Can’t wait to see how these changes play out, Bret!

Also you missed this:

• Skill Balancing:
  
  • Premade groups queuing for Ranked and Unranked Warzones and GSF will now have their matchmaking skill based on the highest rated member, not the team’s average rating.
    

These changes are absolutely fantastic. I can't wait to play with them enabled.

 

Not having to think about what faction to play and just play whatever character I'd like to level/gain requisition on is going to be amazing.

 

I think this is going to be great for reducing queue times and increasing the amount of tip top competitive games we see.

 

 

Is there any chance we could know exactly the stats we're going to be rated on for matchmaking purposes?

You guys were so great when GSF first came out to tell us exactly what the matchmaker was looking for it really helped us back then.

Hey folks!

 

In case you missed these GSF related changes that were posted in the PVP forum:

 

In 5.9.2 the following changes will effect Galactic Starfighter:

 

1. All Warzone and Starfighter queues are now cross-faction
    
   
2. Galactic Starfighter matchmaking has been improved to better account for player experience along with their currently selected ship loadout.
   

Thanks!

 

Bret

Interesting.

 

1. Cross-faction Queues

I'm assuming "cross-faction queues" means that all teams can potentially end up being a mix between Republic and Imperial players. I don't know how I feel about, it might ruin the Republic vs. Empire feel, but I get that it might be good for matchmaking, even though I think cross-server queues over different regions/languages might be a better solution overall (but a combination of both might be the most effective).

1.a. Will there still be a priority for queues to match up mainly teams consisting of one faction first and fill any empty spots with players from the other faction or will it just be first come, first serve with loadout/experience metrics in place without regard of which faction the characters fly for? I think the former would have some potential so we could still have pure Republic vs. Empire matches if enough players from each side in a certain performance bracket are queued at the same time.

 

2. Improved matchmaking

Improved performance and loadout-based matchmaking is good, but hopefully that won't hinder groups of more and less experienced or better/worse loaded out ships to queue together.

I'd love to hear more about the exact formula people will be matched up with, too. Will the matchmaking also check for preferred ships in recent past so it won't just fill a group with main gunshippers, bombers, etc..? Maybe a preferred ship type priority list players can set before queuing (similar to how you can set Tank/Healer/DPS roles for ground queues) could be implemented as well.

 

Some additional thoughts:

 

3. GSF limit for Gunships and Bombers active simultaneously in a match

Will there also be a limit on Gunships with Railguns and Bombers with offensive drones (especially railgun ones)/mines that can be flying at any given time (don't allow to spawn in a gunship/bomber until the next one is destroyed, similar to how heros work in Battlefront 2 just without cost). Seeing how you will only be able to have a limited amount of healers and tanks in ground warzones now, it would only make sense to impose similar limits to GSF to improve balance in matches and not unbalance the game like tons of rail-gunships in mine/drone nests can do. Maybe that could finally end the (rail-)gunship and offensive drone/mine bomber spam in certain GSF scenarios and have people focus on flying strikes and scouts more to give a more fun, Star-Warsy dogfighting feel back to GSF instead of it being all about little Death-Star like, super-laser (aka railgun) powered Superweapons that often can take more punishment than Strikes and outrun certain scouts in various scenarios and auto-aiming drones and mines where a bomber pilot can go AFK and hide with an AFK macro that spams drones and mines and still get kills, assists, medals and rewards even though they are AFK and can't even be kicked.

3.a. All owned ships selectable during a GSF match In addition to the above, it might be a good idea to finally give a choice of being able to select all ships you own in a GSF match instead of having to set a limited number of ships that can be chosen from (or at least increase the number of ships you can queue with considerably).

On a side note, it would be nice if one could purchase the same ship type multiple times for different loadouts or save different loadouts that you can switch in between at respawns during GSF matches.

 

4. Ranked GSF

A ranked GSF option with rewards like special paintjobs, blaster/engine colors, ship skins etc. would be nice as well.

 

5. Ops Queuing for GSF and Warzones

In addition, it would be cool if we could finally challenge another ops group to a GSF match or Warzone match (ideally including selecting the battlefield to fight on) to have some pre-made matches (they don't have to give any big rewards, the most important thing is fun and a challenge!). That way teams could finally see which one is truly better without anyone else interfering and those that roleplay PVP could still have the option to go at it with pure (self-organized) Republic vs. Imperial groups if they desire.

 

6. Abolish Cross-faction communication and socializing restrictions

With the faction split lifted for PVP and cross-faction queues implemented, will you finally abolish the faction chat split so we can have proper cross-faction chat capabilities so we will finally be able to send whispers/tells, join custom chat channels and interact with members of the other factions as well as see all chat channels like /emote, /yell, etc.. from the other faction and add them to our friends list/ignore list (both of which would be nice to be account wide instead of character-based, by the way, so you don't have to add all characters of your friend/ignoree to all of your characters separately) as well as well as maybe join cross-faction guilds? Keep in mind that Bioware has promised to abolish the chat restrictions many years ago, but similar to other big, repeated and unkept promises such as but not limited to the promise about an option to enable chat bubbles/overhead chat text for /say, /yell and /emote player chat (hopefully that will finally be added soon, too), nothing ever came out of it.

