Report from the ranked front lines, from a rookie

People say ranked is toxic and trollish, but it’s actually been better for me than regs.
The last few days, the regs have been full of jerks being elitist and have actually killed off the reg queue a few times because people stop queuing.
Some guy telling people they should delete toon’s and uninstall. (This is in regs by the way).

On the flip side, ranked is nice in comparison. People have been helpful and I’ve not seen any toxicity this week. People discuss strats and honestly try and help each other.
I just wish it popped more at my play times and I would never queue regs again if it continues this way.

What upset me was this guy made my wife cry, which always makes me cry 😭. She’s still learning, it’s regs for god sake and he abused her or got other people to do it once she put him on ignore.
She wasn’t even that bad, 1.4mil on a sent when she’s playing the objectives (he wasnt, just farming dps) is good when you are new to pvp.

Now she says she will never pvp again and it’s taken me 5 years to finally convince her to play it

I think these jerks must be from SS. This toxicity has been building since SS started to drop off with player numbers and the trolls are transferring to SF and ruining it.

When pvp dies in this game, jerks like those can wear a portion of the blame for driving people away who are trying to learn.

Something else, this guy who was dishing out the crap kept saying queue 4s so I can get easy ELO. Which he obviously needs cause I checked his ELO and it’s 1100. Even mine is 1200 and I’ve only just started playing ranked again

Same here. Well, I guess I haven't seen much actual toxicity, but no one wants to work to win anymore. I know Lhance was ribbing me for saying that ranked is fun... but it's not so much that arenas are more fun in and of themselves, it's just that regs have gotten so bad. No one cares anymore. It's so rare to get two teams where both are full of people that are 1. playing the game they zoned into. 2. care about winning 3. are trying to work together instead of thinking they can solo-hero it. and 4. don't see the very first mistake as an automatic loss and start quitting.

Where, in solo ranked, the last couple week anyway, all 4 of those points are there. It's the competition that's fun. I *wish* this existed more reliable in 8s.

That's a sad story. Tell her there are some of us who blatantly kill each other without getting all personal about it! Also, I hope you reported the guy/gal for abuse. I'm pretty sure even mild "stalker" behavior is just that, stalker behavior, and is against the ToS.

As for ranked being so much nicer and polite than regs, and people not caring about rges being wins or losses, well that's sad. The only way to change this is to make regs mean something if you want people to behave as if they mean something.

Some incentives would go a long way in regs. Whether it's lowbies, mids, or 70s there should be a structured meta that encourages people to not only participate but to play to win.

I believe BW has tried to do this, but too much of the game relies on losses dictating rewards in ranked. This in turn causes players to become very negative to others when they believe other players are at fault for their losses.

With ELO, you shouldn't be able to get max rewards by as little as 10 matches. This small effort in ranked has created tons of bad habits and cheating behavior.

The flip side to so little of matches being needed is every single loss damages ELO. Sometimes, one loss can push a player out of the top rewards they are trying so hard to get. This induces rage and toxicity between the players.

With regs, there's simply zero incentive to win matches now. One guy in another thread admitted when he didn't like how a huttball match is being played by others, he simply goes AFK. He justifies this bad behavior by what he views as bad behavior. Players are deathmatching (not trying to win in his mind) and so he does the same thing essentially by AFKing in the match also not playing to win.

I am saying good behavior should be rewarded, winning should be rewarded and then perhaps more people will play as if they care. You can't expect people to think the match means something when winning it has no more incentives than losing.

Sure, competition ought to be a driving force to try to win, but let's be honest some players are not as competitive or enjoy PVP as much as others and some players have been queuing for years and the meta is stale now.

I think that some of this type of attitude that seems to be cyclical can be minimized by creating carrots in regs that draw people to participate and try to win.

Whether it's by individual achievements in the match being rewarded with crafting mats, or just more carrots added for players to queue all tiers of regs, something ought to be done to increase people's interest in PVP and winning.

Some subtle changes as just adding rewards for participating in regs PVP could cause a new influx of players to queue, which in turn means people are more apt to try harder and win.

I had someone in Nova Coast last night say “why do you care about winning? It’s only regs”

I think that sums up everything that’s wrong with people’s attitudes towards reg pvp. When did pvp stop being about winning because it’s only regs? Just because it’s not ranked or as emotionally competitive (for some people), doesn’t mean there should be no competitive spirit or that you shouldn’t try to win.

I really hope Bioware read my other thread about choosing maps and extra incentives to give pvp a much needed injection.
But so far I doubt they’ve even looked at it because I asked Musco if he could just acknowledge he was passing it on. But nada, nothing, no yellow post to say “we got it and passed it on”.
So much for improved communication.

it is a lot friendlier than I recall from 2016. and this coming from an undergeared mando running around in assault spec. luls

matchmaking really is dire though. they need to start separating via elo. I understand that it would mean much slower pops for higher elo players or vice versa (depending on who is in the queue), but leader boards are completely pointless if you're going to use everyone in the queue in the same matches.

which leads me to....how have they still not fixed the role matching thing? if one team has an uneven role matchup with the other team, then the match needs to be cancelled. you cannot control DCs or quitters, but you can make sure everyone accepts the pop before you zone them in, thereby ensuring these mismatched roles games don't occur.

I’ve only had one “role” mismatched game where the healer on our team left.

