here are things for consideration, and since Mike and Eric say they are throwing ideas around, I'm going to make a short list for consideration.

Legacy bound: Tokens and Flags. There is no reason to lock tokens to toons, since pvp rewards are legacy anyway, may as well make it alt friendly. Also, you used to have legacy bound flags, you tried making them toon bound, no one was a fan, please consider changing it back.

Group Ranked Solo Queue: Provide a GF like queue for granked. Meta comp only, Heals, Tank, 2 Dps. Role in need award, make it respect ignore list (because you don't get grouped with ignored anyway in gr) to clarify this, cause there's always one person, you can still fight ignored people, just can't be grouped and make the queue prioritize unignored players (players who try to ignore half the population have less pops) and allow small premades of 1, 2, 3 and full group.

Solo Ranked Class Stacking: See if you can implement a queue design where multiple advanced classes will either be split or not on same team depending on how many are in queue.

Backfill Priority Role: Please make priority role Dps or the "removed role", You recent changes to solo ranked have allowed dps to miss/decline queue and be backfilled by a healer or a tank.

Lockout for Solo Ranked queue: Please make a 30 min to accumlative lockout for dropping queue or group in Solo Ranked. I don't need to remind anyone how much fun it's been all season with bad players dropping group round two forcing an instant loss and depriving the opposite team of Elo for climbing. If you implement this please make it legacy wide. We don't need trolls swapping toons and repeating it all day long. I am on the fence about accumlative time, but other games do it and it works for them.. personaly 30m seems fine to me.

Elo Rating grant: You did a good job on shutting down backfilling, but I'de like to take it a step further. See, my experience in season 11 has been this. I go into a match, I win round 1, their 4th leaves round two. I win 8 elo. I go into a match, I lose round 1, my 4th leaves round two. I lose -14. My request is this, 1 of two options, make elo loss and gain moot in matchs without 8 players, except for the one who left. Or 2, if someone leaves your team from kick or leave or decline queue your loss rating is adjusted for 3v4 loss. It already adjusts for wins, please make it for losses too. To avoid "backfill" the rating of the match cannot exceed what it would have been had the fourth not declined the queue.

Scrimmage Arena: CS:GO did this just recently and I would love to see you do this swtor. So basicaly it's Arenas with no Elo. It's nearly impossible to get any real experience with arenas in 2019 due to changes to the queue, and it would nice to have some elo less training grounds. A nice implentation of this is just a secondary option in "queue unranked" 8 or 4 players. In this case I would advocate not allowing groups.. because it would quickly become very toxic hard to enjoy vs meta pvp guilds farming people who just want to learn how to play arenas.

Last but not least, I'de like to see all pvp mode maps to be selectable. Some people may complain about not enough pops, but no one should be forced to play something they don't want to. Maps that aren't popular should have less pops, because they aren't popular. Maps that are should get more, because they are the most fun and popular.

I had one other idea but I forgot what it was.... I might edit this if I remember what it was.

Very good post! I'm just gonna highlight the points I think are most important and comment on a few. But I would sign this.

Group Ranked Solo Queue: [...] allow small premades of 1, 2, 3 and full group.

Since you are allowing full groups in this queue I'm guessing this will replace the current "Team Ranked", while in "Solo Ranked" all 8 players in an arena had to queue solo? Or do you wanna get rid of the two modes and just make it one?

My suggestion would be: Allow to queue for Solo Ranked either alone or in a group of two (matchmaking based on the person with the highest elo of the two, as if they were both on that rating, so people don't abuse this for elo boost). And keep Team Ranked as it is, to only team up with 4 and play against another team of 4. (Yes, I know, what about a group of 3? But I think a group of 3 should not be allowed to match against a 2+1+1 or 2+2 Team, as 3 people on the right roles can coordinate just like a 4 man team, and they should be playing Team Ranked.)

Backfill Priority Role: Please make priority role Dps or the "removed role", You recent changes to solo ranked have allowed dps to miss/decline queue and be backfilled by a healer or a tank.

Any cross-role backfill system, even if based on priority, is unacceptable! Either the backfilled role is the same as the declined role, or that match shouldn't be allowed to start.

Lockout for Solo Ranked queue: Please make a 30 min to accumlative lockout for dropping queue or group in Solo Ranked.

