As you all know, ranked PvP is not only hurting, but also meaningless. In this post, I will try to list down the issues that have resulted in ranked PvP being what it is, and propose solutions that may address each issue. This is based on a previous post of mine in this thread here, but polished a bit and more visible.

 

Now, here is a comprehensive but not exhaustive list of reasons why someone might not want to participate in ranked PvP, or PvP in general:

 

 

1. They feel that their faction is hopelessly matched, and there is no way to attain a good enough ranking.
   
2. Ranked PvP queues pop much less, and the person simply wants to PvP.
   
3. The maps have gone boring, especially after a grind for PvP gear.
   
4. PvP does not feel rewarding.
   
5. The person estimates his current rating to be greater than what he could attain, or finds it high enough to not ever be willing to risk it going down.
   
6. Arenas do not feel Star Wars.
   
7. The game is not competitive enough.
   

 

1. Faction/server imbalances

The ELO system is a good measure of ranking within the population, given the population is large enough and everyone faces the same "background" as their teammates or rivals. If we assume equal skill between factions in a server, and that skill does not vary that much within servers, the current method of having a cutoff rating is good - but this is obviously false.

 

To remedy this, factional leaderboards can be introduced to each server, which is the only way one can make valid skill comparisons through ratings. This would be the simplest way of giving recognition to those who deserve, and might be self-enforcing in terms of faction balance on each server - people might migrate to the other faction to get "easy recognition". I would recommend cross-faction grouping for ranked, but I suspect that might not actually be possible in the game engine.

 

Another way is to have another server for the ranked PvP to go on, where people can transfer their characters to - like the PTS, but for each region (due to ping issues). But such an implementation would probably be clunky, and one would no longer be able to go back an forth from PvP to regular game as seamlessly as before.

 

2. Queue frequency

Hey, if it's not popping, and you cannot simultaneously queue, then why bother?

 

Except simultaneous queueing has another problem - unranked WILL pop much more frequently, and when someone joins an unranked warzone they will drop from the queue for the ranked warzone...

 

Might as well combine them! We already have bolster on both unranked and ranked. Taking this a step further, one can make queueing for ranked warzones imply that one will queue for ranked-designated maps, and it will count towards ranked-designated goals (dailies, rating, and other stuff). Enlarging the background population would also make for healthier ratings.

 

3. Map selection

The selection has gone boring. You only enjoy playing so many of those maps. Or maybe you are only good in so many of those maps. Why not take your pick?

 

Well, if someone is good at a map most people are bad at, the other people will be able to vote the map out of rotation, making that person's skill go unrecognised. So there actually is a tricky part for selecting maps before queueing. Maybe unranked can choose maps, and ranked have to queue for all? But that could nullify combining the queues...

 

What we do need, however, is a greater selection. Alongside allowing 8v8 ranked (works well with combining the unranked and ranked queues), but more battleground maps, another Huttball map, other game modes and so on. This is a safe bet in getting rid of the staleness.

 

Furthermore, open world PvP could bring a fresh air - if there was some incentive for it. It will be discussed further in the rewards section. Arenas also need rethinking, but this will be addressed in the "not Star Wars" section.

 

4. Incentivising reasons for PvP

If you want people to do something, why not incentivise them? Simply increasing the rewards might attract people who were on the fence thinking about whether to participate. However, this game does have a currency excess - this might be damaging for the game economy.

 

Having PvP affect the rest of the game would, however, make it more part of the game life. Which is good, because we are still at Galactic War. A first suggestion comes to me from the boardgame "Twilight Struggle" - if one side completes more military operations than the other (at a max. of 5 points worth), the difference would be added as victory points. Instead of victory points, one could have a small factional buff the side with more ranked PvP (warzone) games won, up to some cap. Or maybe some additional "conquest reward" for the side with more warzone wins.

 

Commanders in conquest was a step in the right direction too. Another way is from SWG, when planetary control was possible by taking over faction bases. This would replace the affliation of the guards posted in some of the cities, and give additional bonuses for time planet is controlled - along with bonuses for most planets controlled. Changing guard spawns will NOT fit in the current planets, but such contestable planets (as small as CZ, or instanced across the areas on the planet like Makeb) might be patched in later. For the current planets, one can still place assaultable fortresses though.

 

Ranked Huttball wins may be highlighted, with rewards for fastest wins and/or MVP's - while arenas... well, arenas I'll talk about in the "not Star Wars" section.

