Pretty sure they're referring to the theorycrafter discord. I don't recall anyone specifically requesting lockouts for regs, or really anything for regs. Nearly all the pvp feedback on there relates to ranked.

Did everyone read this? We have much bigger issues than what is going on in this thread if this is the case. What an arrogant ****!

Pretty sure they're referring to the theorycrafter discord. I don't recall anyone specifically requesting lockouts for regs, or really anything for regs. Nearly all the pvp feedback on there relates to ranked.

Interesting...

Imagine those those toxic idiots you meet in ranked giving feedback to the devs on discord.... I am so relieved now. The game is in good hands and those people are giving the best feedback possible.

Probably that's the reason of those multiple threads on steam forums about people getting banned for no reason at all just because they pissed off some ranked 12 year old meme player.

Lets say the devs bow down and revert the changes back to the way they were:

 

1) queue pops

2) log into match

3) people observe who on team and opposing team

4) leaving begins (no lockout)

5) start at a disadvantage and pray to the SWTOR gods that you get some good backfill to help

6) get rolled

7) receive that 1 gimme participation point for playing (only have 19 more to go yay!!)

Instead you want to go to/stay at (we will start at 4):

4) Your team starts getting rolled for various reasons (bad, inexperienced, opposing premade, bad matchmaking, or just don't care).

5) A good portion or your team decides to just sit in a corner/give up.

6) You get rolled some more.

7) You get stuck in a match for 5-10 minutes, or more, depending on if the other team decides to pad their numbers.

8) Receive nothing for having to spend that time with AFKers/quitters/what have you.

In regs, there is nothing that they provide that can't be gotten by other methods with a lot less aggravation. Perhaps some crafting items but, if I remember right, those only come from ranked. Even if I am wrong, the items created aren't really needed for anything other than ego.

People use the analogy of a participation trophy, and that is a bad comparison. Why? Because those receiving the trophies generally aren't paying customers. Customers that want to see some sort of return on the money that they're spending.

So some sort of carrot has to be offered or people will stop doing WZs. Instead what is offered is two sticks in the forms of a lockout or not making progression in the weekly/daily.

Here's something to ask yourself "Did these changes make PvPing enjoyable to the average player and entice them in, or did they drive more people off?"

For me, these changes made PvP less enjoyable and I've been PvPing in this game, with a few breaks here and there, since right after it launched.

So that is why I'm done with PvP in this game.

Did everyone read this? We have much bigger issues than what is going on in this thread if this is the case. What an arrogant ****!

I mean, not much need to be as... repetitive on your speech. The point was made, and while I personnally like the tone, I doubt peoples will understand the sarcasm if you make too much of it

Tbh I'm impressed if said theorycrafter discord managed to pull this off and have one or more devs on board. Last time we tried that was when we were launching some class-specific discord servers, and some of us tried to invite devs to the Shadow/Sin discord. Didn't work then, and I think that the server's dead now anyway. So props to them if they indeed managed to do what was previously impossible.

Anyway, if what Alex said is true, then this doesn't change things much, as it means that this potential discord isn't what caused all of these issues in regs, so no need to continue on this topic.

Still, funny to see that the problem has been getting worse, with that peoples need to git gud. No matter if that's ranked or regs, the skill level has dropped way too low since even 5.0 with meme-mercs&co

Again, maybe if we had a bigger player pool in PvP we could begin to see decent pvpers again, which would raise the overall skill level, reduce premades whining threads, all that stuff. But currently, there is no rewards worth doing in regs, at least for the casuals (which are what fuels unranked PvP. Let's not forget that for maybe 20% of good players, there is always 80% of players who are just worse, but this 80% is what makes PvP alive and well).

And casuals will not play in a game if they can't get at least something to make them forget that they got stomped.

5.0 tried to make peoples into pvp by giving easy gear and tokens at the time, it didn't work exactly as planned. So we already know that "gearing fast" isn't a reward in itself for unranked, at least not the only one it needs. We need something more, at least to keep unranked in an overall better shape (which will in turn keep ranked alive as well for more than the few old timers who are not yet burnt out) and to bring new and better competition.

