Hey folks,

 

There have been a lot of great comments in this thread about the currently planned changes. Based on that feedback here are a few additional changes:

• Novare Coast
  
  • Any characters who leave the starting area prior to the match starting will die.
    
  • Players will no longer be able to cap a point outside of the intended 20m range (we’re looking at you, Phase Walk)
    

  [*]Void Star

  • Characters who attempt to hack through the hangar doors to place a charge from inside the hallway, will die.
    

-eric

That's pretty awesome the novare exploit is being fixed

I reported him 3 weeks ago and also PMed Keith (or it was Musco...). He is still online. Make your own conclusions, especially if you remember

Jeezee

F JeeZee. He's just doin that to troll the Real Trixxie. We all know who he is and what he does and I'd love to roll stomp him IRL for it and for messing with Trixxie that way. Total Jerk off.

I didn't see any notes on this, and I haven't read all the replies, but are you ever going to increase the points given to a person defending an objective?

It's an underappreciated job, and not many people like to guard, or even do it competently, perhaps rewarding them with more points in civil war, void star, etc. Could encourage people to take up the roll, instead of avoiding it like the plague.

I didn't see any notes on this, and I haven't read all the replies, but are you ever going to increase the points given to a person defending an objective?

 

It's an underappreciated job, and not many people like to guard, or even do it competently, perhaps rewarding them with more points in civil war, void star, etc. Could encourage people to take up the roll, instead of avoiding it like the plague.

I don't think there is a real change there, but considering turret matches progress faster now I think we can assume the side notes will be attacked more desperately and more frequently, so guarding should be less boring.

I had this ACW match when I started on their side, capped it and was abandoned to guard there. "RIP my DPS :(" I said less than 30 seconds without being attacked by the 1st wave of 4 enemies. These waves came and gone repeatedly along with reinforcements from our side which always left me there when we were done because I was the only stealther. Ended up with top DPS without nearly setting foot on mid [i jumped mid for some attacker medals when they had like 30 points left], and without dying. Top DPS AND defense diamond medal. Guarding can be truly fun if people give it a chance [Admitedly sometimes I just /clubdance half the match in stealth, but the exceptions are so much worth it...]

I don't think there is a real change there, but considering turret matches progress faster now I think we can assume the side notes will be attacked more desperately and more frequently, so guarding should be less boring.

 

I had this ACW match when I started on their side, capped it and was abandoned to guard there. "RIP my DPS :(" I said less than 30 seconds without being attacked by the 1st wave of 4 enemies. These waves came and gone repeatedly along with reinforcements from our side which always left me there when we were done because I was the only stealther. Ended up with top DPS without nearly setting foot on mid [i jumped mid for some attacker medals when they had like 30 points left], and without dying. Top DPS AND defense diamond medal. Guarding can be truly fun if people give it a chance [Admitedly sometimes I just /clubdance half the match in stealth, but the exceptions are so much worth it...]

Your sig says it all hehe.

Well I told you about this long time ago, but you didnt react to it.

Honeslty, what can I do? I dont even use the name in the game or play on that server. Using the name alone isn’t breaking the rules.

All that can be done is you guys report any cheating, regardless of the name. Which is what I believe a lot of you have done.

So there’s no need for me to be upset or react negatively. All I can do is have a good laugh at how pathetically childish they are

Yavin node cannon fire sound effects needs to be substantially lowered to at least that of the Alderaan maps.

VoidStar's doors need visible markers on them so we don't have to go by "Right" or "Left" which is dependent on one's point of view. As it stands now "East" and West" is most accurate (East and West is used by in game chat information i.e. "East bomb has been planted" or something to that effect).

Yavin node cannon fire sound effects needs to be substantially lowered to at least that of the Alderaan maps.

 

VoidStar's doors need visible markers on them so we don't have to go by "Right" or "Left" which is dependent on one's point of view. As it stands now "East" and West" is most accurate (East and West is used by in game chat information i.e. "East bomb has been planted" or something to that effect).

I don't agree with anything in this thread as much as I agree with your post. This needs more visibility. The Yavin turret sound is VERY annoying especially if you're guarding.

