Toxic Community

So I like watching my Twitch streams from time to time, since I like to play ranked those are the streams I tend to watch the most and there has been a new player (partnered sub button streamer) who recently started playing ranked (returning player from SWTOR launch). I find it hilarious how that person has been going strong in solo ranked for about 2 weeks'ish now and his chat has suddenly turned to aids in that time from all the salty players who lost in previous games. The ranked community wonders why 8-9 people are queueing up on avg on a good day. Toxic community.

Now we all know that SWTOR progression Operations and Ranked PVP is some serious business peoples but come on . People can continue to point the finger at Bioware for the lack of class balance, for the lack of PVP content , bad elo system or anything else you wanna (which are valid points). But at this point Bioware could have all that locked down and fixed yet the salty children would still find ways to make the experience bad for others. Group ranked is even worse, most teams don't want close or good games they just want to curb stomp someone. The second they start losing they lose their minds (This isn't all people who queue yolo or 4's mind you but a pretty decent chunk). Anyways hope the guy sticks it out, just know if you do that the drama wont stop people dont know how to take a loss and just hit the re-queue button

Find any Ranked Community (or any real-life high-level sport) that is not considered 'toxic'. Anything that involves some kind of competition and prestige will subsequently have people that become emotional, whether it's mad or sad. This game is no exceptation.

Moreover, there's been numerous people complaining about this recently on the forums. It is not the reason why Ranked is dead. The reason it is dead is because Bioware neglected PvP and Ranked esspecially. They've done this since season 1 basicly.

The changes they've made concerning rewards and gear might have slightly boosted the population partcipating in ranked, but cross-server is the only answer. That will also make the system work properly (people with the same amount of rating getting grouped and so forth).

If you think that how aggressive and negative others are in ranked isn't an issue then I'm glad your not in charge of SWTOR PVP decisions as it would be in a worse place than it is currently. Sure a competitive environment brings out emotional responses from people that doesn't mean that its not contributing to the participation numbers. I'll go out on a limb and play it safe and lets say 70% (since i believe its higher) have relatively no pvp queue issues (unranked queues) across all servers during their respective peak times. But ranked cant even grab and hold 10% of that population. Why? Because for all the ****-talking in regz its nowhere near what you find in solo ranked and lets not even get started in group ranked. This game has issues top to bottom not just in PVP yet this is "supposedly" the 2nd most grossing MMO in the west currently. So saying that design decisions are the sole reason for the lack of ranked queue pops is a stretch. Multiple threads have popped up on the forums about this because more and more people are noticing its an issue and understand its a contributing factor. I never said it was the sole reason but hell its definitely not helping things. Like I said anyone who has played this game for any reasonable amount of time at end game will tell you that Progression Operations and SWTOR ranked PVP is played for the Lawls. It doesn't change the fact that there is a DRASTIC participation difference across the board when it comes to unranked and ranked queue pops and player interaction is one of many reasons.

I wouldn't blame the toxic community, I hate to be that guy but the amount of horrible players that play this game is just breath taking.

I'd agree there are definitely some players that are either new or just bad and dont understand GCD's or how to play their classes. But at the same time you also have to look at it from another perspective. As the situation stands currently where else or how else are they going to learn? Its not like there is an arena only queue, and I wont even try explaining how unranked arenas vs ranked arenas arent a substitute. So the only way they learn is to jump into a ranked pvp environment and learn to swim. Anyone who plays yolo's has gotten bad teammates, but the way the PVP progression system is set up, if they want to learn they have to just queue up. You can argue all day whether having queue pops with bad players vs no queue pops at all and what is better but regardless the participation numbers arent there. All I'm saying is anyone who tries to say that how toxic this community is to new players (including good players like the example I gave above) isn't a problem should re-evaluate things. Blame design decisions all you want yes they are a problem but there are bad design decisions all over this game not just PVP and unranked pops for the most part are fine.

Swtor's pvp system isn't something new, it's been around in almost every MMO that has a pvp system the last decade, it's all common sense when it boils down (like who to kill first the tank, dps or healer). If people can't grab the concept of their class, there's youtube, guides on the net and on here, so there's literally no excuse for bads (not saying noobs cause new players =/= bads).

So we are blaming "bads" now? Sure SWTOR doesnt revolutionize MMO pvp in any way shape or form but I think your forgetting that this is also Star Wars. There is a reason why this game's population is so heavily RP and PVE focused its because its Star Wars. For loads of people SWTOR is their first MMO and they hopped on this train because of the Star Wars IP. You can blame people for not looking up guides or watching videos/streams all you want but at the end of that day that doesn't change the fact that even if you do all that you dont magically evolve from a "baddie" to the SWTOR PVP god. You still have to play. And regardless of how good or bad someone is that doesn't mean you can just verbally **** all over them either. I love seeing people tip toe around a topic instead of being accountable for their actions (and no I'm not referencing you specifically I'm speaking in general here). Every thread I read on the forums that even slightly points a finger towards negative attitudes contributing to the status of ranked and the pitchforks come out. Man I guess I should stop playing games and just watch others play them, I'll go ESL pro-league status at everything in no time .

