Our current choices for warzones are ranked or unranked, then accepting whatever the database chooses for us. Using the same mechanism that exists to select flashpoints (the check boxes), an accommodation to allow three distinct modes of play, as ranked or unranked, should be offered. The selections should be:

 

1) Huttball Maps

2) Arena Maps

3) Objective Maps

 

Any further subdivision of play styles would be counter productive, however. Offering ranked and unranked versions of the three, would allow players versatility in play that is currently sorely lacking. A ranked Huttball league, would be epic. Opening up the venues above the arenas for observers and placing bets on the outcome, would be just the credit sink folks wouldn't mind.

Agreed.

 

This should have happened way back over a year ago when Musco addressed Huttball popping too much.

 

And let's be honest, this has been a problem far longer than just over a year ago.

 

Eric just was on his "Better Communication Tour" during that time so he was responding quite elaborately when you compare these later posts to his earlier ones, if you can find any that is. Anyway, I digress.

 

 

SteveTheCynic dug this post up:

 

Hey everyone,

 

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

 

How does map selection work?

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

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

 

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

 

How can we improve this experience?

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

 

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

 

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

Matchmaking weighting could effectively work one of two ways.

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

 

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

 

-eric

 

 

So it's been a topic that Eric actually responded to.

 

It's on the table then, for more discussion in my mind seeing that he asked questions that have been answered since that post was created yet none have been responded to by Eric or anyone else since then.

 

An acknowledgement that this is still a problem would go a long way, BW.

This would be very nice. I have a strong preference for objective maps and it can be disappointing spending a night only doing huttball/arenas. Arenas can be fun, but too often it's either a faceroll or drags on forever because the healer/tank combos can keep the teams up forever. Plus as a healer it's alot of running away and self healing.

 

Of course I can imagine it might mean less frequent pops, but to be honest I'd likely be queueing all of them during non peak just to get a pop.

 

With ranked and unranked I'd almost rather see the two merged. Maybe full teams with as many ranked players as possible, then fill the gaps with unranked. As a ranked player you can expect to a higher challenge because you have a higher chance of facing other ranked players, so you still get the bonus rewards.

 

Ranked being tied to arenas only is the biggest disappointment. I started PvPing in games like Warhammer and Aion, which were open world and didn't have WoW arenas. Afaik the ranked population is small, so merging queues would be the only way to see ranked 8v8, besides cross server, which is a highly unlikely update.

 

Plus it's kind of neat having the top players mingled in with the flithy casuals. In those other games certain players would develop reputations for being absurdly good which added an extra layer to the game play.

There have been several suggestions about picking maps. At this point I would just like it to show me which map it picked BEFORE I click the enter button. That way if it's Vandinn, Quesh or OPG I can just cancel right away and don't have to waste the time on the load screen only to quit out immediately anyway.

 

If they were to actually give us a choice though, the one I like, which wouldn't affect queue times AT ALL... is to mimic what Guild Wars does. From Eric's description, once the queue has already popped and it selects whether it will be a 4 man or an 8 man, then just put up a list of maps and everyone chooses what they want. Then instead of rolling with all eligible maps having equal chance, instead roll with the selected maps having their weighted chance. So if there are 16 people choosing, and we get 4 for NC, 1 for Original Huttball, 8 for AHG and 3 for OPG, then the odds are...

 

NC = 25%

Huttball = 6.25%

AHG = 50%

OPG = 18.75%

 

Sure you might still get stuck in a map you don't like, but at least SOMEONE playing wants that map. And chances are that several people playing will want that map. No, it's not perfect, but I think it would still be a lot better than we have now. And queue pops would be exactly the same speed.

There have been several suggestions about picking maps. At this point I would just like it to show me which map it picked BEFORE I click the enter button. That way if it's Vandinn, Quesh or OPG I can just cancel right away and don't have to waste the time on the load screen only to quit out immediately anyway.

 

If they were to actually give us a choice though, the one I like, which wouldn't affect queue times AT ALL... is to mimic what Guild Wars does. From Eric's description, once the queue has already popped and it selects whether it will be a 4 man or an 8 man, then just put up a list of maps and everyone chooses what they want. Then instead of rolling with all eligible maps having equal chance, instead roll with the selected maps having their weighted chance. So if there are 16 people choosing, and we get 4 for NC, 1 for Original Huttball, 8 for AHG and 3 for OPG, then the odds are...

 

NC = 25%

Huttball = 6.25%

AHG = 50%

OPG = 18.75%

 

Sure you might still get stuck in a map you don't like, but at least SOMEONE playing wants that map. And chances are that several people playing will want that map. No, it's not perfect, but I think it would still be a lot better than we have now. And queue pops would be exactly the same speed.

 

Wow. This is a great idea! This deserves a post on it's own imo.

 

However, that being said it's going to die right here in the PVP section because BW don't care to read anything posted here.

 

They don't seem to read anything here, and they definitely never post anything here. Just stating facts.

Wow. This is a great idea! This deserves a post on it's own imo.

 

However, that being said it's going to die right here in the PVP section because BW don't care to read anything posted here.

 

They don't seem to read anything here, and they definitely never post anything here. Just stating facts.

 

LoL. That idea has been floated several times, including in the PTS forums when the issue came up there. It's never gained any traction.

Not that it will ever happen, but yes it is sorely needed. If I get a map I don't want to play, I am going to leave it anyway.

Even if they just showed which warzone you got with the queue pop it would make so many people happier. No more joining a match to get Huttball for the 17x time in a row.

Tbh I'm glad they nerfed HB/Vandin pops, getting 5-6 HB's in a row made me exit the game a few times.

Our current choices for warzones are ranked or unranked, then accepting whatever the database chooses for us. Using the same mechanism that exists to select flashpoints (the check boxes), an accommodation to allow three distinct modes of play, as ranked or unranked, should be offered. The selections should be:

 

1) Huttball Maps

2) Arena Maps

3) Objective Maps

 

Any further subdivision of play styles would be counter productive, however. Offering ranked and unranked versions of the three, would allow players versatility in play that is currently sorely lacking. A ranked Huttball league, would be epic. Opening up the venues above the arenas for observers and placing bets on the outcome, would be just the credit sink folks wouldn't mind.

I couldn't agree more I just like all the objective type maps I don't like huttball

Edited April 6, 2020 by LordKitana

I would rather sit in queue for twice or thrice the current time, if it meant getting a map (arena) that I want to play. It would also reduce quitters I imagine.

I would rather sit in queue for twice or thrice the current time, if it meant getting a map (arena) that I want to play. It would also reduce quitters I imagine.

 

People just quit the matches anyway when its one they dislike! Why do you got to sit in a queue, enter the match, only to find that it's something you have no interest in participating in?

 

If they balanced out the pops and maps were a little more fairly even in their pops, maybe forcing matches wouldn't be that big a deal but seeing how you get the same maps 5 times in a row and then some maps simply seem to no longer exist, well you end up wasting time and eating a lot of frustration.

 

There's no logical explanation why they don't let you know what map you have gotten before entering it, if they want to skew the frequency so some maps pop constantly while others never pop. Some transparency would remove a lot of frustration.

Yeah I'm getting tired playing on Huttball maps all the time, we should be able to select which warzone maps we wish to take part in.

this is an awesome idea until they tie conquest to picking a random wz, so we all queue random, then drop the ones we don't want anyway o.O

as a new player it's pretty challenging to learn a warzone, on the go, and having the map change on me between each random queu is beyond frustrating... how the hell do you expect new players to learn the damn warzones to be able to actually help the side we're on. No wonder the number of players who do warzones is in short supply.