I don't agree with anything in this thread as much as I agree with your post. This needs more visibility. The Yavin turret sound is VERY annoying especially if you're guarding.

My solution for this is to set music to 100% but all the rest to 50% and set volume until the music sounds good. Everything else falls in place quite well if you do so

I don't agree with anything in this thread as much as I agree with your post. This needs more visibility. The Yavin turret sound is VERY annoying especially if you're guarding.

I’ve honeslty never noticed. I guess I’ll pay attention next time to see what you mean

Hey folks,

 

*snip*

 

Yavin - Further differentiate the map from Alderaan Civil War along with shortening the match time.

 

[*]When players die they reduce their teams score by 2 (up from 0)

 

-eric

So, I see that you have made the kill farmers happy for Yavin, but how does this effect the other Wzs? The "Kill Farmers" has become a menace and I feel has destroyed the basis of unranked Warzones. they are good at killing when in packs, which they seldom run without. they refuse to run objectives. Is it really possible to win warzones without objectives and by Killing only? I really do wish someone can fix this. Make it so you gain more points by running objectives and less for killing. I know that you need to kill in order to guard, so make the kill zone around the pylon. give them points if they help defend. I have pvped since day one and I have not seen it this bad before.

So, I see that you have made the kill farmers happy for Yavin, but how does this effect the other Wzs? The "Kill Farmers" has become a menace and I feel has destroyed the basis of unranked Warzones. they are good at killing when in packs, which they seldom run without. they refuse to run objectives. Is it really possible to win warzones without objectives and by Killing only? I really do wish someone can fix this. Make it so you gain more points by running objectives and less for killing. I know that you need to kill in order to guard, so make the kill zone around the pylon. give them points if they help defend. I have pvped since day one and I have not seen it this bad before.

Assuming any turret was captured, no kill farmer squad ever can kill faster than the phase of that single turret. It is mainly an empty gesture to an undeserving crowd. Even if a group wins because of that difference it is because they played objectively nearly as well as the second team but killed somewhat better.

On the one hand, we don't want kill farming to be a viable way to win objective maps on its own and on the other hand there are enough of them to ruin many games. The only solution, of course, is as you implied in your post: talk some sense into them so they do their farming somehow objectively contributive, like PVP should be played.

I had sent this suggestion over to Keith a few months ago. He said he liked it and that he'd pass it on to their development team, but that was as far as it got. I'm not saying at all that my suggestion is the only solution to the deathmatching problem, but it has become a much bigger issue in regular, unranked WZs, and the suggestion more effectively addresses both kill farming and AFKers. It's certainly more than Bioware has done, which is nothing, and one of the contributing factors to my decision to cancel my subscription and leave the game.

To summarize, the basic idea here is to completely reverse the contribution medal scores so that players who are actually playing the objectives will get a whole lot more medals, CXP, UC and MVP votes. Players who want to ignore objectives or AFK, will see little or no return on their time.

1. Tie UC to medals. So instead of 8 UC for a loss and 20 UC for a win, make each contribution medal earned during a WZ equal to 1 UC. So if you obtain 20 contribution medals by the end of the match, you'll get 20 UC. If you only get 2 contribution medals because all you did was farm players, you'll only get 2 UC. This will reinforce the incentives of playing objective based PvP WZs in the manner in which they were intended.

2. Tie CXP to medals, so that the CXP return increases based on medals. Currently, you do not get any more CXP for earning more than 8 medals. Once you have 8, there's really no reason in the current WZ system to get more. If CXP rewards are also tied to medals, it is one more way to reinforce and incentivize appropriate player behavior in WZs.

3. Significantly reduce the number of medals for doing damage or healing. This should be a one time medal, based on reaching a certain threshold that scales with the character level. Such as at level 70, if you do at least 1 million damage or at least 1 million healing, you get one contribution medal for that. That's it. This will help de-incentivize players from spending an entire match farming other players and ignoring the objectives.

