Bioware, please... Why do you tolerate it? A single player effectively paralized entire solo queue traffic now.

Solo queue is dead because of him. We actually had people who care about rating mostly queue after 5.6 due to lack of rewards which discouraged toxic players from farming them in solo queue. But now everyone is afraid to queue empire side because of that one guy who just sits there 24/7, asks people to queue yolos and leaves every match.

I cannot play the game and content I enjoy and have paid for due to extremely disruptive behaviour on someone else's part. Sitting in queue for 35 minutes on Republic without pops because everyone is afraid of that one player on their team is just not cool.

Can't you just put that player on your ignore list? As far as I know, that would prevent getting queued with them, even in ranked WZs. It is working for GF, so i figgure it works for WZs aswell.

Doesn't work in ranked.

Bioware, please... Why do you tolerate it? A single player effectively paralized entire solo queue traffic now.

 

Solo queue is dead because of him. We actually had people who care about rating mostly queue after 5.6 due to lack of rewards which discouraged toxic players from farming them in solo queue. But now everyone is afraid to queue empire side because of that one guy who just sits there 24/7, asks people to queue yolos and leaves every match.

 

I cannot play the game and content I enjoy and have paid for due to extremely disruptive behaviour on someone else's part. Sitting in queue for 35 minutes on Republic without pops because everyone is afraid of that one player on their team is just not cool.

I think it would be best if people just accepted that rating in this game is not an indication of skill or personal success, there are too many people who do not care about keeping that pure, who do not care about fair or unfair, and who kind humor in screwing other people out of what they might otherwise legitimately deserve. It sucks, and I understand how that could lead you to feel such frustration.

It's impossible to know what BW does or doesn't do in addressing such instances, and this provides them with plausible deniability. Even were they successful in removing this one individual, it would not leave rating spotless. There's too much win-trading, cheating, throwers, and class imbalance for that.

No one really holds rating in regard anymore save for those few names at the top, who in many cases, got those places in the first place using those same under-handed methods.

I think it would be best if people just accepted that rating in this game is not an indication of skill or personal success, there are too many people who do not care about keeping that pure, who do not care about fair or unfair, and who kind humor in screwing other people out of what they might otherwise legitimately deserve. It sucks, and I understand how that could lead you to feel such frustration.

 

It's impossible to know what BW does or doesn't do in addressing such instances, and this provides them with plausible deniability. Even were they successful in removing this one individual, it would not leave rating spotless. There's too much win-trading, cheating, throwers, and class imbalance for that.

 

No one really holds rating in regard anymore save for those few names at the top, who in many cases, got those places in the first place using those same under-handed methods.

Couldn't agree more.. Bioware needs to find other methods of rewarding player and eliminate The Leaderboard in it entirety, since is not a legit method to measure anyone success.. Players success should be measure on number of medals/tokens accumulate, games play, number of player defeated, and MvP votes, among other things..that will give a sense a legitimacy to the game.. Bioware needs to stop rewarding Trolls.

I think it would be best if people just accepted that rating in this game is not an indication of skill or personal success, there are too many people who do not care about keeping that pure, who do not care about fair or unfair, and who kind humor in screwing other people out of what they might otherwise legitimately deserve. It sucks, and I understand how that could lead you to feel such frustration.

 

It's impossible to know what BW does or doesn't do in addressing such instances, and this provides them with plausible deniability. Even were they successful in removing this one individual, it would not leave rating spotless. There's too much win-trading, cheating, throwers, and class imbalance for that.

 

No one really holds rating in regard anymore save for those few names at the top, who in many cases, got those places in the first place using those same under-handed methods.

That is given up. Then you might as well stop with a ranked concept altogether. Besides, as has been pointed out to me, it's mostly a question about number of matches played, as these variable will even themselves out over time. The only truly skewed issue is queue syncs, as you can never benefit from those as a solo player.

That being said, I would obviously prefer to have action taken by admins or player-mods. Players with limited abilities to escalate issues and possible to observe and nullify broken matches (throwers, queue syncs, toxic people etc.). Yes it could be abused, but it would still be better than doing nothing.

He is back again. I saw he was online, but risked a queue anyway. Sure enough he was there, but on the other team. I tried to convince our tank to sit out, but it became a dumb 4 vs 3 match. Guess I should have sat out myself. Oh how I wish I could reset / stop / nullify such a match.

I have reported him before and yet again tonight, and If this doesn't get him banned, then yes, we might as well pack up pvp in this game and call it a failed experiment

Wait, why are you even queuing Solo?

It's bugged so that you're not getting anything. (The ranking might even be down as they hadn't updated the leaderboards since Nov.)

