Shout when the next fire needs hosing....

One band aid after another... all to help cover over the growing cracks caused by server populations.. rather than biting the bullett and merging servers they decide to fire fight and patch it all up with one plaster after another instead of just doing what needs to be done.

Merge the servers, offer once only name change if your unlucky to get a duplicate and have done with it. Then implement the LFG and X-Server WZ tools that should of been in game from the very start...

Then again if players are happy to log in, hit a WZ and fall asleep for 10minutes a pop then its no differnet to crying that they cant get an OPS grp going unless they wait 30mins-1hr...... ok for some us us that wait cud be days if not weeks... but time wasting is the same as time wasted....

1. WHY WAS THIS NOT IN THE PATCH NOTES?!

This is a gigantic PvP change. The fact that this was left out of the patch notes is downright comical. Is the PvP development group just flat out not communicating with other branches of the SWTOR team?

 

2. This change will reduce leavers

If you need to play WZs to completion, then you can't leave a game. Will this reduce trying? Maybe, maybe not. Winning is always better than losing, so perhaps players will not try less. But it will ABSOLUTELY reduce leavers, because at least for those first 6 WZs, you have no incentive to leave.

This wasn't left out of the patch notes - in fact, I came looking to see if there was already a comment thread started about this change after reading said patch notes.

PvP

Warzones

Daily Warzone missions now require the completion of 6 Warzone matches. Losing a match counts as 1 completion towards this goal, while winning a match counts as 2 completions.

Having said this, I can't say I'm really a fan of this change. Generally, WZ queues on my main server (shii-cho) aren't too terribad, but they aren't always the greatest lately. I honestly don't think this is going to spur more people into queueing up the matches - I actually think this may have the opposite effect. For those who just want to dink around occasionally in PVP, having to do one match to do the daily wasn't so bad. To make them now run 3-6 of them for the same reward means most of those folks won't bother now - it isn't worth their time and effort.

I shudder at what it's going to do to the lower population servers though - chances are WZ's are now just a memory for those folks.

Their hearts might have been in the right place, but in implementation I think we'll find this change falls short of expectations.

This is actually all they could do until they get ranked warzones released. Pugs were getting destroyed by premades and could not get their dalies done. For the premades, not to worry. I am sure skill will prevail, you will still be dominating the opposition. They are just going to get rewarded win or lose. For the pugs. Well, you might be getting pummled, but your making progress. Keep your head up.

The problem with this, though, is while they'll be able to get their dailies done eventually, it now means that they've gotta spend an hour or better getting steamrolled over and over again to get there. Sure, you'll get one or two who try to fight the good fight, but the bulk are going to run around playing lightsaber pinata, totally ignoring the objectives, simply filling the slot to get this stuff done. In the end the net effect will likely be that the one or two who were actually trying to participate get fed up, especially after multiple days worth of getting slaughtered time and time again.

Who knows - maybe it'll actually turn out for the better, but my gut says not likely.

failing to fix fail by adding fail until it fails some more is just FAIL!

that line is the best. best one ive ever read in a forum!

Warzone daily missions changed from 3 wins to 6 played. While this might sound like a good idea it's really not. This encourages people to not bother winning. I've seen this already in the Warzones played today, after 2 minutes in Civil War where the enemy got two turrets 80% of the team just stood at our one turret to get the medals, because their daily would count anyways.

 

Please stop rewarding people for showing up.

On most serveres these days, no one is showing up as it is.

Anything that promotes more people showing up is welcome by me. Maybe my queue will drop from 20 minutes most of the day to 15.

This was indeed a change that was missed in the patch notes. We apologize for this and are working to add it in shortly.

With this change, daily Warzone missions now require "6 played matches," however any win in a Warzone counts as 2 "played matches". This still provides a solid incentive for you to win, but also allows players who lose matches to progress their daily mission by participating.

failing to fix fail by adding fail until it fails some more is just FAIL!

OMG this makes genius sense. would make a mean mission statement for say... a game developer?

On most serveres these days, no one is showing up as it is.

Anything that promotes more people showing up is welcome by me. Maybe my queue will drop from 20 minutes most of the day to 15.

