I have no idea if this was suggested before. But I think it's a simple solution to allow casual players continue to pvp after level 50. This new option, call it whatever you (Bioware) want, is the same in every way, shape, or form to regular pvp except for a couple of things.

1. You are not rewarded warzone commendations for these matches.

2. Expertise limit of xhundred (as in 100 or 300 or 500). Or no BM and WH gear but I think expertise limit is easier.

I know you get a free set of recruit at level 50, but it shouldn't be allowed in casual pvp because of its expertise.

3. You are only rewarded a small fraction of the valor.

4. No records are kept. As in, no medals are earned, your kill count is not increased, and no MVP voting.

The daily and weekly commendation rewards can still be won playing these matches, you just wont get commendations after each match. Whether they must be won separately or both casual wins and regular wins count for the same reward is something for Bioware to decide. If completing the daily and weekly with casual matches is in some way unfair to competitive pvpers, then no problem.... just eliminate the valor gains too when you eliminate being able to get the rewards. Keep in mind though, you competitive players want to play with more people and get queue pops more often. Give this bone (daily and weekly comm rewards) to the casual players so they can (very slowly) build up their pvp gear. Then they will (hopefully) have the balls to competitively pvp since they are wearing at least BM gear.

Removing commendations from matches eliminates the majority of QQ complaints casual players have against regular pvp. Competitive players lose a huge incentive to play casually which means far less competitive players to play with, and against. And since the reward for winning and losing a match is the same (valor, XP, and credits), then there is no REAL reason to complain about losing all the time. And no REAL reason to assemble a pro team to win all the time.

I say this is for 50+. Keep below 50 pvp the same since you can buy equipment (that is below 50) with commendations. If this is made for below 50 also, then almost all newbs would just play that and when you get to 50, you'll keep playing it or face a monumentous climb for pvp gear since you didnt earn any commendations before level 50.

And just for the record, because epeen matters to people on the pvp forum, I have all BM + WH relics and MH. So this option is not for me, I would continue to pvp competitively.

As has been said with said about most of the casual/solo/etc... suggestions, server populations can't support a split queue without driving up the queue times.

That being said, I actually find this suggestion decent, even the part about daily/weekly being completable via this method (some restrictions/additional work should be required).

As has been said with said about most of the casual/solo/etc... suggestions, server populations can't support a split queue without driving up the queue times.

 

 

That being said, I actually find this suggestion decent, even the part about daily/weekly being completable via this method (some restrictions/additional work should be required).

Majority of the server population would accept longer queue time, in exchange of better and more balanced fights. That means fights without premade teams.

I dont find the queue time to be that long and id love the thought of better balanced teams in exchange of longer queue time. I can find other stuff to do while I wait. I can be roaming the Den, Ilum, Black Hole while I wait, its ok, and i think at least 80% of the player community likes the idea.

I don't know how it is in all servers but I imagine that the queues would only slightly suffer because those of us who already have started to build up pvp gear would hate to take a huge hit on the amount of commendations we earn in a week. There are those that don't care for the pvp gear and only grind for the necessity to be competitive in pvp. They would most likely leave regular pvp.

The daily and weekly comm rewards may need tweaking, I can see that. But the main idea of those rewards is to give casual players a chance to get pvp gear to get into regular pvp.

Something else I would like to see changed is more pvp gear or something useful and not just purely cosmetic that would make even pve players seriously consider pvping. Or perhaps cut the requirements for the daily and weekly in half for regular pvp or double the reward. I want an incentive for those who are otherwise somewhat interested in regular pvp to stay in regular and keep the population of competitive pvp as much as possible.

Majority of the server population would accept longer queue time, in exchange of better and more balanced fights. That means fights without premade teams.

 

I dont find the queue time to be that long and id love the thought of better balanced teams in exchange of longer queue time. I can find other stuff to do while I wait. I can be roaming the Den, Ilum, Black Hole while I wait, its ok, and i think at least 80% of the player community likes the idea.

Please read carefully, he never states the removal of team play/4 man queue'ing in this new idea. You'd still have premades, you just wouldn't have the gear gap. I think the gear gap is the number one issue that drives casuals away, it's just compounded with the "premades cheat!" excuse.

