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Frequently Asked PvP Questions


EricMusco

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Hey folks,

 

One thing that I know we have received a lot of varying questions around is the topic of PvP in SWTOR. As many of you have surely seen we are going to have one of our PvP Designers, Alex Modny, on our Thursday Livestream event later on today. As with most of our streams we have quite a few questions which are commonly asked by PvPers. I talked with the combat team about many of your questions and got answers to many of the commonly asked questions. Below you will find those questions/answers.

 

Will we ever be able to choose a specific Warzone to queue for?

 

From the design side, we do like the idea of allowing our players to be able to impact which Warzone they want to queue for, but it is not as simple as letting everyone select which Warzone they want and call it a day. Because of a few reasons (queue population, preventing ‘de facto’ best Warzone, making sure all Warzones are being played, etc.) it would require a fully-fledged design around that new queuing system in order to make sure the system was sustainable (in queue times, etc.). There are no current plans for the near future to implement this feature.

 

Have you considered implementing a Huttball League?

 

We have certainly seen a lot of suggestions around the creation of a Huttball League for sure! Implementing a Huttball League has a special place on our Wall of Crazy but it is not in our current roadmap.

 

Why is Bolster in Ranked PvP? Why not just require a high level of PvP gear?

 

This is a great question, and one we put a lot of thought into when the decision made to keep Bolster in Ranked PvP. As many of you likely know, in the past we had an entry level set of PvP gear called the Recruit set. Wearing this set into a Warzone would put you at an “entry level” for PvP. However, having Recruit gear in the game created two important factors:

 

1. The player needed to know that this is how PvP at max level worked.

2. The player needed to then get the gear and actually equip it.

 

Although this may seem like something which is obvious to many of you who are more seasoned and hardcore PvPers, these factors being missed led to many players first experience being that they got completely stomped in PvP. Although we understand that there are certainly “dues to be paid” when you play PvP, they shouldn’t come right at the beginning of someone’s PvP career. We also want the Ranked population to be as high as possible within the Level 55 bracket so we have Bolster in place so more players can participate in the system.

 

The best solution for this situation was a systematic approach which puts all players on an even footing when they enter the system. We know that some feel the best solution is to simply make everyone have the same gear and stats when in PvP so that it is purely a measure skill and skill alone. However, we feel that as an MMO, gear progression is a major cornerstone of its long term gameplay. We feel that Bolster takes both of those ideas into account and lands as a nice middle ground.

 

It is very unfortunate that Bolster has experienced issues since its implementation which certainly created pain points for our PvP community. However we will continue to work to ensure that Bolster is working as intended! I think we can all agree that having the first time you PvP be a positive experience will go to great lengths to ensuring that those folks stick around and continue to PvP!

 

Will you be implementing Cross-server queuing?

 

We have no plans at this time to implement cross-server queues.

 

Will you be introducing rewards in future Seasons to recognize those players who have achieved the highest of ratings? 1500 seems like a low bar for some players.

 

For starters, we have seen a lot of feedback around this very topic on the forums, please keep it coming. This is a very tricky thing to design around as no matter where you put the breakpoint, someone can potentially feel like they are not getting the rewards they deserve. We took this to heart when trying to decide where best to place the “breakpoint” for reward tiers. For us, giving the Rancor mount to only the top 5% felt like a good breakpoint since that will still make it very rare. We will continue to use player feedback as we make decisions about future seasons rewards, we have no announced changes planned at this time however.

 

Will you be bringing back 8v8 Ranked Warzones?

 

We have no plans currently of bringing back 8v8 Ranked Warzones.

 

Are there any plans of expanding open world PvP?

 

Currently we have no plans of expanding open world PvP, specifically to say we don’t have any plans to introduce any new systems which offer rewards around it. However, we will continue to encourage open world PvP in events and future content. Some examples of this would be the Oricon daily area and the shared questing areas of the Rakghoul event.

 

Are there any plans to address teams having healer hybrids in Arenas fighting against teams without a healer?

 

This is a question of how long we want to wait to pop an Arena match when it relates to hybrids. We could, in theory, create restrictions around matchmaking to pair you only against someone extremely similar to your character in both rating and “spec” layout. However if we did that, it would have very serious effects on how long a queue takes to pop. We had to make a decision to err on the side of having more matches pop than simply trying to mirror the teams exactly. The only option to address this would be to tighten restrictions on matchmaking but this will result in greatly increased queue length, which is not favorable.

