SWTOR: comming Warzone Changes

Soeren Kamper pvp, Ranked Warzones, warzones

The guys over at BioWare Austine is planning to make some changes to the Warzones in SWTOR. This was already mentioned in the 2018 summer roadmap update a few weeks ago, but here are some more updates about it:

As Keith mentioned in the roadmap we are looking to make some Warzone changes this year, starting in July. It is our plan to try to get these on PTS as well, but before we get to that point we wanted to get your opinion on our plans. Below you will find the changes along with our goal for these changes. Let us know your thoughts.

The goals of these changes are:

  • To shorten the average time of our Warzones to be around 12 minutes. We have a few WZs that are taking quite a bit longer than that currently.
  • We have some WZs that are exploitable due to environment hacking, we want to fix that.

Voidstar changes – We want to give the offense a much better chance of completing the objectives. We want to make Voidstar more about a race to complete the objectives as opposed to a map which often ends in a stalemate. Less stalemates will shorten the overall time of the map.

  • Door now take 6 seconds to arm (down from 8)
  • Defenders now have 15 seconds to disarm door bombs (down from 20)
  • Extending the bridges and lowering the shields now takes 6 seconds to channel (down from 8)
  • Forcefields are now blocking the reactor room doors until the bridges are extended
  • Characters who hack their way into the last two rooms of the Warzone before the bridge has been extended or the forcefield is down will be killed

Ancient Hypergates – We want running orbs to be more impactful to the WZs gameplay, with the goal of shortening each map.

  • Orbs now score more points (up from 6, review below)
  • Orbs scores ramp up each round of the game:
    • Round 1 = 12 points per orb delivered
    • Round 2 = 15 points per orb delivered
    • Round 3 = 18 points per orb delivered
    • Round 4 = 21 points per orb delivered
    • Round 5 = 24 points per orb delivered
    • Round 6+ = 27 points per orb delivered
  • Player corral forcefields have had their up-time reduced, the forcefield is now down for 10 seconds and up for 15 seconds (previously 30 seconds)

Alderaan – Shortening the match time.

  • Turrets now damage ships for 12 damage per tick (up from 10)
  • Characters exploiting by hacking inside of the capture terminals will now die when they do so

Yavin – Further differentiate the map from Alderaan Civil War along with shortening the match time.

-eric