The Problem

Well, you can't have a solution without a problem so here it goes. I q a lot on Star Forge. Population is up due to the new xPac and it's great for the game. But with a larger community comes some issues, especially in ranked. Here is a list of problems that I have encountered with my solutions.

#1 - Many new players are trying ranked - As someone who plays SWTOR for the ranked I'm happy to see the community grow. I grew tired of qing against the same 30ish players on a daily basis. The only issue is these players don't know how to play ranked. Regs is a good place to start but ranked is arguably a whole other beast. So for my resolution of new players joining ranked and costing me my sweet, sweet elo, I think there should be another queue. Having a queue dedicated entirely to arena's that balances the same way as ranked does may encourage players to learn their classes and how to properly play arenas. This could even mean removing arenas from the regular queue so that when objective players queue they only get the maps they want.

#2 - Class Stacking - To be completely honest I feel that the game is very balanced right now with the exception of PTs and Juggs (Only 2 melee classes without any type of stealth). Now my issues only come with class stacking. I get that it would be very hard to moderate due to low population and it would be very prone to bugs like the tank blocking but having 3 sins on one team is ridiculous. I'm sure any avid ranked pvper could tell you that 3 of any class is usually scary. So please remove class stacking.

#3 - Team Balancing - If you look to the s12 leaderboards you can see rating is fairly low at this point in a season compared to the previous ones. It's not because of the population as there are people with 100s of wins. It's the team balancing. My understanding is that teams are balanced based on elo, for example a team with the following ratings (900,1000,1700,1200) could be against a team like this (1300,1100,1200,1200). Now that might look okay on paper as their teams have the same average rating but in 6.0 team carries are much harder. This makes people get to high elo and stop qing because their teams end up getting really bad. At the 1600 elo level it becomes painful to climb as your teams end up being full of sub-bronze players. I have heard many theories for how this could be solved but I think that my 1st suggestion would help with this problem as well. If there is a way for players to get good before getting into ranked it helps close the gap between the bottom and the top of the ranked scene. This would mean that with more skill would come more happy pvpers.

Well those are my thoughts, if anyone else has any ideas let me know!

The Problem

Well, you can't have a solution without a problem so here it goes. I q a lot on Star Forge. Population is up due to the new xPac and it's great for the game. But with a larger community comes some issues, especially in ranked. Here is a list of problems that I have encountered with my solutions.

 

#1 - Many new players are trying ranked - As someone who plays SWTOR for the ranked I'm happy to see the community grow. I grew tired of qing against the same 30ish players on a daily basis. The only issue is these players don't know how to play ranked. Regs is a good place to start but ranked is arguably a whole other beast. So for my resolution of new players joining ranked and costing me my sweet, sweet elo, I think there should be another queue. Having a queue dedicated entirely to arena's that balances the same way as ranked does may encourage players to learn their classes and how to properly play arenas. This could even mean removing arenas from the regular queue so that when objective players queue they only get the maps they want.

 

#2 - Class Stacking - To be completely honest I feel that the game is very balanced right now with the exception of PTs and Juggs (Only 2 melee classes without any type of stealth). Now my issues only come with class stacking. I get that it would be very hard to moderate due to low population and it would be very prone to bugs like the tank blocking but having 3 sins on one team is ridiculous. I'm sure any avid ranked pvper could tell you that 3 of any class is usually scary. So please remove class stacking.

 

#3 - Team Balancing - If you look to the s12 leaderboards you can see rating is fairly low at this point in a season compared to the previous ones. It's not because of the population as there are people with 100s of wins. It's the team balancing. My understanding is that teams are balanced based on elo, for example a team with the following ratings (900,1000,1700,1200) could be against a team like this (1300,1100,1200,1200). Now that might look okay on paper as their teams have the same average rating but in 6.0 team carries are much harder. This makes people get to high elo and stop qing because their teams end up getting really bad. At the 1600 elo level it becomes painful to climb as your teams end up being full of sub-bronze players. I have heard many theories for how this could be solved but I think that my 1st suggestion would help with this problem as well. If there is a way for players to get good before getting into ranked it helps close the gap between the bottom and the top of the ranked scene. This would mean that with more skill would come more happy pvpers.