4. Medals for crit heals or crit damage should be removed entirely. It's basically redundant to #3. Reduce or completely remove other medals that are superfluous to the objectives. I believe there's even a medal for a solo kill. Unless that's somehow tied to defending/capturing a node, get rid of it. Whatever you decide to keep, players who do not contribute to the objectives, be it guarding, capturing, killing a ball carrier, scoring a ball, planting a bomb, disarming a bomb, etc. should be getting very few medals comparatively.

5. Significantly increase the number of medals for doing anything that is related to an objective. For example, if I guard a node the entire match during Civil War, Yavin, or Novare Coast, I usually get about 8 medals total. Considering how critical it is to winning a match to guard an objective, this activity should be worth considerably more medals. It will also help incentivize this activity so that more players will actually want to guard an objective. If you spend an entire match guarding a node, you should be getting somewhere between three to five times as many medals as someone who spent the entire match farming players off node.

6. Expanding on #5, also increase medals for other objective related activity, such as capturing a node (Civil War/Yavin/Novare Coast), scoring with a ball or killing a ball carrier (Huttball/Quesh), planting or disarming a bomb (Voidstar), using a buff (Odessen). And so on. Anything that reinforces objective play should be incorporated into the reward system, and dramatically increased so that it's worth doing.

7. Tie MVP votes to medals earned at the end of the match and remove the ability to vote. MVP votes are currently arbitrary and often based on subjective criteria that may or may not have anything to do with who actually contributed most to helping the team win the match. I can't tell you how many times I'd spend an entire match guarding a node, would end up with very little damage done on my DPS characters as a result, but then wouldn't get an MVP vote because other players on my team don't realize that the guy who had the most damage done was ignoring objectives the entire match and actually contributed very little to the team's victory. The irony is that in many of these cases, I could have easily out-DPS'd the kill farmer if I had also chosen to ignore objectives to deathmatch instead. Your team won't win without players who are willing to put the team victory first and in front of their own ego.

At the end of a match, the team members who were guarding a node the entire time or doing some other objective related activity should be the ones at the top of the leader boards, and those who spent the entire match kill farming should end up at the bottom of the board. Medals, and their corresponding CXP, UC, and MVP votes, would correlate to this.

Here's why this is needed. You aren't going to convince players who have selfishly decided to deathmatch to the exclusion of the objectives in objective-based PvP to change. That dialogue has been ongoing on these forums for the better part of a year or more, but the problem has only become more pervasive. When you attempt to explain this or reason with them, you'll often get responses like "I don't care" or "I can play however I want" or "I don't want to babysit a node an entire match". They've already decided some time ago, either through frustration or apathy, that the only way they are able to derive enjoyment from regular WZs is to kill farm, and they will rationalize that decision in every way possible. Nothing anyone says is going to change their minds, and even if you do manage to convince a few of them to be less self-centered and more team oriented, it won't be enough to make any real difference.

The only way you're going to affect real change in player behavior is to implement mechanics that guide that behavior in a more positive and productive direction. Unless Bioware is willing to do something similar to this, regular WZs are going to continue to be a cluster frack that will eventually drive players like me away. It's a retention issue when you allow the misguided, selfish behavior of some players to adversely affect other players, in a PvP format that is intended to be played objectively, no less.

I hope you all have more luck with this than I did.

I had sent this suggestion over to Keith a few months ago. He said he liked it and that he'd pass it on to their development team, but that was as far as it got. I'm not saying at all that my suggestion is the only solution to the deathmatching problem, but it has become a much bigger issue in regular, unranked WZs, and the suggestion more effectively addresses both kill farming and AFKers. It's certainly more than Bioware has done, which is nothing, and one of the contributing factors to my decision to cancel my subscription and leave the game.

 

To summarize, the basic idea here is to completely reverse the contribution medal scores so that players who are actually playing the objectives will get a whole lot more medals, CXP, UC and MVP votes. Players who want to ignore objectives or AFK, will see little or no return on their time.

 

1. Tie UC to medals. So instead of 8 UC for a loss and 20 UC for a win, make each contribution medal earned during a WZ equal to 1 UC. So if you obtain 20 contribution medals by the end of the match, you'll get 20 UC. If you only get 2 contribution medals because all you did was farm players, you'll only get 2 UC. This will reinforce the incentives of playing objective based PvP WZs in the manner in which they were intended.

