Jump to content

Season 11 Summary


MikeBradley

Recommended Posts

  • Dev Post

Hey All,

 

As we begin season 12, I wanted to provide a bit of a recap of actions we took during season 11, talk a bit about the upcoming season, and highlight some of the changes that will be coming with it.

 

 

Season 11 Actions

 

During season 11 we took action against a total of 163 accounts for cheating, hacking, win trading, or exploiting in PvP, including 18 permanent account bans. You may have seen some of my reports trying to explain what we take action against, how we punish, what our goals for these punishments are, and what else we are seeing in the broader PvP environment. I hope that these reports have helped shed some light on these areas, and I would be very interested to hear from you all about what you appreciated from them, what you didn’t, or what other information you would still like to see provided.

 

Throughout the season we also tried to gather as much feedback as possible from the PvP community to get a clearer picture of what their biggest frustrations have been. One of the recurring themes that came up (and that I attempted to speak to in the June Report) was that even with regular, harsher punishments, it felt like it was still too easy for people to cheat their way to the top or to just ruin the PvP experience for others. As a result, we created a new email for reporting this kind of behavior directly to our Live Production team, and in many cases the reports we’ve received have been very helpful. We also took all of that feedback and worked with our designers to come up with some changes for ranked PvP specifically that we are hoping will do more to discourage or deter cheating across the board.

 

 

Season 12 Changes

 

As you can see in the 6.0.2 patch notes, here’s a list of changes we have made for the upcoming PvP season:

 

 

  • Made adjustments to matchmaking which previously allowed a single tank or healer in the Ranked queue to be able to lock up the queue from making any future Ranked PvP matches.
     
  • Players who decline a queue pop or who leave a match early for a Ranked Warzone will now be unable to queue again for 15 minutes.
     
  • Increased the Rating penalty received for declining a Ranked PvP queue or leaving a match early to 25 rating (up from 15 rating).
     
  • In addition to minimum rating requirements, each Ranked PvP Rank now has a minimum games played requirement as follows:
     
     

    •  
    • Bronze – 25 wins
    • Silver – 50 wins
    • Gold – 100 wins
    • Top 96 – 200 wins

 

Starting with this season, we will also have the ability to remove cheating players from the Ranked PvP environment altogether. So in addition to all our previous actions, if an account is caught win trading, cheating, or exploiting in PvP, they will be removed from and unable to queue, join, or play ranked PvP for the rest of the season. If an account continues to be disruptive and problematic in other areas of the game, we absolutely reserve the right to permanently ban those accounts and we will do so if we feel it is warranted.

 

 

Top 96 Rewards

 

As I’m sure some of you are wondering about these, Top 96 rewards will begin going out today, and will be completely distributed by Friday, December 20th.

 

 

Going Forward

 

I realize that these changes may not be all the ones you were hoping for from the new season. When we took a step back and looked at the trends of season 11 (and even earlier seasons), we consistently saw the sentiment that cheating felt rampant, that our punishments did not feel terribly effective, thus Top 96 placements felt like they had lost all meaning, and that few believed we could or would do anything about it. I do want to reiterate that we are by no means finished gathering your feedback or done iterating on ideas to make PvP a better experience for everyone, these are just the changes we were able to make before the new season. Here’s a list of areas that we have heard from you about, and are continuing to brainstorm and design around.

 

 

  • Mixing up seasonal variety
  • More Matchmaking improvements
  • More choice in picking or excluding certain maps or game types
  • Re-examining Group Ranked
  • Balance Issues
  • Vote kicking abuses

 

Thanks to everyone who has read through or commented on any of my posts, sent our PvP email a report of any kind, and to anyone who has in any other way helped to foster a constructive PvP environment. I look forward to hearing your thoughts throughout season 12, and to further improvements in the future.

 

Until next time…

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Mike, this is beautiful. Can you look into applying rating decay for top 96 only? It would only apply to top 96 since it's based on current rating at the end of the season while gold is based on highest earned, so decay wouldn't effect people who earned gold and decayed below it.

