From the simple stand point that there are 'around' 400k-500k subs or whatever, plus FTPers. Even if the number was as low as 200K players playing the game it goes like this:

 

17 Servers, say all of them had 12 teams that played ranked (gross assumption, some are PVE servers, some pvp may have more teams) and that each 8v8 ranked teams requires 8 players. That is about 1632 players in the game playing ranked, lets pretend the teams have backup players and we can bump the number up to 2000 players playing ranked - Across the whole sub base. Lets say theres only 200k players playing SWTOR, that 2000 players is only 1% of the playerbase. And I'm guessing high on players and low on subs. So for less than 1% of the people actually playing they're making the changes. The other few hundred thousand players now get a chance to have exposure to ranked, cause getting on a ranked team is way harder than getting into an OPs group and doing a HM Operation. Doesn't mean anyone is good or bad anywhere, its about ease of entry into the game. If I was the CEO or a Dev I'd make the decsion to include the 99+% of players more regularly than the >1%.

 

I think removing 8v8 ranked or making 8v8 different than what it is now is silly, since group-finder has Ops which is used probably 95% of the time by an OP group queing through GF for the comms, and WZ's should/could have something similar.

 

They Made nightmare modes for the >1%; lets hope they keep the >1% in mind when tweaking Warzones down the line post 2.4.

That is about 1632 players in the game playing ranked, lets pretend the teams have backup players and we can bump the number up to 2000 players playing ranked - Across the whole sub base.

Nowhere near I think.

It's more like 2-6 teams per server except Pot5 that play on a consistent basis. Some might not have them at all, because you can't play ranked with just 1 team. IDK how populated are the EU servers and if all of the RP and PvE ones even have such teams.

 

And they spend very little time in these RWZ, compared to PvE guilds grinding through NiM ops for hours on end.

The reason they want no 8v8 RWZ was already stated, they want all ranked in one place so that it would actually happen without pre-Q'd matches.

How many people do you think are running nightmare mode 16 man operations?

 

Let's get rid of them.

How many people do you think are running nightmare mode 16 man operations?

 

Let's get rid of them.

 

:rak_03::rak_03::rak_03:

This is not an answer. Not one post I've seen has been able to explain why going out of the way to remove 8v8 ranked is better than leaving it as is along side ranked arenas. Not only that, but If it comes down to a difficulty in making a combined rating for arenas, as it stands most people prefer 8v8 by a large margin. I read 3 pages of 8v8 or arena thread and only one person said they preferred arenas to 8v8 ranked, and it was someone who hadn't played arenas yet. A combined or separate rating or making only regs arenas would be way better than what bw plans on doing, but there is no reason both 8v8 ranked and ranked arenas shouldn't be around in patch 2.4.

RWZ in general was just a mess. Even if you had 2 teams queue at the same time, you sometimes had to wait 5-10 minutes for the queue to finally pop.

 

But Arenas would have made RWZ a ghost town.

 

Competitive PvP in this game is just so messed up. No leaderboards, barely any matchmaking (tho I guess 2.4 is bringing some), you cant organize a match against a specific opponent, no cross faction in-game chat, etc. The list could go on for pages probably.

i could care less about the NiM comparisons. how many ppl pvp? how many more do think will pvp with arenas, where you have to be BETTER than in WZs? think about that for a minute.

 

now think about this: even if you don't care about RWZ, the reg Q forces you to Q both WZs and arenas at the same time. the grp limits are the same. do you understand what this means? a 4m premade will now comprise the entire arena team. you think ppl QQ'd about premades, wait till you get a load of arenas that are force fed down the ONE reg Q.

 

returning to population....the same number of ppl will pvp who have always pvp'd. you're not growing the population with arenas. you're growing the number of teams while, in the long term, shrinking the population precisely because they flesh out skill more so than 8v8. this is not a bad thing. I'm not a care bear crying at the loss of his carry. I'm stating a logical conclusion: the lesser players who could contribute in 8v8 will be useless in 4v4, get stomped and stop Qing. w/o RWZs, they have no rated option and the rated community shrinks. hey. nothing wrong with 4v4 and 4v4 rated. it's a good thing. as the only rated option, however, it will shrink rather than grow the rated player population. also...it puts much more of an onus on class balance, which this game has struggled with since its inception. and I don't mean that every class can't be viable, but you're usually talking about 1 in 3 specs. and in the case of wars/knights, the SAME spec.

RWZ in general was just a mess. Even if you had 2 teams queue at the same time, you sometimes had to wait 5-10 minutes for the queue to finally pop.

 

But Arenas would have made RWZ a ghost town.

 

Competitive PvP in this game is just so messed up. No leaderboards, barely any matchmaking (tho I guess 2.4 is bringing some), you cant organize a match against a specific opponent, no cross faction in-game chat, etc. The list could go on for pages probably.

 

fair points all.

Not only that, but even in regs you'll have 4 man premades now going against pugs in arenas.That'll be a whole HEAP of QQ the moment that hits live.