To stay on topic though, I think you'd be surprised how many people get frustrated over a long queue time. 30 minute queue? No way, start getting comments in PvP chat: "Is the queue broken? Man, this match is taking forever!"

Only way the above suggestion would work would be cross server matchmaking.

It's not just the gear gap this option would remove but also the pressure of real competition. There is no real reward for casual pvp besides the daily and weekly. So competitive pvpers will stay in regular.

There will be longer queues, but by how much depends on each server and I doubt they will always stay that long. But long queue pops should be less of a problem if the commendation rewards are increased. If in an hour you are still earning roughly the same amount of comms, then no problem.

Something else this option would do is decrease the number of bads in regular pvp. If a good portion of your losses are due to baddies in bad gear clicking their abilities while keyboard turning and attacking the person who is NOT the one capping a node behind him, then removing them from your queue should grant you better games.

However, in an ironic twist, if this option is implemented then there could be threads QQing about baddies intentionally queuing for regular pvp and throwing the match for that side. At least there should be less threads about gear gaps and not being able to casually pvp.

Here is the real thing. Everyone in 50+ pvp has paid for the game. Most of us play this game for fun. What fun means is different for each of us but all of us are entitled to try to seek fun out. Casual players often don't have fun in 50 pvp and competitive players often don't have fun having to carry a pve-geared casual player.

As has been said with said about most of the casual/solo/etc... suggestions, server populations can't support a split queue without driving up the queue times.

Its been provent to do the exact opposite, previous games that have done this (AoC comes to mind) have actually seen a large improvement in queue times as people who had in the past refused to join up, suddenly find it enjoyable again. Times have dropped from hours waiting to minutes between matches. The problem isn't that the population isn't available... but that the population has been shown repeatedly that there's no point in joining the PVP queue.

Unfortunately the vocal minority will continue to throw up a fit on the forums. They will tell you how it will kill PVP, how they'll be forced to abandon the game, how its not fair. It won't. They won't. And it is.

It's not just the gear gap this option would remove but also the pressure of real competition. There is no real reward for casual pvp besides the daily and weekly. So competitive pvpers will stay in regular.

They should be in Ranked, not farming solo players in regular WZs...

There's already greater reward in Ranked so your idea is already basically implemented and it doesn't work. Most guilds would rather farm in regular WZs than have a chance at losing ranked...I don't think the problem is the lack of 'competitive' pvpers...it's that those of us that solo queue for the most part get matched up against groups that should be playing ranked. The answer is intelligent matchmaking rather than the first in/first out they currently use.

They should be in Ranked, not farming solo players in regular WZs...

 

There's already greater reward in Ranked so your idea is already basically implemented and it doesn't work. Most guilds would rather farm in regular WZs than have a chance at losing ranked...I don't think the problem is the lack of 'competitive' pvpers...it's that those of us that solo queue for the most part get matched up against groups that should be playing ranked. The answer is intelligent matchmaking rather than the first in/first out they currently use.

Ranked takes exactly 16 people, and exactly 8 people per team.

Normal takes 12-16 people, 6-8 per team, and can teams of 1-4 to make them. Do the math.

Ranked takes exactly 16 people, and exactly 8 people per team.

 

Normal takes 12-16 people, 6-8 per team, and can teams of 1-4 to make them. Do the math.

Ranked warzones had no problem filling when they were introduced. Then those players started losing to better teams. Now they don't queue up, or don't have enough of a roster to fill them so they farm pugs in smaller groups.

The problem isn't the math, its the so called competative pvp players.

Ranked warzones had no problem filling when they were introduced. Then those players started losing to better teams. Now they don't queue up, or don't have enough of a roster to fill them so they farm pugs in smaller groups.

 

The problem isn't the math, its the so called competative pvp players.

Are you aware, that over the years global temperature has been rising?

At the same time, the population of pirates has been declining.

Does that mean pirates stop global warming, right?

Since ranked was implemented, server populations have been dropping. Dropping so much that servers merged, and we're still barely populated. The lack of people doing ranked as little to do with whether or not they 'can't handle' losing. It has everything to do with a general population decline.