 

This would be an amazing addition to your wins required change. Keep up the great work friend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey All,

 

Top 96 Rewards

 

As I’m sure some of you are wondering about these, Top 96 rewards will begin going out today, and will be completely distributed by Friday, December 20th.

 

 

 

 

 

so another week to wait for top 96 rewards....like it wasn't enough to wait 11 months...as always

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any thoughts on making ranked comms legacy bound?

 

QFE yes plz and while you're at it, make /addignore apply to the legacy name too

 

---

Hey All,

 

As we begin season 12,

 

I do want to reiterate that we are by no means finished gathering your feedback or done iterating on ideas to make PvP a better experience for everyone,

 

 

Okay i have an admittedly radical question/suggestion here (that will most likely bring tons of hate lol but whatever) ...

 

Is it possible to add a rotational in-game EVENT (like 'Gree', 'Rakghoul' , 'Bounty week', etc. ) that would allow for RANKED PVP in certain isolated OPEN WORLD pvp-instance-only areas scattered across the galaxy? ( like within Tatooine 'Outlaws Den', for example ) ----- And you could "gate" it somehow, eligibility wise, by having a certain 'valor' requirement as well as a certain 'wins' (from Warzones) requirement.

 

Warzones would still garner the most/fastest points of course but i just personally find WZ's (ranked or otherwise) to be so limiting & lifeless most of the time.... and imho open-world PVP is typically far more enjoyable (with far less trolls , haters, cheaters) .

 

So it would just be nice if maybe there was at least SOME type of option to acquire Ranked points every once in a while besides the same ole "queue granked plz!!" or "ranked poppin' ??" spam in /2 pvp channel everyday.

 

-----

p.s. radical idea #2: During 'Bounty Week' EVENT, players with a certain 'valor' rating become eligible to HUNT other players who have voluntarily placed themselves (aka Opt-In ) on the eligible-to-hunted 'Bounty Board' ...and those bounty fights ( 1 v 1 , and only in non-sanctuary areas obviously) can earn Ranked points. And yes i realize win-trading in such a situation would have to be monitored even more.

Edited by Nee-Elder
spacing & such
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Totally understand wanting to discourage people from playing multiple toons in terms of people having for example a high elo mando/low elo mando they log between which may or may not complicate the queue system and there for equation that goes in to the match making and all but at this point does any of that really matter? There is like under 300 people that play ranked on the reg i'd be willing to bet. Edited by mfourcustom
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Could we not get some sort of ranking of players in ordinary regular PVP...somthing a little more light hearted with some fun rewards for getting involved for a season?

 

At the moment Regs are just spewing out gear thats way below your rating that you end up scrapping for a pitiful few fragments.

 

OR if you want to keep regs unranked add normal PVP matches into the mix with those horrible vitriolic arenas in RANKED.

 

There is a strong horrible feeling around Ranked PVP that unless you are brilliant you're not welcome. Surely all PVP interested players should be able to take part in a safe and friendly environment to try and win the rewards on offer and increase the pool of players taking part.

 

Would love a dev comment on this post as I'm sure I'm not alone feeling this way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Post

 

 

Someone mentioned that it's possible to reach a high tier rank during your first 10-20 matches still, so the requirement for winning additional matches doesn't really do much to prevent cheating.

 

Why are placement matches still a thing? Why does your rating depend more on the first games than subsequent games? Why is your score determined by a one-time high rather than an average of all your games played?

 

Thanks for your post, btw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This stuffs nice to see, but could see potentially balancing sooner? Or even bug fixes...

 

Warmonger still does not work, the charge stays at 0 and you wait the full duration of the original cooldown.

 

Charges bug out and if you can 2 stack something, you can then take off whatever gave you two charges. In example double cloak, meaning you can get your two stack cloak then swap tactical maintaining your two stacks until ones used.

 

Ghost GCDs are still happening, seen more often when enemy target is low and or a lot of chain lightnings are in play.

 

Chain lightning desync/snapback/displacement, whatever it is. Is just plain absurd, it was strong but now with the ability to use it more often it's super painful to deal with.