Couldn't agree more.. Bioware needs to find other methods of rewarding player and eliminate The Leaderboard in it entirety, since is not a legit method to measure anyone success.. Players success should be measure on number of medals/tokens accumulate, games play, number of player defeated, and MvP votes, among other things..that will give a sense a legitimacy to the game.. Bioware needs to stop rewarding Trolls.

Id personally think it might be a good idea to give a player his rating depneding on how many total wins he has... not taking losses into account... maybe not the best system.. but it would be a bit more fair then

I think it would be best if people just accepted that rating in this game is not an indication of skill or personal success, there are too many people who do not care about keeping that pure, who do not care about fair or unfair, and who kind humor in screwing other people out of what they might otherwise legitimately deserve. It sucks, and I understand how that could lead you to feel such frustration.

The ranked system sure intoxicates society (and people who play ranked and then read "Ender's Shadow" sometimes even get insulted by the almost direct reference to how does the leaderboard make you a scumbag), but this is the reason you can choose to take your own rating dead seriously, or not too. However, before a wrong conclusion is taken as one can control only himself, you can't bring any harm to the rank of others, because they might take their rating seriously even if you don't.

As for the main probIem, I think the solution is very simple:

Doesn't work in ranked.

BioWare, add 1 damn code line and make ignores work in ranked (or better: PVP in general, and GSF while at it. No sense putting you in a group with someone who you won't hear, and in things bigger than ranked you might not even notice he is there until you miss a called inc...)

That is given up. Then you might as well stop with a ranked concept altogether. Besides, as has been pointed out to me, it's mostly a question about number of matches played, as these variable will even themselves out over time. The only truly skewed issue is queue syncs, as you can never benefit from those as a solo player.

 

That being said, I would obviously prefer to have action taken by admins or player-mods. Players with limited abilities to escalate issues and possible to observe and nullify broken matches (throwers, queue syncs, toxic people etc.). Yes it could be abused, but it would still be better than doing nothing.

The point of ranked is the ranked rewards at the end. Any pretending of honest elo rating is just foolish thinking. Most of the "good" players are teenager to young adult (speaking from hearing them in third party voice comms/streaming) If you think young people won't pull every trick they can think of to stay on top.... lol

It's also the only pvp left with matchmaking. I'm not the only one who loads into a reg 4v4 and you can clearly see 1 side has 1 dps and 3 healers, other side, 2 tanks, 2 dps. And that's just a 4s where you can see the lack of matchmaking, not even going into the 3 healers, 3 skank tanks and 2 dps vs 8 dps in 8v8 regs.

That is given up. Then you might as well stop with a ranked concept altogether.

At this point, I am entirely convinced that the ranking system in it's current form simply doesn't work for SWTOR, and that the concept "tiered rating with four digit numbers" is a lost concept on SWTOR.

Those four-digit ranking systems with multiple tiers work wonders for games with a big population that can sustain them. LoL, WoW and the likes work very well with those systems because you have a ton of competitive, dedicated players who promote PvP across all leagues. They work well because stuff like queue syncing, win-trading and the things described in the OP do not work. They can't be done, except in very rare circumstances. You can't queue sync in LoL ranked, Overwatch or WoW due to the sheer amount of players in the queue. It's increasingly difficult.

In SWTOR, even with the current server merges, the population isn't big enough to sustain such ranking systems. One example: Even on Darth Malgus, I still have times during the early evening/afternoon where I meet the same names/enemy team multiple times in a row. And if there are currently only gold rated players queueing in solo ranked, then I am put with/against gold rated players on a silver character. The system would work if there was a healthy population on all levels, but there simply isn't any, so the matchmaking sucks.

That system is entirey flawed since one aspect of having a tiered rating system the likes of OW, WoW and LoL is to put people of equal rating against each other. What's the point of having three tiers when rating/tiers mean jack sh*t for queueing purposes? What's the entire point of the system if it's basically: "You are miles below that player in skill and activity, but we are going to put you against him anyway! And if you lose, you do lose ranked. You're miles below him, but you'll be penalized for going against him and losing anyway!"

Inbetween the small population, the penalties for loosing against people of much higher rating, the trolling without repercussion, the possibility to queue sync in a way that leaves out any kind of penalty due to missing matchmaking and other important factors, the ranking system has come to a point where it has become utterly meaningless.

You can even see that the system is utterly broken by looking at the Leaderboard. There is a twenty percent difference between the second and the third place on the Scoundrel leaderboard. There is a 33%(!) difference between the first spot and the fifth spot on the Sorcerer leaderboard. We are talking about a leaderboard that has hundreds of spots. In a system that is healthy and competitive, you should not have a difference of 1/3 between the first five spots of over a thousand ranked individuals. You should have a difference of ~1-5% between the top 20/50 so that it always stays a good competition.

Look at other games and how close top PvP and PvE guilds compete for spots. Look at how frequently new people enter Grand Master and Master leagues in LoL, and how competitive that top end of PvP is.