Not only that, but even in regs you'll have 4 man premades now going against pugs in arenas.That'll be a whole HEAP of QQ the moment that hits live.

 

no doubt. the only long term saving grace is solo rated arena Q (largely different population from 4v4 players). and that's only if they figure out a way to deal with players dropping, which is a very real issue when the 3 teammates have no intrinsic connection/loyalty to each other. a 4m will likely stay in it even if they're getting wiped. as a solo? hell, depending on my mood, I'd quit if I took one look at my comp or the other team's and thought it was a hopeless match. and I quit a lot less frequently than many (I'd have said most before transfers made regs utterly dire).

How many people do you think are running nightmare mode 16 man operations?

 

Let's get rid of them.

 

No one QQ's that Scamper, Bubble Stun, or good dps break NiM Raids

Behold, I will reveal unto you the one true reason why 8 v 8 ranked is going away at this time. And I assure you, it is far more mundane than you want it to be.

 

What's the largest group size you can queue for regs? 4.

What's the largest group size you can queue for reg arenas? 4.

What's the largest group size you can queue for ranked WZs? 8.

What's the largest group size you can queue for ranked arenas? 4.

 

To implement ranked arenas and 8 v 8 ranked warzones, the queue system would have to be partially re-written. If you're in an 8 man, should you only be queued for warzones or should you be split into two fours for arenas? If you're in a four man, should you only be queued for arenas, or should you be queued to pug warzones as well? The system, as it stands today, wouldn't know what to do with an 8 person group.

 

So, a decision must be made. Does the queue system get re-written to accommodate these discrepancies or not? Given the low percentage of people that play ranked 8 v 8 warzones, (less than 2 or 3% if I recall the dev post correctly), it simply doesn't make sense to invest the effort.

 

Simple cost/benefit. That's all there is to it.

 

Please note, I'm neither condoning nor condemning the decision. Just making an observation.

Nowhere near I think.

It's more like 2-6 teams per server except Pot5 that play on a consistent basis. Some might not have them at all, because you can't play ranked with just 1 team. IDK how populated are the EU servers and if all of the RP and PvE ones even have such teams.

 

And they spend very little time in these RWZ, compared to PvE guilds grinding through NiM ops for hours on end.

The reason they want no 8v8 RWZ was already stated, they want all ranked in one place so that it would actually happen without pre-Q'd matches.

 

lol you really dont think over 1600 players do ranked games across 2 continents, keep in mind that who is playing ranked is not always broadcasted like it is with some of the top guilds. And based on his numbers thats less than 1% so ya, its safe to estimate that about 1600 people play ranked.

lol you really dont think over 1600 players do ranked games across 2 continents,

Not a chance.

1600 players is 200 teams... and there isn't anywhere near that.

Pot5 probably represents, less than a half of the total Ranked populace, but a third or so, quite likely.

 

keep in mind that who is playing ranked is not always broadcasted like it is with some of the top guilds.

There is a way to know if someone plays ranked: they will have a "highest team rating" on their character sheet.

 

Checking the Fleet at peak times - and PvPers live on the Fleet - on regular servers will identify at best a few players that were ever rated. The number of those who still actively play ranked is much smaller.

My math was soo forgiving you're missing that I am being so unduly giving that many people play. if 1600 people play and the whole population of players was only 200k were still talking, essentially nobody playing ranked.

 

Point: Ranked is dead as far as the numbers that Devs look at, so a 'big change' really isnt a big change since >1% of the entire sub player base is actually playing ranked.

 

Point: removing it from the 8v8 from the system will piss off such a minority in terms of ppl who actually do it they dont see it as a big loss from a numbers standpoint.

 

I for one think its a good thing to have in the game because, as it seems by reading all the info so far, there will be no access for guilds to partake in 8v8, which is the closest thing to OPs for PvP'ers. Its similar to only limiting PvE to Flashpoints from a social standpoint. What is the point of having a 'large guild' that is PvP only?? there isn't even the opportunity to do anything in a large group.

 

Also couple of good points so far:

1) 4man premades queing in regular arenas are gonna be stupid upsetting to the 'casual playerbase'. LMAO at watching the top guilds rollface in regs to do their daily grinds and just stop face for fun, if that isn't griefing in its truest sense what is?

2) The why they are removing the problems with scripting the queing system of 8v8ranked is solid; but if they could just allow 8v8 ranked or unranked it would be pretty awesome. Imagine this: Guild A trash talks Guild B, 8v8 still exists with no ranking or anything attached, just the ability to que only an 8 person Op group vs 8 person op group; it would be similar to the Group Finder in terms of that it is essentially dead for anyone but preformed OP groups queing, that would allow some mechanic in the game for Guild A to go against Guild B in a 'battle royal' type thing. No need for any incentives or anything, just since the mechanic is there leave it there, keep that >1% happy. If 2.4 drops with the said changes, they are non-incentivising large guilds other than to have XP bonuses for PvP'ers.

