Hey everyone,

 

There has been some good discussion in thise topic about both how you believe our map selection works right now in matchmaking, and thoughts on where we can improve it. I want to add some clarity to the former, and then we can talk about the latter.

 

How does map selection work?

This is pretty simple on the surface. When a player (or players) queues for an unranked Warzone the matchmaker does two things (I am ONLY talking about map selection here, not about what the matchmaker does to work towards even teams).

1. Looking at what matches are currently active and the number of players in the queue, the matchmaker decides whether it will pop an Arena or a Warzone.
   
2. The matchmaker then rolls in that game type pool for which map it will pop. All maps have the exact same weighting.
   

 

This means that Huttball and 3-pt control both have the highest odds of being selected since they each have 3 maps respectively (Novare could be argued that it is separate from Yavin/Alderaan though). But ultimately each individual map has the exact same chance of rolling here.

 

How can we improve this experience?

There have been a lot of great ideas in this thread, and definitely keep the ideas coming. This is a topic we have talked about a lot internally (allowing players to select exactly which Warzone they want to play, for example). There are some challenges with that level of granularity (queue times mostly). We have talked about adding exclusions as well, so a player could pick 2-3 Warzones they don’t want and then they fall into the rest of the pool. These changes are fairly large in what it would take to implement and so they would need to happen as a part of other large systemic changes. This in no way means we won’t ever do it, just that it would need to be in a large update and it isn’t currently planned on the schedule.

 

With that said, there are possibly some smaller fixes the team can do in the interim which they are discussing. We may be able to tweak the individual pop values on each map in the PvP queue which would give more weighting towards game type, then map, for example. I don’t have any specifics right now but the team is in active discussion on this topic and I will pass on more info as I have it.

 

Question for you all to give us your feedback on...

Matchmaking weighting could effectively work one of two ways.

• We can give even weighting to individual maps. As in, every single map has the same chance to pop so you see more map diversity. This is how it works today.
  
• We can give equal weighting to each game type. As in, you will see less map diversity overall, but you are more likely to see each map type more often. AKA you will see Voidstar as much as you see Huttball.
  

 

Let us know your thoughts! Thanks everyone, keep the feedback coming.

 

-eric

 

Hi Eric,

 

Have you got enough feed back or will you be doing some sort of poll?

 

How’s the internal discussion going with the team. Have you guys made a decision?

Edited March 26, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Hi Eric,

 

Have you got enough feed back or will you be doing some sort of poll?

 

How’s the internal discussion going with the team. Have you guys made a decision?

 

 

The situation has become critical, players are fighting at mid or somewhere close, the ball has been reset and no one would pick it up for half a minute! 2 or 3 leave before WZ starts. Whichever team has 2-3 players interested in objectives wins usually 6-0.

 

I am still against polls or packing HB maps into one. I think the most efficient way to solve this issue is to:

1. Let players opt-out from warzones they don't want to play (or at least let them select from the two upcoming warzones).

2. Drive players interested in combat only towards regular arenas (different queue).

3. Make the base win to lose ratio and rewards in warzones 5:1 as well, just like in ranked.

Edited March 26, 2019 by varietasplus

The situation has become critical, players are fighting at mid or somewhere close, the ball has been reset and no one would pick it up for half a minute! 2 or 3 leave before WZ starts. Whichever team has 2-3 players interested in objectives wins usually 6-0.

 

I am still against polls or packing HB maps into one. I think the most efficient way to solve this issue is to:

1. Let players opt-out from warzones they don't want to play (or at least let them select from the two upcoming warzones).

2. Drive players interested in combat only towards regular arenas (different queue).

3. Make the base win to lose ratio and rewards in warzones 5:1 as well, just like in ranked.

 

While we disagree on the method of how to fix it, I think we are both on the same page about the problems it’s causing.

 

Nothing is worse than scoring a goal and seeing 4 of your team mates standing right where the ball spawns and they don’t pick up the ball. Then some enemy players respawn and stop you from getting back to the ball.