 

Well those are my thoughts, if anyone else has any ideas let me know!

every solution may not be ideal because low population

if i were the dev i might differentiate the level of tier base on rating

below 900

900-1200 then all the player on this rating can onlhy be pitted with this

ratinf 1200-1500

1500 above

so say if there are only 4 player with 1500 rating then it will be 2 vs 2

and now is stealth meta which is hard for non steath if gank say by 2-3 steath(ops and sin)

say you are are a merc and get open by 2-3 sin with maul spam , you have to break your stun breaker or pop reflect otherwise you can be globalled in 4 sec , this will already disadvantage because you blew your dcd right off the bat

so class stacking is must not be the case, ideally 1 class per arena

The Problem

Well, you can't have a solution without a problem so here it goes. I q a lot on Star Forge. Population is up due to the new xPac and it's great for the game. But with a larger community comes some issues, especially in ranked. Here is a list of problems that I have encountered with my solutions.

 

#1 - Many new players are trying ranked - As someone who plays SWTOR for the ranked I'm happy to see the community grow. I grew tired of qing against the same 30ish players on a daily basis. The only issue is these players don't know how to play ranked. Regs is a good place to start but ranked is arguably a whole other beast. So for my resolution of new players joining ranked and costing me my sweet, sweet elo, I think there should be another queue. Having a queue dedicated entirely to arena's that balances the same way as ranked does may encourage players to learn their classes and how to properly play arenas. This could even mean removing arenas from the regular queue so that when objective players queue they only get the maps they want.

 

#2 - Class Stacking - To be completely honest I feel that the game is very balanced right now with the exception of PTs and Juggs (Only 2 melee classes without any type of stealth). Now my issues only come with class stacking. I get that it would be very hard to moderate due to low population and it would be very prone to bugs like the tank blocking but having 3 sins on one team is ridiculous. I'm sure any avid ranked pvper could tell you that 3 of any class is usually scary. So please remove class stacking.

 

#3 - Team Balancing - If you look to the s12 leaderboards you can see rating is fairly low at this point in a season compared to the previous ones. It's not because of the population as there are people with 100s of wins. It's the team balancing. My understanding is that teams are balanced based on elo, for example a team with the following ratings (900,1000,1700,1200) could be against a team like this (1300,1100,1200,1200). Now that might look okay on paper as their teams have the same average rating but in 6.0 team carries are much harder. This makes people get to high elo and stop qing because their teams end up getting really bad. At the 1600 elo level it becomes painful to climb as your teams end up being full of sub-bronze players. I have heard many theories for how this could be solved but I think that my 1st suggestion would help with this problem as well. If there is a way for players to get good before getting into ranked it helps close the gap between the bottom and the top of the ranked scene. This would mean that with more skill would come more happy pvpers.

 

Well those are my thoughts, if anyone else has any ideas let me know!

I think you totally miss the point here...

85% of the total PVP playerbase is not queing ranked ... Why ? Well.. you can make another thread based on that alone. Bottom line, people have no incentive to que for it because why would they ?

If more people were queing, a lot of these problems you mentioned would be less bad because there would be a much wider variety of skill level in the que.

I think you totally miss the point here...

 

85% of the total PVP playerbase is not queing ranked ... Why ? Well.. you can make another thread based on that alone. Bottom line, people have no incentive to que for it because why would they ?

 

If more people were queing, a lot of these problems you mentioned would be less bad because there would be a much wider variety of skill level in the que.

I would agree that rating brackets is more important than class stacking but I think that having 2v2s for 1500 players because their population is low may discourage them from qing. I like the 4v4 arenas and a 2v2 would be a completely different type of ranked and would end up splitting the community.

I think you totally miss the point here...

 

85% of the total PVP playerbase is not queing ranked ... Why ? Well.. you can make another thread based on that alone. Bottom line, people have no incentive to que for it because why would they ?

