Hi,

I'd like to share with everyone my point of view regarding the Ranked PvP's Grinding System, I know that it is frustrating for every fair ranked player atm. It is obsolete in my opinion and must be fixed as soon as possible in order to make the whole thing less cancerous and a better place for everyone.

Let me explain, I'm a ranked player since early season 8 (before Team Ranked was a thing) and even then the system was outdated, whether it was SR or TR. When you win a game (beyond the first 10 games) you get a number fluctuating between 8 and 20 points (calculated by unknown factors to me) which is fine, so far.

The problem was and still is, when you lose a game, it makes your rating drop not by an equal number of points but a number ABOVE it, generally 10 to 25 points, this is where it greatly complicates things.

Because in the actual ranked scene it is very unlikely that even the greatest player would win multiple games successively. And so you get to the point where after 3 lost games your rating is lowered by 45-60 points

and where 3 won games would only get you 30. You then see skilled players, that used to be in the TOP 100 leaderboard, having between 1100 rating to 1400 now.

That is a total non-sense, because their rating doesn't reflect their skill and they deserve the rewards more than anyone else.

At the moment, TR is non-existant et only SR allows you to grind your rating. Only it is plagued by all kinds of bots,

toxic players who wintrade everyday of the week and others that help them by throwing the games for money. Which makes grinding for fair players IMPOSSIBLE. Get this, not a single player in the existing TOP 3 leaderboard is LEGIT.

They won't admit it but at some point they had help. They all wintraded their way to the top because IT IS THE ONLY WAY nowadays to get a positive rating.

Whether you're a skilled player or casual, the only way is wintrading. So people do it like it's totally normal. Now you see very bad players running around with Platinum Flairs and bragging about it.

It is the existing system that brought this kind of behaviour to life. And the only way to get effectively rid of this (and this is my opinion) is to lower the amount of rating you lose per game.

Losing as much as you win is illogical and totally unfair. Instead what would be sustainable would be losing half as much, or less than what you won the last game.

Or make some kind of mechanic that after some point when you lost 3 or 4 games in a row, the next game you win, gives you an extra amount of rating. Idk that's just an idea. But it needs to be adressed and corrected.

A friend of mine has also suggested an idea to improve the system, one that would not make you lose any rating per loss but only gain rating per win. It think it is also an interesting idea.

Gaining 10 points for a win and losing 15 points in the next is totally unproductive and IS frustrating for everyone.

Bad players would still lose their games (slower than usual that is) and skilled people would now be able to grind their rating in a safer, and healthier and rewarding way.

ALSO that would allow skilled players to play with eachother, and not against casuals.

This frustrates me in particular because I really love this game and I love the PvP mechanics of it and it saddens me because in order not to lose my mind I have to stop playing for couple of months every year.

And I still come back every single time because I foolishly hope the game has changed. But it hasn't.

To be honest I'm not even sure I'll come back next time if nothing changes.

We need to find solutions.

Feel free to share any ideas.

Thanks for reading me.

-Huke

I agree.

Everything is about wintrading in sr.

I admit, they are some very good players, but they don't do magic to get gold, they just use bots or pay lol.

And yes, this rating system makes us play like ******* and gain nothing...

I don't need to queue ranked and see more and more wintrading...

I wish something can be done about this...

I tried to push for this during the ranked reconstruction last year, but it didn't take and I doubt it will now. For whatever it is worth, I will gladly support a system that rewards winners, and doesn't punish losers as hard as now.

It could be something like this:

All starts with 0 points at the start of the season and everybody has a 3:1 ration to begin with.