In the meantime there are 5-6 of your team around the ball and not picking it up. Then one of the enemy who respawned has picked it up while you are dead and runs past your whole team unopposed to score while you’re stuck behind your own respawn screen. (It’s infuriating that there is even a screen. I totally disagree with it and it should let you out instantly).

 

If I rage quit HB it’s only because my team won’t try. I don’t mind losing (actually I do), but it hate playing my favourite maps when no one tries and they expect others to completely carry them.

Imagine if I did that in ranked. Just /stuck each match to get my 50 matches done faster to get my mats. I can hear the screams from here and rightly so.

I would never do that to other players. If I’m going to queue ranked, I’m going to try as hard as I can to play properly and get better. I dont want to ruin other people’s fun or experience because I’m not a selfish player.

I’m a team player and I play to win, even if it means sacrificing my own dps or my lives. If it benefits my team, I will do it selflessly to win.

 

Sadly, more often than not, some of those people who expect others to carry them in HB are dps and kill farmers from ranked. If any of you are reading this, stop and consider how you would feel if we came into ranked and F’d up your ELO by /stucking each time.

If you aren’t a ranked player and just want to farm numbers, L2P because good players can do both at the same time. We don’t care if you get 2mil dps on your Sniper if you let Ball carriers run right past you and you dont even target them. All that means is you are a **** player and will always be a scrub.

 

If all you want to do is farm numbers, then leave as soon as a HB pops for you or better yet, L2P Ranked because only Ranked matters if you are a dps farmer and kill hunter. Anything else is just a bunch of boys seeing who has the biggest you know what.

Could not agree more with everything you said. Problem is not a single word of yours will make them look into themselves. It is a circulus vitiosus, if they understood what they are doing is not right, they would not do it without having to explain it, but since they don't, they would not listen even if you try to make them understand. But I appreciate your efforts for trying, I hope you reached out to few regardless. Edited March 26, 2019 by varietasplus

It is a circulus vitiosus

 

Nice I had to look it up. Thanks for sharing words I never seen used before, not in Latin anyway.

Nothing is worse than scoring a goal and seeing 4 of your team mates standing right where the ball spawns and they don’t pick up the ball.

 

This is what used to make me leave HB early.

 

If I was on my healers I always tried to run the ball or support the carriers in HB and seen the majority of our players humping the mid area randomly attacking enemies while the ball sits there ready for pickup and either I cannot get to it, or the other team grabs it that does it for me.

 

lol I can't stand the frustration of being stopped from scoring by the other team, or my own team stopping us from winning by not bothering to grab the ball.

 

Even on my DeathMatch toons (like merc dps) I still will grab the ball and throw it across to move it into better position to score. People just don't care about the ball objective often times even when the ball is right next to them and all they got to do is grab it.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Lhancelot

The situation has become critical, players are fighting at mid or somewhere close, the ball has been reset and no one would pick it up for half a minute! 2 or 3 leave before WZ starts. Whichever team has 2-3 players interested in objectives wins usually 6-0.

 

I am still against polls or packing HB maps into one. I think the most efficient way to solve this issue is to:

1. Let players opt-out from warzones they don't want to play (or at least let them select from the two upcoming warzones).

2. Drive players interested in combat only towards regular arenas (different queue).

3. Make the base win to lose ratio and rewards in warzones 5:1 as well, just like in ranked.

People still dont get it. BW has put so many different objectives in PVP that the focus for each player isnt always the pbjectoves of the specific WZ you are in. Many peoples expectations for the WZ are misplaced.

Edited March 26, 2019 by olagatonjedi

People still dont get it. BW has put so many different objectives in PVP that the focus for each player isnt always the pbjectoves of the specific WZ you are in. Many peoples expectations for the WZ are misplaced.

 

I just leave HB matches if I feel that the entire team seems to be on a different page than myself when it comes to what our objectives are.

Agree with Op. I like huttball. Especially the original map. No so much the last one. But at any rate too much of anything can be annoying.

 

1) void star is Op. Im a APT so yea no explination needed

 

2) alderaan

 

3) Nova coast

 

Side note. If I never did another hypergate I'd be ( fill in the blank )

This is what used to make me leave HB early.