Yes please. Declining/AFKing and Leaving early must be punished!

Since you are allowing full groups in this queue I'm guessing this will replace the current "Team Ranked", while in "Solo Ranked" all 8 players in an arena had to queue solo? Or do you wanna get rid of the two modes and just make it one?

 

My suggestion would be: Allow to queue for Solo Ranked either alone or in a group of two (matchmaking based on the person with the highest elo of the two, as if they were both on that rating, so people don't abuse this for elo boost). And keep Team Ranked as it is, to only team up with 4 and play against another team of 4. (Yes, I know, what about a group of 3? But I think a group of 3 should not be allowed to match against a 2+1+1 or 2+2 Team, as 3 people on the right roles can coordinate just like a 4 man team, and they should be playing Team Ranked.)

Anyone is of course encouraged to make their own ideas to bioware but my idea in this respect was to reanimate GR by offering an ease of matchmaking. Yes you will be at a disadvantage for tryhard "pros" but thats ok, that how all competitve group are. You stay in your skill bracket, in this case the 2 man groups for example, and you have fun there. You queue with people you like, maybe even whisper a new person after and add them to your group, or don't, ignore them and you'll never get them again.

My idea was not to replace solo, it was bring a matchmaking ease to reanimate gr. I believe the way to do this is make your group, and then pick upa random and maybe a 3rd or a fourth, someone you would never talk to, but realise they are kinda cool.

The original inspiration for this was the Master Mode Flashpoint GF designn. I figured, already in the game, can't be that hard to apply to another endgame mode

I play on the same server as you!

You do? XD We should play sometime, I'm "Nothing" on Satele Shan, I'm sorta loud on fleet and I like to troll it. Hit me up sometime, we pvp together

Some very good ideas here, some already mentioned, but the "Solo Group ranked" idea is a first I think.

The only thing I fear about the group ranked idea is that the very good teams would still farm the solo group quers. There are some very good teams out there and if they would que as a group of 4 against the people who que solo or maybe in 2 ppl groups (if that would work too) they would surely lose. OR you simple remove the possibility to for a group of 4 to que. That way it could work.

Legacy bound stuff, yes, sure.

Lockout, yes, but i am afraid 30 min is not much. If you consider the time needed to get a pop sometimes then 30 min is just the time needed for a pop. There are times when I get instant pops, but mostly its the case where the pops take 10-20 minutes. If this is going to be introduced (and it should be) then they need to look at some statistics on how long people wait for pops so that you dont give them the same lockout as is the time for a pop.

"Scrimmage Arena" is actually our pre-season, but the problem is that those are not long enough and people need to know about them. So if people are well informed about pre-seasons and will take part in them they should get the necessary experience.

But its good the points are constantly being brought up.

here are things for consideration, and since Mike and Eric say they are throwing ideas around, I'm going to make a short list for consideration.

 

 

Legacy bound: Tokens and Flags. There is no reason to lock tokens to toons, since pvp rewards are legacy anyway, may as well make it alt friendly. Also, you used to have legacy bound flags, you tried making them toon bound, no one was a fan, please consider changing it back.

 

Group Ranked Solo Queue: Provide a GF like queue for granked. Meta comp only, Heals, Tank, 2 Dps. Role in need award, make it respect ignore list (because you don't get grouped with ignored anyway in gr) to clarify this, cause there's always one person, you can still fight ignored people, just can't be grouped and make the queue prioritize unignored players (players who try to ignore half the population have less pops) and allow small premades of 1, 2, 3 and full group.

 

Solo Ranked Class Stacking: See if you can implement a queue design where multiple advanced classes will either be split or not on same team depending on how many are in queue.

 

Backfill Priority Role: Please make priority role Dps or the "removed role", You recent changes to solo ranked have allowed dps to miss/decline queue and be backfilled by a healer or a tank.

 

Lockout for Solo Ranked queue: Please make a 30 min to accumlative lockout for dropping queue or group in Solo Ranked. I don't need to remind anyone how much fun it's been all season with bad players dropping group round two forcing an instant loss and depriving the opposite team of Elo for climbing. If you implement this please make it legacy wide. We don't need trolls swapping toons and repeating it all day long. I am on the fence about accumlative time, but other games do it and it works for them.. personaly 30m seems fine to me.