 

edit: on a further note, entry level PvP level should be attained much easier if open world PvP is to be incentivised. Maybe we can have three tiers again, with recruit gear not replacing bolster, but allowing people to get into open world PvP.

 

Intermission: I will keep going on the next post.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Metthew

5. Huggling ones rating

If people attain a high rating, they want to keep it high for some reason. This is despite the rewards being distributed on highest rating attained. The rationality of this is irrelevant, the fact that it is, is.

 

A rating decay forces people to play on one character competitively, and thus it is a problem for people who might play with multiple characters competitively, if the decay is too fast. If it is too slow, though, it is meaningless. Besides, people also don't like losing rating at a constant rate "for whatever reason".

 

I suggested short seasons as a solution before, and I will again. People will still sit on their ratings if they can, but one cannot sit on it too much when you have shorter seasons with lesser rewards. But then, people WILL eventually demand a better payoff for being one of the best.

 

One can then go about it in rounds, as in each mini-season is a round in the greater season, and you are given points depending on your place each round. At the end of the season, people are given better rewards based on points.

 

Alternately, one can have a more significant month-long season every 5-6 months, with better rewards. Seasons which are multiples of five, say, would then be "showdown seasons", in which there is more participation, more fame, more shiny things.

 

6. Un-Star Wars-y and non-Iconic

Warzones definitely have some Star Wars feel, though we could see some boarding action, more offense/defense games (but instead of Voidstar, you invade an enemy fortress, try to charge through trenches etc.). Huttball is really unique in the game, though I believe a wider map should've been created alongside Quesh as well.

 

The problem is arenas. They simply aren't Star Wars, in the 4v4 form. Not only that, but the 4v4 format brings a myriad of problems in unranked, or solo ranked.

 

1v1 and 2v2 arenas, however, ARE Star Wars. And dueling rings definitely have a better ring to the ears. They also have the benefit of making solo ranked be about solo skill, and 1v1/2v2 smooths out faction imbalances better than 4v4 in solo queues. Healers/tanks would still be viable in 2v2's, though they might need be rebalanced a bit.

 

One also then gets the chance of being crowned the dueling champion (or pair dueling champions) of the server. Much better than "leaderboards", I say.

 

7. Competition

Not only would increasing competitiveness would expand the playerbase, it would attract new subscribing players, and could even shoot the game in fame (yeah, even after all this time).

 

One basically needs to balance out the classes, make the gameplay deeper. More emphasis on well-timed debuffs like Distraction would be nice, so would making several classes be able to exploit procs - harder they are to exploit, better the reward. Making the game more APM intense could go well too, though I should stress: that does not mean more abilities, just more situations where one should be a bit more aware.

 

Having advertised tournaments with rewards would also go a long way, though after the combat is polished enough.

 

End

5. Huggling ones rating

 

*** is huggling?

*** is huggling?

Hugging your rating, cuddling with your rating while watching a romantic comedy, spooning it in your bed with a gentle smile in your face.

 

Or namely, stopping participation in ranked PvP after you think you've reached a high enough rating because of a variety of reasons.

The main problem with pvp is that the devs don't give a **** about it. Go ask Musco.

 

I truly feel for you new players/PVPers, such high hopes, such enormous disappointment to come.

 

You can write your ideas until you are blue in the face, they do not give a flying ****.

Edited October 21, 2014 by ThorgrimLutgen

Thanks for spending the time to write this thread. PvP has been completely abandoned for the most part and I commend any who still has the strength or willpower (no pun intended) to fight for more PvP features. I started playing this game because the idea of PvP in the starwars universe just sounded like an amazing thing. Too bad the games implementation of PvP has been terrible for the most part. Think back to Ilum... and they pulled the plug on that.

 

Although I have differing opinions on some of your points, Ill take anything at this point.

Separate faction leaderboards would be interesting but in the end pointless. What's ruining solo ranked right now is low population, and tendency for many of the top players to coordinate their queuing and to use comms.

 

On the Bastion especially, many of the top players from the server are in the same guild both imp-side and pub-side, and even if they aren't many of them shares comms. This gives them the advantage of being able to orchestrate queue pops whenever they want, the ability to queue dodge bads and farm them by switching to the other faction, and the obvious advantage of comms. They aren't doing anything wrong necessarily, playing with friends is fine, but if we had a higher server population or cross-faction queuing or cross-server their advantage would be erased.

 

People don't like feeling like they're at an obvious disadvantage, especially in solo ranked, which is supposed to be random draw, so anything BW does to take the advantage away from players queuing together would benefit the entire population.