Bronze:

You need 100 points to reach bronze level. You get 3 points for each win and lose 1 point for each loss. Reaching bronze level (100 points) should be doable for most. Once you reach 100 points you can not go below it and your ratio is now 2:1

Silver:

You need 100 more points (200 points in total) to reach silver level. You get 2 points for each win and lose 1 point for each loss. Reaching silver level (200 points) will take a bit longer but should also be doable. Once you reach 200 points you can not go below it and your ratio is now 1:1

Gold:

You need 100 more points (300 points in total) to reach gold level. You get 1 points for each win and lose 1 point for each loss. Reaching gold level (300 points) is where things gets "hard". Once you reach 300 points you can not go below it and your ratio is now 1:1

After gold? No clue. They could simply maintain a 1:1 ration to compete for top 3.

Benefits:

- Ranked would be less toxic, as losing is not that big of a deal

- With a fixed amount of points, you ensure the need for several matches to climb

- New and inexperienced players would feel a sense of accomplishment

- Veteran players would still have gold and top 10 placements to fight for

- Hopefully more players would try ranked

Yes, of course it needs to be revamped and they could make vast improvements many of which myself along with countless others have offered up in ideas over the years but for some reason, this topic NEVER gets acknowledged by ANYONE at BioWare.

Unfortunately BioWare ignore all threads in the PVP section. That’s sort of a little problem when it comes to wanting to open up dialogue with Eric Musco and his Community Management team about Ranked and the toxic dysfunctional cesspool it has devolved into, I mean if this very PVP topic is in a section of the forums that receives no attention how can this problem ever be improved upon?

So as awful as ranked is now, until this company entertains communicating with its player base about ranked, nothing is going to happen. Unless they just decide to do something with no input from the players and that’s a possibility they do things like that too. Lol. I Wish and hope I am wrong, but meh. I believe in history and theirs is such.

I tried to push for this during the ranked reconstruction last year, but it didn't take and I doubt it will now. For whatever it is worth, I will gladly support a system that rewards winners, and doesn't punish losers as hard as now.

 

It could be something like this:

 

All starts with 0 points at the start of the season and everybody has a 3:1 ration to begin with.

 

Bronze:

You need 100 points to reach bronze level. You get 3 points for each win and lose 1 point for each loss. Reaching bronze level (100 points) should be doable for most. Once you reach 100 points you can not go below it and your ratio is now 2:1

 

Silver:

You need 100 more points (200 points in total) to reach silver level. You get 2 points for each win and lose 1 point for each loss. Reaching silver level (200 points) will take a bit longer but should also be doable. Once you reach 200 points you can not go below it and your ratio is now 1:1

 

Gold:

You need 100 more points (300 points in total) to reach gold level. You get 1 points for each win and lose 1 point for each loss. Reaching gold level (300 points) is where things gets "hard". Once you reach 300 points you can not go below it and your ratio is now 1:1

 

After gold? No clue. They could simply maintain a 1:1 ration to compete for top 3.

 

Benefits:

- Ranked would be less toxic, as losing is not that big of a deal

- With a fixed amount of points, you ensure the need for several matches to climb

- New and inexperienced players would feel a sense of accomplishment

- Veteran players would still have gold and top 10 placements to fight for

- Hopefully more players would try ranked

I hoped that you'd see this thread, I just saw some of your posts and I 100% agreed to them.

I'm glad there's people like you who still care about this game like I do.

What was that ranked reconstruction you mentionned ? I don't think I was around at that moment.

Your solution is honestly a great idea, and I would totally see it work,

I think I would just change the ratio for each bracket.

Fact is, I'm not sure even that system would prevent players from wintrading so having a 1:1 ratio would still be punshing for legit players. 1:1 ratio should only be applicable to Gold and beyond, don't you think? It'd be like this :

4:1 to get to Bronze,

3:1 to get to Silver

2:1 to get to Gold

1:1 to grind Top 3

@Ijwed I understand what you mean and see now that even my solution or Lundorff's wouldn't prevent players from Win Trading or throwing for the sake of it. I'm just trying to find solutions and asking around for a better idea.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the only way to get to top 3 has always been Win Trading, but this season in particular, where there aren't any legit TR games going on (because players ask around for friends to make groups against them) the only way to grind your rating now is Solo Q, for this season in particular and at the moment.