 

Elo Rating grant: You did a good job on shutting down backfilling, but I'de like to take it a step further. See, my experience in season 11 has been this. I go into a match, I win round 1, their 4th leaves round two. I win 8 elo. I go into a match, I lose round 1, my 4th leaves round two. I lose -14. My request is this, 1 of two options, make elo loss and gain moot in matchs without 8 players, except for the one who left. Or 2, if someone leaves your team from kick or leave or decline queue your loss rating is adjusted for 3v4 loss. It already adjusts for wins, please make it for losses too. To avoid "backfill" the rating of the match cannot exceed what it would have been had the fourth not declined the queue.

 

Scrimmage Arena: CS:GO did this just recently and I would love to see you do this swtor. So basicaly it's Arenas with no Elo. It's nearly impossible to get any real experience with arenas in 2019 due to changes to the queue, and it would nice to have some elo less training grounds. A nice implentation of this is just a secondary option in "queue unranked" 8 or 4 players. In this case I would advocate not allowing groups.. because it would quickly become very toxic hard to enjoy vs meta pvp guilds farming people who just want to learn how to play arenas.

 

Last but not least, I'de like to see all pvp mode maps to be selectable. Some people may complain about not enough pops, but no one should be forced to play something they don't want to. Maps that aren't popular should have less pops, because they aren't popular. Maps that are should get more, because they are the most fun and popular.

 

I had one other idea but I forgot what it was.... I might edit this if I remember what it was.

I Support all of these except ignore things in group arena since long playing experienced players will just know all noobs by their names and will put them into ignore list while those players who arent playing every day will be in disadvantage since they wont be able to find out all these noobs. Besides people will start ignoring specs they dont like to fight in one team with (pts, sins, snipers or whatever they dont want to see) it is possible because ranked community is very small and barely new players join it. All of these will lead to serious queue-pop collapses

I also disagree with opportunity with choosing maps since players will just choose into black list those maps they dont like: marauders will ignore rishi cove arena since it is small and there is no place to hide and regen for them, snipers will ignore all except mandalore battle arena since they can sit up on edge and push everyone they want down, mercs will want to play on makeb or orbital station since there are not many places for enemies to run from them or kite and with hydraulic speed they can run on bridges/rant and push everyone they want. This also will lead to pop decrease and unfair matches

Last but not least, I'de like to see all pvp mode maps to be selectable.

 

Some people may complain about not enough pops, but no one should be forced to play something they don't want to.

Maps that aren't popular should have less pops, because they aren't popular. Maps that are should get more, because they are the most fun and popular.

winner winner, chicken parm dinner! ^

Fine.

If we can't stop the cheats in ranked or make it so ELO actually is an accurate representation of a player's skill, can't make new classes, can't change up the class power structure, can't make WZ comms legacy bound or transferable, can't make a gearing system that is enjoyable and doesn't punish alts, and can't make conquest enjoyable as it once was, at least make it so we can choose what PVP map we play! FFS.

This would eliminate the countless quitters and constant dropping of the WZ due to it being Huttball for the 20th time in a row.

I wanted to take a moment to explain why the respected ignore list is so important in my opinion.

My idea is not to replace solo ranked with a meta comp queue. Solo ranked is a good concept, has it's own rules and strats and I have no interest in suggesting that it be replaced or fused with GR. I trully believe that would be a fiasco akin to how number farming premades are fused with solo queueing objective players in regs right now.

Fundmently at it's core, GR is 4 friends who queue together in a comp of their choosing and they fight other players. My idea is to set the building block in motion. I am going to provide an extended example of a scenario I would like to see become a reality.

Jake plays Sorc heals. John plays Jugg tank. Jake and John decide they want to try GR for the first time, so they group up and they queue GR GF. They get a match, and 2 Dps show up, Clair and Jim. Clair is a lethality operative and Jim is a MM sniper. They go up against... lets say <Farming GR> some leet premade 1700 rating top three team. Ok, so, round starts and 1 minute in Jim gets destroyed and does maybe 100k dmg total. Now Clair lethality and Jugg tank and Sorc heals are left. They manage to cc out and seperate tnk and hlr and kill one of <farming GR>s dps. Acid comes and pug team loses. Round two is different, <FGR> is carefull, they blow up jim in 30 seconds and this time they cc and seperate clair and take her out after maybe 2 minute, 2:30. So now the match is lost.