 

If more people were queing, a lot of these problems you mentioned would be less bad because there would be a much wider variety of skill level in the que.

I’d completely agree that all of these issues would be solved with a larger player base qing ranked. I made sure to put my #1 solution where it is because realistically it would solve all of the other problems. I watch quite a bit of SWTOR youtube from a variety of sources like NoblePlays and Cease and the one thing I notice in comments is players telling their ranked horror stories. A lot of players who q ranked and are vote kicked or harassed because they’re not experienced. IMO another q would help everyone in the pvp community from objective players in regs to top tier ranked players.

#3 - Team Balancing - If you look to the s12 leaderboards you can see rating is fairly low at this point in a season compared to the previous ones. It's not because of the population as there are people with 100s of wins. It's the team balancing. My understanding is that teams are balanced based on elo, for example a team with the following ratings (900,1000,1700,1200) could be against a team like this (1300,1100,1200,1200). Now that might look okay on paper as their teams have the same average rating but in 6.0 team carries are much harder. This makes people get to high elo and stop qing because their teams end up getting really bad. At the 1600 elo level it becomes painful to climb as your teams end up being full of sub-bronze players. I have heard many theories for how this could be solved but I think that my 1st suggestion would help with this problem as well. If there is a way for players to get good before getting into ranked it helps close the gap between the bottom and the top of the ranked scene. This would mean that with more skill would come more happy pvpers.

 

Well those are my thoughts, if anyone else has any ideas let me know!

This is the beauty of the win requirements at work. I think the reason ratings are so much lower mainly has to do with placement games having less impact and not allowing people to get lucky with a high rating. Not only that, the win requirements force good players that otherwise would stop once they got to a lucky high rating to keep playing. In my opinion, there are many more good players queueing regularly than anytime during the last two seasons, and that's directly attributable to the new win requirements. Also, the only classes that seem to be able to reliably get ratings similar to the last few seasons are sins and ops for obvious reasons.

The elo balancing you refer to is the only proper way that it can be done. It's trying to make the fairest teams possible. Anyone that *****es about being high rated and being "punished" by the queue is just talking nonsense. And if they stop queueing...great, no rewards for them. Praise Mike B!

Honestly, the incentive is really not the bread and butter of everything

incentive call cheater and stacking of easy win gameplay

replace incentive with fun and you will have something.

problem is a player with 10.000-hour experience fighting a player with 100-hour experience is not fun

(this is why sport has brackets)

Unfortunately is not that easy to rank players by real experience but an incentive was proven a lot of time in many games won't fix the problem that PVP. It will be terrible if not WORST experience for a new player approaching and slightly more meaningful but still horrible or at least boring experience for veterans.

Until we discover other then material incentive to bring people to do something game will always fail

But I want POPS! *whine*

But then again I DON'T want these scrubs in my team, you know my ELO *whine*

Honestly, just do it like the "pros" do on DM. Destroy queue until it's only the same 30 people playing again. Result: Only "legit gold and top 3 players" in your team. There you go, problem solved.

The Problem

Well, you can't have a solution without a problem so here it goes. I q a lot on Star Forge. Population is up due to the new xPac and it's great for the game. But with a larger community comes some issues, especially in ranked. Here is a list of problems that I have encountered with my solutions.

 

#1 - Many new players are trying ranked - As someone who plays SWTOR for the ranked I'm happy to see the community grow. I grew tired of qing against the same 30ish players on a daily basis. The only issue is these players don't know how to play ranked. Regs is a good place to start but ranked is arguably a whole other beast. So for my resolution of new players joining ranked and costing me my sweet, sweet elo, I think there should be another queue. Having a queue dedicated entirely to arena's that balances the same way as ranked does may encourage players to learn their classes and how to properly play arenas. This could even mean removing arenas from the regular queue so that when objective players queue they only get the maps they want.

