i mean, the population of granked is probably even lower than solos, so if solos has a problem with queue manipulation, i'd think granked did too. pure speculation, as the last time i queued granked was nearly 2 years ago, but the logic seems sound.

granked manipulation is incredibly easy to identify because the population is so low.

granked manipulation is incredibly easy to identify because the population is so low.

which is exactly what i'm getting at. Sorry for all of you who did get titles/etc legitimately, but you're being ruined by low population and the people who take advantage of it. And the only real cure for low population issues is to increase the population, which probably isn't happening in a substantive manner. It would take a minor miracle to get me back into swtor PvP to the point I was pre-5.10, and nothing short of Earth shattering to get me to regularly queue ranked. I honestly have no intention of regularly playing this game until september and the expansion at the soonest because of the sheer lack of anything to do. I keep up the sub to continue to support the game and it's development in hopes it miraculously improves and because it's nice to jump in and stomp things occasionally (sorry, not sorry for the arrogance)

to those with serious difficulties following basic reasoning: were there more people in the queue, it would be harder to control who was in the same match as you based on simple things like queue timing or hypothesizing on the elo based matchmaking.

Its actually ironic, since the wintraders made people stop going for ranked due to wintrading and this caused an even lower ranked populaiton, which in the end helped the wintraders to get the titles ever easier! So over all its doomed.

Hey All,

In June we caught and punished 24 accounts for win trading or cheating in PvP. We have:

• Suspended the accounts
  
• Zeroed out all ranked ratings of every character on those accounts
  
• Removed all of their Ranked PvP Reward Tokens
  

There was 1 account that we permanently banned this month for repeated cheating offenses.

I understand that many of you were dissatisfied with the contents of last month’s report, so I’d like to loop back and speak specifically to some points and questions that were raised there.

CS Suspicions

This is simply not true. I know our Galway team, we are in contact with them on a daily basis, and contrary to the rumors you may hear, they are one of our greatest allies in stopping cheaters in PvP, not helping them. Without going into too much detail, the tools our CS teams use have meticulous history of anything that is done to an account, it is simply not possible that “secretly helping” an account could happen or go unnoticed.

Which seems more likely… that several employees at every level of that office would risk their careers, reputations, and livelihoods to protect a cheating players’ points in a video game… or that someone is lying on the internet?

Let’s Talk About Punishments

Now that I’m sharing specifics on how many accounts we catch and what action we take against them, it’s clear that many, if not all of you, are displeased with the severity of the punishments in these cases. I’d like to talk about these punishments, what our goals are for having them, why I am also dissatisfied with aspects of them, and what we’re focused on trying to improve going forward.

Our Goals

The cornerstone of our game and our team is that we want people to play and enjoy our game. When players cheat, hack, exploit, bot, trade wins, scam, harass other players, or any other form of rule-breaking behavior, we have to make decisions on how to punish every possible infraction. In making these decisions, we look at the offense, what exactly they did, how they did it, what we believe they were trying to achieve, who was affected, how severely, and then we attempt to craft a punishment that we feel is fitting for each offense. This is absolutely an imperfect process, but it is one grounded in the goal that we want to change and deter the problematic behavior, so that as many people can play and enjoy our game as possible.

We know that not all of our punishments are completely effective at changing bad behavior, but we have pretty good evidence that many of them are. I have no problem with any conversation revolving around the effectiveness of punishments, which ones seem to work, which ones don’t, and sharing ideas for deterring or discouraging cheating. Within our team, we are constantly having discussions on these topics specifically, and I do my best to ensure that those discussions are reinforced by the ideas and sentiments shared here on the forums.

Banning Accounts

Every account we action for cheating gets an email that spells out very clearly if we catch them again, punishments will be more severe, up to and including account closure. I’ve seen a couple posts asking that I clarify where exactly that line is, and what specifically will get an account banned. I’m reluctant to go into too much detail here because I worry that rather than be a deterrent, it would reveal the exact level of tolerance we have, and that those who cheat would know exactly how far they can push the boundaries. At the end of the day, the primary reason that we are not more regularly banning accounts is that very few cross that line after their first punishment.

I’ve read sentiments that claim that we’re afraid to ban accounts that give us money (not true), that there is no amount of cheating that will get you permanently banned (also not true), or that we should lower the bar for banning accounts and do so more freely (honestly that’s a fair debate that several of us on the team are having every month).

The truth is, we do permanently ban accounts that we repeatedly catch cheating. We’ve banned around a dozen accounts just this season, and I imagine there will be a couple more before it’s over. In some instances we’ve seen bans meaningfully change behavior and in others we have seen players simply make new accounts and continue cheating, so even these punishments are not the cure-all that they may seem.

Why I am dissatisfied with some of our current cheating punishments…

I’m also frustrated with some of these punishments because they are only treating symptoms of the problems and not the problems themselves. In my view, one of the biggest problems is that in some ways our systems, leaderboards, and PvP quest rewards can incentivize bad behavior. Given the tools that we have right now, and the specific actions that we’re currently able to take, these do not feel like problems that we can realistically punish our way out of. I know that it’s tempting to believe that permanent bans are the only solution to all of these problems, but we’ve seen that is not always the case. In these instances, I think we need a better solution.

Given the bridges that I’m trying to build between our studio and this community, I’ve been asked specifically to work with our designers and analytics team to come up with some new actions that we can take against cheaters that will remove their ability to ruin the experience of others, while also staying true to our primary goal for the game. So far we have some promising leads, and while I’ll allude to some below, I’m hesitant to go into too much detail here until we can firmly commit the time and resources to them.

