor rank 100. There is believed to have been an exploit with bringing alts to Ilum, but as the community manager said, those separate issues are being looked into.
Gave Amantangelo has also said that they are going to be patching Ilum to make the “safe” bases truly safe, instant killing enemy player. This will function much the same way that DAOC’s border keep guards worked or how SWTOR’s current Warzones function.
Bioware is warning players to stay out of Ilum until this patch fix can be implemented asap. Taxi services are being shut down to the location.
The SWTOR Patch 1.1 rumors were pretty crazy. I have a friend who quit SWTOR over them. I’m sure others are still unaware and planning to quit. General chat right now is crazy with people cursing the name of Bioware and saying how PvP is completely ruined with all the Imps being rank 100. Spread the word, it’s a bunch of malarkey.
Exactly, thank you for a reasonable and logical article regarding this issue. I had heard all of the same things and since I’m not level 50 I was inclined to believe it. Having read Gabe’s post it seems like it’s been very much exaggerated.
It’s sad that people aren’t interested in doing the research or waiting a few hours before cancelling and calling the whole game ruined in sweeping rubbish doomsayer like rants over one aspect of the game, which is getting an emergency update Jan 19.
I’m on The Swiftsure and its a huge disparity between Empire and Republic. I wish there was some faction balancing in place however that’s a whole new topic and one that is a big problem with the 2 faction MMO.
Fantastic post. Great work guys. Though I fear this will do little to appease the rabid cesspool of QQers in the Forums. They see what they want to see. Really, there is nothing Bioware can do to make this small but hysterically vocal segment happy.
PvP qq’ers are the bane of any mmorpg. The come early, min/max, and then leave once some amount of balance enters the game under the guise of the game not being balanced.
I don’t understand the psychology behind it, the want for the easy kill, the easy reward.
The easy reward is a glass of bourbon and some quality European porn. -shrug-
that lag farming was terrible but you were pretty much forced to do it because it was at least 10x the valor per hour that WZs were. I know you’ll tell me I wasn’t forced but since I dislike the farming so much why not get it over with quicker?
the population imbalance is their own fault, 2 factions. . .I don’t cut them any slack, everyone knew that would happen. The only guys that didn’t know it was coming was Bioware apparently.
Realistically, this is poor PvP design (which we knew was coming), paired with poor coding/lag (which was a suprise), followed by some even worse, bandaid fixes that made things worse not better.
I nipped onto the game last night to say my goodbyes to the Guild and was hit by a lengthy patching process for 1.1
Once in I literally managed to send 1 Email before I got a fatal, orange-screen, buzzing crash.
I cleaned all the dust out of my PC recently so really hope this was a bug and not my £400+ GFX card overheating in a very short time span…..
I have terrible luck with PCs.
A quick Google and yeah 1.1 is playing havoc with some GFX cards so I’m “safe” 🙂
When Bioware placed guilds on servers before launch, they knew well in advance that there were way more Imperial Guilds and members then Republic Guilds and members.
If you were a Republic player being farmed without any chance of a victory would you participate in PvP or stay clear of the area? If your an Imperial player fighting to earn valor and there isn’t anyone there to kill, will you eventually just stay away?
The answer to both is yes!
Before I left the game, I attempted playing PvP on Ilum and found it hard to find anyone to fight. I played an Imperial Agent so it wasn’t like they could not see me coming. The Republic players would /say to me it’s our turn to farm for materials please stop attacking us. ??????
I read this several times in chat and discovered that there was some kind of an agreement. This agreement allowed both sides to trade control of the PvP zone and then farm the area for crafting materials. I was also told that this agreement was in place in an effort to help the out numbered Republic players on the server.
So much for PvP on that server!!!
“Rumor: Players farmed in the spawn point gave valor without diminishing returns.”
This rumor was NOT dispelled by the devs. They stated how things were supposed to work, but they also stated players were supposed to die instantly upon entering the opponent’s base. Given the huge “not working as intended,” there is nothing to state that diminishing returns WAS working as intended.
You’re right about the rumors regarding turret and NPC valor-gains having been dispelled (in so far as we can take the dev post as “proof”), but diminishing returns is still an unknown, based on the post you linked. Nothing I read clearly states anything other than that Ilum is *designed* to implement diminishing returns. It’s also *designed* to kill enemy players when they enter the base…
It was dispelled by the players, though.
Players were farmed in their spawn point, but were not giving un-diminished valor gains to their killers.
Today’s patch made the turrets unfarmable, kill players faster, and made the base a truly “safe” spot.
I believe people confuse imbalanced PvP environments with exploiting:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=212002