Another major issue, and the one that made me switch over to GSF instead of ground side where its not so blatant, is the utter lack of matchmaking. I've noticed that on Jedi Covenant most of my matches boil down into three categories.

 

1) I'm grouped with one of our "professional" premade groups vs a bunch of pugs. This match ends within 5-8 minutes and even if the premades aren't a bunch of trolls to their inferior pug teammates, its still a very dull match.

 

2) I'm grouped against said premade and either promptly quit or spend the entire match hiding in stealth and sapping people for the lolz.

 

3) Pug vs Pug or premade vs premade, these are really rare but are the only matches worth playing, if I had to take a guess I get these maybe 30% of the time, less on most nights when a certain guild likes to field multiple premades.

 

If over half of your matches every day are determined from the get go, whats the point of playing?

 

*before anyone gets on my *** about "finding friends" that's besides the point. The point i'm making is that matches are rarely balanced. The system is flawed and yes I do know that I can stack the odds in my favor to render more wins by forming my own premade but that's rather pointless as well since the only thing more boring than getting stomped is being the one whose doing the effortless stomping.

If they make the first 5 or so games per week on each character ELO free (but keep the ranked comms) I'm sure more people would play. But the proportion of ungeared characters in ranked would go up... Edited October 21, 2014 by Savej

Short discussions should be short.

 

Faction leaderboards don't do anything.

 

Choosing maps exacerbates the problem of low population.

 

How Star Warsy a warzone/arena feels is not high on competitive PvPers priority list and regs have plenty of players already.

Another major issue, and the one that made me switch over to GSF instead of ground side where its not so blatant, is the utter lack of matchmaking. I've noticed that on Jedi Covenant most of my matches boil down into three categories.

 

1) I'm grouped with one of our "professional" premade groups vs a bunch of pugs. This match ends within 5-8 minutes and even if the premades aren't a bunch of trolls to their inferior pug teammates, its still a very dull match.

 

2) I'm grouped against said premade and either promptly quit or spend the entire match hiding in stealth and sapping people for the lolz.

 

3) Pug vs Pug or premade vs premade, these are really rare but are the only matches worth playing, if I had to take a guess I get these maybe 30% of the time, less on most nights when a certain guild likes to field multiple premades.

 

If over half of your matches every day are determined from the get go, whats the point of playing?

 

*before anyone gets on my *** about "finding friends" that's besides the point. The point i'm making is that matches are rarely balanced. The system is flawed and yes I do know that I can stack the odds in my favor to render more wins by forming my own premade but that's rather pointless as well since the only thing more boring than getting stomped is being the one whose doing the effortless stomping.

 

At this point I'm all for advocating for the most unbalanced reg warzones possible. They are meant to be random and fast and it works. If they are unbalanced, it could encourage players to do ranked for a balanced match. Lets be honest, no one has any issue queueing with 3 friends for ranked 4s, even if they suck, if they know the other team is going to suck too. Right now, only the very best queue ranked and so anyone else just gets dominated to the point where stomping in regs is far more appealing.

The problem that SWTOR PvP has always suffered from is population. There is just not enough of a variety of players on one server to make it balanced. Cross server queues were really the only answer to get a large enough pool of players to make any form of matchmaking work. When you have a system that has such a low volume of people using it that you can just use two teams of 4 to farm rating and comms without having to worry about another team coming in and queuing against you there is a significant problem.

At this point I'm all for advocating for the most unbalanced reg warzones possible. They are meant to be random and fast and it works. If they are unbalanced, it could encourage players to do ranked for a balanced match. Lets be honest, no one has any issue queueing with 3 friends for ranked 4s, even if they suck, if they know the other team is going to suck too. Right now, only the very best queue ranked and so anyone else just gets dominated to the point where stomping in regs is far more appealing.

 

Eh, to be honest i'de much prefer to only get one pop per half hour if it meant it would actually be a good game where either team could win. I have my gear, I don't need the comms from games I could afk through, and my play time is limited so i'de rather play one good balanced game than any number of stompings, or of being stomped.

At this point I'm all for advocating for the most unbalanced reg warzones possible. They are meant to be random and fast and it works. If they are unbalanced, it could encourage players to do ranked for a balanced match. Lets be honest, no one has any issue queueing with 3 friends for ranked 4s, even if they suck, if they know the other team is going to suck too. Right now, only the very best queue ranked and so anyone else just gets dominated to the point where stomping in regs is far more appealing.