 

#3 - Team Balancing - If you look to the s12 leaderboards you can see rating is fairly low at this point in a season compared to the previous ones. It's not because of the population as there are people with 100s of wins. It's the team balancing. My understanding is that teams are balanced based on elo, for example a team with the following ratings (900,1000,1700,1200) could be against a team like this (1300,1100,1200,1200). Now that might look okay on paper as their teams have the same average rating but in 6.0 team carries are much harder. This makes people get to high elo and stop qing because their teams end up getting really bad. At the 1600 elo level it becomes painful to climb as your teams end up being full of sub-bronze players. I have heard many theories for how this could be solved but I think that my 1st suggestion would help with this problem as well. If there is a way for players to get good before getting into ranked it helps close the gap between the bottom and the top of the ranked scene. This would mean that with more skill would come more happy pvpers.

 

Well those are my thoughts, if anyone else has any ideas let me know!

I completely agree with you Brant.

SF ranked pops are up, mostly because there are a lot new ranked players in que. While these players are not necessarily bad, they are not great. They are still learning players. Like you, Brant. I don't mean this in a toxic manner, it's just the fact. You aren't necessarily a bad player Brant, but you are not the best in que either. You can agree with that. We all started somewhere. Hopefully as you que more games, and play more seasons you can attain more skill and become a really good player.

Where I start to get angry is when I get 5 games in a row with the same "new" player that is learning, when I know for a fact that there are games with players at higher elo. Imagine loosing 10 games in a row because a new player wants to learn. The same player sandbagging and costing the team, every single game. The loss is entirely and solely his fault. I don't try to be toxic. But it is annoying and depressing when you could have had so many good games except for the fact of this one player. I don't want to vote kick players, but when this is continuously happening on a consistent basis, you have little other recourse.

Bioware changed the way it balances teams in regards to ELO at the start of s10. They did this in part because they thought it would make team balance generally better, but they also wanted to combat backfilling and "prediciting the que" that occurred in s9. Well....... backfilling no longer exist, the que is not better, and honestly it was better when players could predict the que. At least we knew when we qued that we would get "good games with good players" and when to stay out of the que to avoid the "bad games with bad players." The old system also properly barred low elo players from getting into high elo matches, and high elo players from getting into low elo matches. Whereas in the new system, you can get in a game with 1100 players when you are 1700 elo.

TLDR: Players should avoid toxicity to new players. They are a key and integral part to the longevity of the ranked community. But in the new matchmaking system it becomes infuriating and almost impossible to carry these new players on a consistent basis. New players should be aware of this, since god knows Bioware won't do anything to fix matchmaking.

Bioware changed the way it balances teams in regards to ELO at the start of s10. They did this in part because they thought it would make team balance generally better, but they also wanted to combat backfilling and "prediciting the que" that occurred in s9. Well....... backfilling no longer exist, the que is not better, and honestly it was better when players could predict the que. At least we knew when we qued that we would get "good games with good players" and when to stay out of the que to avoid the "bad games with bad players." The old system also properly barred low elo players from getting into high elo matches, and high elo players from getting into low elo matches. Whereas in the new system, you can get in a game with 1100 players when you are 1700 elo.

This is hogwash. Now decent players have to actually earn their wins and their rating. They can't just manipulate the queue and get easy carries to high ratings. The new matchmaking is infinitely superior. It makes the fairest matches possible and puts everyone on an even playing field, rather than stacking the deck in favor of high rated players.

The fact that ratings are much lower than in previous seasons proves that the matchmaking is working much better than every before.

Regarding new players, one simple thing that Bioware could do is put in a disclaimer somewhere in the game that let's players know that ranked is not for the faint of heart. People coming into ranked should at the very least have a full set bonus, tactical, and have had a decent amount of practice on that class in regs. Valor 25 is clearly not a sufficient prerequisite.

The best thing a "pro-pvper" can do to help is rerolling and aid new PVP players teaching them since low level.

Take a vacation from PVP ranked to make a guild with the sole intent of promoting PVP and reroll to help to grow together.

and since he is at it, he could promote world PVP organizing events between guilds I mean instead of rolling ranked or waiting ranked for 2-3-4-5 hours a day those hours could be spent in making PVP better

since Devs won't do much.