 

If I was on my healers I always tried to run the ball or support the carriers in HB and seen the majority of our players humping the mid area randomly attacking enemies while the ball sits there ready for pickup and either I cannot get to it, or the other team grabs it that does it for me.

 

lol I can't stand the frustration of being stopped from scoring by the other team, or my own team stopping us from winning by not bothering to grab the ball.

 

Even on my DeathMatch toons (like merc dps) I still will grab the ball and throw it across to move it into better position to score. People just don't care about the ball objective often times even when the ball is right next to them and all they got to do is grab it.

 

I’m also leaving HB matches for the same reasons. I refuse to carry people who won’t even try to play.

I’ve tried to go with the “flow” when no one tries and just do what they do, but I just can’t. My competitive HB nature kicks in and I find my self with the ball or chasing the Ball carrier.

Next thing I’m frustrated and angry at the situation, which isn’t fun. So I leave before I start yelling at people to help.

 

Most HB matches feel like that these days. Add the fact that we now have 3 maps and they pop about 40-50% of the time and it is very aggravating.

I like HB, but it’s more than apparent to me that the majority don’t. Most people just want pure 8v8 combat maps with no objectives, which we don’t have. So the next best thing are the maps that are heavily combat focused as well as objective.

 

These are the most combat focused maps :

Void Star

Hypergates

Nova Coast

Civil War

Yavin

 

I personally don’t like OPG, but at least there is only one of those objective maps. But we also have 3 HB objective maps. Even if every map we had popped once per rotation and HB and OPG were put in between each combat map, we would still have 44.44% of heavily objective pvp over combat pvp. We would have 33.33% of Hutt Ball only maps.

This is too much for most of the population because all they want to do kill stuff.

 

If people played HB and OPG properly I wouldn’t have an issue with each map popping once per rotation. But most people won’t try to play them properly. I used to be able to play HB all day and I used to be happy when it popped.

 

This thread isn’t just for me or my personal wants or needs. I made it because I want pvp to be successful and I believe the needs of the majority of the pvp population out weight the needs of the few.

If the majority just want to fight and kill and ignore the objectives. Then the heavy combat maps need to pop more than the objective maps. But I also understand that OPG is a unique map unto itself, which is why I think it should be equally weighted with the unique maps.

If the “3 point” capture maps were mainly objective too, then I would also agree they should be grouped together like Hutt Ball, but they aren’t as heavily objective like HB or OPG. If anything, they are a good balance between combat and objective since the way the score changed, they now tip more towards combat.

For the good of the majority of the community, those maps (Civil War & Yavin) need to be individually weighted the same as HG, VS, NC and OPG (which I personally hate). All the Hutt Ball maps need wighted as a group and then a map chose from the group if HB pops on the rotation.

 

My love of Hutt Ball and hate of OPG are irrelevant when it comes to what’s best for the health of pvp. I’ve tried to be as objective as I can be with my feed back.

Edited March 26, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Option 3 for me please Bob, make maps selectable. Fewer pops but at least the people you're playing with want to be there. Also Option 4, pvp ignore. If I want more pops then I toggle all the maps and clear out my ignore list. If I want better quality then I accept the increased wait time.

 

Also on your "every map has an equal chance" point. Haven't read the whole thread so not sure if this has been covered but, if a map is hated then it will appear to pop more than one that is loved. Let's say everyone hates Vandin (who could!) and half the players leave as soon as they zone in then get backfilled. Then 8 people get the first pop, 4 leave and 4 backfills, 2 leave and 2 backfills then 1 leaves and 1 backfill with a 50/50 on leaving or staying. So 15 (and a half) people just effectively experienced a Vandin pop and flounce to the forums for a good old whinge. By contrast everyone loves Odessen (who couldn't!) since it is the best map so 8 people pop all 8 stay and mournfully ask each other why Odessen (proven as the best map by Science) appears to pop half as often as Vandin.

 

Apologies if someone else mentioned this already, I'm old and long threads are beyond me now

Option 3 for me please Bob, make maps selectable. Fewer pops but at least the people you're playing with want to be there. Also Option 4, pvp ignore. If I want more pops then I toggle all the maps and clear out my ignore list. If I want better quality then I accept the increased wait time.

