SWTOR and PvP

  I tend to talk mostly about health and gaming on this blog. For people who don't really know me, or who don't know my leisure activities, I'm a gamer. I play online MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) as a sort of "painkiller"--it allows me to focus on something outside myself when I'm in pain. I focus on things to the exclusion of all else, so it works perfectly. And before anyone comes out and accuses me of being addicted or the like--nope, I'm not. I've been known to do things like read, knit, bead, or sleep when dealing with pain. It's whatever I feel like doing at the moment. I have no cravings to play if I'm not, but let's be honest. Fun activities mean you tend to do them, and gaming is fun for me.

  Over the past couple of days, I've begun PvPing in Star Wars: The Old Republic (that's Player vs. Player to those of you who don't know the terminology). PvP consists of real people playing against real people. TOR's PvP is some of the better PvP that I've encountered in games, although I'll admit that I haven't participated in PvP in most games I've played.

  In TOR, there are a bunch of maps that you're randomly sent to. Each map has a different sort of goal--there's are "capture the flag" style maps called Huttball, several maps where you capture different locations with varying results (in one, you get points from each location, so holding as many as possible is the best way to win. In another, holding a location causes you to attack the shield of the other team. Whichever shield hits 0 first is the loser. More locations mean more attacks against the opponents. In a third--well, I haven't quite figured that one out yet, since every time I've played, my team has lost). There's an arena, where the only goal is to kill the opposing team. There's a map I haven't played yet, so I can't tell you about it.

  Each team is made up of 8 players in most of the maps. There are a few with 4 players, and I'm told that ranked matches are always 4 players.

  My PvP character is in the low level bracket (from 10 to I don't remember the higher end but I think I'm getting there. 40?). I play a healer, as when I tried DPS (damage per second, don't ask why it's not just D instead of DPS, I don't know the answer) I found myself healing anyway. That's probably because the last time I did any serious PvP, I played a healing class.

  From what I understand, you can't do team ratings or solo ratings without being level 65, and my PvP character is only 34. I've played fewer than 20 matches, and I've been voted MVP 14 times (cool! I didn't even realize I'd been voted for MVP once, much less 14 times until I opened the window for this screenshot). I guess players like to thank their healers.

  My UI is currently a bit crowded--I have a combination of leveling buttons and PvP buttons. This isn't my full screen, just the lower quarter. Eventually the two side boxes of hotbars will go away, and the target windows will lower down. In the meantime, I keep my combat buttons on the bottom bar, and my heals up in the floating hotbar by itself. I tend to spend most of my time looking around my character, so that allows me to see what moves have cooled down.

  I'm a mouse-right-and-movement-left player who uses mouse look a lot. My main moves are all bound to either my mouse or keys near my movement keys. I try to make sure that no moves require me to remove my hand from the movement keys or the mouse buttons, so I can run at a moment's notice. As a healer, I do a lot of running in PvP, usually towards the DPS in the hopes that they'll peel whatever is attacking me off me and kill it. The hard part is that I have the directional sense of something with no directional sense, and can get lost in an empty room. Sometimes I wind up running away from my team instead of towards it.

  The worst is when I'm healing and suddenly the entire group of enemy players converge to slaughter me before turning and slaughtering my teammates. On the one hand, it makes me feel like I'm doing a good job if they're going for me first. On the other hand, I'm dead!

  Nothing proves how necessary a healer is like getting into an arena (4 vs 4 matches where the only goal is to kill each other) and fighting against a team without a healer. That happened last night, and the poor other team didn't stand a chance. They had one tank and three DPS (Tanks are heavy duty characters who soak up all the damage for their teammates, so that their teammates can do the what they do best--kill. Or in my case, heal). Our team was made up of a tank, two DPS, and me, the healer. We didn't lose a single person.

  It probably surprises some people that I PvP. In EQ2, I did housing almost exclusively, and constantly lost my buttons when trying to do combat. The thing is, EQ2 is the exception rather than the rule. Housing was so much fun in EQ2 (and still is) that I didn't bother to do anything else. EQ2 was my escape from combat. Before EQ2, I did hardcore raiding in several games, along with pretty serious PvP. When I came to EQ2, it was to take a break from all that.

  PvP right now allows me to relax and let off some steam. I don't do the trash talking thing. I don't mock my teammates or get unnecessarily annoyed at them. But there's something about slaughtering (or in my case, healing while someone else slaughters) a bunch of other people that's strangely soothing.

  With everything that's going on in my life, I need to relax, even if it's through slaughtering other people in a game!