 

2. Tie CXP to medals, so that the CXP return increases based on medals. Currently, you do not get any more CXP for earning more than 8 medals. Once you have 8, there's really no reason in the current WZ system to get more. If CXP rewards are also tied to medals, it is one more way to reinforce and incentivize appropriate player behavior in WZs.

 

3. Significantly reduce the number of medals for doing damage or healing. This should be a one time medal, based on reaching a certain threshold that scales with the character level. Such as at level 70, if you do at least 1 million damage or at least 1 million healing, you get one contribution medal for that. That's it. This will help de-incentivize players from spending an entire match farming other players and ignoring the objectives.

 

4. Medals for crit heals or crit damage should be removed entirely. It's basically redundant to #3. Reduce or completely remove other medals that are superfluous to the objectives. I believe there's even a medal for a solo kill. Unless that's somehow tied to defending/capturing a node, get rid of it. Whatever you decide to keep, players who do not contribute to the objectives, be it guarding, capturing, killing a ball carrier, scoring a ball, planting a bomb, disarming a bomb, etc. should be getting very few medals comparatively.

 

5. Significantly increase the number of medals for doing anything that is related to an objective. For example, if I guard a node the entire match during Civil War, Yavin, or Novare Coast, I usually get about 8 medals total. Considering how critical it is to winning a match to guard an objective, this activity should be worth considerably more medals. It will also help incentivize this activity so that more players will actually want to guard an objective. If you spend an entire match guarding a node, you should be getting somewhere between three to five times as many medals as someone who spent the entire match farming players off node.

 

6. Expanding on #5, also increase medals for other objective related activity, such as capturing a node (Civil War/Yavin/Novare Coast), scoring with a ball or killing a ball carrier (Huttball/Quesh), planting or disarming a bomb (Voidstar), using a buff (Odessen). And so on. Anything that reinforces objective play should be incorporated into the reward system, and dramatically increased so that it's worth doing.

 

7. Tie MVP votes to medals earned at the end of the match and remove the ability to vote. MVP votes are currently arbitrary and often based on subjective criteria that may or may not have anything to do with who actually contributed most to helping the team win the match. I can't tell you how many times I'd spend an entire match guarding a node, would end up with very little damage done on my DPS characters as a result, but then wouldn't get an MVP vote because other players on my team don't realize that the guy who had the most damage done was ignoring objectives the entire match and actually contributed very little to the team's victory. The irony is that in many of these cases, I could have easily out-DPS'd the kill farmer if I had also chosen to ignore objectives to deathmatch instead. Your team won't win without players who are willing to put the team victory first and in front of their own ego.

 

At the end of a match, the team members who were guarding a node the entire time or doing some other objective related activity should be the ones at the top of the leader boards, and those who spent the entire match kill farming should end up at the bottom of the board. Medals, and their corresponding CXP, UC, and MVP votes, would correlate to this.

 

Here's why this is needed. You aren't going to convince players who have selfishly decided to deathmatch to the exclusion of the objectives in objective-based PvP to change. That dialogue has been ongoing on these forums for the better part of a year or more, but the problem has only become more pervasive. When you attempt to explain this or reason with them, you'll often get responses like "I don't care" or "I can play however I want" or "I don't want to babysit a node an entire match". They've already decided some time ago, either through frustration or apathy, that the only way they are able to derive enjoyment from regular WZs is to kill farm, and they will rationalize that decision in every way possible. Nothing anyone says is going to change their minds, and even if you do manage to convince a few of them to be less self-centered and more team oriented, it won't be enough to make any real difference.

 

The only way you're going to affect real change in player behavior is to implement mechanics that guide that behavior in a more positive and productive direction. Unless Bioware is willing to do something similar to this, regular WZs are going to continue to be a cluster frack that will eventually drive players like me away. It's a retention issue when you allow the misguided, selfish behavior of some players to adversely affect other players, in a PvP format that is intended to be played objectively, no less.

 

I hope you all have more luck with this than I did.

Sounds good to me

I believe there's even a medal for a solo kill.