It makes main quest progression easier though.. remember when the que would pop every 3 seconds back in the day? you'd spend all your time having fun pvp'ing but never get your quest done. now i can level and run my alts through the content while in the que and when it pops finally like 30 minutes later i can do my wz, then back to the leveling.

no more pvp all the time

Dear Bioware -

Please accept my application for an internship. I would be more than willing to go from office to office to collect changes that are being implemented in the next patch, write them down on a piece of paper, and post them to your website. If you would like, I would also be willing to log into a test server and confirm that these changes are actually in the game. The amount of face and fan goodwill this would save you is priceless.

This was indeed a change that was missed in the patch notes. We apologize for this and are working to add it in shortly.

 

With this change, daily Warzone missions now require "6 played matches," however any win in a Warzone counts as 2 "played matches". This still provides a solid incentive for you to win, but also allows players who lose matches to progress their daily mission by participating.

You could've easily gone with a higher ratio of wins required though, being able to skip one WZ if you win is not really a solid incentive on a high population server.

I've seen some comments on how this isn't ranked WZs and you shouldn't really care if you win or lose, for some of us that usually only run in groups of four and take it semi-serious it's a pain when the other 4 decide to go AFK near an objective. It's not really an issue about getting gear quickly, but the pride of winning and knowing your entire team did well.

So what you are saying is that I have a chance of actually completing my PvP daily mission every day now?

Because, you see, I have a job... and a wife... and interests outside of the game. Yet I have also decided to play on the Republic faction, which is constantly outgeared and frequently outnumbered in Warzones despite being on a server with a decent population.

I've seen the root of this problem by playing some alts on the Empire faction of my server. They get constant PvP queue pops. I rarely wait more than 3 minutes when playing Empire, and I almost always am playing Huttball, Voidstar, or Storm the Beach against other Empire players. Everyone's gear is around the same level, so the games tend to be close affairs that end in 100+ WZ comms regardless of whether my team wins or loses.

When I queue up as a Republic player I wait 10-15 minutes between games because there simply aren't enough people to run multiple teams except at primetime -- when I am getting home from work, cooking dinner, talking to my wife, etc. Then I get into a Warzone and we are frequently one or two players down. Then you have the gear disparity since the Empire is earning WZ comms so much faster from their constant queue pops.

Now, at least I can feel like I am working towards something on a daily basis. It has taken me as long as three days to complete the PvP daily in the past, largely because every WZ I went into we were down a player.

Thank you for this change Bioware. Everyone who is talking about "rewarding losing" likely plays Empire and doesn't understand what the underpopulated Republic factions have to contend with.

Frankly, if this keeps up I'll just switch to my Empire characters full-time. I can already play all but one WZ there.

You could've easily gone with a higher ratio of wins required though, being able to skip one WZ if you win is not really a solid incentive on a high population server.

Many people are not on a high population server and have to wait a reasonably long time to get into warzones. On low population servers you also don't have a lot of options about who you get to play with.

If you have a long wait time between warzones, and you get matched against a team that hugely outranks you, it can be pretty hard to win the requisite number of games. Though it's also particularly frustrating when you get into a really close match and lose say huttball 5-6.

While I agree with you that if you have very fast queues, the requirement to only play 6 games is a pretty lax requirement, most servers aren't high population servers. Just playing 6 games can take your whole evening if you have 20 minute queues between games.

Had his happened 5 months ago you would still have 1.7 million players, maybe more.

But hey, better late then never, AM I RIGHT!?

The problem with this, though, is while they'll be able to get their dailies done eventually, it now means that they've gotta spend an hour or better getting steamrolled over and over again to get there. Sure, you'll get one or two who try to fight the good fight, but the bulk are going to run around playing lightsaber pinata, totally ignoring the objectives, simply filling the slot to get this stuff done. In the end the net effect will likely be that the one or two who were actually trying to participate get fed up, especially after multiple days worth of getting slaughtered time and time again.

 

Who knows - maybe it'll actually turn out for the better, but my gut says not likely.

This doesn't fix faction imbalance or low pop servers, but your gut is missing an important point. Right now, especially as a fresh 50, it can be near impossible to get 3 wins for a daily. We don't have the gear to compete, and as we all know, PvP in this game is about 80% gear/20% skill. So we are getting slaughtered ANYWAY.

