The was to fix the lack of players in the queue at certain times (everytime outside of primetime), especially Republic players who always had less people in the queue.

It may not be ideal for RP purposes, but it save Republic side pvp and therefore pvp as a whole.

Is it worth reducing the game's fantasy in order to have shorter queues? Maybe. Objectively, it's not really a yes or no question. Some will like it and others won't. You can't please everyone.

That being said, subjectively, I think it's stupid too!

Just sayin

+

It killed star wars atmosphere in the game. I dont feel like playing the real star wars where reps soldier fighting imps troopers, jedi dueling sith with their cool lightsabers. Now it is just lame

The was to fix the lack of players in the queue at certain times (everytime outside of primetime), especially Republic players who always had less people in the queue.

It may not be ideal for RP purposes, but it save Republic side pvp and therefore pvp as a whole.

Only on SS and the other servers that are dying anyway. SF and DM had 0 problems with Pubside queues. Only waited longer than 3 min for a pop in the dead of night.

Is it worth reducing the game's fantasy in order to have shorter queues? Maybe. Objectively, it's not really a yes or no question. Some will like it and others won't. You can't please everyone.

 

That being said, subjectively, I think it's stupid too!

There is a difference between shorter queues and not popping at all.

Before the the change the republic would only pop a few hours a day and even then it was slow compared to the Imps.

Eventually everyone playing rep got fed up and made mirror imp classes so they could get matches. This of course made it worse if you wanted to play a rep toon.

We would literally have hours and hours of nothing but imp vs imp matches. I could login on an imp toon and play for 3-5 hours and not get one Imp vs rep match.

Now we can play what ever faction we like and lots of people have gone back to playing their rep Alts. There are still more Imps around, but there are definitely more people playing reps now because they know they can queue up and pop at the same rate as what Imps can.

Ideally we would have a much bigger game population and we wouldn’t have needed this change. But the game is getting older and less people play it. So they needed to make some sacrifices somewhere or pvp would have died.

The next thing will end up being crossfaction flashpoints or Operations because there won’t be enough people.

Only on SS and the other servers that are dying anyway. SF and DM had 0 problems with Pubside queues. Only waited longer than 3 min for a pop in the dead of night.

Your dead of night is different to my dead of night. It’s subjective at what time you play. Also I don’t play on SS, I play on SF and it was having the same problem.

So merge all the servers into one massive server.

Queue problems resolved

So merge all the servers into one massive server.

 

Queue problems resolved

Really? Because the prior merges solved the problem?

We're already down to only 2 english servers, and the queue problems aren't fixed. I doubt one more merger will make a huge difference given I'm told SS is dead.

On the topic of hand, yeah, it's lame. I mean, I get why they did it though.

It's probably too much to ask that they 'fake it'. IE: If you queue as IMP, everyone on your team 'looks' like an IMP player on your screen (lightsabers would display as red, armour would become the imperial version, etc) whereas the same players would look like REPs if you queued as REP. I mean a real AAA title could manage it but we all know SWTOR isn't that.

Is it worth reducing the game's fantasy in order to have shorter queues? Maybe. Objectively, it's not really a yes or no question. Some will like it and others won't. You can't please everyone.

 

That being said, subjectively, I think it's stupid too!

Obviously you can have whatever subjective opinion you want. but this move absolutely was necessary to keep PvP ques working. They had no choice.

We're already down to only 2 english servers, and the queue problems aren't fixed. I doubt one more merger will make a huge difference given I'm told SS is dead.

 

On the topic of hand, yeah, it's lame. I mean, I get why they did it though.

 

It's probably too much to ask that they 'fake it'. IE: If you queue as IMP, everyone on your team 'looks' like an IMP player on your screen (lightsabers would display as red, armour would become the imperial version, etc) whereas the same players would look like REPs if you queued as REP. I mean a real AAA title could manage it but we all know SWTOR isn't that.

We lost that when we first went to cartel market armor. I haven't been able to tell classes by armor since late 2012.

It's probably too much to ask that they 'fake it'. IE: If you queue as IMP, everyone on your team 'looks' like an IMP player on your screen (lightsabers would display as red, armour would become the imperial version, etc) whereas the same players would look like REPs if you queued as REP. I mean a real AAA title could manage it but we all know SWTOR isn't that.

I've only ever seen that in shooter games where characters are not as individualized as in RPGs/MMOs. As lame as the current solution is I think you'd rustle a lot more jimmies by auto re-skinning toons into generic templates.

Obviously you can have whatever subjective opinion you want. but this move absolutely was necessary to keep PvP ques working. They had no choice.

If what you and TrixxieTriss are saying is true, then perhaps this was the most sound solution. I played a bit during the final server merge in 2017 so obviously there was a lot of activity back then. Before that, I think I played a month or two in 2016 and back then I primarily played the Republic and perhaps the queues were a bit longer. But 2016 was a long time ago now!