 

Slows affecting movement abilities (not hydrualics and force speed ofc), probably not a possible fix, but they not only cause you to fall through the map sometimes but they also make you fall short of your target.

 

Tactical restrictions not working.. So all three PT specs and VG specs can use Superheated fuel, that also makes meteor brawler's aoe a super crit. This is absurd, really should not even work like that. If restrictions just worked a lot of issues would be fixed. For example marauder can aoe obfuscate every 10-14s with dual saber throw with juggernauts 'throwing arm' tactical. Granted some tacticals are actually nice to use that are meant for another class, for example aoe force crush on rage. This really needs a fix soon.

 

Then viral elements is hitting the same target you initially hit with backstab again with it's aoe proc. Making some surprising amount of single target burst. This is clearly not how it's meant to work.

 

As for balancing I could go on for a while but.

Something that's most important at the moment is how much AoE is done now, it absolutely shreds tanks. One for example viral elements would hit a tank 6x times if they're guarding the target of someone using viral elements. Meteor brawler hitting 60-110k aoes a tank getting hit by that and with a guard on someone meaning they can take nearly 150k in one explosion, that's not including any gcd that could be used during it.

 

Now those might seem strong with just one person doing it, but you can stack these... Which brings up next thing that needs attention. Class stacking in solos, it absolutely ruins the experience. Nobody should have to go against 4 assassins or operatives, or a mix of only those two.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is a strong horrible feeling around Ranked PVP that unless you are brilliant you're not welcome.

 

Which is exactly why I never joined Ranked.

 

It's a nearly closed circle now.

And what is called "trash talking" is in my opinion nothing but a way to scare away and to keep more competors out.

Less competitors = more chances to win.

 

And what's even worse is those brlliant players trying to ruin Unranked, too.

Edited by AlrikFassbauer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

  • Mixing up seasonal variety
  • More Matchmaking improvements
  • More choice in picking or excluding certain maps or game types
  • Re-examining Group Ranked
  • Balance Issues
  • Vote kicking abuses

 

 

Sorry but this issues should've solved before season started.

 

About matchmaking improvements last season was a total **** show and we still see same **** show is in game with healer tank backfill or class stacking vs. You had a post about matchmaking ideas last season and i see you didnt even checked it later as always. Matchmaking issues should've solves last season and we shouldnt even talk about it now you had enough time but as always you did nothing it is a big issue of BW. You let terrible matchmaking last more than a year and you didnt even try to adress it before season start and now you are talking about it like you did last season so i can see nothing gonna happen again.

 

Balance issues are big problem now your team didnt listen feedbacks in pts and you started season with terrible balance. You should adress balance issues before season and you had 2 long months to do that. As always did nothing and i dont see a positiv change in near future too.

 

And you started season while some classes most important tactical that can make that class maybe a little viable in SR locked in rng vendor. I am talking about juggernauts Embrace the pain tactical and we are talking about worst class in SR at the point. And same classes one of the most important utility is still bugged although BW announced it is fixed but again not working.

 

SWTOR 8th year is anniversart is coming but still havent learned a thing how to run a MMO. I see this post like your and musco's previous posts where you just make a post just for damage control and do nothing after that. There are tens of post like this and some of them yours and still nothing is happaning like your big class balance and matchmaking posts last season. It will be the same and you will lose players in ranked arenas faster this year.

 

P.S. Also how about horrible desync? Any plan to fix it or will act like it doesnt exists as always? Sorry but i dont believe you and BW this is just a PR post that will be ignored seconds after it is posted.

Edited by omeru
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any thoughts on making ranked comms legacy bound?

 

Yeah actually waiting for more information about it too because even with gold you get only 30k tokens + you need 100 wins it's going to be really hard to buy rewards.

