Heh, 80 you say? I know what you mean, though it takes an obscenely miserable warzone to make me quit a WZ. I've been averaging 50 per match. Today we had healers and I've been averaging 70-80. Didn't see how many I got for today's single win, I was too shocked.

 

And here's the result of the most fun warzone I've ever had in SWTOR. It went back and forth...

 

That top image looked like an aweful time, I would've enjoyed the second match, win or lose. But alas, BW doesn't see that as a problem with the first match-up or they would have done something about it. Some of the hard-core pvpr's don't see the problem either and would rather they get their coms and valor regardless of the match-up.

Edited October 17, 2012 by iSoldat

I disagree.Nothing more to add.Learn to pvp as a group.Duel friends.Get better.Use stims.Play often.

They need to make pvp cross server and any group two plus gets put in a premade queue. This would allow all numbers of premised groups to be put together to make 8v8.

 

That way the premades can get the competition they so crave by going against other groups.

 

Yes, I would be lumped into that most of the time as well since I pvp with my friends.

I like to run with at least one friend when I pvp so that I know there will be at least one other person I can count on to be doing what is suppose to be done to win the game, you would be amazed how much of a difference one other person you can count on will make.

 

Whether I solo q or q with a friend or two, I very rarely queue with a full group of four but it does happen sometimes, the wait period is never more then 10 minutes and that is after midnight, during prime time its usually around a two to three minute wait with a rare longer wait from time to time.

 

I am only here posting because I have some time to kill before bed, and got tired of pvp after a few games of watching people over commit to objectives or ignore them completely. The breaking point was watching a guy spend two minutes pounding on a dps while a sage stood 15 meters away healing him completely unmolested by anyone but me, this is after I marked him and called him out as a healer, but tanks have a bit of trouble burning down guarded healers alone.

Id rather face a premade on Civil War than a pug group, why?

 

Because those ive met dont quit at (i.e 150-320) its so lame having to go to the enemys medal farm to get some action for a good 5minutes.

 

Some pugs are a bunch of horribads and should not be allowed to get on the internet, I even like leavers more than these kinds

Automated matchmaking is never perfect, but damn it there are all kinds statistics that can be measured and it can be done pretty well instead of just rolling the dice. Let's just choose one at random, say, GEAR LEVEL. Or MAXIMUM HEALTH. Or PRIMARY STAT. What a concept.

 

Anything that is implemented that will make queue times take longer will be problematic for this game. The time between warzone pops is, like the OP stated, steadily increasing, something many people in both my guild and in general chat have been noticing. It's not particularly bad right now but this is exactly the trend that happened on many servers in the spring: near instant pops became a few minutes wait then a 5 minute wait then a 10 minute wait and so on. By mid-May PVP was all but dead on a large number of servers due to this snowball effect. Anything that causes or contributes to this being repeated should be avoided.

 

So instead of matching people by valor, gear, primary stats and what not, because this will likely lead to less warzones all around, I think that Bioware should institute some sort of reward system that encourages people to group up, perhaps a 30% increase to commendations or something of that nature if you queue up as a group of four.

I know right! fancy wanting to pvp with your mates instead of nubsters that wear pve gear.... the sheer gore of them... A mmo where you want to play with friends thats just crazy talk!!

 

What they need to do is let you q with as many as you want regardless of ranked or normal that way no nubsters in crap gear or nubsters off doing their own thing or unbalanced groups.... I know I know the care bears will get upset.... now if you struggle to have no friends in a mmo to play with I think you have more problems than worrying about premades in pvp.

I do not agree with OP that wz activity is dropping. On shadowlands que pops every 5 minutes for regular wz and there is an active ranked community thanks to ID(infinite Darkness) deciding that they would stop rolling everyone and create split teams with invites for geared players who are decent or above. Another thing I am noticing is as time goes on, players are getting better geared and there are more skilled players in pug matches. If you see an obvious mismatch, the solution is simple, defend your home node and force them to attack you there. I sometimes have more fun in losing matches than in winning matches because i no longer feel obligated to complete objectives. And when you do get a good pug its very refreshing. If you get unlucky and have say 3 recruit players you can always just leave and let them farm medals for gear while moving on to a more worthwhile match.