The system is so close to being given up on because the system, through many mistakes in the past few years, has been broken beyond anything else.

....

A very good overview of the situation. For starters, what BioWare could do is to at least match the rank gain/loss to the rating difference between the groups. Say, if golds win vs bronze, the gold gets +X and the bronze loses -X. However, if the bronze beats the golds, the bronze gets +5X and gold loses -5X. Not sure what the X should be, but that's the general idea...

At this point, I am entirely convinced that the ranking system in it's current form simply doesn't work for SWTOR, and that the concept "tiered rating with four digit numbers" is a lost concept on SWTOR.

Yes, you are right. At the moment there is a small number of players in the game (they reside on Darth Malgus) who basically sort out the top spots among themselves and play the entire season in a matter to get their specific toons to those spots. They have the highest ratings cause they only PVP. They PVP at the right time, the right faction, farm the poor regular solo quing ppl, who are unaware that they are being farmed. Yes, they do enter solo que, but they know how to sync que, sitting on voice chat waiting for the others to get pop so they can enter que (or just check guild tab or /who).

It is almost impossible to climb up to top ranks without being in this group of people, they sort out who gets what. They even use toons or classes that they dont even play, just to occupy that specific spot. That is the sad reality of ranked in this game.

Yes, you are right. At the moment there is a small number of players in the game (they reside on Darth Malgus) who basically sort out the top spots among themselves and play the entire season in a matter to get their specific toons to those spots. They have the highest ratings cause they only PVP. They PVP at the right time, the right faction, farm the poor regular solo quing ppl, who are unaware that they are being farmed. Yes, they do enter solo que, but they know how to sync que, sitting on voice chat waiting for the others to get pop so they can enter que (or just check guild tab or /who).

 

It is almost impossible to climb up to top ranks without being in this group of people, they sort out who gets what. They even use toons or classes that they dont even play, just to occupy that specific spot. That is the sad reality of ranked in this game.

Of course you have a ton of proof for all of this right?

Of course you have a ton of proof for all of this right?

If given the tools to perform win-trading and queue synching without that much of a repercussion, there will be people abusing this. Period. We can argue that the person you quoted might have shot a bit over the edge to what extend it is happening, but let's not kid ourselves that there are tons of win trading issues in any given season. And seeing that some classes on the leaderboard have as much as a 30%(!) rating difference between the first and second spot, I'd bet a Revered Master set that you'll find indications of queue synching with those individuals. That is not how competitive leaderboards turn out when the progression is fair and balanced.

Show me any other game where the top ten players of any given region/class/server compete within a 30% rating difference. I'll wait. It's usually within 2-4% to faciilitate a good competition. If you have a 30% rating difference in the top spots, people might as well not play at all.

So, in conclusion to thar argument: We can argue the extend of what you quoted, but let's not get into the sh*t conversation whether there's a good amount of win-trading and queue synching going on when the system completely supports it and makes it easy as heck.

BioWare, add 1 damn code line and make ignores work in ranked (or better: PVP in general, and GSF while at it. No sense putting you in a group with someone who you won't hear, and in things bigger than ranked you might not even notice he is there until you miss a called inc...)

They can't. If that works then all you have to do is get some trolls to put you on ignore & you will never get a match in your life.

Hence why PvP ignores still allow you to be queued. Granted it sucks for those of us who care about our ranks & get trolled.

They can't. If that works then all you have to do is get some trolls to put you on ignore & you will never get a match in your life.

Hence why PvP ignores still allow you to be queued. Granted it sucks for those of us who care about our ranks & get trolled.

It would only prevent me from being put WITH the trolls, not against them. Believe me, if there are, say 20 trolls who ignore me to ruin me, that means I will never be in a group that involves one guy who wants to ruin me anyway, so he won't get to ruin my rating. But, just to make it extra safe, let's add some more to the matchmaking code: let's say a match is being formed and there are 2 spots remaining, and 3 people are suitable for that spot, one of them is you, the other is ignoring you, and a 3rd guy. If we make the matchmaking system always prefer to exclude the ignorer, by picking you and the 3rd guy, it makes sure ignores don't make you miss matches while still ensuring the guy who is ignoring you doesn't have to suffer your presence. I know, so far it sounds terrible because it seems to let the trolls and hackers and AFKs and whoever you ignore get in the matches while you have to wait longer to get the next match without them. But don't forget that if this is a true hacker/troll/AFK then many people will ignore him, and in such cases even if he has priority, imagine that back in the last example the 3rd guy also ignored you, that would mean its either only you or both of them, and the warzone needs 2 people, so that would be you out and the ignorers in.