So making ranked comms legacy bound will be better for us I think. Even if we need 100 wins, with 3 characs gold you have 90k + weekly/daily so you have 110k at the end of the season but it's still not a lot when you see prices of rewards

 

With 30k tokens you can't do anything acutally

Edited by andrejderkrieger
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Guardian / Juggernaut force leap cooldown reduction utility is still broken, the patch that was supposed to fix it only made it so the cooldown gets reduced but the game won't let you jump until the normal cooldown without the utility happens (meaning you might as well not take this useless utility, since you have to wait the full time already).

 

This also happens with force push reset of force leap, it waits until your force leap is off normal cooldown. "Charges" have completely broken this ability. Why don't you guys just revert it, force leap doesn't need charges since it's so broken now. I even preferred the old UI, rather than the charges one.

 

2) Juggernaut / Guardian Enraged Defense scaling is also broken moving from level 70 to 75. Enraged Defense is healing half the amount it should at level 75.

Edited by RACATW
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is a strong horrible feeling around Ranked PVP that unless you are brilliant you're not welcome.

 

This, as terrible as it sounds, is unfortunately very true. I thought a lot about it, how other games handle it and how specifically SWTOR in it's current state could improve on that issue. But whatever idea was presented to me or I could come up with myself wouldn't be able to seize the root of the problem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I see most of you still refuse to understand.. that there won't be any major changes to PVP or ranked ever because no one is going to redesign the classes or the system so that they work in this ***show of a minigame that 10% of total player base actually plays.

 

It's been almost 8 years and the same problems are still here. So based on this, what are the odds that anything posted here will be addressed ever ?

 

Dsync, class stacking, some classes/specs are just garbage in ranked = autoloss - easy first kills . There are god specs and victim specs. A lot of class specs are fun to play but are totally inferior in arena type of competition and you will just drag the team down just by being such a class.

 

Class stacking ? yes.. 4 stealth vs non stealth, ranged vs melee and the list can go on . There were tons of threads/ posts about it = still didn't get fixed .

 

Matchmaking ? I see a lot of complaints here.. but it seems it ain't getting better either. Sadly the truth is that no matter what changes they make, the game just cannot control who you get in the team because the game doesn't know that player x is trash... or player y is a pvp god. It just makes games based on what 's in que = 2 player x in oen team and maybe 3 player y and one player x in the 2nd team = the outcome is pretty clear. Then we complain about matchmaking..

 

Oh an class balance ? DPS can guard, some can double vanish, taunt, we can swap tacticals which is good only for classes that can vanish = pretty fair, yes ? Classes with endless self heals have crazy dps and stealth too on top of that, spike, maul maul.. this is the e= mc2 of PVP at the moment.

 

So bottom line is. It will be fixed.. yes in 3 years they will nerf sins opers and they gonna buff juggs pt;s and then we are going to whine about them being too OP and how broken and what a joke it is.. so it's a never ending running in circles basically with the false illusion of changes coming. Changes.. like with the recent crafting ones, changes that don't fix *** but at least we can't complain they haven't done anything.

 

Release the expansion in the way no one wants so you can spend 3 years to fix after dozens of threads on PTS forums telling what to do.

 

Peace and have a nice Sunday . ;)

 

PS: In 5.0 they nerfed mercs in the end.. but they also nerfed other classes that didn't need any changes so nothing really changed.

Edited by DavidAtkinson
Link to comment
Share on other sites

After we saw well known botter with his shiny season 11 top 3 flair do you really expect us to believe you?

 

The fact devs can't trace ALL bots used in ranked (not only the simplest bots but more sophisticated bots) proves that ranked is doomed. The end.

Edited by omaan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then why you still play it ? Season 12 and the same problems are present.... you think it will ever chance ? Unlikely

 

Iam answering to a guy who cares. As for me, every time i see bot ruining my games i just record it, making screenshots and making ticket/sending mail to pvp reports swtor mailbox with screenshots, video and brief explanation what happened. Everything devs do or don't do after is not my concern or in my power. I know that devs banning most obvious bot users who are using simple dumb programs but missing more complicated scripted and programmed bots which are hidden behind virtual machines. As long as devs aren't able to trace these there is no sense to hope something will change so i was surprised the guy i quoted still writes about it

Edited by omaan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...