Point: Ranked is dead as far as the numbers that Devs look at, so a 'big change' really isnt a big change since >1% of the entire sub player base is actually playing ranked.

 

And again, removing NiM 16 man would piss off only a minority as well. Let's do that. I think we can all agree that replacing 16 man ops with new simplified SM/HM 4 and 8 man content would increase FP/OP participation, and heck, who needs hardcore PVE raid guilds anyway?

 

 

Anyone care to guess what the chances are of BW annoying their precious raiders?

Edited August 28, 2013 by Jherad

Firstly regarding a code having to be rewritten, even if it was to hard for people who can make entire games to incorporate 8v8 ranked queue and rating along with ranked arenas, almost everyone in the "8v8 or arenas" forum has said they prefer 8v8 to arenas. So if it would come down to only having regs arenas and 8v8 ranked vice versa most people would want to keep the 8v8. Secondly a player from tofn has already provided a spreadsheet with over 20 teams he has played since 2.0. That prob does't include teams rebuilding or pugs and since 2.0 pot5 as prob had about that maybe upwards of 30 even, and my old pve server even has about 8 teams that queue once a week. Thirdly it would take a simple ranked weekly as an incentive to queue. If there was a reward such as 500k credits for 4 ranked wins in a week, you would easily see a quarter of the pvp population in queue, and guilds with backups to backups for their core team would see splits and there would be more teams. So besides a coding problem which is highly unlikely anyone have a good reason going out of the way to take 8v8 ranked is better than leaving as is along side ranked arenas? And if the number of people playing is a valid reason to quit, maybe we can buff rewards for pvpers like a ranked weekly so we can take out two of the most popular common sense pvp problem threads in one shot. Edited August 28, 2013 by SEANeD

Here's the thing; at the last Community Cantina, I believe they said that they were afraid having two separate ranked queues would starve both. But....if so few people were doing ranked 8v8 - either it's a mathematically insignificant number of people or it isn't. It can't be both "it will take too many people out of arena queues" and "hardly anyone will do them at all" at the same time. If the number of people who are/would be doing them is that small - it also shouldn't have that big of an impact on how many people are queuing for ranked arenas.

 

Given that in order for the ranked arenas to be healthy, you're going to want to have a substantial number of arena teams to be queuing and continue queuing - it seems to me that giving the hardcore-est of the hardcore something else to queue for when they can would be in the best interest of everyone. Otherwise, I fear we'll end up with the same situation as ranked 8v8 - a bunch of teams queuing for arenas at first, getting their butts handed to them before they even have a chance to get a rating for the matchmaking system to work, and getting discouraged and quitting.

Given that in order for the ranked arenas to be healthy, you're going to want to have a substantial number of arena teams to be queuing and continue queuing - it seems to me that giving the hardcore-est of the hardcore something else to queue for when they can would be in the best interest of everyone.

But that would be Arenas, not warzones.

It was the PvP community that made an implicit agreement that Voidstar matches would be straight 15 minutes of TDM instead of door play. That kept asking for arenas.

 

You'll always hear more complaints than praise on the forums, because 1) people don't like change, 2) people who do like change have nothing to write about, nothing to gain by writing about it.

 

The problem with 8v8 and the strongest barrier to entry has always been logistics, not skill. Plenty of people would've been happy losing these matches 75% of the time (all except another such team) if they still got to farm their ranked commendations for EWH or Conq gear... except you couldn't actually get a RWZ without a team to pre-queue against.

Here's the thing; at the last Community Cantina, I believe they said that they were afraid having two separate ranked queues would starve both. But....if so few people were doing ranked 8v8 - either it's a mathematically insignificant number of people or it isn't. It can't be both "it will take too many people out of arena queues" and "hardly anyone will do them at all" at the same time. If the number of people who are/would be doing them is that small - it also shouldn't have that big of an impact on how many people are queuing for ranked arenas.

 

This. Either way, removing it is a bad decision.

 

And again, removing NiM 16 man would piss off only a minority as well. Let's do that. I think we can all agree that replacing 16 man ops with new simplified SM/HM 4 and 8 man content would increase FP/OP participation, and heck, who needs hardcore PVE raid guilds anyway?

 

 

Anyone care to guess what the chances are of BW annoying their precious raiders?

 

Yeah, I really don't think there's a good rebuttal to this argument. 16 man NiM is just as exclusive/hard to put together as RWZs.... but I guess it's pretty obvious that BW's hardcore PVE sensibilities >>>> their hardcore PVP concerns.

Edited August 28, 2013 by JediMasterSLC

The Red Eclipse is a PVE server yet we have more ranked teams than guilds who cleared or made good progress in Nim TFB and S&V. Shall we remove nightmare operations as well then?

... except Pot5 that play on a consistent basis...

What? pot5 still does rpvp? I thought it was on stand still cause one team who regularly queued got trolled into unsubbing, another team went to the bastion, and some are on the pts... pretty sure the rpvp on pot5 is more like 1-2 teams and maybe a pug every now and then (for the time being)