Everyone leaves the match, and what do you think John and Jake should do? Imo their move should be, put Jim on ignore, ask clair to join their group, invite her to comms in discord and A) ask /2 on fleet LF Cleave DPS GR, or B) requeue and hope to get another good player.

Lets assume they get another good player, a madness sorc for example. This time they fight and gf pug group and they win. What should Jake, John and Clair do? Imo they should invite Madness sorc to discord, ask him to join group, and just like that you built the foundation of a GR team in the making.

Ignore list is required for this design because GR is 4 friends playing their comp. It isn't 4 randoms being toxic to one another each trying to last longer than each other.

The last point I will make is address Blad concern of killing queue times. Right now GGR is dead as a doornail, so if poor Fred on his pt gets ignored by 90% of Satele Shan he's not even going to dent the queue times a flat dead queue. Anything is better than right now.

I wanted to add one more thing that I view as important. There are moany very good pvpers in this game who won't go near ranked because A) they don't have a group for GR or B) the toxicity in solo is soulcrushing to them. I don't blame them one bit for staying in regs and having fun being a reg star. I believe that if they had the chance to play arenas and not play with toxicity, death threats, mother offers, I can see a day where people queue GRGF because it sound like fun for the next couple hours. Meet up with old friends, duke out a couple of arenas, get some mats then go play huttball or civil war.

 

I wanted to add one more thing that I view as important. There are moany very good pvpers in this game who won't go near ranked because A) they don't have a group for GR or B) the toxicity in solo is soulcrushing to them. I don't blame them one bit for staying in regs and having fun being a reg star. I believe that if they had the chance to play arenas and not play with toxicity, death threats, mother offers, I can see a day where people queue GRGF because it sound like fun for the next couple hours. Meet up with old friends, duke out a couple of arenas, get some mats then go play huttball or civil war.

I think this is a very important part. More people like myself who hate the toxicity in solo queue would play ranked.

The only thing I don’t like is the ignore function being used as you describe. It might be better to have a seperate mechanism that allows you to block that person coming into your specific team during that session.

That way they can get better and not be permanently shunned or penalised. You also have to consider that they might have a few friends they want to play with and then can’t because someone on the teams has them permanently on ignore (which isn’t fair) and might itself start breaking the queue when everyone has different people on ignore that you might not. Eventually you end up with only a very select and a small group of people who aren’t on anyone’s ignore list that can get matches in an orderly fashion and they will nearly always be playing against or with a very small bunch of people.

I think this is a very important part. More people like myself who hate the toxicity in solo queue would play ranked.

Arent you playing ranked cause of ping?

Arent you playing ranked cause of ping?

It’s Certainly challenging with 220ms.

Scrimmage arenas are a great idea and a way to get newer players into arenas, particularly group ranked since preseasons tend to be short. It would also be incredibly easy to implement.

Although I've been asking for this since 2014 so don't get your hopes up...

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=765049

Scrimmage arenas are a great idea and a way to get newer players into arenas, particularly group ranked since preseasons tend to be short. It would also be incredibly easy to implement.

 

Although I've been asking for this since 2014 so don't get your hopes up...

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=765049

can't you already do that with Grp PvP Challenge in the pvp tab of activity finder? it sucks cuz you can't get mats from it, but it's otherwise exactly what you want(?)

did it a few times within my guild. couldn't keep their concentration for long, but...we are a pve guild. it did get wooky back into a WZ/arena though!

can't you already do that with Grp PvP Challenge in the pvp tab of activity finder? it sucks cuz you can't get mats from it, but it's otherwise exactly what you want(?)

 

did it a few times within my guild. couldn't keep their concentration for long, but...we are a pve guild. it did get wooky back into a WZ/arena though!

Can you do that cross-faction as well? Imp Guild X challenges Pub guild Y. I'm guessing you can get there through group finder but I'm not sure if there's a direct way.

Admittedly that feature came out while I was away and I thought it was only for 8v8.