Now the solo queue is way too infested by these kind of players and it makes grinding nearly impossible for everyone. So the only solution for people to get to it at the moment, is by Win Trading.

I'm trying to make sense, sorry if I don't. English isn't my first langage.

Just look at the current SR leaderboard and give me the name of just ONE player who got there legitimately.

Even the best players I know had some kind of help from friends.

@Ijwed I understand what you mean and see now that even my solution or Lundorff's wouldn't prevent players from Win Trading or throwing for the sake of it. I'm just trying to find solutions and asking around for a better idea.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the only way to get to top 3 has always been Win Trading, but this season in particular, where there aren't any legit TR games going on (because players ask around for friends to make groups against them) the only way to grind your rating now is Solo Q, for this season in particular and at the moment.

 

Now the solo queue is way too infested by these kind of players and it makes grinding nearly impossible for everyone. So the only solution for people to get to it at the moment, is by Win Trading.

 

I'm trying to make sense, sorry if I don't. English isn't my first langage.

Just look at the current SR leaderboard and give me the name of just ONE player who got there legitimately.

Even the best players I know had some kind of help from friends.

Well of course tr is a separate issue due to lack of participation but in terms of solo ranked there are plenty examples of Top 3 players i'm almost certain are legit.

As far as being impossible to climb, of course the win trading and trolls make it more difficult to climb and I would argue the state of solo ranked is so bad that you shouldn't even care at this point, but Its still possible as I did on my commando in my last stream which you can watch at https://www.twitch.tv/alim_95 .

Well of course tr is a separate issue due to lack of participation but in terms of solo ranked there are plenty examples of Top 3 players i'm almost certain are legit: myself (Globalim, Surrender), Aqrius (Xendys, Khyarus), Ezmode, Mandomode, Triggermode, Cehla, Headtails, Globalrasi, Uknowbabe to name a few.

 

As far as being impossible to climb, of course the win trading and trolls make it more difficult to climb and I would argue the state of solo ranked is so bad that you shouldn't even care at this point, but Its still possible as I did on my commando in my last stream which you can watch at https://www.twitch.tv/alim_95 .

So you are half a dozen guys being able to get through somehow without any help whatsoever, that's great for you.

Well, I guess I speak for my experience. I would say that it's still possible for dpses to climb, but for Healers or Tanks, there are too many variables that all lower your chances to win a game. You just have to get 1 meme dps or Tank and you lose 90% of the time. I only play healing classes and despite being able to do 20K+ hps easily, using cc's and cuts on cd etc, I can't carry my team on my own, only the dpses can and sometimes the tank, the healer has a lower importance for success imo. As for dpses/healer games, it's the same, having no offguard lowers your chances even more vs a full dd team... Maybe I should convert myself to dps then, I played Fury mara seasons ago and managed to almost reach Gold in 10 games so idk lol

Why does nobody see the real problem?

Every player nowadays has many different charakters. Gear means nothing. Most players want to get 1 high rating, they dont care if they have 5 other twinks low.

It should be like this:

Top Gear is required to be allowed to queue. Getting gear should be hard, and no legacy gear. Everyone who would queue, would have to put much time in the charakter before beeing allowed to queue. And everyone wants an high rating, so nobody would wintrade.

Wintrade is possible, because you can just take a twink. And win/loose with him (whatever your buddy needs, if you are group up with him, or against him). And later he can do the same for you.

This problem would be solved, if twinks were not allowed to queue, or if their gear would be so bad, that they couldnt carry, and your mate would get the loose, if he gets teamed up with these twinks.