Now that all PVP queues are cross-faction, it would only make sense if any and all measures hindering cross-faction communication, planning and socializing should be abolished as well.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Glzmo

While it won't stop the AFK-ers and Suiciders, it can only be good for GSF.

 

shame that BW didn't do anything to support this mode for years, and let the population dwindle. - But I'm more confident that we'll get more even matches around peak-times. - OFC if you queue late night or early morning it's still gonna be the first 16 in the queue get a match whatever their skill level/ upgrades.

 

Pity about the Imps vs pubs, but you can still join a 1-faction ops group - whether you can do this x-faction remains to be seen ( somehow I doubt it)

 

Safe Flying!

well I see one problem with the Cross faction. in the past if I've gotten a team that had 2-3 non contributors I'd swap factions not wanting to deal with them, and wasting my time (can't always get them kicked even if you want to). Now if I get a team like that I'll just log out of game entirely and find something else to do.

 

But at least it should help the queu times, especially in non peak times.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Toraak

Gliz, I think the problem with limiting the number of a specific ship class or classes is harder due to the nature of how you queue for gsf. Like the ground game, which does not allow you to change discipline or utilities while in warzone queue, you cannot change your ship components or the ships on your bar while in queue for GSF. However, unlike the ground, at least in GSF you can, essentially, queue up five "set ups" and swap between them as needed during the match. Ground doesn't let you do any of that. So, I don't really support that suggestion. Its not really as much of a problem on Satele Shan as it was before strikes were upgraded and bombers somewhat nerfed. And the new iokath map seems very strike friendly in contrast to, say, Lost Shipyards TDM.

 

Regarding your suggestion for ops group queueing … my hope is that the custom ground match nature of the Rishi stronghold is so popular that they finally implement Despon's suggestion for a custom match lobby for GSF. I don't see it happening for 5.9.2 but hopefully down the road.

I've always been positive when it comes to GSF since it's the best thing about this game. - but there's only so much one person can do.

 

Too bad BioWare spent years pissing the best franchise in the business up against the wall. - Since the Bantha in the room is the dwindling populations. When GSF first launched, you could even get a match at 5am easy. - now we have merged servers and x-faction coz it takes too long to get 2 teams of 8 halfway decent players on at any one time.

 

- Sad. Real sad.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Storm-Cutter

well I see one problem with the Cross faction. in the past if I've gotten a team that had 2-3 non contributors I'd swap factions not wanting to deal with them, and wasting my time (can't always get them kicked even if you want to). Now if I get a team like that I'll just log out of game entirely and find something else to do.

 

But at least it should help the queu times, especially in non peak times.

 

With proper match-making those 2-3 baddies would be split up, 1 baddie on one side, 2 on the other. Partially cancelling themselves out...;-) So what you see as a "problem with the Cross faction", seems to me to be that cross faction (if they get match-making working right) is a solution to your problem. There will always be newbies, baddies, people who do not care or whatever, but hopefully the new system will even them out. It may not do much to even out the adept players though as they may hide in premades of 3 other adept players for cover. We shall see how well the system works.

Bret,

 

I posed this question to Eric, but haven't gotten a response yet. Eric had stated that a premade group will not get split up by the new matchmaking system in regular WZs or GSF. My principal concern here is how will not splitting up a premade in GSF help to achieve any kind of match balance there when that is the #1 reason why GSF matches are so ridiculously lopsided? While there are certainly other contributing factors to GSF match inequity, such as mastered ships versus un-mastered ships, it's the premades of veteran players versus players who are literally brand new to GSF (which has a higher learning curve than ground PvP) that crushes the life out of that aspect of the game.

Bret,

 

I posed this question to Eric, but haven't gotten a response yet. Eric had stated that a premade group will not get split up by the new matchmaking system in regular WZs or GSF. My principal concern here is how will not splitting up a premade in GSF help to achieve any kind of match balance there when that is the #1 reason why GSF matches are so ridiculously lopsided? While there are certainly other contributing factors to GSF match inequity, such as mastered ships versus un-mastered ships, it's the premades of veteran players versus players who are literally brand new to GSF (which has a higher learning curve than ground PvP) that crushes the life out of that aspect of the game.

 

Yep premades will still be able to rolfstomp people into not queing except now when it dies it will be dead for both factions not just one. This will also put an end to the "but I switch" defense as well.

The real problem with matchmaking in SWTOR is that it's done backwards. As devs previously explained, matchmaking is done by making teams and then matching that team against the closest matching team it can find. It would work WAY better if the matchmaking matched individuals and then formed teams from the individuals. Not sure why that is a difficult concept for EA employed programmers. *sigh*

• Premade groups no longer count as the average rating of all the ships. They now count everyone in the group as the same as the highest rated player in the group.
  
• The matchmaker will attempt to make the most even teams possible.
  