 

Welcome back - and might I add:

 

Spot on

You left out a few things, at least IMO

 

1) imbalances in class. Mercs/mando's know what I'm talking about. They are first targetted, 1st to die due to lack of defensive cooldowns, etc... Some may say l2p, but it bears out when you look at the leaderboards, and in terms of ranking, they just don't cut it.

 

Possible fix, rank rewards should be based on each individual class, not on an arbitrary number set by Mucsco and Co for all classes.

 

edit: just checked, as of now, 13 mercs/mandos are above 1500, juggs/guardians - over 50 are.

 

2) since the advent of conquest points, there are even more baddies and trolls jumping into ranked. Thus, a lot of people don't even bother to queue due to this. Play your 1st 10 games and all you get is mostly this and your ranking is essentially ruined and beyond difficult to make up. You would then have to get extremely lucky with queues in order for this to happen.

 

3) lack of gate on ranked. Literally, anyone can queue for ranked. the fresh 55 on their 1st toon can queue as soon as they hit 55, no relics, no augments, never having set foot in a pvp match and they can queue. This just isn't right.

 

Look at it this way, there are group finder story mode ops where anyone can join, but if you want to get into HM or NiM ops, you need to get invited. How to combat this in ranked pvp, well, it works with grouped because you'd have to get invited. However, in solo yolo, there needs to be a gate, whether that's 2018 expertise and/or valor level, something needs to happen there as long as there is solo ranked

 

4) as long as there is solo ranked, then a different ranking system needs to be used, esp as long as trolls and nubs are allowed free reign. As it is, ones ranking is dependent on the randomness of the group composition as well as the random skill levels of the team. As such ELO isn't a good system for this. Solo ranked rating should be more participation oriented, where group ranked should stay the same.

 

And as such, end of season rewards should reflect the difference with better rewards going to grouped, just as you get better rewards in HM and NiM mode ops This, IMO will help out participation, which is the goal. Is this a more care bear situation for solo ranked? Absolutely. But again, rewards should reflect the difference, and if you really wanna go hardcore, then get a group.

 

5+) 8v8 ranked, huttball leagues are a couple other things that come to mind. Another is the ability to practice as a group, thus be able to choose an arena, queue for it, and go against another team. Or even hand pick a group to go against. Basically a place where you can go to work on skills as a group and not have to worry about ranking. Let's face it, in Pve you can go and wipe as many times as you like until you kill a boss. But in ranked, you wipe over and over again, your ranking is in the toilet and you can't crawl out of it. If you have a place you can go to pratice, then that would not be a bad thing and would lead to more competitive matches. Add that if people could pick and choose wz's as well as groups, then the player population could make it's own huttball leagues.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Anyakaschala

cross faction should be possible engine/coding wise. The new x pac will have cross faction flashpoints, forging alliances to defeat the Revanites etc blah blah blah...

Thanks for spending the time to write this thread. PvP has been completely abandoned for the most part and I commend any who still has the strength or willpower (no pun intended) to fight for more PvP features. I started playing this game because the idea of PvP in the starwars universe just sounded like an amazing thing. Too bad the games implementation of PvP has been terrible for the most part. Think back to Ilum... and they pulled the plug on that.

 

Although I have differing opinions on some of your points, Ill take anything at this point.

Oh man, I feel similarly. I started playing this game because I felt like I would be playing KOTOR1/2, except be in the universe. Got what I needed from smuggler/agent storylines, but PvP's always been lacking IMHO. You mentioned Ilum, which was always kind of a broken lagfest.

 

Do tell where your opinion differs though.

 

Separate faction leaderboards would be interesting but in the end pointless. What's ruining solo ranked right now is low population, and tendency for many of the top players to coordinate their queuing and to use comms.

...

Those problems are intertwined. It is low population that allows people to coordinate, and as you said such coordination can put off further people.

 

You would also have less of that problem if you had 1v1 or 2v2 arenas though. Basically makes each matchup small compared to the population, that the off person also queueing will necessarily interfere within solo queues (and easier to find two people to queue than four). 8v8 might remedy it to some point by making it more difficult to coordinate such a thing too.

 

Another major issue, and the one that made me switch over to GSF instead of ground side where its not so blatant, is the utter lack of matchmaking.

...

If over half of your matches every day are determined from the get go, whats the point of playing?

 

*before anyone gets on my *** about "finding friends" that's besides the point. The point i'm making is that matches are rarely balanced. The system is flawed and yes I do know that I can stack the odds in my favor to render more wins by forming my own premade but that's rather pointless as well since the only thing more boring than getting stomped is being the one whose doing the effortless stomping.