Its quite a simple logic. Make the player to put effort into beeing allowed to play ranked. If everyone has only 1 charakter, everyone cares about his rating and nobody would wintrade for any mate.

oh i hate opening this can of worms... but all making max level pvp gear hard to get in conjunction with requiring it to queue for ranked would do is result in the queue being even more of a ghost town than it is already

here we go again

i didnt say i have an solution.I only told you whats the real problem...

and the other real problem, and thats obvious, not enough players, not enough competition and everybody knows everybody... sad story swtor

oh i hate opening this can of worms... but all making max level pvp gear hard to get in conjunction with requiring it to queue for ranked would do is result in the queue being even more of a ghost town than it is already

 

here we go again

Lol, I'm guessing you weren't around pre 5.0 when pvp and expertise was a thing and ranked was a lot better than it is now, it required full expertise which forced the player to invest time in regs grinding the gear and playing their class to enter ranked, and you couldnt just get random bots to q or someone to throw for you, this system worked perfectly but then pve players were crying that pvp hear is too much of a grind resulted in the devs removing pvp gear and letting any plebs queue for ranked which ultimately lead to low skilled peeps in the queue and bots and throwers also entering the solo q ruining the whole experience for everyone, you want a solution to this problem, bring back pvp gear and expertise, it will only let those who are serious about ranked or those who are determined to start playing ranked a better experience since those who are new to pvp will get adequate playing time in regs by being forced to gear that way. And makes it harder for wintraders like a certain juggernaut on darth malgus to put their bots in queue.

pre 5.0 [...] it required full expertise which forced the player to invest time

uhm no, in 4.x you had BiS expertise gear in like one day, there was zero else incentive to queue, that's why season 7 was even less active than seasons 11 and 12. Not trying to defend the current gearing system though which obviously sucks in many ways.

Top Gear is required to be allowed to queue. Getting gear should be hard, and no legacy gear. Everyone who would queue, would have to put much time in the charakter before beeing allowed to queue. And everyone wants an high rating, so nobody would wintrade.

There is a much smoother solution to this: Legacy ELO. No matter which character or class you're on, it all counts into one rating. Yes, everyone would play the FOTM class then, and yes, they would need to rework Top 96 rewards, but for competition this would be the best solution I can think of right now.

What's the point of solo ranked these days anyway?

When Ossus exp dropped, I went back to solo ranked in pre season to get enough reputation for 258 gear. Even in that pre season, where ELO didn't matter at all, ppl were still throwing games. Tanks in queue with zero gear on, players hitting /stuck at the spawn right after the game starts etc. This hasn't changed. Today I see no name players in regs with gold, platinum flairs with average skill. Many of them farmed their friends in TR in non playing hours and they would take turns after. So, what's the point of playing ranked fair and square when some noob with zero skills are gonna get that flair you want in other ways a get away with it?

Lol, I'm guessing you weren't around pre 5.0 when pvp and expertise was a thing and ranked was a lot better than it is now, it required full expertise which forced the player to invest time in regs grinding the gear and playing their class to enter ranked, and you couldnt just get random bots to q or someone to throw for you, this system worked perfectly but then pve players were crying that pvp hear is too much of a grind resulted in the devs removing pvp gear and letting any plebs queue for ranked which ultimately lead to low skilled peeps in the queue and bots and throwers also entering the solo q ruining the whole experience for everyone, you want a solution to this problem, bring back pvp gear and expertise, it will only let those who are serious about ranked or those who are determined to start playing ranked a better experience since those who are new to pvp will get adequate playing time in regs by being forced to gear that way. And makes it harder for wintraders like a certain juggernaut on darth malgus to put their bots in queue.

actually i was around for expertise. getting expertise gear was hardly "hard". like the person was implying he wanted gearing for pvp to be

Well of course tr is a separate issue due to lack of participation but in terms of solo ranked there are plenty examples of Top 3 players i'm almost certain are legit: myself (Globalim, Surrender), Aqrius (Xendys, Khyarus), Ezmode, Mandomode, Triggermode, Cehla, Headtails, Globalrasi, Uknowbabe to name a few.