• Given this, a premade group with at least 1 highly experienced player would be more apt to be matched up with less experienced/less upgraded players.
  

 

Shouldn't the last point be that this is less likely?

The real problem with matchmaking in SWTOR is that it's done backwards. As devs previously explained, matchmaking is done by making teams and then matching that team against the closest matching team it can find. It would work WAY better if the matchmaking matched individuals and then formed teams from the individuals. Not sure why that is a difficult concept for EA employed programmers. *sigh*

 

Yes, this might work if they consider those in a premade are 50% better than when not (or some estimated amount), and if we had enough people in the queues. Maybe with cross server queueing we could get closer to enough.

Shouldn't the last point be that this is less likely?

 

I'm pretty sure he means literally with, as in, on their team. Not with as in, playing a match against.

I don't frequent the GSF forums so much so I almost missed this one. Awesome news, and long live solo queueing!!

 

The one bad thing about cross-faction is that I won't be able to tell according to the sound of the shots, if they are friendly or enemy and will have to always assume hostility when I see shots in my general direction, but the benefits by far overcome the penalties, and it is not so rare to witness some "mute shots" due to the too many sounds going around at a given moment, so perhaps being over-jumpy will be a good outcome actually. Good Job devs!!

 

All that being said, I still vote for any kind of limitation of the total of GS+Bomber on the field in a given team, along with some "resolve" mechanic for abilities that disable rolling which are vastly used by premades of 4 strikers and proton missiles who voice-coordinate their next target and can not always be resisted against.

Hey folks! Thanks for the questions/thoughts. To clarify a couple things with the matchmaking changes for GSF:

 

The goals:

• Get matches to pop more frequently.
  
• Get those matches to be more fairly balanced.
  

Cross faction teams helps achieve both of these goals. It makes hitting a critical mass of players to start a match more stable and easier to achieve. It also gives the matchmaker the ability to sort through ALL of the players to arrange the best possible match.

 

A few points about premade groups:

• Premade groups no longer count as the average rating of all the ships. They now count everyone in the group as the same as the highest rated player in the group.
  
• The matchmaker will attempt to make the most even teams possible.
  
• Given this, a premade group with at least 1 highly experienced player would be more apt to be matched up with less experienced/less upgraded players.
  

Matches should be much more fairly matched across the board after these changes are put into place. This, admittedly, does not cure every ill caused by premade groups of highly skilled player. But it should help to mitigate the issues and improve the quality of matches across the board.

 

How are skilled players calculated ? Win rate ? medals ? kills ? damage ?

Is it the same with both ships ? If i'm skilled with sniper and take an other ship in an other category nether played am i considered as my main ship skilled ?

 

Is it the same for both maps (meaning difference between the 2 goals (def-capture Vs daethmatch)) ?

Edited June 7, 2018 by geofraynils

This is all good, but to get more participants, something will have to be done about the tutorial! GSF uses basic skills not found elsewhere in the game, so the learning curve is incredibly high at the very start. Even if your group is highly tolerant, you know you are letting them down atrociously. The two most basic skills--control of the ship and hitting a moving target--are the ones most in need of a tutorial.

 

To be most effective, tutorials should start with the practice of ship control by itself. Separating the skill will make for much faster learning. Maps could be taken from the game itself. Targets could be placed in spots of varying difficulty to hit, rather like the boosts available in matches.

 

Another should be hitting targets that are both stationary and moving at various speeds with changes of directon. Perhaps this could provide some areas without obstacles so that single skill could be isolated by the user for quicker mastery. Other areas should include obstacles in order to combine both fundamental skills.

 

Yes, there will still be loads to be learned only in real matches. But places to work on the fundamentals without dragging a team down with you would make GSF something I, at least, would avidly pursue. As would many of the people I talk to about it.

Hey folks!

 

In case you missed these GSF related changes that were posted in the PVP forum:

 

In 5.9.2 the following changes will effect Galactic Starfighter:

 

1. All Warzone and Starfighter queues are now cross-faction
    
   
2. Galactic Starfighter matchmaking has been improved to better account for player experience along with their currently selected ship loadout.
   

Thanks!

 

Bret

 

I appreciate it, and I appreciate the work you've put into the game, but I'm no longer interested in a PVP mode with a greatly lowered skill cap. I all but quit playing months ago.

a PVP mode with a greatly lowered skill cap

 

What do you mean?

What do you mean?

 

I am guessing missile buff made gunships harder. Possible bomber rage as well. Who knows

I am guessing missile buff made gunships harder. Possible bomber rage as well. Who knows

 

Zyrieas was mostly a scout pilot, so, assumptions and all that. But regardless, she was never opposed to making missiles, and by extension strikes, more viable. Besides, the tone of her post seems to indicate she thinks something unique about the proposed changes will lower the skill cap.

Besides, the tone of her post seems to indicate she thinks something unique about the proposed changes will lower the skill cap.

How can that be true when they said they had already quit because of that reason? That indicates they quit due to the state of the game right now or months ago. Edited June 8, 2018 by Lendul