1.Stop farming recruits

 

2. Go back to Rated

 

3.You will find competition there.

 

4.Profit???

Lets look at the evidence so far - 10 months into the game.

 

There are actually very few pre-mades, however, they tend to play continuously so, as a solo player, you have a high probability of meeting them.

A special WZ system was set up specifically for pre-mades (ranked), however the queue times are long - confirming that they are too few to have a system of their own. Therefore they queue in unranked and face roll the solo and lowbie 4 mans.

A large number of solo players either no longer do PvP or have left the game as its no fun to be face rolled continually.

 

So - for the sake of a few players a larger proportion no longer queue, making queue times for those that do queue longer. And people leave the game. EA loses subscriptions of many, to keep a few happy - seems a pretty awful business case to me.

 

Of course there are many who will state that solo players are useless and unimportant and we should all join pre-mades, thats because they know without the soloers they would rarely get to play, totally ignoring the fact that the soloers will eventually get fed up with being face rolled and leave either pvp or the game anyway.

 

The system is called PvP, this stands for PLAYER vs PLAYER, not T V T (Team vs Team), or RvR (realm vs Realm), or even PM vs PM (pre-made vs Pre-made) i.e. The "its a team game" argument is spurious.

 

I strongly believe that people who want to play Pre-made vs Pre-made should have a system to do so, equally I believe it is also fair to provide a solo'ers only system, I think we all know who's queue will take longer to pop.

 

I,m not sure which BW/EA understands less, Customer service, PvP gameplay (I think PvE is pretty good, although limited in terms of volume) or Business, as far as I can see they score pretty low on all three,

I do not agree with OP that wz activity is dropping. On shadowlands que pops every 5 minutes for regular wz and there is an active ranked community thanks to ID(infinite Darkness) deciding that they would stop rolling everyone and create split teams with invites for geared players who are decent or above. Another thing I am noticing is as time goes on, players are getting better geared and there are more skilled players in pug matches. If you see an obvious mismatch, the solution is simple, defend your home node and force them to attack you there. I sometimes have more fun in losing matches than in winning matches because i no longer feel obligated to complete objectives. And when you do get a good pug its very refreshing. If you get unlucky and have say 3 recruit players you can always just leave and let them farm medals for gear while moving on to a more worthwhile match.

 

It is slowly getting worse on shadowlands as well. Just like last 2 times before ea merger, the ques start taking a bit longer to pop (like in the early am at this point) then that slowly cycles thru the whole day until ques get to be 10 to 20 mins or so. Then youll see a ton more premade vs non premade threads since there are more non premade ppl dropping subs and voia that leads to more and more ppl dropping subs and so on a big ol hairy circle of death for bw. Not really sure if BW has a prayer to stop it at this juncture. Hopefully the f2p will work, but it seems theyre doing it halfassed trying to draw blood from the turnip so to speak, so I dont hold much hope in that.

I quickly stop queueing when I repeatedly face the same team, which is composed of largely the same premade, and we're getting roflstomped.

 

Last night there was a guild fielding 4 faceroll sentinels against which we were matched up three times in a row. Individually you could pick them off no problem (for obvious reasons we were far more competitive in huttball because of this). But they moved in a pack, and with a mismatched pug group with several undergeared people, they were basically able to pick us off at will. I certainly don't mind dying, but getting crushed by four guys over and over because my team was poorly composed and poorly coordinated.... it stopped being interesting or fun rather quickly.

 

I don't have a very good solution here. I agree that anything discouraging people to queue is entirely counterproductive. In WoW (or at least Lich King WoW), the effect of premades would be somewhat diluted by the fact that the map cycle included maps of different sizes. Even if you faced a premade in Arathi Basin or WSG, the next map would be Strand of the Ancients or Alterac Valley. At least you wouldn't get stuck being killed by the same lolravage group of sentinels over and over. In the end that doesn't really help with the fact that you're being matched with undergeared or incompetent players however, it only dilutes the effect.

1.Stop farming recruits

 

2. Go back to Rated

 

3.You will find competition there.

 

4.Profit???

 

If only it were that easy.