This is really weird, because many people claim to have the same problem with GSF. Think GSF has some matchmaking, but low population makes it defunct at the end of the day.

 

I have a feeling your problem would be solved if more people were PvP'ing.

If they make the first 5 or so games per week on each character ELO free (but keep the ranked comms) I'm sure more people would play. But the proportion of ungeared characters in ranked would go up...

People who want all their games to count for ELO's, would be sent complaining then. That's not even counting the ungeared people, though if someone is ungeared just to make appropiate use of bolster/set bonuses, then I'd be okay.

 

1v1/2v2 arenas eliminate or minimise that problem though: in 1v1's ungeared characters would not be your problem, while in 2v2's, the chance you'll have an ungeared person is less [i can work out the stats if someone has a problem with this] though it still loses you the game.

 

Short discussions should be short.

 

Faction leaderboards don't do anything.

 

Choosing maps exacerbates the problem of low population.

 

How Star Warsy a warzone/arena feels is not high on competitive PvPers priority list and regs have plenty of players already.

This is shorter than the papers I usually write, and I intended this as a treatise but figured I didn't have much to write on each point.

 

Faction leaderboards would do as much as what the current leaderboards do, which is I guess arguably nothing. I am just saying that they would be more accurate and meaningful at doing this nothing.

 

I actually said choosing maps might nullify combining the queues, which implies that map choice would worsen queue times again. It should've been made explicit though, thanks for pointing that out.

 

Un-Star Wars-iness IS a problem for arenas, though I wrote under that point my general complaints about them. 4v4 in solo queues is too random to be of any meaning, and emphasises DPS too much against uncoordinated groups - 1v1 and 2v2's would not suffer from this, and 8v8's do not though they could use some improvement.

 

Competitiveness was another point, if you've seen it in the post. The thing is, people just don't really care about this game's PvP, which not only directly loses talented people, but also loses it fame which in turn loses it more people. For that, we first need the game to be polished and, as I said, "deeper/smarter". Then when things are streamlined enough, tournaments can be held where people show off their skill, so the game attracts more skilled people. And so on.

Short discussions should be short.

 

Faction leaderboards don't do anything.

 

Choosing maps exacerbates the problem of low population.

 

How Star Warsy a warzone/arena feels is not high on competitive PvPers priority list and regs have plenty of players already.

 

That.

 

The one feature that will not single handedly save SWTOR PvP but BW is still stupid for not making it a priority: 4v4 and 8v8 challenge matches. Challenge matches enable player run tournaments.

 

Challenge matches and reward top rated PvP players by giving them (among other things) a pass for free transfers so that they can measure their epeens on other servers. This + challenge matches would enable some epic bragging rights smackdowns.

That.

 

The one feature that will not single handedly save SWTOR PvP but BW is still stupid for not making it a priority: 4v4 and 8v8 challenge matches. Challenge matches enable player run tournaments.

 

Challenge matches and reward top rated PvP players by giving them (among other things) a pass for free transfers so that they can measure their epeens on other servers. This + challenge matches would enable some epic bragging rights smackdowns.

 

not only that but challenge matches of all sizes, meaning you could choose the map, thus players can create their own huttball leagues. If you want a bump in pvp participation, this is an easy way to do it, IMO.

one thing i've never seen mentioned is in the old 8v8 system, only rankings >1200 were displayed. Don't you think this would help getting more people to queue? As in everyone can be like 1195 then, and i don't think people with a sub 1200 rating really care whether they are number 4238 or 5032

not only that but challenge matches of all sizes, meaning you could choose the map, thus players can create their own huttball leagues. If you want a bump in pvp participation, this is an easy way to do it, IMO.

 

Huttball league would be a great addition to the game.

At this point I'm all for advocating for the most unbalanced reg warzones possible. They are meant to be random and fast and it works. If they are unbalanced, it could encourage players to do ranked for a balanced match. Lets be honest, no one has any issue queueing with 3 friends for ranked 4s, even if they suck, if they know the other team is going to suck too. Right now, only the very best queue ranked and so anyone else just gets dominated to the point where stomping in regs is far more appealing.

That's actually why I advocate for combining unranked with ranked queues.

 

Another point is that for bad people to eventually become good, they must play along and against good players. If you force a separation between the good and the bad (without some sort of ladder system, but then we would need regional PvP lobbies), then the divide will only grow larger in time.

