The random letter name was likely a bot but it was very weird to run into one in lowbies in Odessen Proving Grounds (my personal favourite map). So I had a good battle mod and didn't want to lose it despite the two players trying to kill me, I had activated control points twice and noticed the AFK player on my team camping before. So I ran in and was able to distract my attackers with the nice, low lying fruit of an AFK player and get myself to safety while simultaneously getting the AFK player killed and into a spawn point where they were at least forced to touch their keyboard again.

I expect to run into AFK players in regular matches to farm CXP- not so much lowbies, especially after the XP fix to dailies. I don't actually see AFK players much at all- are they on more at certain times?

The random letter name was likely a bot but it was very weird to run into one in lowbies in Odessen Proving Grounds (my personal favourite map). So I had a good battle mod and didn't want to lose it despite the two players trying to kill me, I had activated control points twice and noticed the AFK player on my team camping before. So I ran in and was able to distract my attackers with the nice, low lying fruit of an AFK player and get myself to safety while simultaneously getting the AFK player killed and into a spawn point where they were at least forced to touch their keyboard again.

 

I expect to run into AFK players in regular matches to farm CXP- not so much lowbies, especially after the XP fix to dailies. I don't actually see AFK players much at all- are they on more at certain times?

I hardly ever see AFK'rs that are AFK from the start of the match. I very often see AFK'rs in ACW and AHG if they've decided that the match is unwinnable - usually immediately after the other team takes 2 turrets or has a 1st round double cap in AHG. In AHG they will go into one of the tunnels and park themselves in a corner. In ACW they will often drop off "our" side of the spawn ledge, and then just stand there.

I understand not being able to vote-kick at will, since you might have new players who were honestly trying but just not very good, and then I could see some "pros" I've run into trying to vote kick them just because "not on MY team". But I wish that either it would not warn the AFK'r about "you have to initiate combat or you will be kicked" or maybe if ALL 7 other people on the team voted to kick then it would do it. Not sure, but basically right now there's not a thing you can do about AFK'rs. Actually, maybe just having WZ matches honor the "ignore" mechanism would do it - at least I could prevent myself from being in matches with them for-ever-after. But that will never happen, because bioware and their all holy "quick pvp pops". :(

Just before 5.0 launched there were a lot of new pvp bots farming WZ Comms to convert to credits. They had the usual stupid multi letter nonsensical names, no gear at all, and no advanced class. They would go hide in a corner or the bot would latch onto a team mate and go on follow.

Since 5.0, I've seen 2-3, a lot less than before it launched, but it's hard to tell now because everyone's has an advanced class and lots of people are bad and just farming CXP by sitting in corners or all at the one node,

I'd argue but I just was in an arena match against a sage where they didn't pop their bubble which made it much easier to kill them- usually those matches drag on a while... I was wondering why in Odessen everyone started hugging a not under attack mode, or some ignoring the mods.

Had a match of Huttball where it was like the enemy team all knew what they were doing and the entire team ran around like headless chickens. When I started out, it might have been to try and increase my Conquest score which I now ignore since I don't care about it anymore, but I tried to win and learn what was happening. PvP is much more fun when you know what you're doing- I wish they had practice arenas for people where they could run around the map, get a feel for the various objectives, nodes and areas.

I'd argue but I just was in an arena match against a sage where they didn't pop their bubble which made it much easier to kill them- usually those matches drag on a while... I was wondering why in Odessen everyone started hugging a not under attack mode, or some ignoring the mods.

 

Had a match of Huttball where it was like the enemy team all knew what they were doing and the entire team ran around like headless chickens. When I started out, it might have been to try and increase my Conquest score which I now ignore since I don't care about it anymore, but I tried to win and learn what was happening. PvP is much more fun when you know what you're doing- I wish they had practice arenas for people where they could run around the map, get a feel for the various objectives, nodes and areas.

Biggest mistake Bioware made when introducing Arena was not having it as a seperate queue in regs as well as ranked.

When they released it, I only got 3-4 pops of Arena between lvl 10-50. By the time I started to try ranked I got abused for being a noob, when I used to do really well in ranked 8 man. It's a bit hard to know what you're doing when you've had no practice in regs.

Then when I knew what to do, there was no way to train your guildies or friends. I honestly think this is why ranked teams didn't work out.

Most of the first time that you finally got to play in a coordinated team was against experienced teams. Once you got rolfstomped, you didn't bother going back. Not because you lost, but because of the toxic comments from fellow ranked pvpers. If they rolled you, all you heard was how bad you were, even in fleet chat. It still happens constantly and you wonder why people don't queue teams or even solo. It's like compensation for lack or manhood size or who has the biggest one. All the newbie ranked players for current players are just parsing dummies or people to ridicule. All this does is breed more toxicity and less ranked players. Even this new CXP system will only encourage what I've already said.

Without somewhere dedicated for people to practice in a casual reg environment, then ranked Arena will always be dominated by the existing ranked players because it's difficult for new blood to learn enough to be a challenge.

Sure they pop in regs, but it's random. I can play 8 hours straight and get 3 arenas. Plus there are multiple maps that require different tactics.

Arena needs a seperate reg queue so people can practice the different maps and tactics.

What is really frustring is during low pop times when you have 8-12 people in the queue, instead of the system popping you into an arena, it makes you wait till there is enough people for an 8v8 match or even more agrevating, it makes you wait an hour for an odessen pop and you find out there are enough reps and imps to have multiple arena matches. As well as the fact that many people hate odessen the worst, myself included, I refuse to play the map and leave every pop, which ends the match. People requeue and it makes you wait a long time and then pops another odessen when there are 8 imps and 8 reps.

What they need to do is bring back a form or 8 man ranked or at least an advanced 8 man bracket. Newbies and afks can still do what they want in regs, but dedicated pvpers who want to win more than being idiots, can have somewhere to play.