 

I prefer to group than solo queue as it enhances my experience in a warzone. I like playing with players who understand their rolls and play objectives. Now I do solo queue and I do fight against premades and its not like they win every single time. Heck when we are in a group most of the time we don't even get in TS as we know what to do. I do not think we have enough pvpers logging on at least once a week to run rateds and I wish we did as I rather do them.

No, apart from the retarded amount of CC (that is what's really ruining warzones) the worst thing is the lack of healers on Republic side on my server. Almost every single warzone is about the Republic trying to bruteforce their way through 2-3 crosshealing Imperial healers. With perfect coordination there may be a chance to take them down but more often than not they heal everything while the Snipers and Marauders melt everything.

 

It's a relief to come up against an Imp team with only one healer. And even more of a relief when we actually have one of our own.

Last night I had a premade in my group. They were 14k, 14k, 16k hp. Yeah, we lost that one.

 

Premades aren't the problem. Fully geared and optimized premades with perfect composition and excellent coordination are the problem (see the 9 layer of pvp hell post...).

 

It's really a tough situation. On the one hand, you can't blame them for being good players and grouping smart. You can't blame them for queuing regular matches IF the ranked queue isn't popping. (Now, if there is a decent rated queue and they are still in regular WZs, that's another matter...)

 

On the other hand, being in a standard pug against a team like that isn't going to go well. It doesn't matter how decent the players are, if they care about objectives. They will get destroyed by the premade that has their sh*t together. If I see a match like that, I honestly will go farm medals, because I don't feel like giving the other team the satisfaction of beating me to a pulp and thinking they are awesome. Their punishment for queuing a match like that should be to sit on their asses the whole match. If they press our node where we are farming, I'll quit.

We know. As the issue has not been adressed by BW the only option you can do as a paying customer is to vote with your wallet

 

Pretty much this

 

People (myself included) have given EA a ton of feedback on the Pre Mades in WH augmented gear greifing the nonranked wzs and they have decided to ignore the issue!

 

The only message that can be sent now is by cancelling when you simply cant take it anymore!

 

I do want to clear something up thats a misstatement in this thread.

 

The under geared PUG players are not the BAD in this senario, they are entering WZs knowing they mostly likely short on gear to some extent but still try to rise to challenge

 

The BAD PLAYERS are the pre mades in WH Augmented gear rolling the unranked.

After all, if they were half as good as they claim and 1/1000000 as good as they act like they are, they would be in Ranked Warzones and never step foot again in a unranked warzone because there is no challenge to being there.

 

Sorry the GOOD Players are in Ranked when geared enough

Its the BADs that require every single advantage they can summon so they dont get spanked by the unranked PUGs.

 

Real people rise to a challenge

Cowards hide from the challenge and try to bully those weaker (call it what it is).

 

I have absolutely no respect for any of the pre mades (that are geared up) that troll the unranked.

None at all.

Be it imp pre made or Rep premade

 

Far as Im concerned,

THEY are the BADs

Because their to cowardly to enter ranked consistantly

 

(PS: spare me the excuse of ranked not popping. Seems tome if all the pre mades qued ranked, rather then unranked, it would pop alot faster.)

 

Still say this issue (and EAs completely diregard to issue) is one of the main reasons the F2P will ultimately fail.

 

Who wants to buy a sub after learning some BADs with every possible advantage will be farming them till they can gear up themselves.

 

Far more likely they say after being rolled constant "Screw this, Im not spending money to feed some kids over inflated ego online" as they leave, never to return.

Here are some personal statistics over the past 3 days from solo pvp'ing on the Republic side of the Progenitor server. I used Recruit gear only at the start to see the incentive a new player will have. To see if he will keep playing pvp:

 

Played 38 matches over the course of 3 days:

 

Won: 4. Lost: 34.

Number of times queued against a premade (3 or 4 people from the same guild): 23

Number of times queued with a premade (3 or 4 people from the same guild): 2

Number of times lost against the Republic: 0

Number of times lost against the Empire: 34

Number of times won against the Republic: 4

Number of times won against the Empire: 0

Number of times grouped without a healer: 17

Number of times faced an enemy group without a healer: 1

Number of times faced an exceptional enemy group (4 or more players with War Hero title or above): 10

Number of times queued with an exceptional group (4 or more players with War Hero or above): 1

Number of times queued with an inadequate group (4 or more players in Recruit): 10

Number of deaths: stopped counting.