 

What about the issue of 3v4 matches in Arenas?

 

This typically occurs due to a player crashing before loading into a match, which creates a situation where one team will have one less player. In this situation, we have made the decision that matchmaking will not backfill that player. This is because by the time we can accurately detect that a player has crashed, and then select a player to backfill in the crashed player’s place, the first round would already be in progress or over. In this case, backfilling would turn a negative situation for 4 players into a negative situation for 5 players, and we are not fond of that idea.

 

On the plus side, our rating system takes the 3v4 into account when awarding rating at the end of the match. The team with 4 will not be rewarded nearly as well for winning as they would if it was a normal match, nor will the team with 3 be punished as severely for losing.

 

Matchmaking will sometimes place the same Advanced Classes on the same teams. An example would be 4 Powertechs against 4 Assassins. Are there any improvements planned here?

 

This is a great question, we agree that this is certainly less than optimal. Matchmaking should certainly be better about how it assigns classes across each team and we will be actively looking to make improvements. No timeline right now on those changes but it is on our radar.

 

Huge rating gaps between players in any given Arena match….

 

Typically this issue occurs when there are not a lot of players in the Arena queue, I think it may help to understand a bit about how our matchmaking works. Matches are based around the original character who is entered in matchmaking and what their rating is. Let’s say a character is 1500 and enters the queue. Matchmaking will start looking for another 7 players to have them play with who are also 1500. At certain time intervals, that rating range is expanded (both up and down) in order to work to fill the match. Over time that range will continue to be expanded, so the “up” and “down” rating from that base player is why you could see a 1200 player and an 1800 player in the same game as they are both 300 rating from the original character in the queue.

 

What about players who “sync queue” to specifically play each other, AKA match fixing?

 

This is an issue which is again due to the amount of players in the queue. If a group of 8 players wanted to fix the queue to play against each other, they may be able to do so at some weird “off time” for their server. However, we have systems in place to detect these types of actions and when Season 1 ends, those players will find themselves without any rewards at all.

 

Do you have any plans to address overpowered Hybrid builds which are present in Arenas?

 

Our history of class balance shows that we attempt to discourage overpowered hybrid builds when and wherever possible. We are constantly balancing classes and will take action if something is not falling into line with class balance. We will continue to monitor these builds and adjust as necessary.

 

Although this may not be a comprehensive list of every PvP question ever asked, I hope that this will do a good job of answering a lot of the core questions PvPers are asking. Thank you all for your continued feedback!

 

-eric

Edited by EricMusco
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Thanks a lot for your attention and for bringing this to us.

 

To be blunt - I'm disappointed that you seem to be answering every question with no saying that its not in your current roadmap and that you at this time have no plans to implement... Anything. Dark times ahead.

 

 

Edit: Still better than letting us hold on to hope that things are going to get better, like this at least we'll know what we'll get. Good thing, good post, good initiative.

Edited by AdamLKvist
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Will you be introducing rewards in future Seasons to recognize those players who have achieved the highest of ratings? 1500 seems like a low bar for some players.

 

For starters, we have seen a lot of feedback around this very topic on the forums, please keep it coming. This is a very tricky thing to design around as no matter where you put the breakpoint, someone can potentially feel like they are not getting the rewards they deserve. We took this to heart when trying to decide where best to place the “breakpoint” for reward tiers. For us, giving the Rancor mount to only the top 5% felt like a good breakpoint since that will still make it very rare. We will continue to use player feedback as we make decisions about future seasons rewards, we have no announced changes planned at this time however.

 

 

I think you meant to bold and underline the question

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I think you missed a question Eric. Otherwise, I think you've pretty much given a response to most of the questions you will see during the stream. Well, the ones you would actually provide responses to :rak_03:

 

Do you have any plans to keep premades and PUGs separate in warzones?

 

No. As an MMO, we encourage players to have friends and enjoy the game together.

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I kinda wish I hadn't looked at this thread :(.

-The reason bolster remains is ranked is just ridiculous.If somebody is starting the game and hasn't got a clue on gearing,NOBODY wants them in ranked arenas,its just handicapping their team.