As I said in the other thread, until your mentality changes, it is unlikely we will converse as equals.

They should be in Ranked, not farming solo players in regular WZs...

 

There's already greater reward in Ranked so your idea is already basically implemented and it doesn't work. Most guilds would rather farm in regular WZs than have a chance at losing ranked...I don't think the problem is the lack of 'competitive' pvpers...it's that those of us that solo queue for the most part get matched up against groups that should be playing ranked. The answer is intelligent matchmaking rather than the first in/first out they currently use.

Ranked is for organized teams. You can't queue solo. And no one would if they were able to. As far as I know, there is no problem with the number of people playing 50 pvp right now. It was brought up as a potential problem if this was implemented.

While I agree in general that the matchmaking system needs some tweaking, I don't think it's as bad as some other people think it is. And while ranked gives more comms than regular, regular pvp still gives comms which gives incentive for competitive pvpers (who look for all possible advantages and uses them) to play regular instead of ranked. Casual does not give any comms and only a small fraction of the valor per match. The only comms awarded is for completing the daily and weekly. The rewards for winning and losing is the same since there are no comms awarded. In addition, casual pvp comes with an expertise limit (the smaller the better) so best gear in casual would be pve gear, which many pvpers do not have a good set of. All this means that competitive pvpers will have little reason to play casual. You can only farm for credits, and pvp is not a credit making gold mine.

The base problem complainers have with regular pvp is the gear gap. And for that my simple solution is to raise the comm rewards for regular matches. With the rewards raised, you'll close the gap faster. The second most common problem is facing premades. I would think this was a serious problem if I could not have a pre made on my side. But since they queue for both sides, it's fair. I get on teams with no premades facing a 4 man well equipped premade. When I see that I just think 'tough ****' and switch to getting as many medals as I can. Because there is a possibility that in my next game, I'm on the team with a 4 man well equipped premade.

Are you aware, that over the years global temperature has been rising?

At the same time, the population of pirates has been declining.

 

Does that mean pirates stop global warming, right?

 

 

Since ranked was implemented, server populations have been dropping. Dropping so much that servers merged, and we're still barely populated. The lack of people doing ranked as little to do with whether or not they 'can't handle' losing. It has everything to do with a general population decline.

 

As I said in the other thread, until your mentality changes, it is unlikely we will converse as equals.

And do you understand that when people flat out tell you they won't queue up for ranked warzones because they are never going to win, it means that people don't queue up for ranked warzones because they never win?

What about when those same people then queue up for unranked warzones with their guildmates? What does that tell you? I get being obstinate.. but we're reaching the level here where your ignoring reality. Christ.. I've seen "High Ranked PVPers" co-operating with other teams in order to game the system rather then actually fight them. Tera, Aion, AoC were rife with this kind of gameplay. Its human nature to seek the easiest out, and nothing about gamers in general and PVPers in particular has ever shown me they are immune to it.

But hey, in SWTOR its different.. the PVPers here are of the better variety.

Incidently, what do you think is going to happen when the game goes FTP, and all those wonderful new people who can do.. what.. five matches a week(?)... join up, find themselves stomped into the ground by a fully geared premade? Well.. hell.. I'm sure they'll subsribe.. up their game, grind out months of mostly losses, just cause they'll realise that you are absolutely right. Its not the system.. its them.

LOL.. reality is hard.

Edit: I'll simplify it for you as best I can. Your system gives no incentive for anyone to PVP other than the ones running the premades. You are not giving new players, who already suffer from a huge gear gap, any reason to PVP. They are not having fun, they are not even being challenged. They are simply cannon fodder for groups who are ginding out points. As stated above, pvpers seek the easiest path to their goal(aka best gear) farming pugs rather then facing better teams in ranked PVP is exactly that.

And do you understand that when people flat out tell you they won't queue up for ranked warzones because they are never going to win, it means that people don't queue up for ranked warzones because they never win?

 

What about when those same people then queue up for unranked warzones with their guildmates? What does that tell you? I get being obstinate.. but we're reaching the level here where your ignoring reality. Christ.. I've seen "High Ranked PVPers" co-operating with other teams in order to game the system rather then actually fight them. Tera, Aion, AoC were rife with this kind of gameplay. Its human nature to seek the easiest out, and nothing about gamers in general and PVPers in particular has ever shown me they are immune to it.