I think it depends on what server you're playing on. Today I had a team with 7 reps and a Merc and I'm fairly certain there were reps on the other side so in that game the reps were in majority. However, while I think that the mixed teams is not an elegant solution, it is a solution. World of Warcraft actually has the same issue; for Battlegrounds the Horde will have longer queues since there are more Horde players than Alliance players. But for other content it is typically the Alliance that struggles more because of their smaller playerbase. People tend to gravitate towards the one faction that is dominant. They too could mix teams like SWTOR does and a lot of problems would be solved. The only casualty is the fantasy. But the fantasy is important, which is why threads like these exist. And yes, it could be argued that getting to play pvp is more important and if the case truly is that reps gets no pops, then I agree. I personally have not experienced it.

Better than cross-server......

LoL...

So merge all the servers into one massive server.

 

Queue problems resolved

That doesn’t fix the population inbalance between rep and imp.

We're already down to only 2 english servers, and the queue problems aren't fixed. I doubt one more merger will make a huge difference given I'm told SS is dead.

 

On the topic of hand, yeah, it's lame. I mean, I get why they did it though.

 

It's probably too much to ask that they 'fake it'. IE: If you queue as IMP, everyone on your team 'looks' like an IMP player on your screen (lightsabers would display as red, armour would become the imperial version, etc) whereas the same players would look like REPs if you queued as REP. I mean a real AAA title could manage it but we all know SWTOR isn't that.

SF is better for pvping, but I have no major issues with SS queue times.

As for your 'idea', while it is certainly possible for BW to implement such a thing [they've made many such stupid decisions], their decision to implement this wouldn't be based on whether they are 'a real AAA title' or not, but on whether they'd like to manufacture a forum / twitter meltdown because a niche minority of players want to rewind the game to how it looked in 2012. I lol at the way you can apparently headcanon your characters doing pvp in the first place but the sticking point is the appropriate color of your teammate's lightsaber.

So merge all the servers into one massive server.

 

Queue problems resolved

No thank you.

If what you and TrixxieTriss are saying is true, then perhaps this was the most sound solution. I played a bit during the final server merge in 2017 so obviously there was a lot of activity back then. Before that, I think I played a month or two in 2016 and back then I primarily played the Republic and perhaps the queues were a bit longer. But 2016 was a long time ago now!

 

I think it depends on what server you're playing on. Today I had a team with 7 reps and a Merc and I'm fairly certain there were reps on the other side so in that game the reps were in majority. However, while I think that the mixed teams is not an elegant solution, it is a solution. World of Warcraft actually has the same issue; for Battlegrounds the Horde will have longer queues since there are more Horde players than Alliance players. But for other content it is typically the Alliance that struggles more because of their smaller playerbase. People tend to gravitate towards the one faction that is dominant. They too could mix teams like SWTOR does and a lot of problems would be solved. The only casualty is the fantasy. But the fantasy is important, which is why threads like these exist. And yes, it could be argued that getting to play pvp is more important and if the case truly is that reps gets no pops, then I agree. I personally have not experienced it.

Those mergers were a bandaid. They didnt fix the illness. Plus they also culled a big portion of the player base when they moved the west coast server to the east coast. The merge was good for about 2-3 months and then both servers started to just feel as full as what Harbinger had been.

Before cross faction what would happen is those rep players you saw today would have all been on imp toon so they could get pops.

You would also have a group that followed the winning faction. So for a few hours a day you would have some good rep teams who would decimate the Imps (might have only been 16-20 of us on) and some of the Imps would get sick of losing so they would start to switch rep.

Then for about 2 hours we’d have more balanced matches because people would switch back and forth to find the strongest side. Eventually they’d all go back to Imps as soon as the reps started to lose again and the rep queue would die.

Basically you had a bunch of the population (who had both faction Alts) jumping around to be on the winning side and it had nothing at all to do with immersion or fanatasy or Jedi vs Sith. It was all about winning and that was it. As soon as they were losing they would faction dodge to the other side. These guys were essentially defacto cross faction players.

The one thing cross faction fixed was stopping these guys from trying to win/lose dodge. Most of them needed to be carried anyway, that’s why those strong reps would start to lose when they came over and dilute the ranks (which was fine cause at least the queue popped).

This affected the reps way more than the Imps because of population imbalance. There were always more Imps on even when those win/loss dodgers came over to the rep side and matches still popped. But as soon as the reps lost more than 2-3 games, the dodgers would jump back to Imps and the rep pops would die in under 20mins. Then the next 20 hours was mostly Imp v Imp matches.

Most of us became immune to Imp vs Imp because that’s all we played (if we wanted to get any pvp pops). My saying is... “if it’s red, it’s dead”

For me and most pvpers the mixed teams don’t matter because we don’t look at wether we are fighting a Jedi or Sith. We see red and want to kill it.