Pretty sure there's a medal. If there's not, there's at least an achieve tied to it. I've gotten raged at for "you ruined my solo kill!". Don't get me wrong, if I'm responding to an inc call, and it looks like they are about to win it on their own by the time I get there, I'll stand aside and let them have the kill because why not? But I'm not going to risk losing the node so they can have their own little solo fight in a team game.

And I cut the whole long post, but I would love changes like that. There would still be plenty of room for abuse. For example, way back when Ilum was actually active at the start of the game, didn't factions just stand there by the objective and willingly trade it back and forth for the "points"? Instead of actually fighting over it. Yeah, I can see people doing that with turrets to get medals for "taking a turret" or whatever.

Although, well, not to be a Debby Downer, but I think a lot of the players that deathmatch actually just don't care about rewards at all. They are already top geared, and so what does another CXP pack or more UC mean to them? Nothing.

Oh, and we'll also probably get a hand slap for necro'ing a post here.

Although, well, not to be a Debby Downer, but I think a lot of the players that deathmatch actually just don't care about rewards at all. They are already top geared, and so what does another CXP pack or more UC mean to them? Nothing.

 

Oh, and we'll also probably get a hand slap for necro'ing a post here.

Many of them still have alts they are gearing. For those who don't and fit into the category you described, they would lose MVP votes. There's a strong theory that MVP votes factor into the new matchmaking system. If that's true, then we'd eventually see some shifts in matchmaking that could help to alleviate the problem.

As for getting a warning for the thread necro, my forum posting privileges expire in a month when my subscription ends. It's pretty much like giving someone a traffic ticket who's about to move to a different country - it would just be a waste of time and paper.

There's a strong theory that MVP votes factor into the new matchmaking system.

Good lord, I hope not. I posted that as a JOKE... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=953229

As for getting a warning for the thread necro, my forum posting privileges expire in a month when my subscription ends. It's pretty much like giving someone a traffic ticket who's about to move to a different country - it would just be a waste of time and paper.

I just said that because apparently someone did get a warning for posting on that huge "PvP a Day" thread. That thread's been going forever, and keeps cropping up every few months when someone decides to post a story. And the mods give a necro warning for THAT one?

Good lord, I hope not. I posted that as a JOKE... http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=953229

I had read that back when you posted it. It's speculation, of course, but if taken with win/loss ratio, it makes a lot of sense. Regardless, I think you can agree that something needs to change in WZs to combat the problem. Discussion is clearly not working.

I had read that back when you posted it. It's speculation, of course, but if taken with win/loss ratio, it makes a lot of sense. Regardless, I think you can agree that something needs to change in WZs to combat the problem. Discussion is clearly not working.

Yeah, for sure. I didn't mean to imply that it was a bad plan. I was just doing a bit of devil advocating. Like I said, I would love a system that was better at rewarding contributions to the team winning, rather than contributions to solo goals.

 

Here's why this is needed. You aren't going to convince players who have selfishly decided to deathmatch to the exclusion of the objectives in objective-based PvP to change.

True.

The only way you're going to affect real change in player behavior is to implement mechanics that guide that behavior in a more positive and productive direction. Unless Bioware is willing to do something similar to this, regular WZs are going to continue to be a cluster frack...

I agree with this, but I think if you reduce what people achieve through solo play it won't discourage players one bit from deathmatching or playing "selfishly."

As you mention in part of your post, rewarding players for group/objective play more though could produce more teamplay from some players.

Thing is, it's like sending people to jail to "teach them a lesson," in essence by not rewarding players for solo play it's sending them to jail and that never works in deterring certain behaviors. Positive reinforcement and counseling does.

So with positive reinforcement, adding more rewards for team objective play could help. Counseling deathmatchers doesn't seem like a real option so that's about all the devs can do imo.

I just said that because apparently someone did get a warning for posting on that huge "PvP a Day" thread. That thread's been going forever, and keeps cropping up every few months when someone decides to post a story. And the mods give a necro warning for THAT one?

It’s getting out of control. I’ve started using reddit more because there are people posting over there who can not longer post here.