 

But hey, in SWTOR its different.. the PVPers here are of the better variety.

 

Incidently, what do you think is going to happen when the game goes FTP, and all those wonderful new people who can do.. what.. five matches a week(?)... join up, find themselves stomped into the ground by a fully geared premade? Well.. hell.. I'm sure they'll subsribe.. up their game, grind out months of mostly losses, just cause they'll realise that you are absolutely right. Its not the system.. its them.

 

LOL.. reality is hard.

 

Edit: I'll simplify it for you as best I can. Your system gives no incentive for anyone to PVP other than the ones running the premades. You are not giving new players, who already suffer from a huge gear gap, any reason to PVP. They are not having fun, they are not even being challenged. They are simply cannon fodder for groups who are ginding out points. As stated above, pvpers seek the easiest path to their goal(aka best gear) farming pugs rather then facing better teams in ranked PVP is exactly that.

Is your entire post directed at the person you quoted?

Is your entire post directed at the person you quoted?

Pretty much, and it's way off topic.

Good suggestion MonkeyCannon. Other than what I've said previously, I have no other comment. Let's hope for cross server queue's to open up populations soon.

1. You are not rewarded warzone commendations for these matches.

2. Expertise limit of xhundred (as in 100 or 300 or 500). Or no BM and WH gear but I think expertise limit is easier.

I know you get a free set of recruit at level 50, but it shouldn't be allowed in casual pvp because of its expertise.

3. You are only rewarded a small fraction of the valor.

While I think a "just for fun league" is an okay idea (I wouldn't be interested, but it takes all kinds), I don't see the second stipulation leveling the playing field and making it more casual-friendly. By eliminating Expertise, all you do is create a gear gap based on PvE progression; i.e. it will be Augmented Dread Guard/Campaign-geared premades rolling the fresh ungeared 50s rather than War Hero vs. Recruit.

Instead, I think you'd be better off requiring players to equip Recruit in every slot, or just NORMALIZE all stats to reflect recruit in every slot (regardless of what the player is actually wearing... like bolster but in reverse).

For me, this is all academic anyway since I'd likely not participate. But again, if what you are after is a nice, level, casual-friendly playing field, you need to do more than simply eliminate expertise.

While i do like the idea of splitting up casual and hardcore PvPers, no one will queue for "casual WZ" that doesn't offer any reward. That's like offering PvP players casual ops that don't give you any drops for defeating a boss. People will always still come into regular PvP games with PvE gear just to get the rewards. Comms and ranked comms. If you don't offer these at all then there's no point having a causal league.

Another alternative would be to put these people in the <50 PvP rounds (reduce their stats to 49). That way they can still get comms, dailys and not interfere with RWZ. I know from personal experience that coming into RWZ from PvE is hard, and I get slaughtered as soon as I pop (merc healer), having the ability to start in a lower ranked system until i get the gear would be a good idea I think. it'd let people like me get the gear needed, learn the basic mechanics/strategies and then come into RWZ feeling a little more confident.

I agree with cross server WZ, that's desperately needed, especially on Oceanic servers.

Idea is bad. This would essentially be an all twink WZ with full skill trees. Good players will still stomp the trash, despite the gear. You really think that "casual" players are the only ones that will play in this queue? You'll have a mix of "casual" keyboard turners and fully capable players that are just either bored or broke and don't want to spend the time or money gearing a toon.

Do you think people don't get owned in call of duty? Bad players have been owned in every game from the beginning of time, and they still play. I played with people in Quake 2 CTF that never got halfway up the fraglist and still played for hours a day. And that was a completely level playing field with no gear or perks involved.

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A better solution to the ranked problem is to have an 8 man bracket that didnt have a rating. RWZ requires perfect class composition as well as skill. 8 man queue could be filled by premades of either 8 on both sides, or a combination of 4+4s. That takes more premades out of the solo q, and lets people play with a full group if they want to without the 'pressure' of maintaining their rating. If the 8 mans can't fill a WZ against each other, they get split into 4s and randomly put on teams like it is now. Just split the raid frame down the middle, and put them in the regular q.