I’ve mirror Alts of both factions. I play both depending on spec, but it depends on my mood and what I might be doing while waiting for pvp pops. (I also have 30 Alts on each US server. Itnuse to be more till I deleted a bunch after they made the game Alt unfriendly)

My pvp preferences :

Merc before commando (I don’t like the big commando cannon and the story is boring)

Sent before Mara (dark side sent is a real piece of work )

Jugg before Guardian (always had a Jugg)

Sage before Sorc (Sorc abilities stand out like a sore thumb. Sages are less obvious)

Sin before Shadow (no particular reason)

Sniper/gunslinger about the same, but I play my sniper more because she’s higher CXP at the moment.

Operative before scoundrel (IMO, agent story is the best in the game)

PT before VG (not a fan of either class, but PT because it’s a better story)

I can understand from a RP or fantasy perspective that it’s not great, but pvp would have literally died. You can’t RP or have fantasy in pvp if there is no pvp to start with. The only solution was cross faction.

Plus my dark side Jedi feels much more at home hanging out with a bunch of Sith and my lightside Merc isn’t looking over her shoulder all the time when she’s got Jedi around her.

Make your own fantasy in your own mind. Remember up until recently we had the alliance which was both factions together. Now we have gone back to rep vs imp we still have the ability to be traitors too. This still gives you room to stretch you imagination to fit one of those scenarios or maybe another you dream up yourself. Like in HB, the Hutts have taken you all captive and make you play together or they’ll kill you.

If we still had a massive population I would have liked them to create a third faction specifically for the alliance, then you could have had 3 too choose from. Fight for the reps, the Imps or alliance (cross faction). In the end I honestly believe the alliance queue would have had the most people and the reps and Imps pops would slow right down till they were dead.

No thank you.

I have to agree with Casi.

Mergers won’t fix anything until Bioware fix the underlying problems that are causing population decline.

If they did fix the problems then mergers wouldn’t be needed because people might come back,

Bioware are 100% to blame for people abandoning the game in disgust from grind fatigue, gesring, bugs, lack of content, poor design choices (mistakes and not back tracking when they make them), desync (big problem for pvp), lack of communication and not fixing things faster (that they bother fixing at all )

What they could do now to help pvpers is offer discounted transfers so they can all be together.

What’s happening at the moment is those with more money that others have already started to transfer and those that can’t afford it are becoming stranded on Satele Shan and pvp is dying over there. That is causing more people to just leave the game or demand mergers (I can’t really blame them if they can’t play the content they want).

Cheap transfers or free transfers aren’t a silver bullet, they are a band aid at best. But they should always be tried first before resorting to mergers.

Bioware made a mistake last time in not offering free transfers well before the mergers were needed. If they had, the population would have worked out where it wanted to play the content they wanted.

Pug Group pvp/FP/Ops players wouldn’t have been stranded on dead servers, which ultimately made them leave the game.

Solo players could have had quiet servers to play on

RP players could have keep their community more coherent and less diluted.

We also could have kept the servers regionally based (hopefully).

The was to fix the lack of players in the queue at certain times (everytime outside of primetime), especially Republic players who always had less people in the queue.

It may not be ideal for RP purposes, but it save Republic side pvp and therefore pvp as a whole.

Funny you actually believe that.... lol just lol...

Look, on darth malgus there were always plenty of reps in que.. always. The republic planets are full of people even now.

Cross faction was just useless as it brought nothing to PVP, nor did the so called " matchmaking". It's exactly the same as it was before.

Funny you actually believe that.... lol just lol...

 

Look, on darth malgus there were always plenty of reps in que.. always. The republic planets are full of people even now.

 

Cross faction was just useless as it brought nothing to PVP, nor did the so called " matchmaking". It's exactly the same as it was before.

But, that wasn’t the case on the US servers. It didn’t pop like DM,

I do agree that matchmaking has done nothing. If anything it’s made it worse and they shouldn’t have bothered. But that’s not the crossfaction fault.

I think if they’d left the matchmaking out of it the crossfaction would have worked better than it does. They should never have done it at the same time and then we could have seen first hand the real impact of crossfaction,

As it was, by doing them both at once it did have a detrimental affect on the quality of pvp. People like to say (on the US servers) it’s because reps are s**t players. But that’s just not the case. Since the matchmaking it has become apparent that the majority of players on both factions are just s**t players because of how borked up the matchmaking is.

They put 1-2 good players on a team or whole premade and and then all s**t. Instead of putting same skilled players for both teams. They spread out all the good players or premades to carry the crap players. If they just put all the crap players together into matches and all the better players together it would make things better. But at the moment we are spread out instead of being put together.

At least without the match making you had a better than average chance of getting good teams on both sides. Now it’s rare to ever have two good teams against each other. You have complete one sided teams that’s so bad it’s like preschoolers getting beaten by PhD graduates.

Crossfaction didn’t cause any of that and was needed for the US servers or pvp would have always been imp vs imp.