 

The problem that SWTOR PvP has always suffered from is population. There is just not enough of a variety of players on one server to make it balanced. Cross server queues were really the only answer to get a large enough pool of players to make any form of matchmaking work. When you have a system that has such a low volume of people using it that you can just use two teams of 4 to farm rating and comms without having to worry about another team coming in and queuing against you there is a significant problem.

1v1/2v2 would fix that too to be honest, what you need is for the number of people on each side to be small compared to the background game. If 8v8 brought in enough people back, it could work as well - though without any new maps I don't see how anybody would be interested.

 

Eh, to be honest i'de much prefer to only get one pop per half hour if it meant it would actually be a good game where either team could win. I have my gear, I don't need the comms from games I could afk through, and my play time is limited so i'de rather play one good balanced game than any number of stompings, or of being stomped.

Complete randomization would actually make the expected game balanced as long as you aren't especially good or especially bad.

 

You left out a few things, at least IMO

 

1) imbalances in class. Mercs/mando's know what I'm talking about. They are first targetted, 1st to die due to lack of defensive cooldowns, etc... Some may say l2p, but it bears out when you look at the leaderboards, and in terms of ranking, they just don't cut it.

 

Possible fix, rank rewards should be based on each individual class, not on an arbitrary number set by Mucsco and Co for all classes.

 

edit: just checked, as of now, 13 mercs/mandos are above 1500, juggs/guardians - over 50 are.

I actually suggested balancing the classes under competitiveness, as by decreasing the quality of PvP it also makes SWTOR PvP non-quality, and cuts back on the publicity it could be getting. I don't think we need to go beyond servers/factions in terms of division of leaderboards though, that might be, well, dividing things up too much.

 

I would instead suggest they actually be proactive in balancing the classes. But 3.0 changes are aimed at making that easier, so...

 

2) since the advent of conquest points, there are even more baddies and trolls jumping into ranked. Thus, a lot of people don't even bother to queue due to this. Play your 1st 10 games and all you get is mostly this and your ranking is essentially ruined and beyond difficult to make up. You would then have to get extremely lucky with queues in order for this to happen.

 

3) lack of gate on ranked. Literally, anyone can queue for ranked. the fresh 55 on their 1st toon can queue as soon as they hit 55, no relics, no augments, never having set foot in a pvp match and they can queue. This just isn't right.

I seeked to remedy this by suggesting 1v1 and 2v2's as the personal glory matches. Ways to sabotage people would only be there for 2v2, except chances your team will have a "troll" are diminished.

 

4) as long as there is solo ranked, then a different ranking system needs to be used, esp as long as trolls and nubs are allowed free reign. As it is, ones ranking is dependent on the randomness of the group composition as well as the random skill levels of the team. As such ELO isn't a good system for this. Solo ranked rating should be more participation oriented, where group ranked should stay the same.

 

And as such, end of season rewards should reflect the difference with better rewards going to grouped, just as you get better rewards in HM and NiM mode ops This, IMO will help out participation, which is the goal. Is this a more care bear situation for solo ranked? Absolutely. But again, rewards should reflect the difference, and if you really wanna go hardcore, then get a group.

As I have talked about before, the ELO system works fine for measuring participation under several assumptions. We simply don't have the population, nor enough frequency of games in ranked, to make it robust.

 

5+) 8v8 ranked, huttball leagues are a couple other things that come to mind. Another is the ability to practice as a group, thus be able to choose an arena, queue for it, and go against another team. Or even hand pick a group to go against. Basically a place where you can go to work on skills as a group and not have to worry about ranking. Let's face it, in Pve you can go and wipe as many times as you like until you kill a boss. But in ranked, you wipe over and over again, your ranking is in the toilet and you can't crawl out of it. If you have a place you can go to pratice, then that would not be a bad thing and would lead to more competitive matches. Add that if people could pick and choose wz's as well as groups, then the player population could make it's own huttball leagues.

Challenge games without rating would actually be swell, this is a nice idea. So would just opening up a game in a lobby, setting it as public/private, and joining it manually, playing "free" before the warzone fills etc.

cross faction should be possible engine/coding wise. The new x pac will have cross faction flashpoints, forging alliances to defeat the Revanites etc blah blah blah...

Strange, I thought the devs had said no to cross-faction grouping. If cross-faction grouping is possible, that's how non-faction warfare matches should work.

 

one thing i've never seen mentioned is in the old 8v8 system, only rankings >1200 were displayed. Don't you think this would help getting more people to queue? As in everyone can be like 1195 then, and i don't think people with a sub 1200 rating really care whether they are number 4238 or 5032

I am unsure, StarCraft had explicit ranks I believe and it worked just fine.