Basically like everyone has said, just better matchmaking. It can't take that much code to make premades always match up with premades out of the same queue as everyone else. Hell, it shouldn't take that much code to analyze what the highest possible combination of gear that each player has either equpped or in their inventory and even out the teams that way. Your feeling of 'no fun' for casual players is easily equaled by the feeling of being in min/max WH gear and seeing 5 players less than 15k on your team, knowing full well this game doesn't balance the teams for ****.

Great input Ster-Ling and Prophet_Loxley. You guys are getting close to what I'm talking about here, so let me clear some things up.

There will be a gear gap no matter what one does unless there is a league with required uniforms supplied by the game itself, much like how recruit is supplied to fresh 50s. It's our nature to nitpick and only be able to see the differences between my gear and the gear the guy who beat me was wearing and awarding his win to his gear instead of to his skill. So unless there is a league where everyone gets the exact same gear with the exact same stat distribution without being able to customize it outside of a cosmetic feature like color theme, complaints about gear fairness will keep existing.

Here is a fundamental difference between the pvp gear gap and the pve gear gap. To get pvp gear you must pvp. To get pve gear you must pve. To play casual pvp you cannot use pvp gear, which means you must get your gear from pve instead. This means the outcome of pvp matches will not affect your gear progression in casual pvp because it does not reflect how well you perform in casual pvp unlike the pvp gear progression in regular pvp. The catch-22 in regular pvp is that you need to do well to get good gear and you need good gear to do well. But in casual, it doesn't matter how you perform in the match because your gear comes from pve.

I am not opposed to using more rules for casual pvp but I do like to keep things simple and let it work itself out. A casual league needs to remain simple to be casual. Competitive players will realize that casual pvp is a waste of time because they are not being rewarded for winning. Everyone is rewarded for participating and everyone gets the same rewards.

As I said before, you can earn commendations through casual pvp. You are not awarded them in matches, but you are when you complete the daily and weekly. Casual pvp offers a slow grind to pvp gear if one did not know about saving comms for when you get to level 50, or one decided to respec and doesn't want to go back to using recruit gear, or whatever other reason. I mentioned the possibility of eliminating comms if too many people, both competitive pvpers and casual players, don't want them awarded to casual pvpers who completes their daily and weekly. I wouldn't eliminate them because I want to see more people in regular pvp.

Putting casual 50s in 10-49 bracket would create another problem, or inflame a currently existing problem. There are no expertise restrictions in that bracket. If there was, you would still have a huge gear gap which is worse than regular pvp because of the difference in levels. Most players do not equip BiS gear every time they gain a level. But at 50 that's all you do. Also, since you earn the same amount of comms in 10-49 pvp as in 50 pvp, why not farm 10-49 for comms? In 1.3, players used to be able to play in 10-49 bracket while being level 50. It changed for the better now. Your suggestion would take us backwards.

Cross server would be awesome, but it's kinda separated from this current issue.

Idea is bad. This would essentially be an all twink WZ with full skill trees. Good players will still stomp the trash, despite the gear. You really think that "casual" players are the only ones that will play in this queue? You'll have a mix of "casual" keyboard turners and fully capable players that are just either bored or broke and don't want to spend the time or money gearing a toon.

 

Do you think people don't get owned in call of duty? Bad players have been owned in every game from the beginning of time, and they still play. I played with people in Quake 2 CTF that never got halfway up the fraglist and still played for hours a day. And that was a completely level playing field with no gear or perks involved.

 

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A better solution to the ranked problem is to have an 8 man bracket that didnt have a rating. RWZ requires perfect class composition as well as skill. 8 man queue could be filled by premades of either 8 on both sides, or a combination of 4+4s. That takes more premades out of the solo q, and lets people play with a full group if they want to without the 'pressure' of maintaining their rating. If the 8 mans can't fill a WZ against each other, they get split into 4s and randomly put on teams like it is now. Just split the raid frame down the middle, and put them in the regular q.