 

As far as being impossible to climb, of course the win trading and trolls make it more difficult to climb and I would argue the state of solo ranked is so bad that you shouldn't even care at this point, but Its still possible as I did on my commando in my last stream which you can watch at https://www.twitch.tv/alim_95 .

Well, firstly, I want to say that you deserve a ban only for mentioning these players, and secondly, it is obvious that all the listed players are one party, in which you obviously also belong. These players undoubtedly have great experience, but they all sit in the same discord, and literally manage the lineup. At one point in time, only one of them plays on a character with a high rating, and the rest are specially sitting on characters with an artificially lowered rating and "supporting".

I have long understood that playing on streams, you would like to say that you are playing according to the rules, but this is not so! Do you guys think that if you find a way to avoid bans, then all your competitor traders should be banned? Personally, I am familiar with two commandos that were in the top 3 last season, but now they are both in the 1000 ranking, because this class sucks this season. But by some miracle, this streamer yesterday took 1400+ in 1 day. Coincidence? I do not think so! Watching his stream, I noticed that even that operative with 120 ratings, getting into his team, makes just an excellent DPS.

Well, firstly, I want to say that you deserve a ban only for mentioning these players, and secondly, it is obvious that all the listed players are one party, in which you obviously also belong. These players undoubtedly have great experience, but they all sit in the same discord, and literally manage the lineup. At one point in time, only one of them plays on a character with a high rating, and the rest are specially sitting on characters with an artificially lowered rating and "supporting".

Alright buddy, might aswell drop the name Kiretana then, to get this whole thread full of lies and false claims banned.

Losses cost too much.

Remove lost ELO make it so the contest only counts wins, that would make it harder to win trade and it would remove a lot of the toxicity.

When dropping a match will almost guarantee a loss, this empowers the cheaters too much and makes it so common that you end up with lots of angry players who lose ELO for nothing they did themselves.

I believe the entire competition ought to be about wins counts, losses should play no part of ranked ELO. The other thing I’d do is make ELO legacy wide that way people could play any toon they wanted.

The other good thing would be people couldn’t have throw away toons where they drop to throw matches for their pals. They would have to devote an account to trying to cheat then, and how could they cheat if the contest only counted wins as a way to boost ELO.

So top three titles people love to sell I mean win by throwing matches and getting top ELO with minimum wins just enough wins to get top ELO thanks to 20-30 matches handed to them via cheating would have to turn into rewards given to the ones who top the number of wins not just who could be spoon fed losses to artificially boost a much undeserved ELO score.

I’d actually prefer to just remove ELO, personally I think it is not capable of working properly with so many cheaters, win traders, and all the massive Differences in power between the classes shows just how impossible it is for ELO to even begin to properly indicate who are truly the best in PVP which is what ELO is Supposed to indicate!

Well, firstly, I want to say that you deserve a ban only for mentioning these players, and secondly, it is obvious that all the listed players are one party, in which you obviously also belong. These players undoubtedly have great experience, but they all sit in the same discord, and literally manage the lineup. At one point in time, only one of them plays on a character with a high rating, and the rest are specially sitting on characters with an artificially lowered rating and "supporting".

 

I have long understood that playing on streams, you would like to say that you are playing according to the rules, but this is not so! Do you guys think that if you find a way to avoid bans, then all your competitor traders should be banned? Personally, I am familiar with two commandos that were in the top 3 last season, but now they are both in the 1000 ranking, because this class sucks this season. But by some miracle, this streamer yesterday took 1400+ in 1 day. Coincidence? I do not think so! Watching his stream, I noticed that even that operative with 120 ratings, getting into his team, makes just an excellent DPS.

You should've seen his stream yesterday, when he got tank/healer games at 2am in the morning. Hilarious.