 

FYI, your ignore list doesn’t stop you popping with the people on it. That only works with pve queues,

Edited March 26, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Option 3 for me please Bob, make maps selectable. Fewer pops but at least the people you're playing with want to be there.

Again, people have a variety of reasons for being in a given warzone map that may have nothing to do with the same reasons as their teammate. The biggest issue IS the warzone map popping regularly, regardless of which map it is. I think people are overanalyzing this, and not thinking big picture and health of the game.

Again, people have a variety of reasons for being in a given warzone map that may have nothing to do with the same reasons as their teammate. The biggest issue IS the warzone map popping regularly, regardless of which map it is. I think people are overanalyzing this, and not thinking big picture and health of the game.

 

The big picture is that backfills are not a whole lot of fun. I've been getting, if I'm lucky, 1 warzone out of 3 that isn't either a last minute (like 10s before the gate opens) backfill or an actual mid-way through the match backfill.

 

You can filter which flashpoints you que for, and yet you can't even select to que for a 4v4 only or an 8v8 only match.

 

Making pvp players always que for 4v4 and 8v8 at the same time is similar to what making pve players always que for OPs, Uprisings and Flashpoints at the same time would be. GF would die fast if half the time you wanted a flashpoint you got dumped into an operation (or vice-versa).

The big picture is that backfills are not a whole lot of fun. I've been getting, if I'm lucky, 1 warzone out of 3 that isn't either a last minute (like 10s before the gate opens) backfill or an actual mid-way through the match backfill.

 

You can filter which flashpoints you que for, and yet you can't even select to que for a 4v4 only or an 8v8 only match.

 

Making pvp players always que for 4v4 and 8v8 at the same time is similar to what making pve players always que for OPs, Uprisings and Flashpoints at the same time would be. GF would die fast if half the time you wanted a flashpoint you got dumped into an operation (or vice-versa).

There are too many factors unique to ops, fps, and uprisings vs pvp, that a comparison cant be made for a queue selection system, or a guaranteed improvement upon the current system by its implementation. A queue selection would break the game more unless there was significant compensation for joining less popular ones, or significant punishment for leaving a match in the games current state.

FYI, your ignore list doesn’t stop you popping with the people on it. That only works with pve queues,

 

i am aware, I add them as friends and leave if the pop has too many such "friends" in it but a proper PVP ignore would seem a lot simpler.

 

Again, people have a variety of reasons for being in a given warzone map that may have nothing to do with the same reasons as their teammate. The biggest issue IS the warzone map popping regularly, regardless of which map it is. I think people are overanalyzing this, and not thinking big picture and health of the game.

 

Well of course they do my flustered friend. And they should be free to reason their reasons. I just don't want to play with them. And THAT is the big picture. I'm not legally required to play this game (softest community service order EVER! Jussie himself would be saying "Really are you sure? That doesn't seem fair") so if I'm pushed into content I don't enjoy I'll just push off elsewhere.

This thread isn’t just for me or my personal wants or needs. I made it because I want pvp to be successful and I believe the needs of the majority of the pvp population out weight the needs of the few.

If the majority just want to fight and kill and ignore the objectives. Then the heavy combat maps need to pop more than the objective maps.

 

And this is where the fundaments of our unresolvable debate lies. Based on the last month's experience, current player base - safe a moderate fraction - does not care about objectives AT ALL. There is little to none correlation between map type (objective complexity) and objective awereness or combat focused player happiness.

 

Those who ignore objectives, ignore it on ALL MAPS, therefore it is irrelevant whether they do not pay attention to the ball or VS door or turret cap. They are not going to defend, cap or interrupt anything, they are not going to gather orbs or mods. They will always be fighting at mid (even if side turrets are both captured by their own team or even unoccupied), because mid is closest to spawn point and the brainless button smashing. This happens almost in every warzone, therefore namecalling and frustration is reaching unprecedented extremity.

