Everyone knows premade groups on starfighter and stacked ships against stock ships. Its completely unfair to new players to the game. Starfighter is broken severely and barely anyone plays because of this. I say make racks like warzone and once you buff a ship fully, you advance a rack to fight other skilled opponents. That way its not beginners against pros, or beginners against premade groups of pros. Its severely annoying and ruins starfighter. To the people who say "then why do you play it", because its a choice. Its not a fun choice, but its the only fun to do when your below lvl 10 if you want a pvp experience. You do it for those quests also. Its frustrating, the group option needs to be removed, and racks need to be added. Edited October 30, 2015 by JoshaObiwan

I know I'm bumping this thread, but hopefully I'm the last one to do so.

 

Read this, and have a nice day.

Lots of people play GSF. I assume most of them do it because they enjoy it?

 

I know GSF can be frustrating at first, but suggesting you shouldn't be able to Q as a group is absurd. Read Stasie's Guide - it's the sticky on top of the GSF forum. It took me from being perpetual space debris to holding my own in a fight, like overnight. Like any game, it just takes learning how it works, and then practicing.

 

While plenty of ppl DO play GSF, it's unfortunately not in large enough numbers that they could create a bracketed approach like the ground pvp model. Besides, the great thing about GSF is that you can play it with people at various levels - it's the only aspect of SWTOR that isn't level driven, and I love that.

Stacie's guide is not enough, when you have a group having spammed mines and drones, using comms (teamspeak etc) and tactics, while the others as individuals are trying to do something.

 

And do not say "discuss tactics" because NONE Listens, nor anyone going to type in the chat, while flying trying to avoid the constant lock from missile sats and players.

 

GSF is in pretty poor state at the moment because of some completely mindless additions to the game.

 

a) Do proper weighting on players & ships they have during matchmaking.

b) Improve the Strike Fighters.

c) Put missiles & torpedoes locking in a cooldown.

 

And for the love of who ever in Bioware wants GSF to stay alive, remove the bombers completely, and all the satellites and drones. They kill the game.

Git gud or git rekt. That's what PvP is about and GSF is no exception. Everyone has to deal with it.

 

Just in case you want to get better, have some guides:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=821345

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=729222

Edited October 31, 2015 by Danalon

sigh

 

we were so close to getting that thread out of the way....and now someone else starts a new one.

Oh, is it time for bad players to whine on the forums without bothering to read anything again?

 

Learn to play. Ask questions instead of whining about how bad you are. We're happy to help people around here, but I know I'm personally tired of threads like this one from people who don't even understand what's going on.

Everyone knows premade groups on starfighter and stacked ships against stock ships. Its completely unfair to new players to the game. Starfighter is broken severely and barely anyone plays because of this. I say make racks like warzone and once you buff a ship fully, you advance a rack to fight other skilled opponents. That way its not beginners against pros, or beginners against premade groups of pros. Its severely annoying and ruins starfighter. To the people who say "then why do you play it", because its a choice. Its not a fun choice, but its the only fun to do when your below lvl 10 if you want a pvp experience. You do it for those quests also. Its frustrating, the group option needs to be removed, and racks need to be added.

 

 

Aside from not knowing that the word you're looking for is "rank" not "rack", you also clearly don't even understand how matchmaking for the ground game works.

 

The WZ matchmaker will quite happily throw a fully max geared group with high ranked PvP ratings against a bunch of first timers in PvE green gear if that's the only way to get a match going with the people who are in the queue. It tries perhaps a little bit harder to do a good match than the GSF matchmaker does, but only a little.

 

On the whole the matchmaking for GSF produces slightly better outcomes than the ground game matchmaking does for a similar queue size, simply by virtue of gear only having a tiny fraction of the impact that gear does in WZs and Arenas. Even with bolster, gear impact in the ground game dwarfs gear impact in GSF.

 

If you want to increase the GSF matchmaker's performance advantage over the WZ matchmaker even more, there is a solution, though it may not be all that practical. Get LOTS of people to queue for GSF on your server. Small queues are the primary limiting factor on matchmaker performance in SWTOR. They'll still do stupid things occasionally, but with a large queue extreme mismatches are going to be the exception rather than the rule.

 

For consistently good GSF matchmaking you're probably looking at a minimum of about 70 people in the queue when a game is formed and 150 or so would be even better. You could even be ambitious and aim for 256 or 512.

 

You could also lobby Bioware for a GSF tutorial experience that isn't a useless steaming pile of crap, but the devs have stated that they're pretty sure that having people start their GSF experience with absolutely no clue why their games consist entirely of getting blown up before they have a chance to do anything has little to no effect on continued participation in GSF. Oddly, new players starting with a lvl 60 purchased character in ground PvE play apparently do need a fairly extensive tutorial. Go figure.

