A Love Letter to Odessen Proving Grounds

Dear Odessen Proving Grounds,

That is your preferred mode of address, isn't it? I know that's how you were originally introduced in the patch notes, but since then I've also heard people refer to you as "Alliance Proving Grounds" sometimes, which has made me wonder.

I'm writing to you because I feel sad thinking of all the bad things that you have to listen to people say about you every day. "Not this one!" or "I hate this one!" over and over again, usually followed by a notification that so-and-so has left the ops group. It would make anyone feel bad.

I just wanted to tell you: Ignore the haters. There are those of us who absolutely adore you.

People accuse you of being too complicated? I like a simple good thing as much as the next person, but if everything was simple the world would be quite boring. We love your beautiful complexity and how different it makes you from most of the other warzones. People who just want to bash others' heads in can stick to doing so in their ranked arenas.

I sometimes suspect that a lot of the most public hate for you is fed by well-known PvPers who love to play stealth classes, because stealth provides them with a noticeable advantage in most warzones. That doesn't fly with you however, oh no! Capping an objective? Not possible in stealth. Defending an objective? Not possible in stealth either. Carrying a power-up? No way you're doing that in stealth.

No, instead you decided to give love to those long-suffering support players, the tanks and healers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that those roles aren't inherently fun to play - however, they are probably more prone to being made un-fun by other players than any other. You'll know what I mean if you've ever healed a Huttball game and pointlessly plinked shots off the enemy ball carrier while your team's damage dealers were off having random duels in the middle of nowhere. If you're playing support, you need someone to support who's actually interested in winning the game, and that's not always guaranteed.

However, your unique design has finally set the tanks and healers of the world free, since you offer multiple ways to contribute towards winning that don't actually require you to kill anyone. In fact, you turned a lone tank or healer guarding an objective into a force to be reckoned with all on their own. It doesn't even matter if the enemy eventually kills you, as long as you manage to stay alive just long enough. There is a unique kind of satisfaction in falling over defeated just as a round ends and the objective gets deactivated. You may have won this fight, but you definitely lost the battle, suckers.

I remember once zoning into a match in progress on my Sage healer, with the enemy team having a considerable lead, and I almost single-handedly turned things around because while everyone else was busy brawling in mid, I spent several rounds activating objective points with the green power-up and claiming them for our side.

People may complain that you don't give enough weight to killing the enemy. Again I say, leave those people to their arenas. I enjoy winning even if my enemy is still alive. (If killing was the only point, what would even be the point of playing a healer?)

Others may moan about your map design. The other day I saw someone state on the official forums in all seriousness that sometimes they manage to run all over the map without finding any players! Well duh, I thought, because running all over the map trying to find players isn't the goal. If that person actually focused on the objectives, they'd meet some opposition soon enough.

Again, I actually really love how different your map is, with those narrow tunnels making it hard to see the enemy. It means that you never quite know what's coming and you're rewarded for being able to make good guesses as to what's going to happen in the next round. I gotta write a guide about that some time...

Finally, let's not forget how you achieved that seemingly impossible feat of bringing Republic and Empire together to fight for the same cause. Sure, Yavin Ruins has copied that now, but you were the first. Not only that, but you did it with style. Some people may be clamouring for unity in other places now, but can you really see Pubs and Imps fighting side by side on Alderaan or Denova? Pfft.

Never change, Proving Grounds. Never change.

Lots of Love,

A Fan