Funny how much rage and hatred I got from that streamer on his stream, and all his friends after sharing this thread. They all went apes at me like an immune system fighting an infection. Just because I undisclosed their shenanigan, without pointing my claims at anyone and not mentioning a single name. They broke cover by themselves.

The problem is obviously not the current system according to them, ofc not, because it allows them to do their activities in total peace and without any competitivity.

The problem are the players who fight against it and all kinds of behaviours like such. Fine then, we're the problem.

Only we all know what's going on, and that's what makes them lose their mind over it. And if God forbids, a poor soul reveals their activity on the forums...

I'm surprised no one shared that clever meme one of his friends made about me here yet... Anyone?

The problem is obviously not the current system according to them, ofc not, because it allows them to do their activities in total peace and without any competitivity.

Exactly this. ^

I have created so many threads and posts on threads about the corruption and garbage that ranked is on this game and BW seems oblivious. I just stopped playing ranked, and the cheating kids that live in it can have it.

I mean they are like kids, too btw. Any interaction with the "ranked community" now is like trying to communicate with a bunch of 12 year olds I never seen so much toxic teen angst corralled in one channel.

Dudes need to get laid or something but that's besides the point.

The real point is, ranked is at the lowest point it has ever been, and that's saying a lot. I offer BW and some of their so-called PVPers that are on staff to go play ranked for 48 hours! I mean, BW just put a little time into investigating it yourself and you will see just how awful this niche of the game is. It's so obvious no one working at BW paritcipates in ranked for any extended period of time, in fact I bet not one of them queues ranked, EVER.

Not only does the scoring system only encourage cheating by how easy it is to cheat, but without any sort of ingame monitoring the little kiddies in ranked make it their playground to manipulate and ruin for everyone else.

Seems dumb as hell to allow a game mode to carry on like this, but that's just the case. A bunch of toxic nasty immature players that are running a secret cabal of cheating and wintrading to make money off pixels and/or to just collect pixels by cheating because, well, because they can.

Really awesome "competitive game mode" we got here! Totally sarcasm for anyone incapable of telling.

When you win a game (beyond the first 10 games) you get a number fluctuating between 8 and 20 points (calculated by unknown factors to me) which is fine, so far.

I'm surprised no one has done this yet, but this requires clarification. After your first 10 games, you gain/lose more elo for a certain number of games (not sure exactly, maybe the next dozen or so). But eventually that tails off, and virtually all games you gain/lose between 10 and 13 elo.

And so you get to the point where after 3 lost games your rating is lowered by 45-60 points

and where 3 won games would only get you 30.

Winning three games and gaining 10 elo each (+30) and then losing three games and losing 15 elo each (-45) is the most extreme that could ever get, and that would only happen to a very high rated player. The disparity between winning and losing is not nearly that high. It's more like you gain 11-12 for winning and you lose 12-13 for losing. Overall, you do lose more than you gain if your winrate is .500, but it's not nearly as extreme as this post is presenting.

Only it is plagued by all kinds of bots,

toxic players who wintrade everyday of the week and others that help them by throwing the games for money. Which makes grinding for fair players IMPOSSIBLE.

SF is not like that. There are a lot of toxic ******es that vote kick people excessively, but that's a separate issue really.

Get this, not a single player in the existing TOP 3 leaderboard is LEGIT.

They won't admit it but at some point they had help. They all wintraded their way to the top because IT IS THE ONLY WAY nowadays to get a positive rating.

This is not true. I'm currently in top 3 position on one of my toons (though I don't have the 200 wins yet, getting close), and I have never wintraded or engaged in any kind of coordination with others in solo ranked.

Historically, many top 3 titles were wintraded or gained through a dead team ranked system. Probably about half, which is still a disturbing amount. But to say it's ALL of them is simply absurd.

So top three titles people love to sell I mean win by throwing matches and getting top ELO with minimum wins just enough wins to get top ELO thanks to 20-30 matches handed to them via cheating would have to turn into rewards given to the ones who top the number of wins not just who could be spoon fed losses to artificially boost a much undeserved ELO score.