Imagine those those toxic idiots you meet in ranked giving feedback to the devs on discord.... I am so relieved now. The game is in good hands and those people are giving the best feedback possible.

This is indeed a problem on some topics. Every few weeks one of the babies on there has a tantrum that vote kick was removed. They so badly want it back to bully people out of the queue, and I'm one of the few to argue against them a lot of times.

In the bigger picture, it's not like Bioware just does whatever people suggest in the discord, especially because opinions can vary drastically. I think Chris does absorb a decent amount of feedback, but ultimately it's always Bioware's decision to do what they want. I don't believe they've ever pandered to players just for the sake of it, which is probably a good thing overall.

If I PvP from now on, its with my friends in tow. 4 man objective focused premades seem rare these days.

Or, you could just disengage from PvP entirely like I did. The game is actually better without it, imho. So much less frustration and toxicity, and you'll no longer care if Bioware is listening and actually addressing PvP issues anymore. In other words, stop expecting anything from them and you won't be disappointed when they fail to deliver.

But, as I've said before, there are times when I miss it. Especially with quality players. Unfortunately, players such as yourself are very much in the minority of the player base at this point.

Or, you could just disengage from PvP entirely like I did. The game is actually better without it, imho.

But like, what's left to do without PvP.

Raids are useless once you've cleared them once in the highest difficulty, there is absolutely no new content added.

Sure you could... Do flashpoints. Level your 80th reroll. Buy cartel coins to get new housing items. Buy cartel coins to get cosmetic gear. Or have a chat with peoples on the foru-... Oh I see.

4. Once you implement all of those 3 ideas together, you can then use the revamped medal / points system to add extra win points (and possibly rewards) to players who excel. So even if someone is on a losing team, they may still get as many points towards their missions (or extra rewards) as someone who wasn’t as good on the winning team.

Variable depending on the warzone, you get winner points on the losing team if you have XXX objective points. If BW made even that one change it would help a lot.

Pretty sure they're referring to the theorycrafter discord. I don't recall anyone specifically requesting lockouts for regs, or really anything for regs. Nearly all the pvp feedback on there relates to ranked.

I'd believe this conspiracy theory considering they made unranked more like ranked now.

I'd believe this conspiracy theory considering they made unranked more like ranked now.

I'm not sure how it's a conspiracy theory. The pvpers on the theorycrafter discord are largely ranked players, which only makes sense. Ranked is the endgame pvp in this game, and it's not like you really need theorycrafting for regs (not that there's anything wrong with optimizing for regs).

This is partially speculation, but I think it was just a philosophical shift on Bioware's part. They saw the numbers and concluded that too many people were leaving warzones, and they didn't like it. I think it had very little to do with player feedback altogether.

I had to take a step back....I do not want to derail this thread from the OP's original topic but I did want to give everyone a little scenario:

There is this baseball player named Ted and Ted is playing during the steroid era of MLB. Ted is a great baseball player, obviously, but wants to be better. Well, as a result of some "juice", average Ted becomes known as Mongo. Now Mongo is absolutely destroying the baseball!!! Team winning and Mongo is reaping all the rewards and benefits. Mongo is loving life!

The other players in the league are starting to take notice. They start questioning Mongo and questioning whether or not the playing field is equal. Well, pretty soon MLB is forced to get involved. Mongo no like!! So Mongo and a couple of his buddies, who are doing the same thing, decide they need to have a meeting with the Comish of MLB. In that meeting, Mongo and the boys tell the ole Commissioner that the other players really don't know what they talking about....BUT....don't sweat it.....Mongo and his boys will help out. WE can tell you what needs to be done to fix the league!

Well, the commissioner, who was absolutely enamored with Mongo and the boys decide to just turn the other cheek, make a few itsy bitsy changes to try and appease the rest of the players in the league, but....in reality....nothing really changed.

In real life, MLB rooted out the Mongos of the league. They frowned upon the behavior and strived for a level playing field. Unfortunately, in the scenario described.....that did not happen.

If a meeting like that occurred, shame on you all! In a competitive venue such as ranked, it has to be overseen by an impartial entity. Perception is not always reality but damn....sure seems shady.