Of course, all these examples are talking about 1 warzone and 3 people to simplify it for the imaginations, but we are talking about ~10 warzones and hundreds of people, so the final result would be:

If a small number of players hate you and ignore you and they all queue at the same time (not together), due to the number of warzone queues and people queueing you will probably quickly find a warzone in which none of them is present and they will get their own warzones without you slightly later (and none of you will be even aware of each other).

If all your ignores are queueing grouped you they will get a match before you, but you will get the next match with no problem.

However, if you were a troll/hacker/AFKer than eventually, everybody would ignore you and you will find yourself purged from PVP. [i used "you" in this example just to match it to the previous examples, but of course, since it isn't YOU you, but a troll/hacker/AFK this is a happy thing.

In extreme circumstances when a guy somehow, without doing something socially unacceptable (such as trolling) or game-wise unacceptable (such as hacking), you got yourself a seriously large group of ignorers (and we are discussing the size of conquesting guilds here), you could send a ticket and report them (if they are so many that you really are harmed by it, you probably know who they are, right?)

Doesn't work in ranked.

Doesn’t work in pvp in general

Wintrading, throwing games, hacking, trolling, mat farming etc, you all need to realize the Devs could care less about it. It is what it is, nothing is going to change.

We could argue if the devs don't care or don't know (at least not about the extent of the issue) or simply aren't efficient, but let's even assume you are right and they don't care, even if "It is what it is" there is no logical reason to conclude "nothing is going to change". The difference between a living thing and a dead thing is the ability to change (dead can only decay), the game and the developers are many things but they aren't dead yet. The fact that something is currently wrong doesn't mean it can't be corrected, just as much as we all know those good things can be broken. If reality is bad, it is the duty of those who suffer to act and change it. Only when THEY give up, is when you can safely assume no one else is going to go help them. I could give many examples, ranging from madness sorcs dominating PVP being corrected by a nerf (though the nerf was admittedly overkill), between people complaining engineering fire probes being too good as node guarding mechanics (which got changed) and there is no need to mention real-life examples such as nearly any end of dictatorship ever.

Every time someone wants a change it means he acknowledges the current situation as a flawed/bad one. Therefore simply echoing what he knows about the situation isn't enough reason to turn it down.

Of course you have a ton of proof for all of this right?

Oh my post didnt go through due to maintanance.

I could get you all the evidence you need, but it would take up all my play time (which is already very limited) and im not willing to do that, just to prove this. Sadly it is to this extent and its very sad that these people do it and then go out acting as if nothing happens.

Sure, I do understand it to a certain extent, they are very very good and going the normal way would result in your main getting a bad initial 10 matches ending up at rating 1200, which means it would take ages to get to 2000 for example (even with wintrade). So they simply dont take the chance. They are good, so they deserve it (is what I think they are thinking).

Oh my post didnt go through due to maintanance.

I could get you all the evidence you need, but it would take up all my play time (which is already very limited) and im not willing to do that, just to prove this. Sadly it is to this extent and its very sad that these people do it and then go out acting as if nothing happens.

A lot of those people you are talking about are actually streaming ranked (including me). So there's just no possibility to do anything cheesy because a lot of people are watching. Anyway there is no need to watch, you can easily say is someone's rating legitimate or not, just by playing against.

Right now everyone is just stuck in team ranked because solos are full of throwers and it's not fair to play against a tank thrower, for example.

Sure, I do understand it to a certain extent, they are very very good and going the normal way would result in your main getting a bad initial 10 matches ending up at rating 1200, which means it would take ages to get to 2000 for example (even with wintrade). So they simply dont take the chance. They are good, so they deserve it (is what I think they are thinking).

No it doesn't take ages, in the end you managed to get 2.2k with only 60 wins. On the rep side. Either you're one of the best players ever, or just a hypocritical wintrader. I strongly suggest you to stop talking crap in various threads unless someone actually reported you.

A lot of those people you are talking about are actually streaming ranked (including me). So there's just no possibility to do anything cheesy because a lot of people are watching. Anyway there is no need to watch, you can easily say is someone's rating legitimate or not, just by playing against.

Right now everyone is just stuck in team ranked because solos are full of throwers and it's not fair to play against a tank thrower, for example.

Yes, stream when its not relevant. Ive seen ppl on other servers and playing at various times and not streaming. People play far more than they show the world.

No it doesn't take ages, in the end you managed to get 2.2k with only 60 wins. On the rep side. Either you're one of the best players ever, or just a hypocritical wintrader. I strongly suggest you to stop talking crap in various threads unless someone actually reported you.

Yes, we can drag this debate forever. I learned how to que, I watched streams, made a big friend list with comments and details, played on Tulak Hord (were rep is strong) etc. I used all possible ways to get to my rating. If you dont like it, report me, they will check. They will be checking at the end anyway, if i manage to make it to top. Who knows....

PS.: **looks at sentinel with 2000+ rating with 70 wins****