At least now we'll be able to know that in 6 matches we'll complete dailies and get those extra commendations we need so desperately to participate (especially given that it can be hard for some fresh 50's to get even one medal in some WZs, meaning zeroes across the board, which results in a waste of time and a fair amount of rage quitting).

Now at least the fresh 50's can slowly progress toward more commendations and thus better gear and thus better contribution. It SUCKS to have a guild member claim that fresh 50's are the reason PvP players bail out of losing games, especially when the mechanics support "older" players. Without the expertise factor, it wouldn't matter. But there it is. And if we can't get the dailies, it takes even longer to get the commendations, even longer to get the gear - and without THAT, it's always a slaughter.

So this turns out to be a great boon to new 50's and should encourage more to participate in WZs.

I completely understand why the low pop people see this as a welcome change, but changing PvP isn't a solution to that problem, server merges/free transfer is. As someone that does 10-15 WZs a day (sometimes more) it's really disheartening to see all the people signing up just because they get free stuff with minimal effort. This recent change made that problem worse.

Ranked WZs might fix this, 8-man queueing absolutely would. The mentality that seems prevalent in todays society about as long as you attend you are already a winner is in my opinion ruining the challenge and enjoyment of doing something that truly took effort.

Warzone daily missions changed from 3 wins to 6 played. While this might sound like a good idea it's really not. This encourages people to not bother winning. I've seen this already in the Warzones played today, after 2 minutes in Civil War where the enemy got two turrets 80% of the team just stood at our one turret to get the medals, because their daily would count anyways.

 

Please stop rewarding people for showing up.

This is different from the release of 1.2 how?

I'm sorry, what you are seeing isn't a product of this patch, but of 1.2 and the 'need X medals to get reward' BS. It was nice they changed it to 1 instead of 3, but still, most felt it was a stupid change, and this is the real reason for people camping a control point for medals. I admit, I've found myself doing it lately too, but it comes from being sick of doing nothing but feeding the other side medals by getting 2 shotted (yes, I have BM gear, for almost 800 Expertise, in fact), or worse, stun locked for whole fights.

I am glad for this change, since I had decided that 1 or 3 medals was not worth fighting through that kind of aggrevation to complete one.

i think its a good change. if you win 3 in a row, you're done. no more doing 12 warzones just to finish 1 daily quest. i really dont see a negative.

This is exactly what I mean; I'd be lucky if playing 12 would give me the 3 wins I need before today. There were days that I'd play at least that many, and not get even 1 win.

Maybe I can get the daily I've had on my tracker for 4 days done now...

This encourages people to not bother winning. I've seen this already in the Warzones played today, after 2 minutes in Civil War where the enemy got two turrets 80% of the team just stood at our one turret to get the medals, because their daily would count anyways.

Yes, this is the one really strong argument against the change. At least before this, leavers would get replaced with people who might be decent. It will be better at the beginning of the week when people still need wins for the weekly.

Here's some sample text:

"Daily Mission: Warzone Wonkery"

Blah Blah RP text here. Darth Whomever wants you to kick butt / Jedi Master Whatstheirname wants you to defend the helpless peons of East Burbletown

"Objective: Get six mission points from Warzone match-play. Mission points are rewarded as follows:

• Losing a match: One Point
  
• Winning a Match: Two Points"
  

I played about 8 games yesterday, and it was literally impossible to win, you would call stuff for example inc at east on N Coast and the entire team is just chilling at South as they don't need the win so they don't care. First time I ever played 8 games without winning, we lost one huttball game in under 2 mins as they let them score 6 times.

Only and literally I mean only benefit of this daily, is that if you join a losing game, you won't leave as you still get your daily 1 game, but thats it.

I have also noticed the amount of AFK players has increased on my server.

A month or two ago, as a hardcore PvP'er, I'd say this is a terrible change.

Today, as PvE'er with a work schedule and a raid schedule I have to fit PvP time into somehow on a server that is slowly dying, I think this is a great change.

This is a great band-aid and quite necessary due to the state of a lot of servers. However, if cross-realm were to be implemented, I would probably push for this to be changed back to 3 wins.