Why do you not play ranked PvP?

Yeah, and its a self fulfilling prophecy situation to some extent. More people don't do ranked, so the ranked queues are longer. As a result all the 1300+ expertise people get bored and faceroll some normal warzones.

I don't mind getting smacked around a bit in rateds, but it always seems like my team is grossly undergeared, and that gets a bit demoralizing after a couple losses.

Yeah it can happen, no doubts there, but even when you run into these (as someone pointed out) you can learn a few strats and have an idea with the other team is doing. I know nobody enjoys getting wrecked, but WZ's are not supposed to be easy either, especially in ranked. Like I said, if each faction took the initiative to get more groups running, the chances of going up against said faceroll teams would lessen. I started a Republic PUG RWZ thread last week, and Saturday got 10 games in going 7-3 overall.

PUG groups doesn't guarantee a loss, you just need to get the basics down in order to maximize a return. For one, set up a voice comms program for peeps to join, balance the classes as best as possible, and lastly let everyone know it's more for fun and to help with getting gear. If peeps can get those 3 things going, and with a boost from factional interest, it can be successful. From here, you don't need to be dependant on a "Guild" at all, as you would be more dependant on your faction. I was amazed at how many quality players from other guilds joined up, and am glad it's been working.

Oh PvP is a constant learning curve.
There's always someone you are 'better then' and someone who is 'better then you'.
It's what is great about it.

I just think right now, especially with all the transferred people coming over barely in full BM, they seem to think "oh, we're 7-8 guildies , we can handle whoever". Even with my own guild (hold the lulz), I can't sit here and say I know they are really terrible players. I can tell you that they give away anywhere from 100 to 200 in expertise a person, and in my own experiences as I've slowly progressed from 1000 to 1235 now, I've found the overall improvements in my output and surviviability much better as I went.

I was in another guild trying them out - large guild - and they had the same mindset. They couldn't believe they would keep losing with a median expertise score of mid 1100s and running with 3 to 3.5 healers.

Sometimes I hit up rateds just to assess my own skills and output, but in general I'm still staying with normals for a bit longer. A lot of people I run with our less geared then I am, and also have an old guildie from the guild I just left who's a fresh meat 50 we've all been there...

It is kinda fun though. We ran into a very good republic group about 3 straight times two nights ago, and you should've seen him in chat , his head was like exploding and he was like "I only did 40k damage. total" and I'm just snickering to myself "welcome to the pros, my friend"

I saw your republic PUG thread. It's a good idea. I wouldn't mind seeing an Imperial one too, but I'm not sure I'm the right person to start it (at this point). It'll also help a bit once BW finally gives us individual server forums now. Those are 6 months overdue.

See 1-5. The only "self-fulfilling prophecy" is the one everyone predicted when the Bioware devs said that their matchmaking system would become "more flexible" if there weren't enough similarly rated teams in the queue. The moment those two words hit the paper the rated WZ queue was doomed to fail. Not only that, now that rateds have proven to be the colossal disappointment that everything else Bioware has done turned out to be, most of the Republic major PvP guilds on my server have jumped ship. It was just one failure too many.

I think the number 1 problem is undergeared origin server people. the destination servers have almost all had 'home field' advantage for a while now. This isn't a gripe. It's just a reality. More experienced, more gear.

If Bioware doesn't change the ceiling on expertise soon, people will eventually get on equal ground. I'm about 4 weeks away from full WH, for example (based on the 2-3 hours a night I play)

The top 4on4 Warcraft 3 team is 10-0 last time I looked. This doesn't mean there are only 10 games of Warcraft 3 4on4 ever played since whenever their last season is, but rather this is the number of games the matchmaking system can reasonably match up a reasonable opponent against that team.

Assuming you believe your system works then a difference of 400 ELO represents a 99% chance of winning. You're not supposed to match teams that have 99% to win because it's not a very exciting game for either team. It'd be like saying if top boxing ranking is determined by how many scrubs you can KO in a punch because you never fought anyone remotely in your same league. And in real life it could take a long time for 2 top guys to matched together, but that's what you got to do get to the top. It's not like you get to go beat up 100 scrubs and now that makes you #1 in the world without ever fighting the #1 guy, or at least someone close to him.

Of course you can't do matchmaking without enough people. After all if only 2 teams are queued up for a WZ in the last 2 hours you obviously can't do better than just putting these two teams against each other (or not at all).

If they'd made a solo queue there would be ranked pvp- that way pugs would face pugs and premades would face premades- which makes perfect sense to everyone but the biggest idiots.

D*mn dude, that's pretty cool.

ftfy...

That's not even necessary if you believe your rating system actually works. If you go through the system to gain points, there's no reason to believe one guy at the top via one system is significantly better or worse than another guy at the top from a different system. You don't suddenly play better or worse just because the other 7 guys are PUGs or guys you know, at least I hope this is not the case. It's probably a good idea to separate the two types of gameplay anyway but a good player is still a good player whether he's with 7 PUGs or 7 WHs.