This is partially speculation, but I think it was just a philosophical shift on Bioware's part. They saw the numbers and concluded that too many people were leaving warzones, and they didn't like it. I think it had very little to do with player feedback altogether.

It has been many times that we've been granted with a "We're Bioware, we're monitoring data", or "They have the numbers".

One would think that with all this data, they could deduce proper solutions or even see the proper issue regarding a specific gamemode. Or even talk to the players to make sure that everybody is on the same page.

As I don't want to sound especially mean to Jackie and other community team members, but it's a shame that peoples on the Bioware Team are so... reluctant to give answers. Well sure it's hard to talk on the forums, that I get. But I'm not sure they risk to piss off the playerbase anymore by saying "we're working on stuff", or simply "we have no plan to fix this". Sure, it takes time to gather data, but seeing the current (slow) patch schedule, you often don't need this much time to see what is wrong.

ESO's CM were kinda good with this on Discord last I checked, with players having answers when they suggested features or change that wouldn't be implemented, or when changes were indeed coming.

But I may be too optimistic.

One would think that with all this data, they could deduce proper solutions or even see the proper issue regarding a specific gamemode. Or even talk to the players to make sure that everybody is on the same page.

Lockout timer IS the proper solution. There's a reason why games use that feautre. WoW has had it for 17 years and its worked out fine. Games that don't have it people abuse the crap out of it bouncing from match to match looking for their carry.

One would think that with all this data, they could deduce proper solutions or even see the proper issue regarding a specific gamemode. Or even talk to the players to make sure that everybody is on the same page.

But there's a missing piece here that players don't always want to hear. Even though many of you hate the feature...Bioware might be right. Some people have reported anecodotal experiences that pvp is popping less or that people are leaving nearly as frequently, etc, etc. But Bioware presumably has those numbers as well. I'm sure they'll look at them, and maybe the new lockouts really have hurt pvp. Or maybe they haven't. Players don't have any real idea how a feature like this has actually impacted pvp, especially when they're biased based on their own dislike for it.

Lockout timer IS the proper solution. There's a reason why games use that feautre. WoW has had it for 17 years and its worked out fine. Games that don't have it people abuse the crap out of it bouncing from match to match looking for their carry.

Yes, but wow also gives you the ability to choose maps, can tell when you DC vs rage quit and doesn’t have the performance issues that swtor has. It also doesn’t lock you out on all your characters (at least it didn’t used too, I don’t know if it’s changed).

In “theory” the lockout is a good idea, but not in isolation by itself and not without fixing or at least addressing the reasons people were rage quitting. Theory is not always reflected in a positive result. Sometimes a good idea ends up being bad because of how it was implemented or because it was implemented in isolation or at the wrong time.

IMO, the lockout is too harsh in its current “Legacy wide” incarnation for regs.

If Bioware can make changes that have been suggested in this thread, then there is a place for the lockout. But at the moment they don’t seem to even want to discuss their “monitoring” or “adjustments” they could make.

It’s slowly killing off participation in regs and that doesn’t bode well. They need to make some of these adjustments sooner rather than later. And mostly staying quiet while this discussion has been going on for months now isn’t helping players feel confident Bioware are listening or even care.

But there's a missing piece here that players don't always want to hear. Even though many of you hate the feature...Bioware might be right. Some people have reported anecodotal experiences that pvp is popping less or that people are leaving nearly as frequently, etc, etc. But Bioware presumably has those numbers as well. I'm sure they'll look at them, and maybe the new lockouts really have hurt pvp. Or maybe they haven't. Players don't have any real idea how a feature like this has actually impacted pvp, especially when they're biased based on their own dislike for it.

You are right, but It would be great if they’d actually talk to us about the situation and the monitoring they said they were going to do. That would stop a lot of conjecture and guessing or anecdotal evidence needing to be used.

It’s obvious from the feed back that a portion (and none of us know how much) of the pvp population don’t like these changes and have stopped playing.

Some two way engagement directly from ChrisS (On the forums ) is probably needed at this point so everyone knows where we stand and wether some of us just need to give up on swtor pvp for good because Biowares vision for pvp isn’t for us.