 

Basically like everyone has said, just better matchmaking. It can't take that much code to make premades always match up with premades out of the same queue as everyone else. Hell, it shouldn't take that much code to analyze what the highest possible combination of gear that each player has either equpped or in their inventory and even out the teams that way. Your feeling of 'no fun' for casual players is easily equaled by the feeling of being in min/max WH gear and seeing 5 players less than 15k on your team, knowing full well this game doesn't balance the teams for ****.

Good players will always stomp trash. The difference here is that good players cannot use trash to advance in any way. And being stomped will not mean you lost something meaningful. The reward is the same whether you win or lose the match: a small fraction of valor and credits.

Let's use your Quake example. You described a level playing field, but you did not describe the amount of frustration and QQ people have experienced. I know there was a lot of both, but if people who cannot even get halfway up the list in the K/D ratio played for hours, I assume they did not perceive a huge and sometimes unfair imbalance of something (gear, or perks) beyond their control. You got a gun and some ammo and was sent off, may the best man win. That is fair. You win and lose based on your skill, because you cannot blame it on gear since you both got the same gun. My idea somewhat simulates this enviroment. There will be a gear gap but that gap has nothing to do with pvp. If you want better gear to pvp in, you have to go pve. And performing well in pve is a lot easier than performing well in pvp.

I must reiterate this, because people are getting confused: This is a solution to regular pvp, not ranked pvp. People complain about the gear gap so here is a slower but easier option to get your gear. People complain about having to carry bads, so here is an option they can pvp in without bringing your team down. People complain about facing premades, so here is an option that will 'filter' some solo players giving you a chance to be grouped with a premade team on your side. This is not a miracle cure, but not just a bandaid solution either.

I do not have any ideas to fixing ranked pvp right now so I have no comment on how to fix the ranked problem.

Majority of the server population would accept longer queue time, in exchange of better and more balanced fights. That means fights without premade teams.

 

I dont find the queue time to be that long and id love the thought of better balanced teams in exchange of longer queue time. I can find other stuff to do while I wait. I can be roaming the Den, Ilum, Black Hole while I wait, its ok, and i think at least 80% of the player community likes the idea.

Agreed I feel that 99% of players would accept longer que times in exchange for geared players, ive suggested 3 lvls of competition also (recruit/Normal/ranked) if People ie. myself in full WH gear que with recruit geared players or lower geared players, its a slaughter fest 75% of games because you dont know whos on the enemy team I assume that there will be at least 50% of enemy team also in full WH. But in saying that not aways. Also remove pre-made team que ups for everything other then ranked matchs, perhaps tier the que with Valor rank, but that wouldn't work cause u can post via the legacy system PvP gear which in my opinion is rediculous, If U BUY PVP gear BM/WH it should be bound to that character otherwise the whole system becomes unbalanced and Unfair. hence why we have players with multiple full WH geared characters altho not impossible to have done properly in the time weve had available since launch, but unlikely with most player character time "/played". Personally i like the original system of centurion>champion>Battle master > War hero but replaced centurion and chapion with recruit gear to speed up the process for new players, other wise the so called "grind" according to alot of whineing babys would be "unbearable" Wat a joke took me 2 months of playing to get from 1-50 Battle master gear then they Buffed Valor to speed it up again, to many whineing babys!

..while being casual PVP-er I do not like the idea of removing all comms and valors and getting them ONLY by dailiy/weekly completion. That's actually my only way to get those comms to gear myself better and become more competitive.

But what if we do not change anything except taking away rewards that full WH player gets by smashing the Recruit one?

In other words: fully geared EWH player won't be rewarded comms or medals if his only aim was to kill other players that obviously are no match for him due to gear gap.

On the other hand the recruit player would get some reward in case he has beaten the EWH one.

The full balancing and details are of course to be discussed, what I wanted to achieve here is to remove the incentive for EWH pvpers to mindlessly kill those "easy meats".

You wanna rewards? The fight against equal opponents, I say.

Whilst good intentioned, as with 95% of pvp suggestions it simply hasn't been thought through.

1) Banning expertise in casual pvp

Have you looked at pve gear recently?!?! The gear gap between different pve sets is FAR WORSE than the gear gaps between pvp sets. The difference between recruit mk2 and full augmented WH is much less than someone in ilevel50 gear and someone in fully augmented BH / Dread guard.

so, banning expertise would make the situation worse, not better. The only thing this would improve is ease of access for people who primarily pve. For example, I have many guild members in full pve gear who can't be bothered to start pvping because they dont want to do the gear grind. This casual pvp would allow them to do that, but gear gaps would still be an issue.