 

As you can see from this limited survery, queuing solo meant losing the overwhelming majority of the games (a ratio of 4-34), almost all of them against the Empire. I've been in 4 true PuGvsPuG matches and incidentally every single one of them was Rep vs Rep we won.

 

23 times ouf of 38 (all in Rep vs Imp) we faced three or more players from the same guild. On my team this happened twice but we lost those matches as well due to the fact that:

 

10 times out of 38 we had 4 or more people (!!!) in Recruit gear (myself included of course), whereas 10 out of 38 times we faced enemy groups where 4 or more people were sporting War Hero, Conqueror, Warlord etc. titles.

 

This was further compounded by the fact that 17 (!) out of 38 times our team did not have a healer. Only once was I in a match where I could not find an enemy healer to mark.

 

I did not exactly count how many times our group was utterly annihilated (0-6 huttball, 100-0% novare etc.) but there were a lot of instances where we could not hold a single node in Civil War. Coordination was ok, we always discussed tactics, 9 out of 10 times people called out inc but the general lack of healers AND the overall gear advantage enjoyed by the enemies AND the fact that 23 matches had 3 or 4 people from the same guild made sure that no amount of coordination would make a difference.

 

Look at the numbers and tell me why a new lvl50 would bother to play pvp again after this?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Facing premades more than half the time (23/38) was part of the reason we kept losing but not the only part. The drastic lack of healers wasn't helping either. And the fact that in almost every 3rd match or so we had 4 people in Recruit.

 

I haven't tried pvp as an Imperial yet. I'm curious to do some statistics when I hit 50 to see if it's easier to level up somewhat as an Imperial.

 

I've seen many opinions by many people (some say it's fine, the majority call for changes) but I think there is something very wrong with pvp if solo queuing means autoloss.

Edited October 17, 2012 by CommanderKeeva

Keeva that looks like a faction imbalance issue on your server, not a premade problem.

 

Good stats though.

Last night I had a premade in my group. They were 14k, 14k, 16k hp. Yeah, we lost that one.

 

Premades aren't the problem. Fully geared and optimized premades with perfect composition and excellent coordination are the problem (see the 9 layer of pvp hell post...).

 

It's really a tough situation. On the one hand, you can't blame them for being good players and grouping smart. You can't blame them for queuing regular matches IF the ranked queue isn't popping. (Now, if there is a decent rated queue and they are still in regular WZs, that's another matter...)

 

On the other hand, being in a standard pug against a team like that isn't going to go well. It doesn't matter how decent the players are, if they care about objectives. They will get destroyed by the premade that has their sh*t together. If I see a match like that, I honestly will go farm medals, because I don't feel like giving the other team the satisfaction of beating me to a pulp and thinking they are awesome. Their punishment for queuing a match like that should be to sit on their asses the whole match. If they press our node where we are farming, I'll quit.

 

I think the assumption is that most premades are 8 man geared ops full of augmented war hero geared players that have voice chat and the experience of playing together in many matches. Usually these guys are playing in the unranked queue because the ranked isn't popping. Its probably fair to quit, if they're ruining your fun its best to leave than to get angry. I usually stick it out to get my daily done. Getting the weekly done can be frustrating though. When I get frustrated I'll queue for PVE and do a flashpoint or something to pass time and try again later. This leads to the problem you'll see where people complain that pvp queues aren't popping at all. No one wants to solo queue for their weekly against a ranked queueing op team. Even earthworms learn from negative feedback.

 

The best possible fix for this is ranked queue being cross-server.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Ybini

Keeva that looks like a faction imbalance issue on your server, not a premade problem.

 

Good stats though.

 

Sure I didn't say the problem was limited to premades only but 23/38 vs 2/38 does give you something to think about. At any rate, whatever the problem is, I don't think the new guy will care and will just leave, compounding the PvP problem even further.

Actually I would say that The Progenator is about evenly balanced in terms of player numbers on the Fleet.

 

The issue is that there are a few Imp guilds/pre-mades that play most of prime time, every day, as Pre-mades and there are very few imp pugs, whereas the Pub players are more frequently pugs or part pugs. I rarely play Imp on The Progenator as the queue time is often excessively long when queued solo.