-No plans to bring back 8v8 ranked,which was the best pvp in this game imo,arenas are fun but get boring

-No plans for crosserver queueing=group arenas will die out in season 2,atm on tofn(The main pvp server eu) on a good night there are a max of 5-6 teams queueing.On a good night.Nobody wants to face the same players everybody especially if there is a big skill difference between teams.

This is very...disheartening.Sad times for pvp are a'comin!

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Since almost all of your matchmaking problems stem from low population in the queues, the smart thing to do would be to start planning for cross server queues. If that is something that is not possible due to technical limitations, you should just say that. Otherwise these questions and problems will persist.
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Nice to see some attention for PvP but as others have pointed it's a lot of no's and not really too much to look forward too. Could we maybe see a follow up post with some good news? Is there anything in the works for PvP? A lot of us in the PvP community are grasping at straws here, Eric. A friend of mine recently quit because he saw no reason in progressing in this game anymore, I have to say I can't blame him.

 

There is no rewards for WZ's outside of gear and a random smattering of a few mounts and a pet or two. There is no PvP rep system, no rivalry system, the ranked rewards to put bluntly are a joke outside of the Rancor (a gear set that can be replicated with the existing gear and a pink/purple dye pack is not a unique reward). I still have a lot of fun PvPing in this game but it does sort of feel like there isn't much to look forward too. I enjoy the world PvP in the events but the "PvP" quests in the Gree event are PvE quests in a PvP area.

 

I guess to sum it up, at least in my opinion, as a member of the PvP community I don't feel like there is much in the way of dev attention being spent on PvP. We get a few posts every now and then and have almost no unique aspects of them game tied to PvP. Anything a PvP player can get a PvE player can get and then some.

 

EDIT: Also please sticky this post Eric so it can stay here and not get swept away by nerf posts and then I have to dig it up when all the arm chair developers come out and say how easy it would be to implement cross server. Really the only good thing to come out of this is now I have somewhere to point to when tell people to stop crying about X-server.

Edited by Capt_Beers
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Not exactly the answers I was hoping for but thanks for them anyways.

 

 

Added question:

 

With objective based open world pvp out in the cold, are there any plans to add instanced pvp scenarios larger than 8v8 warzones? I'm thinking WoW battlegrounds type things, not necessarily as large in scale or numbers but larger and less cookie cutter than what we currently have.

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Will we ever be able to choose a specific Warzone to queue for?

 

From the design side, we do like the idea of allowing our players to be able to impact which Warzone they want to queue for, but it is not as simple as letting everyone select which Warzone they want and call it a day. Because of a few reasons (queue population, preventing ‘de facto’ best Warzone, making sure all Warzones are being played, etc.) it would require a fully-fledged design around that new queuing system in order to make sure the system was sustainable (in queue times, etc.). There are no current plans for the near future to implement this feature.

 

Thanks for finally admitting that the population for pvpers is as good as dead.

 

Have you considered implementing a Huttball League?

 

We have certainly seen a lot of suggestions around the creation of a Huttball League for sure! Implementing a Huttball League has a special place on our Wall of Crazy but it is not in our current roadmap.

 

Sigh ok, I can unsub with *put different pvp focused mmo here* release then.

 

Why is Bolster in Ranked PvP? Why not just require a high level of PvP gear?

 

This is a great question, and one we put a lot of thought into when the decision made to keep Bolster in Ranked PvP. As many of you likely know, in the past we had an entry level set of PvP gear called the Recruit set. Wearing this set into a Warzone would put you at an “entry level” for PvP. However, having Recruit gear in the game created two important factors:

 

1. The player needed to know that this is how PvP at max level worked.

2. The player needed to then get the gear and actually equip it.

 

Equip PVP gear? Wouldn't have guessed... troll aside I think the tutorials are great and there can be practice brackets or a tutorial like in GSF right?

 

Will you be implementing Cross-server queuing?

 

We have no plans at this time to implement cross-server queues.

 

 

That's about the point where I have stopped reading, thanks for the FAQ, I know what I can expect for my Sub now, nothing PVP, dead rankeds... very disappointing.

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Not exactly the answers I was hoping for but thanks for them anyways.

 

 

Added question:

 

With objective based open world pvp out in the cold, are there any plans to add instanced pvp scenarios larger than 8v8 warzones? I'm thinking WoW battlegrounds type things, not necessarily as large in scale or numbers but larger and less cookie cutter than what we currently have.