People can still que together in groups of 4 for normal pvp. I think one of the reasons the GSF matchmaker gets so much crap is because of the way the pre-game lineup can show how potentially outmatched your team is. I say potentially because I've seen games which looked like they should've gone terrible for a team, but actually ended up in a land slide victory for them instead. Normal pvp warzones, won't show you that kind of info so you won't know your team is seriously outclassed until you see them wiping the floor with you. Edited October 31, 2015 by Kinsha

Oh, is it time for bad players to whine on the forums without bothering to read anything again?

 

Learn to play. Ask questions instead of whining about how bad you are. We're happy to help people around here, but I know I'm personally tired of threads like this one from people who don't even understand what's going on.

 

I hear you, these threads do grow tiresome - but at least the dude is here. I'm sure 99% of the anti-GSF ragers never set virtual foot in these parts. We've pointed a few nascent pilots in the right direction via threads like these...who knows, perhaps that may happen here.

 

@OP - the short answer to your question, as has already been stated: a lot of us would love ranked GSF. But the GSF population simply isn't large enough to support it, let alone regularly put together even matches. Matchmaker just has very little to work with. Since you're here: please let us try to help you. Ask questions. Tell us where you play, maybe we can get you into a group too (if you want).

 

 

People can still que together in groups of 4 for normal pvp. I think one of the reasons the GSF matchmaker gets so much crap is because of the way the pre-game lineup can show how potentially outmatched your team is. I say potentially because I've seen games which looked like they should've gone terrible for a team, but actually ended up in a land slide victory for them instead. Normal pvp warzones, won't show you that kind of info so you won't know your team is seriously outclassed until you see them wiping the floor with you.

 

This too. You never really know how the match will go until you actually play it.

 

Also, @kinsha - welcome to the forum, great to see you actually posting here.

I kinda feel that while it wouldn't solve the poor queue pop issues if they at least gave everyone equal priority (thus no queue priority for groups) we might get better matches with what we have. At least it's my understanding that GSF matchmaker prioritizes groups over match balance and tries to cobble together a balanced match only after adding a group to a match. (You'd still have the whole timer thing in place so groups would still get pops, they just might have to wait longer than they're used to if the devs did away with group queue priority).

 

The system probably would've worked fine with high queue populations but with our current low populations it probably just makes balanced matchmaking worse not better since it has to focus on group queue priority over balance.

Edited October 31, 2015 by Gavin_Kelvar

I kinda feel that while it wouldn't solve the poor queue pop issues if they at least gave everyone equal priority (thus no queue priority for groups) we might get better matches with what we have. At least it's my understanding that GSF matchmaker prioritizes groups over match balance and tries to cobble together a balanced match only after adding a group to a match. (You'd still have the whole timer thing in place so groups would still get pops, they just might have to wait longer than they're used to if the devs did away with group queue priority).

 

The system probably would've worked fine with high queue populations but with our current low populations it probably just makes balanced matchmaking worse not better since it has to focus on group queue priority over balance.

 

Yeah, I don't know either, but it's interesting idea. By the way, matchmaker priority works like this (per one of Drak's posts):

 

1) groups

2) people with more mastered ships on their bar

3) everyone else

 

Personally, whenever I queue on either of two JC mains (the ones with five mastered ships on the bar at all times) - I can't buy a pop unless I'm in a group. If I'm solo, I get passed over and over. This is largely why I GSF on other toons these days. When I roll a new alt, pops are considerably more frequent.

Yeah, I don't know either, but it's interesting idea. By the way, matchmaker priority works like this (per one of Drak's posts):

 

1) groups

2) people with more mastered ships on their bar

3) everyone else

 

Personally, whenever I queue on either of two JC mains (the ones with five mastered ships on the bar at all times) - I can't buy a pop unless I'm in a group. If I'm solo, I get passed over and over. This is largely why I GSF on other toons these days. When I roll a new alt, pops are considerably more frequent.

 

Woah not sure when I said that Max but not quite.

 

Matchmaker prioritizes groups over solo players for sure we know that.

 

However the developers told us the 3 characteristics that it looks for in to try to balance teams.

 

1: It looks at total games played on that character (not legacy)

2: It looks at the ship on your loadout bar with the highest requisition. (mastered being considered the maximum)

3: It looks at how long you've been in queue. (because they don't want you waiting for forever)

 

 

This is why when someone with a high games count and atleast one mastered ship queue's solo it takes forever to get in a game, because there usually isn't anyone else for the game to match you against.

Woah not sure when I said that Max but not quite.