My problem is primarily with this portion. I couldn't care less with what BW do to NiM or ranked as long as they keep it from affecting me. And they refuse to talk about issues that I care about, and are actively making my life miserable to favor said NiMers and ranked overlords. So by speaking to sycophants in a vacuum they are ignoring what I assume is the larger part of the player base: those of us too busy (or pissed off by their stupidity being an additional constraint in my case) to partake of these game modes. (The time constraint is more an issue for NiM, the pissed off personally is directed at ranked PvP).

None of this makes any sense. Bioware didn't make any of the changes to regs to appease ranked players. That's just something you made up for some unknown reason.

My problem is primarily with this portion. I couldn't care less with what BW do to NiM or ranked as long as they keep it from affecting me. And they refuse to talk about issues that I care about, and are actively making my life miserable to favor said NiMers and ranked overlords. So by speaking to sycophants in a vacuum they are ignoring what I assume is the larger part of the player base: those of us too busy (or pissed off by their stupidity being an additional constraint in my case) to partake of these game modes. (The time constraint is more an issue for NiM, the pissed off personally is directed at ranked PvP).

 

I also feel feedback and communication with BW should come primarily through BW administered channels. purely hypothetically speaking, if a third party moderated channel wished to dictate, emphasize, or even block certain topics, discussions, or players they can.

 

I happen to feel that the feedback provided by ranked players about ranked was seen as a good idea and then wantonly applied to the rest of us, with little regard to how the rest of us happen to feel or think about it; and I admit perhaps unfairly, extrapolate that to my opinion on NiM.

 

Honestly, I'm very unhappy with BW on all fronts. I'm a long time player, came to SWTOR through the knights of the old republic and first 3 mass effect titles, and have done most content this game currently offers. I have little interest in progressing further than I have PvE wise, and frankly my mental health cannot tolerate ranked (im making this about me on purpose here, please leave out the mad cause bad comments). I consider myself perfectly good at what I do, and I have little need or desire to have anyone other than myself and my friends validate that for me. But I deserve to have a say in issues that impact me as much as any NiMer or ranked player.

 

If they desire to take NiMers or ranked players feedback more seriously than mine, please half my subscription so that they provide more value than I do as well.

This is one of the many reasons that forums are garbage. None of the NiM or ranked players made your life miserable in any way. Most of the topics discussed in the discord about pvp, is class stacking, class balance, matchmaking...

Discord isn't the only way they gathered feedback, it's one of many... You people complain they don't listen and don't communicate and when they do, you still complain why they didn't listen to 'YOU'. None of the suggestions or feedback is related to regs, or hm or rp or etc. It is for the NiM and ranked pvp and made by NiM or Ranked player , which it should. On the forums you can't even make a suggestion without some rpers saying I want this, this, cause lore, my needs , which it isn't about combat at all.

One of your own fellow forumers trixxespam and few others suggested the deserter buff in the first place if that's what is complaining about. How people don't care about objectives only farming numbers etc.

And in the end, it was BioWare's choices to implement them. Such as in forums. Not anybody's fault, not those who is in discord, not those whose in forums if there is even a fault.

Yes, but wow also gives you the ability to choose maps, can tell when you DC vs rage quit and doesn’t have the performance issues that swtor has. It also doesn’t lock you out on all your characters (at least it didn’t used too, I don’t know if it’s changed).

They allow you to filter two maps. Any more than that and you get zero rewards. I personally am against a map filter though. The way warzone queues are now it ensures all maps get played. Map filter would just kill off the less popular maps that some people may actually like.

The one time I got a DC from WoW I still had the lockout timer, so I doubt WoW can tell the difference between a legitimate DC and a rage quit.

I don't know if the lockouts are account wide or not. If they are not they should be.

In “theory” the lockout is a good idea, but not in isolation by itself and not without fixing or at least addressing the reasons people were rage quitting. Theory is not always reflected in a positive result. Sometimes a good idea ends up being bad because of how it was implemented or because it was implemented in isolation or at the wrong time.

There's not one good reason for rage quitting. Play out the map and move on.