Do you not know about the win requirements? You need 200 wins to get top 3 now.

Seems dumb as hell to allow a game mode to carry on like this, but that's just the case. A bunch of toxic nasty immature players that are running a secret cabal of cheating and wintrading to make money off pixels and/or to just collect pixels by cheating because, well, because they can.

Just a reminder to people that Lhance here says that he played ranked for 1 week over a year ago. And that's it. Yet somehow he has this intimate knowledge about what happens in ranked today lol. He'll claim "everyone knows it!" when the reality is that it's just the forum echo chamber of people that don't play ranked hating on ranked. If people want to know the real problems in ranked, pay attention to the people that actually play it regularly. They're the only ones that have first hand knowledge of the situation.

It's also worth pointing out that SF and DM seem to have different problems going on at the moment, so people should be more careful to not make points about solos as a whole if it's something only happening on one server.

I've always been open about the fact that solo ranked has problems. And I'm even open to radical suggestions like removing elo (I've never been really convinced, but it's not crazy). But exaggerating and outright making stuff up about ranked is never going to help your case.

Just a reminder to people that Lhance here says that he played ranked for 1 week over a year ago. And that's it.

I probably was playing ranked before you ever even heard of ranked, or SWTOR for that matter rofl. I played ranked years ago, and played every year until last year, which admittedly was only for 1-2 weeks. That hardly equates to "only played ranked one week." You are deliberately twisting my words into a narrative you want it to be. That's why no one likes to engage you on the forums. You just want to argue and you only read and see what you want from the words other people write.

(We can't discuss anything when people lack basic comprehension skills or choose to be disingenuous when they respond to what others write!)

So, as I wrote a year ago and in past years before that, Solo ranked is (STILL) a cesspool, that's a fact. Call it whatever you want. If it's not a cesspool, how come so little of the pop play it? How come this game mode isn't touted as a successful part of SWTOR heavily supported and talked about by PVPers worldwide? That's because it's BAD.

Sure, Alex and a couple others on the forums will tell you solo ranked is alive and well, but that's apparently coming from a perspective of someone that lives in ranked, enjoys all the "lively" and "humorous good natured" banter they spew and who also somehow miraculously avoids all activities of dropped matches and wintrading.

As much as some of these guys play solo ranked, I find it hard to believe they never see this stuff, when all it takes is for me to queue for one day and find 3 out of 4 matches somehow someway get compromised by someone either dropping from the match before it begins to ensure one team has 3 versus 4, or they find another way to skew the numbers like group kicking/throwing the match purposefully. It's that bad.

Don't believe me, just try it yourself people. Come back and share your experience let's see if it more resembles my depiction or Alex's rose-tinted vision of solo ranked.

Another thing Alex has expressed is that ELO accurately represents how good a player is in PVP, ELO works on SWTOR according to him. Yes, he believes that.

Dead pop game = broken ELO. It doesn't work. For ELO to work, you need a healthy population. SWTOR does not have a healthy ranked population people need to stop pretending it does.

For ELO to work, you need a rigid structured system that isn't plagued with so many variables that contribute to ELO loss, often which has nothing to do with the player or their skills!

In a nutshell, it's just too easy to cause a loss in ranked which is why so many people cheat in the first place, because it's SO EASY to do. The second reason so many cheat in ranked is because the repercussions are light to nil, many cheaters get away with it.

If BW truly wants a ELO style system for scoring, they have to tighten up on all the ways people cheat including group kicks which has become the new favorite tactic by these wonderful elite skilled fellows that live in ranked 24/7.

I just think some of the these ranked players are fanatics, and extremely biased. They will do everything they can to defend it's present set-up regardless how dead or awful it is for the majority of other players who wish it was better. These guys don't care, as long as they can get their little shiny pixels, they don't care how bad the game mode is, apparently.