 

Matchmaker prioritizes groups over solo players for sure we know that.

 

However the developers told us the 3 characteristics that it looks for in to try to balance teams.

 

1: It looks at total games played on that character (not legacy)

2: It looks at the ship on your loadout bar with the highest requisition. (mastered being considered the maximum)

3: It looks at how long you've been in queue. (because they don't want you waiting for forever)

 

 

This is why when someone with a high games count and atleast one mastered ship queue's solo it takes forever to get in a game, because there usually isn't anyone else for the game to match you against.

 

OK, thanks for clarifying. Re: #2...are we certain the number of mastered ships has no impact on queue priority? If not, this seems to be a common misconception. I've seen several folks suggest removing some mastered ships from one's bar and re-queueing in an effort to get a pop. That idea may not have started with you (and apologies since I misattributed it as such) but it's definitely floating around out there.

 

Time in queue, yes, this seems obvious and I figured that went without saying.

 

But I did totally neglect to mention the item about games played on that character. It's a key point, and also helps explain why I can't get any pops on my aforementioned mains.

@OP - the short answer to your question, as has already been stated: a lot of us would love ranked GSF. But the GSF population simply isn't large enough to support it, let alone regularly put together even matches. Matchmaker just has very little to work with. Since you're here: please let us try to help you. Ask questions. Tell us where you play, maybe we can get you into a group too (if you want).

 

I am 99% sure I know who this guy is. I ran into him on TEH yesterday while he was talking nonsense about how mastered ships are OP and advocating for 'racks' in ops chat. He was also dead weight on the team he was on, big surprise. (This is the other reason I'm pretty sure he's from my server, in light of some hate mail I got around the same time.) No matter what we say to him, it's not going to get through, and I don't have the patience to keep trying. Not in this particular case. He intentionally rolls new alts and flies stock ships, and he's honestly just not good enough to make that work. His frustration is largely his own doing, and having attempted to help him in the past, I no longer have any sympathy for him.

 

If you care to bother, I can give you his name via PM. But it's a waste of your time.

 

Edit: See his other wonderful contributions to the forums here and here. He posts a whine thread and never comes back to it.

Edited October 31, 2015 by DakhathKilrathi

OK, thanks for clarifying. Re: #2...are we certain the number of mastered ships has no impact on queue priority? If not, this seems to be a common misconception. I've seen several folks suggest removing some mastered ships from one's bar and re-queueing in an effort to get a pop. That idea may not have started with you (and apologies since I misattributed it as such) but it's definitely floating around out there.

 

Time in queue, yes, this seems obvious and I figured that went without saying.

 

But I did totally neglect to mention the item about games played on that character. It's a key point, and also helps explain why I can't get any pops on my aforementioned mains.

 

The way they phrased it when we asked them made it very much sound like it's your single highest ship on your loadout bar that is considered for highest requisition. Now they could have changed it since they told us that last year or perhaps we missunderstood. I don't have anything in writing I can link too since it was them talking about it on stream and answering our questions.

 

I will take a look through their old vods on their twitch channel and see if I can find it... wish me luck that is a lot of video to sort through...

Alright so someone owes me a drink for this but I went back through about 10 hours of footage of the devs playing GSF on stream to find this one 2 minutes window where they talk about matchmaking. The phrasing they use on what ship or ships power the matchmaking uses is a lot more vague then I remember so there might be another instance where they talk about it but for now I'm done watching devs flying around in balanced power not able to kill anything.

 

Alright so at time stamp 9:55-12:00 they talk about GSF's matchmaking, here is the link enjoy!

 

 

*Side note watching myself and Anastasie beat the hell out of the devs was extremely entertaining. (As was us trying to protect them)

You can find the videos of us playing with and against them here and here. (The second link we play vs them much more then the first)

I've thought about this and I understand what the OP's complaint really is, I think. The issue for him is not that he runs into premades or anything. This is one of those guys that wants to play in the low tier bracket forever. I couldn't figure out why he constantly rerolls to put himself in stock ships again, but that has to be it; he does the same thing in ground PVP. (And that explains the whole "you're worse than level 29s in WZs" complaint in that hatemail.)

 

He wants to farm, but he doesn't want to be hindered by better players while he does so. Rather than actually learning how to play, he just wants to take advantage of players who have less experience than he does. Somehow, I've got even less sympathy for him than I had before.

 

With that out of the way, Drak, thanks for hunting down those videos. They actually answer this guy's complaint, too. Can't be bothered to check the timestamp, but in one of the two you linked at the end of your post they talk about how they aren't going to add any sort of bracket or restrict groups for a variety of reasons. And it's the right call.