 

What do you mean by less cookie cutter?

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Here's a question:

 

*A ot of people, myself included, cannot stand Arena in any shape or form yet we're forced to put up with it in the normal queue. For me personally it has reached the point where I hardly ever queue anymore. I subbed back when Arena didnt exist and I can assure you that I wouldnt have stuck around if Arena had been forced upon me since launch. Are you ever going to separate Arena from 8 vs 8 in the normal queue or give us the option to only queue for one, the other or both, similar to how we can pick FP'es in GF? And wouldnt it encourage people to actually queue for ranked if it was the only place where they could play it? This is for 55 specifically, I think they should be kept mixed in lowbie so that people get to play it before they queue ranked.

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Will you ever fix Juggernaut/Guardian leap/intercede? These have been broken since like 1.2ish or somewhere thereabouts.. it's VERY frustrating to not be able to rely on a key ability especially in Hutt Ball matches where I lose at least 1 point per game due to a leap/intercede only going half way to the target. Edited by Ulliam
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Why is Bolster in Ranked PvP? Why not just require a high level of PvP gear?

 

This is a great question, and one we put a lot of thought into when the decision made to keep Bolster in Ranked PvP. As many of you likely know, in the past we had an entry level set of PvP gear called the Recruit set. Wearing this set into a Warzone would put you at an “entry level” for PvP. However, having Recruit gear in the game created two important factors:

 

1. The player needed to know that this is how PvP at max level worked.

2. The player needed to then get the gear and actually equip it.

 

Although this may seem like something which is obvious to many of you who are more seasoned and hardcore PvPers, these factors being missed led to many players first experience being that they got completely stomped in PvP. Although we understand that there are certainly “dues to be paid” when you play PvP, they shouldn’t come right at the beginning of someone’s PvP career. We also want the Ranked population to be as high as possible within the Level 55 bracket so we have Bolster in place so more players can participate in the system.

 

The best solution for this situation was a systematic approach which puts all players on an even footing when they enter the system. We know that some feel the best solution is to simply make everyone have the same gear and stats when in PvP so that it is purely a measure skill and skill alone. However, we feel that as an MMO, gear progression is a major cornerstone of its long term gameplay. We feel that Bolster takes both of those ideas into account and lands as a nice middle ground.

 

It is very unfortunate that Bolster has experienced issues since its implementation which certainly created pain points for our PvP community. However we will continue to work to ensure that Bolster is working as intended! I think we can all agree that having the first time you PvP be a positive experience will go to great lengths to ensuring that those folks stick around and continue to PvP!

 

-eric

 

 

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Stupid Answer!

 

"Your new to 55 PvP, played Ranked with no PvP gear. Help your team lose, stop those on your faction getting a higher Ranking. Stop PvP'ers from queing because you are nothing more then a handicap."

 

Longer wait time vs Bolstered team member

 

LONGER WAIT TIME!

 

Bolstered team member vs Don't Que

 

DON'T QUE!

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Will you ever fix Juggernaut/Guardian leap/intercede? These have been broken since like 1.2ish or somewhere thereabouts.. it's VERY frustrating to not be able to rely on a key ability especially in Hutt Ball matches where I lose at least 1 point per game due to a leap/intercede only going half way to the target.
It's not that fun to be on the other end of it either and rubber banding all over the map.
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You said in that FAQ that cross-server queues are not on your roadmap. That's fine and dandy, but is there any chance of us getting a reason a why? A lot of answers in that FAQ were 'no' because of limited server populations. It seems obvious to me that cross server queuing (for PvP and PvE) would solve many of the issues.

 

I understand it's expensive and difficult and yada yada yada, but if it is please just say that instead of just saying no to an obviously sensible fix.

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You said in that FAQ that cross-server queues are not on your roadmap. That's fine and dandy, but is there any chance of us getting a reason a why? A lot of answers in that FAQ were 'no' because of limited server populations. It seems obvious to me that cross server queuing (for PvP and PvE) would solve many of the issues.

 

I understand it's expensive and difficult and yada yada yada, but if it is please just say that instead of just saying no to an obviously sensible fix.

 

They said a while back that it would be a serious commitment to resources IE time and money which don't go to well with PvP these days and factor in the engine it has been known for a while that it's a feature that will never happen.

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