2) Remove medals to reduce competition

Player versus Player combat is pure competition! Unless you *like* losing, every time you enter pvp you are competing with other players to try and win. Removing medals won't change that. All you are doing is shifting the focus so that the only thing that is important is the objectives. However, if you play regular 50 pvp you'll know that winning the match by winning objectives is what *most* people already focus on.

3) Remove comms and deny groups

Ok, so you remove expertise, remove medals and remove rewards. The combined effect of these things is to basically serve as a training ground for new pvpers where each player just focuses on playing their class to the best of their ability. Whilst this may sound good, in reality this just means a giant death match. Given the larger gear gaps that you can expect, a giant death match just wouldn't be that fun.

As has been said with said about most of the casual/solo/etc... suggestions, server populations can't support a split queue without driving up the queue times.

You keep on saying this but you have no idea how the queuing algorithms have been written and are speaking from absolute ignorance.

Good players will always stomp trash. The difference here is that good players cannot use trash to advance in any way. And being stomped will not mean you lost something meaningful. The reward is the same whether you win or lose the match: a small fraction of valor and credits.

 

Let's use your Quake example. You described a level playing field, but you did not describe the amount of frustration and QQ people have experienced. I know there was a lot of both, but if people who cannot even get halfway up the list in the K/D ratio played for hours, I assume they did not perceive a huge and sometimes unfair imbalance of something (gear, or perks) beyond their control. You got a gun and some ammo and was sent off, may the best man win. That is fair. You win and lose based on your skill, because you cannot blame it on gear since you both got the same gun. My idea somewhat simulates this enviroment. There will be a gear gap but that gap has nothing to do with pvp. If you want better gear to pvp in, you have to go pve. And performing well in pve is a lot easier than performing well in pvp.

My point was that people that are bad at games often realize they are bad at games, and have fun doing so because the mechanics are fun to them. People that are good at games want to better themselves, and will grind the hours it takes to 'learn a map' or 'get gear.' The art of bunny hopping around q3dm6 with a rocket launcher and knowing the perfect physics to hit someone with that rocket is not something learned over night, in fact I would argue it takes significantly longer to learn than it does to grind for a set of augmented battlemaster gear, which is pretty much what you need to survive against the best geared players in this game. I happen to think SWTOR is fun, so I keep playing, despite not always being the best player (well, resolve issues aside...)

I must reiterate this, because people are getting confused: This is a solution to regular pvp, not ranked pvp. People complain about the gear gap so here is a slower but easier option to get your gear. People complain about having to carry bads, so here is an option they can pvp in without bringing your team down. People complain about facing premades, so here is an option that will 'filter' some solo players giving you a chance to be grouped with a premade team on your side. This is not a miracle cure, but not just a bandaid solution either.

 

I do not have any ideas to fixing ranked pvp right now so I have no comment on how to fix the ranked problem.

Your post, and many others like it, are talking about how to make things FUN for casual players. That's all well and good, but what happens when those casual players enjoy themselves? Then they leave the casual queue, join the real one, and get roflstomped EXACTLY like they are now. Then they come to the forums, asking for premades to get banned, and the cycle begins anew. My suggestion for all of you casual player advocates is to come up with an idea as good as what I laid out to help good players play against good players. I'll let you in on a little secret, the perception that good players enjoy facerolling newbs in recruit gear is completely inaccurate. I was in a voidstar the other day where the other team couldn't even get to the first set of doors, they would wipe within 20m of their shuttle. Then my side capped door within a minute. Wiped their whole team, capped, then wiped the entire team again before the doors actually blew. It wasn't fun for either side. I'd much rather play a competitive full length round every time.

The solution isn't to take casuals out of the q, it's to match premades vs premades without having to do ranked. 6 man premade vs premade, or 4+4vs4+4, 8v8, etc etc etc. Doesn't have to have different rewards, although maybe a 20% boost to valor when your WZ is all premades is in order.