IMO, the lockout is too harsh in its current “Legacy wide” incarnation for regs.

Don't rage quit, problem solved. If you're having connection problems then fix your internet first. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been DC'd from swtor and I've been playing since beta and 3 of those occasions were power outages.

But at the moment they don’t seem to even want to discuss their “monitoring” or “adjustments” they could make.

Because there's nothing to really discuss. Quitting warzones was abused for years. It took them too long to fix it, but they finally stepped up and added a proper punishment for it.

It’s slowly killing off participation in regs and that doesn’t bode well.

Complete nonsense. Queue times have been popping just as consistently as they were a few months ago when I was last subbed and I guarantee they will continue to pop at the same rate during the time I stay subbed for the next 2 or 3 months while I wait for the next update for FFXIV which is probably going to be the expansion announcement and whenever my next break is and come back here will probably still be fine with the queues.

Its only an issue for you because you play during off hours a lot, which news flash is normal for any game. Even in WoW the pvp queue drops into 30+ minute wait times in the middle of the night and they have cross servers.

None of this makes any sense. Bioware didn't make any of the changes to regs to appease ranked players. That's just something you made up for some unknown reason.

Yeah, I have to agree with Alex here. I’ll admit even though Riku banned me there, I still loiter and read stuff without ever posting again. It’s very eye opening as to what’s discussed in the pvp channel and the rest of the discord server is an excellent place to learn stuff or get insights to things like theory crafting BiS stats or which amps give the best bang for your buck.

If you read back through all of ChrisS posts on the Pvp discord channel, you can see that reg pvp is not discussed at all. And the majority of posts he makes have to do with bugs, win trade / cheats, matchmaking and questions regarding how the systems work to add x to y, etc to help the theory crafters out.

There is even some insight occasionally on why some decisions are made to do with ranked. He also calls out some of the crap some guys post there and is more frank than he can be here on the official forums.

The only post I every saw that Chris specifically mentions regs was when he typed regs??? To see if someone was talking about that instead of ranked.

And after you read all 50 pages of his comments, you can see that he ignores or filters out 95% of the elitist ranked rubbish that’s can be posted there. Which isn’t much different to here. The difference is there you can have a two way conversation with him (if you are allowed by a certain mod ) that you can’t have here. Which is a shame because he could put an end to so many of these threads by discussing the topics with us here.

A lot of what Alex posts here about vote kicking is nearly exactly what ChrisS has said himself on discord. And you should see all the whining on there from some more well “known” forum players who want it back so they can abuse it and they can’t accept its better off gone. Alex is actually the voice of reason on that topic, but his reasoning is based on the info from ChrisS.

The situation on the discord isn’t perfect. It’s anything but perfect that it’s run the way it is by a certain mod. It’s also not great that discussing or improving reg pvp is a good way to get yelled at or booted from the server. So I can say with enough confidence that ranked guys over there aren’t telling ChrisS what to do in regs. Its more that ranked is all that’s discussed in the pvp channel, so any changes to ranked seem to just filter through to regs like an after thought, the ranked guys aren’t specifically asking or demanding anything for regs.

Its more that ranked is all that’s discussed in the pvp channel, so any changes to ranked seem to just filter through to regs like an after thought.q the ranked guys aren’t specifically asking or demanding anything for regs.

Man its almost like, exactly what I said was happening, where an effort to prop up solo ranked and keep it going was crapping up other (more popular) aspects of the game.

They allow you to filter two maps. Any more than that and you get zero rewards. I personally am against a map filter though. The way warzone queues are now it ensures all maps get played. Map filter would just kill off the less popular maps that some people may actually like.

 

The one time I got a DC from WoW I still had the lockout timer, so I doubt WoW can tell the difference between a legitimate DC and a rage quit.

 

I don't know if the lockouts are account wide or not. If they are not they should be.

 

There's not one good reason for rage quitting. Play out the map and move on.

 

Don't rage quit, problem solved. If you're having connection problems then fix your internet first. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been DC'd from swtor and I've been playing since beta and 3 of those occasions were power outages.

 

Because there's nothing to really discuss. Quitting warzones was abused for years. It took them too long to fix it, but they finally stepped up and added a proper punishment for it.