This is hogwash. Now decent players have to actually earn their wins and their rating. They can't just manipulate the queue and get easy carries to high ratings. The new matchmaking is infinitely superior. It makes the fairest matches possible and puts everyone on an even playing field, rather than stacking the deck in favor of high rated players.

 

The fact that ratings are much lower than in previous seasons proves that the matchmaking is working much better than every before.

 

Regarding new players, one simple thing that Bioware could do is put in a disclaimer somewhere in the game that let's players know that ranked is not for the faint of heart. People coming into ranked should at the very least have a full set bonus, tactical, and have had a decent amount of practice on that class in regs. Valor 25 is clearly not a sufficient prerequisite.

I mean I would disagree that lower elo means that it's working because if you look at some of the better players like Deamlo for example he has a sorc below bronze whereas last season he was gold in close to the same amount of matches. Everyone starts at the same place I was merely just talking about possible options for a rework. Last season there wasn't any match manipulation other than wintrading which is a whole seperate issue. All I was getting at was with a lot of new players joining there needs to be ways for them to learn without harming the ratings of the top 25% of queue.

I completely agree with you Brant.

 

SF ranked pops are up, mostly because there are a lot new ranked players in que. While these players are not necessarily bad, they are not great. They are still learning players. Like you, Brant. I don't mean this in a toxic manner, it's just the fact. You aren't necessarily a bad player Brant, but you are not the best in que either. You can agree with that. We all started somewhere. Hopefully as you que more games, and play more seasons you can attain more skill and become a really good player.

 

Where I start to get angry is when I get 5 games in a row with the same "new" player that is learning, when I know for a fact that there are games with players at higher elo. Imagine loosing 10 games in a row because a new player wants to learn. The same player sandbagging and costing the team, every single game. The loss is entirely and solely his fault. I don't try to be toxic. But it is annoying and depressing when you could have had so many good games except for the fact of this one player. I don't want to vote kick players, but when this is continuously happening on a consistent basis, you have little other recourse.

 

Bioware changed the way it balances teams in regards to ELO at the start of s10. They did this in part because they thought it would make team balance generally better, but they also wanted to combat backfilling and "prediciting the que" that occurred in s9. Well....... backfilling no longer exist, the que is not better, and honestly it was better when players could predict the que. At least we knew when we qued that we would get "good games with good players" and when to stay out of the que to avoid the "bad games with bad players." The old system also properly barred low elo players from getting into high elo matches, and high elo players from getting into low elo matches. Whereas in the new system, you can get in a game with 1100 players when you are 1700 elo.

 

TLDR: Players should avoid toxicity to new players. They are a key and integral part to the longevity of the ranked community. But in the new matchmaking system it becomes infuriating and almost impossible to carry these new players on a consistent basis. New players should be aware of this, since god knows Bioware won't do anything to fix matchmaking.

I'd completely agree that I'm not the best player in q but I've gotten gold in seasons prior to s12 and it hasn't been nearly as unfair as it is now between the heavier class stacking and large influx of new players. In s11 when I was around 1600 elo it became impossible to climb as your teams were so poorly balanced but in s12 that threshold doesn't seem to exist, it simply starts from game 1. Even on the winning side it tends to be complete blowouts with matches ending before the 1-2 minute marker which is ridiculous.

I mean I would disagree that lower elo means that it's working because if you look at some of the better players like Deamlo for example he has a sorc below bronze whereas last season he was gold in close to the same amount of matches. Everyone starts at the same place I was merely just talking about possible options for a rework. Last season there wasn't any match manipulation other than wintrading which is a whole seperate issue. All I was getting at was with a lot of new players joining there needs to be ways for them to learn without harming the ratings of the top 25% of queue.

He had over 100 wins last season and only 14 this season on his sorc.

And what do you mean below bronze? They're obviously going to adjust the brackets given the lower ratings overall.