 

They are moving in hordes, globalling players trying to focus on objectives and don't bother if they lose the match. The solution to this problem is not to reduce the pop ratio of HB, but to:

1. Drive objective-ignorant players away from regular warzones. Create a "B" type of each warzone map with disabled objectives in a separate queue and let them fight whereever they want. Team with most kill wins. Good riddance.

2. Dramatically increase the reward differene between wins and loss (5:1).

3. Don't mess with pop ratio, don't pack maps. Had 3 pieces of 3-pointed maps in a raw and became boring and frustrating pretty quickly with the stupidity of current player base.

 

The HB pop issue - which does seem to be a valid one - is most likely an underlying IT (programming) randomiztaion problem that needs to be addressed in a different manner.

Edited March 29, 2019 by varietasplus

They are moving in hordes, globalling players trying to focus on objectives and don't bother if they lose the match. The solution to this problem is not to reduce the pop ratio of HB, but to:

 

It's worse on the US servers. I'd say maybe 1 in 10 US "warzone" streamers even pretends to play objectives. End of game, click, sort by damage done. "Top dmg!!!" /bkiss. Lost 6-0.

 

We could wander into a "Europeans aren't as ego obsessed" fake science discussion but I'm inclined to credit Snave's influence on DM. He's completely objective focused in warzones and that rubs off on the people who watch him and play with/against him and that then rubs off on the wider community.

 

There are plenty of ways of fixing it but as long "pop speed trumps all" is Requirement #1 then not much will change.

 

The HB pop issue - which does seem to be a valid one - is most likely an underlying IT (programming) randomiztaion problem that needs to be addressed in a different manner.

 

I have very little faith in the EA Austin dev team but I'm pretty sure even they couldn't mess up a random number generator. Arguably RNG is their specialization.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Bullyabass

I have very little faith in the EA Austin dev team but I'm pretty sure even they couldn't mess up a random number generator. Arguably RNG is their specialization.

 

I did not imply devs messed it up. The underlying problem is that there is no "real", just pseudo random number generation in programming, I don't want to go into details. Knowing this, it is imperative a good programmer takes it into consideration when developing a program (in this case: warzone queues). The RNG you refer to in a funny, sarcastic way is a design matter, whereas the queue problem is a coding issue, I would not even call it a bug, but it needs to be addressed.

Edited March 29, 2019 by varietasplus

It's worse on the US servers. I'd say maybe 1 in 10 US "warzone" streamers even pretends to play objectives. End of game, click, sort by damage done. "Top dmg!!!" /bkiss. Lost 6-0.

 

We could wander into a "Europeans aren't as ego obsessed" fake science discussion but I'm inclined to credit Snave's influence on DM. He's completely objective focused in warzones and that rubs off on the people who watch him and play with/against him and that then rubs off on the wider community.

 

This is what’s happened from my perspective.

 

With the Merge, the number farmers and a large part of the American ranked community was stuck on Satele Shan.

The remaining pvpers were on Star Forge. I’d already moved some Alts to the east coast for pve and to take a break from some of the pvp trolls.

 

When the servers were moved to the east coast, I decided not to go back to Satele Shan as my primary pvp server and instead stayed on Star Forge because people on SF wanted to play to win over number crunching. The mind set was better. It was friendly and people would offer to help others and chat.

Yes, there were still death match people about and number crunchers. But the attitude in pvp was more relaxed and the majority played to win. That meant trying to play the objectives and helping each other.

 

Then Satele Shan started to decline in numbers and slowly there were people transferring from Satele to Star Forge. These people brought their bad attitude and less than friendly banter and trollish whining to SF. They also braught enough number crunchers to change the balance from people trying to win with objectives to people following a herd around the map to see who could get the highest numbers.

 

This behaviour has just spread like a cancer on SF as more and more transfer from SS and it’s been teaching any new people to play like this. New players do what the more experienced players do because they are learning and don’t know what to do. This is breeding more bad behaviour or attitude towards winning matches because when the “less skilled people” see the “kings” of dps saying that winning or regs don’t matter, then they don’t try to win either.

This whole thing has started to get worse the more players transfer. Star Forges pvp culture has completely changed in the last 4-5 months and I think it’s irreparable.