 

Complete nonsense. Queue times have been popping just as consistently as they were a few months ago when I was last subbed and I guarantee they will continue to pop at the same rate during the time I stay subbed for the next 2 or 3 months while I wait for the next update for FFXIV which is probably going to be the expansion announcement and whenever my next break is and come back here will probably still be fine with the queues.

 

Its only an issue for you because you play during off hours a lot, which news flash is normal for any game. Even in WoW the pvp queue drops into 30+ minute wait times in the middle of the night and they have cross servers.

Have you read any of my other posts in this thread or just the ones on this last page? I know you like to play forum pvp with me, but if you’d read any of the other posts you see that my problem with the lockouts are not about rage quitting as such.

I’ve not played WoW for a while, but I do remember they used to have a map of the day or week or something like that tied to the quests and rewards, as well as a random queue. Do they still have that system to encourage people to play specific maps of the week/day or join the full random queue for better rewards?

I think something like that would work here with a “limited” choice selection. I agree with you that a full map choice probably wouldn’t be good for this game, especially now with less people than we had years ago and the population to support it.

As for DCing, well bud, you don’t live on the other side of the world or have to deal with crappy ping. You probably have really good internet where you are and might even live near the servers for all we know. That doesn’t mean everyone has your experience, the same as you don’t have ours. A little empathy from you towards other player’s situations wouldn’t go astray here.

Also your opinion on population is as valid as the rest of ours because it’s just as anecdotal on what you see or experience. Which is why I would love nothing better than Bioware to open the floor to this discussion and talk to us about what they are tracking. And you maybe right, maybe the population hasn’t changed when you play and it may have even gone up for all we know. I’ve not been pvping since xmas because of the changes (so I can’t even say).

And thats not only due to the lockout, which I could live with if it was only that, but because of the win only policy that goes along with it, the broken or unfair matchmaking that gets worse when there are less players and the Games perfomance issues that never seem to get better, only worse, even when my internet is as stable and perfect as it can get playing with the distance handicap and WTFast.

But what is undeniable is there are players (I can’t say how many and neither can you) who have stopped playing pvp because of these changes and there have been more than 10 largish threads on this topic since they made the changes. Both here and in the general section where you usually see the more casual pvpers post.

Some of the comments of how it’s turning off old and new players should ring alarm bells for any developer to then monitor it more closely and discuss with the players.

1. Because it’s not officially run, so the mods get to choose who the “in crowd” is or if they have a beef with you personally, they boot you, like Riku did to me. It comes across as bullying and elitism.

There has recently been a leader with an orange trademark style, he also claimed he was bullied when he broke the rules and got moderated off a few social platforms, guess you share some similarities

Yeah, I have to agree with Alex here. I’ll admit even though Riku banned me there, I still loiter and read stuff without ever posting again. It’s very eye opening as to what’s discussed in the pvp channel and the rest of the discord server is an excellent place to learn stuff or get insights to things like theory crafting BiS stats or which amps give the best bang for your buck.

happy to have you accept the rules that we use on that discord, you are free to contribute as you wish, we just want to avoid soapboxing that happens here on the forums

the theorycrafting discord is happy to accommodate more regs focused discussions and we are/have considered taking steps to promote that further, but it seems in general that most players who run that are far more casual and don't really spend that much time discussing that topic on different social platforms (unless for complaints, very few constructive discussions).

happy to have you accept the rules that we use on that discord, you are free to contribute as you wish, we just want to avoid soapboxing that happens here on the forums

 

the theorycrafting discord is happy to accommodate more regs focused discussions and we are/have considered taking steps to promote that further, but it seems in general that most players who run that are far more casual and don't really spend that much time discussing that topic on different social platforms (unless for complaints, very few constructive discussions).

I’ll happily keep loitering and not posting. That way I can’t get accused of anything, but I can also see both sides of what’s happening and stay better informed.

I do have one suggestion if you are really serious about promoting discussion on regs over there. Have a seperate pvp reg channel and ranked channel or call it objective pvp channel or something so the casuals or objective players can talk without derision and can stay out of ranked drama that is often discussed.