He had over 100 wins last season and only 14 this season on his sorc.

 

And what do you mean below bronze? They're obviously going to adjust the brackets given the lower ratings overall.

My fault I misread when I was flipping between seasons but having a rating of 1100-1000 will not be bronze and if is that's pretty ridiculous. But even then with 10 wins at roughly 1k elo that means that he has around 15-20 losses. Maybe not a great example but if you compare a lot of people's ratings with similar amounts of games played they are lower. As a concrete example I can use rogean's slinger, in s11 he had just over 100 wins at 1653 rating and in s12 he has around 90 games played at 1265 rating. Another example is distract with 67 wins at 1243 rating and last season he had 38 wins at 1508 rating. So as much as my initial remark was incorrect you can see throughout the pvp community it's significantly lower.

My fault I misread when I was flipping between seasons but having a rating of 1100-1000 will not be bronze and if is that's pretty ridiculous. But even then with 10 wins at roughly 1k elo that means that he has around 15-20 losses. Maybe not a great example but if you compare a lot of people's ratings with similar amounts of games played they are lower. As a concrete example I can use rogean's slinger, in s11 he had just over 100 wins at 1653 rating and in s12 he has around 90 games played at 1265 rating. Another example is distract with 67 wins at 1243 rating and last season he had 38 wins at 1508 rating. So as much as my initial remark was incorrect you can see throughout the pvp community it's significantly lower.

Those are great examples of better matchmaking...that's my point. If merely decent players are shooting up to much higher than average ratings, that means there's something wrong. The ratings people have now reflect a healthy matchmaking that is forcing players to actually play the game in a fair way. If your point is that good players are being "dragged down" in some sense by bad players, that's happening to everyone equally if they play enough games (which they now have to if they want rewards).

The main issue to tackle is class balance and class stacking. Sins and ops are running roughshod over solo ranked. To go to your examples, it's much more difficult for snipers to survive than it was the last few seasons.

I would agree that rating brackets is more important than class stacking but I think that having 2v2s for 1500 players because their population is low may discourage them from qing. I like the 4v4 arenas and a 2v2 would be a completely different type of ranked and would end up splitting the community.

what i mean is it is stil 4 vs 4 but in case not so many people que on that time and only 4 people with that rating , the dev should not deny the pop

but it would be 2 v 2 on 4 v 4 arena

"How to make ranked less toxic" - Man Up. Solved.

or the toxic people could grow up - not only solved this problem but probably made a better person out of the toxic people

Calling someone toxic and telling someone to grow up is toxic, don't you think?

I mean, how do you think they will respond? "Oh okay will do, sir!"

#1 rule of less toxic pvp: Don't suck.

Calling someone toxic and telling someone to grow up is toxic, don't you think?

I mean, how do you think they will respond? "Oh okay will do, sir!"

 

#1 rule of less toxic pvp: Don't suck.

People can stop being toxic and they know they are doing something wrong because all humans know when they are ******es.

on the other hand, people cannot "don't suck" as they need time to improve.

So grow up can be done by following the voice inside you that tells you to stop being rude to don't suck takes time

both are a solution but one takes a few minutes the other one needs few months. I am fine with both as I am not in a rush but usually the Toxic people are always in a rush so you see the problem

"How to make ranked less toxic" - Man Up. Solved.

The title should probably be the problem with ranked instead of toxic but whatever.

Thing is, the new players will roughly be on or against your team 50/50 if your rating is higher so in theory, over a certain number of games, this should balance out.

All the while, they are improving too which can only be good amrite?

Thing is, the new players will roughly be on or against your team 50/50 if your rating is higher so in theory, over a certain number of games, this should balance out.

All the while, they are improving too which can only be good amrite?

I agree with this. The OP seems to be saying that they will consciously choose not to be toxic once new players are sectioned away or come back at a level deserving of their approval - which is, in itself, toxic on so many levels.

The toxicity isn't the fault of the under geared or new player (which people forget can be mutually exclusive). It's the fault of certain ranked players with a false sense of superiority.