What we’re focused on improving going forward

As a quick caveat, I can’t promise that any of these will be enacted within a certain timeframe, but these are all specific areas that we’re doing our utmost to build consensus around within the studio. Conversations on these points are happening regularly, every week, and some are getting real traction. As soon as we have designs solidified and scheduled on our calendar, I will let you all know.

• A way to remove cheaters from the PvP ques altogether for the duration of the season
  
• How we can adjust our PvP rewards and/or systems to disincentivize bad behavior across the board
  
• Extra conditionals to improve the average quality of PvP matches, even if it lengthens que times somewhat
  
• Lockout timers for those who leave ranked matches or decline a que
  
• Better data on 3v4 matchups, how we can track them more accurately and do more to prevent them altogether
  
• How to grow overall player involvement in PvP (ranked and unranked)
  

I appreciate the time and effort that many of you took to submit reports to the new email address, the additional evidence provided there has been very helpful in our ongoing efforts to clean up cheating in PvP. Look for an extra report later this month regarding another special investigation we’re wrapping up. *Spoiler Alert* There will be bans.

Until next time…

I played WoW all June and only came in to farm a new location. Nevertheless, the ban came for 48 hours and reset the rating! Well done! Everyone knows that I stopped playing for several months. That's exactly why people do not believe in your pvp reports. UNSUB

I played WoW all June and only came in to farm a new location. Nevertheless, the ban came for 48 hours and reset the rating! Well done! Everyone knows that I stopped playing for several months. That's exactly why people do not believe in your pvp reports. UNSUB

wut?

/5char

@Mike🅱️

In 6.0, please change it so it stops making 3v4 matches. Even in lowbies and lvl 70 regs. I know people can not accept, but when you load 4 players against none and then load up 3, it just makes people stop playing.

This happens a lot in lowbies because there are only 7 of us in the queue, it’s not someone declining unless they are doing it for 2-3 hours straight. I know this because we’ve had the same 7 players in every match.

As an example :

What makes it worse is the system puts all lvl 30+ on the team with 4 and then puts all the lower players on the team with 3.

On top of that, it puts two snipers and a merc with a healer on the team with 4 vs a PT, Sorc and lvl 11 Mara on the team with 3.

This isn’t a one off or even a few matches. This can happen over and over for 5-6 matches till it swaps someone to the other team. But we still have a 3v4 match.

Honestly, it should work like this, put one sniper on each team and put the healer on the team with the lowest lvl players.

This current system kills lowbies even more because once 3v4 matches start, people start leaving before it starts and eventually stop queuing and then it doesn’t pop at all.

And don’t get me started on backfilling. When you have a 3v3 match already going. DONT BACK FILL AT ALL. Especially if you are only going to back fill one team and make it 3v4 for rounds two and 3.

@Mike🅱️

 

In 6.0, please change it so it stops making 3v4 matches. Even in lowbies and lvl 70 regs. I know people can not accept, but when you load 4 players against none and then load up 3, it just makes people stop playing.

This happens a lot in lowbies because there are only 7 of us in the queue, it’s not someone declining unless they are doing it for 2-3 hours straight. I know this because we’ve had the same 7 players in every match.

As an example :

What makes it worse is the system puts all lvl 30+ on the team with 4 and then puts all the lower players on the team with 3.

On top of that, it puts two snipers and a merc with a healer on the team with 4 vs a PT, Sorc and lvl 11 Mara on the team with 3.

This isn’t a one off or even a few matches. This can happen over and over for 5-6 matches till it swaps someone to the other team. But we still have a 3v4 match.

Honestly, it should work like this, put one sniper on each team and put the healer on the team with the lowest lvl players.

This current system kills lowbies even more because once 3v4 matches start, people start leaving before it starts and eventually stop queuing and then it doesn’t pop at all.

And don’t get me started on backfilling. When you have a 3v3 match already going. DONT BACK FILL AT ALL. Especially if you are only going to back fill one team and make it 3v4 for rounds two and 3.

Keep in mind that this is a low population issue, not a game issue. The matchmaking just puts in what it gets. People who que for lowbies often are doing story and other stuff and the when the pop comes they might be in a cutscene or something so they decline, there is no one else in que so u end up 3v4. This is not a game issue, well technically it is, but it has to do with number of players in que. Its also why you are getting arenas instead of regular pvp maps. Its just not enough people. This will be solved when (and if) the game becomes more populated.

Keep in mind that this is a low population issue, not a game issue. The matchmaking just puts in what it gets. People who que for lowbies often are doing story and other stuff and the when the pop comes they might be in a cutscene or something so they decline, there is no one else in que so u end up 3v4. This is not a game issue, well technically it is, but it has to do with number of players in que. Its also why you are getting arenas instead of regular pvp maps. Its just not enough people. This will be solved when (and if) the game becomes more populated.

Making 3v4 games when there are 7 people in the queue is not a population issue. It’s a team allocation issue,

Yes, there is a low population, but the queue should just make a 3v3 and then rotate the 7th person through the next match and another person sits it out,

Arenas in lowbies or regs are usually over fast, so we are only talking about 3 or so minutes to wait to rotate through.

You also shouldn’t back fill teams that are even once the match starts. If a match is already 3v3, it should not back fill to make it 4v3 or even 4v4 because there is always the chance that one of those people will decline the pop.

If you have all one class on a team vs a mixed class team in regs, the team with all snipers or all merc or Mara’s or even all PTs is most likely going to win because combined they can become OP. That is broken matchmaking

Lastly, the queue and matchmaking is broken. It should wait till all players accept before putting you into the match. Then it should put those people in “holding” lobbies before allocating the teams.

None of that is a population issue, as you say, it’s a technical issue and that is what need to be fixed.