 

Servers like Red Eclipse have much more of an inbalance issue in my experience being mainly Republic both in terms of numbers and WZ domination.

 

The issues relate to the games mechanics and not so much to faction balances, as even with a faction inbalance you will still play against teams from your own faction.

 

PS: Good work Keeva, interesting information whether people consider it relevent or not.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Ashaari
addition

Pretty much this

 

The BAD PLAYERS are the pre mades in WH Augmented gear rolling the unranked.

After all, if they were half as good as they claim and 1/1000000 as good as they act like they are, they would be in Ranked Warzones and never step foot again in a unranked warzone because there is no challenge to being there.

 

Sorry the GOOD Players are in Ranked when geared enough

Its the BADs that require every single advantage they can summon so they dont get spanked by the unranked PUGs.

 

Real people rise to a challenge

Cowards hide from the challenge and try to bully those weaker (call it what it is).

 

I have absolutely no respect for any of the pre mades (that are geared up) that troll the unranked.

None at all.

Be it imp pre made or Rep premade

 

Far as Im concerned,

THEY are the BADs

Because their to cowardly to enter ranked consistantly

 

(PS: spare me the excuse of ranked not popping. Seems tome if all the pre mades qued ranked, rather then unranked, it would pop alot faster.)

 

Still say this issue (and EAs completely diregard to issue) is one of the main reasons the F2P will ultimately fail.

 

Who wants to buy a sub after learning some BADs with every possible advantage will be farming them till they can gear up themselves.

 

Far more likely they say after being rolled constant "Screw this, Im not spending money to feed some kids over inflated ego online" as they leave, never to return.

 

So what I take from this is I am a terrible player and a coward because we can never get our pvpers online at a time to run what little ranked queues that are going on (they do happen you just need to coordinated with other teams to see they are running). When ranks do happen you face the same team over and over again and that gets old fast. Also ranked warzones can be as bad in terms of imbalance as non ranked, what do you think happens when someone is starting a pug group and saying "anyone can join gear and class does not mattar", well what usually happens is the pug faces a stomping but hey at least its ranked.

 

You make it sound like the players who are not running ranked (most want to not all of them can) enjoy stomping the crap out of players in recruit gear, which I don't. I love a good close matchup, the warzones that come down to the wire 1-2 or 5-6 huttballs, 10%-0% NC, 20 point wins in CW, VS where no one gets the doors or it becomes a race to see who got what down faster.

 

I cannot deny that there are players who enjoy beating on recruit gear players but don't label all WH geared players in one group...that's being narrow minded and makes you look like an idiot.

 

This threads title is all about premades but for some reason a lot of it comes back to a gear thing. Is there a gap in gear...yes, but unless you have never PvPed you should not be hitting 50 and go "oh I have never done a warzone before but I really want give it a shot ill buy some recruit gear and have some fun". With an exception to you not having any player interaction at all over the course of your leveling you should have some concept of gear and what that means at any endgame type activities whether that be PvE or PvP.

 

You should be ready with comms so you can get some WH and BM right away fill the gap with recruit, maybe do some operations or HM flashpoints to boos your HP and stats.

 

This is an MMO, Its almost like they want you to meet people and enjoy the game with you. There is a solo aspect to this game but how can you blame someone for wanted to group up with a guild or friends to take part in PvP. I know I am just blowing smoke but these type of posts make my head scratch. There is nothing stopping anyone from joining a guild or grouping with friends.

 

They should just give everyone a set of WH when they hit 50 and be done with it...when this happens I will be waiting on pins and needles as to what will be the next big complaint.

So what I take from this is I am a terrible player and a coward...

 

I cannot deny that there are players who enjoy beating on recruit gear players

I take it you figured it out all by yourself?

There are few ranked WZ,s because there are few pre-mades who want to play it.

 

So why do BW cater for the few at the expense of the much larger majority who dont want to fight as or against pre-mades? And why do BW do this when knowingly losing subs because of exactly this issue?

 

Any logical theories for this - I can only come up with stupidity and lack of understanding of the game they produce.

I take it you figured it out all by yourself?

 

Yeah you got me dead to rights I guess...