The only mismatching I can see is when they put all the ranged on one team and all the melee on the other. The actual roles are filled, but the class specs aren’t taken into account. Ie whole stealth teams against non stealth teams, etc.

It’s worse in reg arena, which I get a fair bit of because it pops when pops are low (and sadly getting longer). I’ve had 2 healer tank dps against full dps, etc. most of the time it’s forgone conclusion because pubs will just attack one of the healers. Or you get premades vs pugs in reg arena.

Ranked seems to be the only solace of people trying to win, helping, communitating and not being toxic. It seems to go against everyone’s experience of how ranked use to be. Which is actually really awesome
It seems all the jerks have become reg stars to boost their egos in premades while they farm dps against under skilled pugs. Seems they aren’t queueing grouped ranked. To which I stay out of ranked and let it be a good experience for people who try to win and want to have a pleasant and fun time doing so.

I did want to touch on an earlier point. Pops are getting longer again at my play times. I’m now getting 50% arena and the wait times are stretching out to 15-20mins at the moment. Of course Ranked doesn’t pop at this time either. So it’s regs or nothing if I want to pvp at all.

It’s at these times that these toxic players in regs can and do kill the pvp queue fast. They either don’t understand what they are doing (cause they are stupid and selfish) or they do it on purpose to troll and kill the queue (which means they aren’t real pvpers to start with). Their sort of behaviour might have limited affect on the primetime queue at the moment, but they can wipe out the low pop time queue fast.

These people are adding to the problem of pvp player retention or new blood wanting to try it out. If these guys don’t change what they are doing, less and less people will play pvp. This will start to affect prime time too. Then they’ll scream for mergers and keep doing it till they kill pvp altogether. I would go as far as saying these guys are becoming as detrimental to pvp as Bioware’s poor decisions.

I’ve no solution to this problem. At least when Bioware **** up, we are all on the same side and want them to fix it. Who do you complain to about these **** t**ds who are ruining pvp from within the community. We’ve no recourse and can’t do anything about it. They are a scourge and when pvp finally dies out, they will have been a big part of the problem.

Similar here. I've only seen, hmm... I think 2 times (maybe 3) where we had a role mismatch. One time it was in our favor, where a DPS quit, and a healer backfilled on our side. Another time the other side got a healer/tank/2 DPS, and we got a healer/ 3 DPS. I've also seen two matches where it was 3v4. That's out of a total of 91 matches I've played so far, so I think that's pretty good.

Definitely seen a lot more class-imbalanced matches, things like 4 mercs vs. 3 sins and a sorc. Seems like it would be more fair to split that up into 2 mercs on each team - but then maybe the ELO levels dictate otherwise.

I agree. I know when I started pvp, I waited until I was max level because I thought I was supposed to (and I think early on the game did not even do level bolster, it went ahead and put you as level 10 in with the 50s?). I had no idea what I was doing, obviously. Running the wrong way in voidstar, because who knew the spawn points changed!? Defensive Cooldowns? What are those? Keybinding? I never had to do that to beat the biggest, baddest boss in my PvE story! Etc. Etc.

NO ONE yelled at me. I got a guild invite, and got into a guild where they gave some advice, but mostly just didn't worry too much about it and let people learn. It was what you might call a "welcoming" community. I am 100% sure that if I tried to start PvP from scratch today I would not even bother. As I've said, even in lowbies there are people that will start "chatting" that people should stop queuing, or "learn to PvP". If I see that and it's a same-faction target I will try to whisper said target afterwards and tell them to ignore the idiots.

I wish to recommend you for this behavior. I used to stand up to these people in chat, but I don't feel it's worth the bother anymore. From my experience, they just start arguing with you and then the whole chat is littered with dumb things not related to the warzone. Now I just put them in my ignore list so I don't have to see their messages, which (unfortunately) often means I have no idea who they're commenting to this time and can't whisper to them for support. x.x

I don't remember being called names or told to stop queuing when I started pvp, either. The only time I can remember was when someone thought I had called incs after dying, even though I had not -- my recruit geared sniper just melted so fast that I was dead before anyone realized I had called for help. It was only when I started using forums I was told I shouldn't pvp because I wasn't good enough, or good geared enough (I didn't know anything about gearing. Still don't, in fact. I just google a guide when I feel determined to play max level pvp).

Funny how that has shifted nowadays. The pvp forums feel much more accepting nowadays, and certain in-game people are determined to aggressively call out any and all sub-optimal playing, regardless if they're winning or now.

Dunno why I'm posting in a thread about ranked though, since I doubt I'll ever play ranked. But I suppose this is a subject I feel strongly about. I came back from a semi-break (only logged in to play class stories with a friend) and have been leveling 3 different characters for a week now. On every one of those characters, I've had to ignore the same damn player for throwing tantrums because people made mistakes. In lowbie. Exactly where does he think new players are supposed to learn?

3 times in 1 night. different healers each time. at least 2 of those matches, a healer never even zoned in. matches never should have happened.

edit: regs have no matchmaking. there's no point to mentioning them in comparison. it's irrelevant.

See this is up for debate. People swear that after the so-called matchmaking update was added they noticed a difference in their reg teams regarding skill levels.

When Eric had previously mentioned that BW had secret stats they might use for matchmaking, people then assumed after the update this secret rating stat was being used.

I question this, and honestly feel that nothing was changed regarding how teams are constructed. I do not believe BW started using any stats that are not visible to players for matchmaking, but many people swear there is a difference now.