Can you do that cross-faction as well? Imp Guild X challenges Pub guild Y. I'm guessing you can get there through group finder but I'm not sure if there's a direct way.

 

Admittedly that feature came out while I was away and I thought it was only for 8v8.

haven't tried x-faction. it's an interesting question, but I think it would work.

Can you do that cross-faction as well? Imp Guild X challenges Pub guild Y. I'm guessing you can get there through group finder but I'm not sure if there's a direct way.

 

Admittedly that feature came out while I was away and I thought it was only for 8v8.

You can customise how many players you have and what maps. If you want, you can make 2v2, 3v3 or even 5v5 teams on 8v8 maps or 4v4 maps.

I’m not sure about the group finder. I did t even know it was an option?

it's not like group finder. you have to form a group and then send a "challenge" to the leader of the other group. then it loads up like any pvp instance.

it's not a GF thing that searches for matches. it's designed to practice with other ppl at arranged times and on selected maps with no rewards. just the fun of competing and practicing. it's a fantastic idea, but like I said, I could only get my guild to play with it for one night and all of about 4 games, maybe just 3.

it's not like group finder. you have to form a group and then send a "challenge" to the leader of the other group. then it loads up like any pvp instance.

 

it's not a GF thing that searches for matches. it's designed to practice with other ppl at arranged times and on selected maps with no rewards. just the fun of competing and practicing. it's a fantastic idea, but like I said, I could only get my guild to play with it for one night and all of about 4 games, maybe just 3.

If we had an unranked arena que I would never touch regs again...

If we had an unranked arena que I would never touch regs again...

If there was an only reg arena queue many would probably just do that more often than ranked arenas, myself included... especially if there was an option for like only DPS or only trinity games, etc.

arena only queues would die just as quickly as grp ranked but w/o new seasons to revive them. you see, reg star guilds would queue in 4m grps and wipe the floor with pugs. even grp ranked teams would go in there to kill time when the grp queue is empty.

the only way to keep a reg arena queue alive is to mirror the dreadful matchmaking system of solo ranked. heh.

Well changes i want to see for season 12 is the developers who make changes. Sadly current developer team cant get 1 good change as always they will make things worse like they did all these years. Who ever made this stupid, buggy and exploiter friendly matchmaking and let it run almost a year is not suitable making any changes for solo ranked. Sadly if they gonna change match making it will be total **** like current one since maker will be same or similar level developer. Sadly nothing good will come from current developer team since they will add things without thinking how will it affect game like they do class changes in 6.0. So changes will happen but it wont be any better than this since same team will make it and they will rush things with out thinking.

Sorry but we are tqalking about BW here who cant perma ban botters, who cant make a decent working matchmaking, who cant make class balance changes almost 20 months, who wont listen player feedback, who cant fix instant death areas in their new stupid arena maps. Who can only reskin existing warzones, who cant fix dsync and blame engine for that and dont know engine can be improved. Sorry but if this game was created by another company i would have some hopes but in BW's hands you cant expect anything good since they are all have fear of losing their jobs since BW might shut down soon and they wont invest anything major on pvp they did last 12-15 months which is almost nothing.I dont even think shorter ranked season will happen since creating a bronze level armor and some color crystals is hard for them.

You cannot expect a decent change who gives snipers a *********** phasewalk and predation, give marauders more cc immunity more force camo they clearly have no idea about this game and without a clue about the game.

Just turn solo queue into a group finder queue for TR, with a separate ELO branch for it, and make it so you only get similar rating people in SR. Make it also show what is needed in queue, just like the group finder queues for operations and trinity requiring things.

Not so good TR teams would probably still get matched with the higher ELO solo ranked teams, and we'd have pops for "everything". Furthermore, as of the moment, every spec is good in the tank/heal setting, so arena PVP would be so much easier to balance.

arena only queues would die just as quickly as grp ranked but w/o new seasons to revive them. you see, reg star guilds would queue in 4m grps and wipe the floor with pugs. even grp ranked teams would go in there to kill time when the grp queue is empty.

 

the only way to keep a reg arena queue alive is to mirror the dreadful matchmaking system of solo ranked. heh.

You would definitely have to restrict premades vs pugs or it wouldn’t work.