 

I wish we had people like Snave who stream and show people how to win with objectives. Having some streamers willing to buck the trend on Star Forge and promote objective play over number crunching would be awesome. But I think most are too scared of being told they are bad players if they don’t top the dps.

It would also be great if we had a Snave and friends group willing to train people on Star Forge.

 

Snave🧔🏻 Any chance you guys might go on a server Safari to Star Forge and take your training on the road 🆘? Maybe even some streaming adventures to Star Forge a few times a month

Team up with Krea and do joint streams.

Edited March 30, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

Hey everyone,

 

There has been some good discussion in thise topic about both how you believe our map selection works right now in matchmaking, and thoughts on where we can improve it. I want to add some clarity to the former, and then we can talk about the latter.

 

How does map selection work?

This is pretty simple on the surface. When a player (or players) queues for an unranked Warzone the matchmaker does two things (I am ONLY talking about map selection here, not about what the matchmaker does to work towards even teams).

1. Looking at what matches are currently active and the number of players in the queue, the matchmaker decides whether it will pop an Arena or a Warzone.
   
2. The matchmaker then rolls in that game type pool for which map it will pop. All maps have the exact same weighting.
   

 

This means that Huttball and 3-pt control both have the highest odds of being selected since they each have 3 maps respectively (Novare could be argued that it is separate from Yavin/Alderaan though). But ultimately each individual map has the exact same chance of rolling here.

 

How can we improve this experience?

There have been a lot of great ideas in this thread, and definitely keep the ideas coming. This is a topic we have talked about a lot internally (allowing players to select exactly which Warzone they want to play, for example). There are some challenges with that level of granularity (queue times mostly). We have talked about adding exclusions as well, so a player could pick 2-3 Warzones they don’t want and then they fall into the rest of the pool. These changes are fairly large in what it would take to implement and so they would need to happen as a part of other large systemic changes. This in no way means we won’t ever do it, just that it would need to be in a large update and it isn’t currently planned on the schedule.

 

With that said, there are possibly some smaller fixes the team can do in the interim which they are discussing. We may be able to tweak the individual pop values on each map in the PvP queue which would give more weighting towards game type, then map, for example. I don’t have any specifics right now but the team is in active discussion on this topic and I will pass on more info as I have it.

 

Question for you all to give us your feedback on...

Matchmaking weighting could effectively work one of two ways.

• We can give even weighting to individual maps. As in, every single map has the same chance to pop so you see more map diversity. This is how it works today.
  
• We can give equal weighting to each game type. As in, you will see less map diversity overall, but you are more likely to see each map type more often. AKA you will see Voidstar as much as you see Huttball.
  

 

Let us know your thoughts! Thanks everyone, keep the feedback coming.

 

-eric

 

Eric, you posted this on the 15th of March 2019. It’s now 8-9 December 2019 and nothing’s been done. Could you at least reply and tell us if you guys plan on doing anything or it is wishful thinking on our part.

I think we deserved to know, even if it’s bad news.

Having Huttball 80% of the time yesterday evening, 4 out of the 5 WZs I had time for, was soul-crushing. The first three I played to win. By the fourth I just didn't care any more and joined the deathmatching mosh pit in the middle. I don't think it's ridiculous to assume the other folks in that melee ignoring the ball had seen Huttball a lot more than even I had that evening.

 

This is not a new experience after playing for 7 years. The fact that it's not a 'remember the bad old days when...' experience after all this time is inexcusable. You can find threads complaining about too much Huttball since launch, back when it was blamed on faction imbalance. Well, PvP's been cross-faction for a while now and it's still happening. Sort it out and stop mugging off Trixxie here.

Edited December 10, 2019 by mothbanquet

Playing lowbies last night and it was nothing but HB, i like HB but too much of it is annoying, especially with all the Desynch going on.

Something is definitely wrong with this game

i like HB but too much of it is annoying

 

Simply this. Love/hate for HB will always be a spectrum of opinion, and I don't hate HB per se but to quote another BW game, familiarity breeds contempt and I'm as familiar with Huttball as I can get.

I think they broke it.