So the problem with solo ranked is that you have a toxic community, because rating is on the line and when you aren't actually talking to someone in a group (like on voice) you are more likely to rage at them or blame them just through the nature of text compared to speech.

It's 4v4, where you are playing a limited class already (which all the classes in this game are really limited to just their role and not much outside that role) and you are reliant on the actions of 7 others, which means you can't possibly have a great impact on a match. This can be frustrating.

The game is not designed around 3dps/1healer or 4dps. You have inflated damage taken when there isn't a tank in play. Classes without an out (snipers, mercs, jugs, pts) are going to have surviability issues. They aren't meant to perform without a tank and healer in play and when that tank/healer is replaced with another 2 dps, it just turns the matchups into dps races. Also frustrating because it promotes faceroll and makes certain classes feel helpless.

The tank matchups in solo ranked are also very boring. Most the time they are predetermined before the gates drop just based on specs. Specs that rely on hard swap will probably never get a kill in solo ranked tank/healer, just because they won't be able to coordinate it. Most tank matchups go to acid. The ones that don't usually are either won by a team being cleaved down or with tank tunneling. This assumes everyone has a general idea how to play.

Because it requires 8 people in queue of the same role, the system can't even pop games on off hours for even the most active servers. Requiring 8 people to make one game in a low pop game (w/ no cross server) is beyond stupid, because there is no possible way an elo system will work unless you have several games going at the same time.

This is also a problem for faction. Because it requires so many people to make a team, you might have 3 players of your faction in queue around the same skill level, but one new player let's say queues for ranked. You then get grouped in with that new player. This is why harbringer republic for example doesn't really see any solo ranked pops, because this is going to turn off the 3 players ready for ranked if they get someone queued who should be allowed to queue, but can't start at a low elo to learn. The faction problem also brings queue syncing. Cross faction and cross server would obviously help this.

The elo system is messed up. It apparently forms teams before checking for 8 players in queue of equal rating. So what happens is if 4 players have around 2k rating and are waiting in queue, the system will group those 4 players, not give them a game yet, but eventually then pair them against a lower elo team which causes imbalanced matchups.

Because the system doesn't have enough players to make a working elo system, you don't have an entry level where new players coming into ranked can play with and against people of the same relative skill level. This is just going to make veteran players angry when they get new players on their team. New players also won't be able to learn and will probably get turned away from playing ranked altogether.

Everytime a new player gets turned away from ranked, that's another player that could have been helping the elo system work. This is not a player's responsibility to help guide other players. The game itself should have training grounds and tutorials. It should teach new players and really everyone how to play their class and role. The game should also encourage veteran/fully geared PvPers to play ranked. The current rewards simply just isn't getting it done on a large scale.

People are not encouraged to play ranked. This is probably the biggest reason it is unpopular. Ranked isn't a requirement in the gearing process. Look at PvE. You get different gear based on the level of content you are doing. This makes people want to do nightmare mode or heroic or whatever. When you can get the best gear in regulars. Where it is easy, because there is no elo system. Where you can group with friends and steamroll undergeared, underexperienced players. A lot of people will stop there and not want to do ranked.

Arenas themselves are not maintenanced well by the developers. They have still not addressed barrier and shield probe and whatever else in acid. They have not addressed skank tanking. Each map has several bugs. Makeb is still not optimized well.

The developers are also poor at balancing even for the tank/healer scenarios. The 3 healers for example are not equal in tank/healer. This is amazing to me, considering the 3 healers all play with the tank almost identically. The tanks themselves are also not balanced. Also amazing, because they play so similar as well at least when you are talking about tank/healer. This causes a lot of issues when trickled down to solo ranked, where sorc healers and pt tanks are clearly the strongest. This will discourage operative/merc healers and sin/jug tanks from queuing.

Honestly you'll be hard pressed to find any online game that doesn't sport toxic players. People either do it for the lulz or are butt hurt for losing. You're never going to play any online game or mmo and experience sunshine and rainbows the entire time. It's not like this was never the case but the internet just makes it easier to be ***** because people can hide behind a monitor.

Cross server isn't gonna do jack ****.

Even if we combined all the servers, despite player preferences, latency issues, and ignoring time difference between US West, East, and EU, and language barriers...Nothing will happen.

We'd need thousands of ranked players. Hundreds in the queue at any given moment. Right now there's maybe a dozen. At "prime time". Double, even triple that and you still have a dead queue that will wither away.

Please, just find another game if you want "competitive PvP".

Seriously.