So what are you saying? Merge the servers?

iam asking how developers are going to bann them considering that these guys have 5-20 wins made against same team of their friends which is difficult to say whether it is coinsidence and lucky pops or a wintrade. When tr was alive wintraders couldnt do such trick because they had to wintrade much more than 5-20 games to get top 96 spots and queueing against same team more than 30 games was an obvious wintrade and they were reseted. Yet now it is enough to wintrade 5-15 games to get highest spots and it is difficult to say if it was a wintrade or just lucky wins against one team at one day lol

Besides the top names of people in teams everyone knows from streamed TR and stuff, its hard to know what is a wintrade or not... and with some of the top players its still questionable.

What even qualifies as a wintrade is somewhat of a gray area. Especially considering there are very few set teams of people that only play with each other like seasons long past. Many granked games now are kickball style...

The argument that a lot of "kickballed" top3s are not legit is understandable. The teams are usually not completely randomized, and they often are stacked player or comp wise deliberately towards one side or the other where most players of the 8 already know the likely outcome. When done in this manner with the implicit assumption that you trade off wins on chars everyone wants to climb on, its obviously a wintrade...

Its just often hard to differentiate this kind of thing from more legitly intended games.

Besides the top names of people in teams everyone knows from streamed TR and stuff, its hard to know what is a wintrade or not... and with some of the top players its still questionable.

 

What even qualifies as a wintrade is somewhat of a gray area. Especially considering there are very few set teams of people that only play with each other like seasons long past. Many granked games now are kickball style...

 

The argument that a lot of "kickballed" top3s are not legit is understandable. The teams are usually not completely randomized, and they often are stacked player or comp wise deliberately towards one side or the other where most players of the 8 already know the likely outcome. When done in this manner with the implicit assumption that you trade off wins on chars everyone wants to climb on, its obviously a wintrade...

 

Its just often hard to differentiate this kind of thing from more legitly intended games.

Yes you are right, I mean if you have a competition where people just dont take part in are the winners really winners? If it were up to me and I would see that Team Ranked has very low participation I would rather remove the top rewards from this competition, since it is not in line with what goes on in Solo ranked.

Yes you are right, I mean if you have a competition where people just dont take part in are the winners really winners? If it were up to me and I would see that Team Ranked has very low participation I would rather remove the top rewards from this competition, since it is not in line with what goes on in Solo ranked.

I wouldn't go nearly as far as removing top rewards bud. I was just saying its somewhat more difficult to identify wintrades now due to there almost always being kickballed style matches as opposed to long established named teams that vs. each other in addition to other reasons.

A lot of those that are up there are those that are always up there in rating for granked and are known for being good players...

While its harder to cheat or have unfair advantages in solo ranked since they fixed faction imbalance, ease of hacking, backfilling, etc, there is always wintrading to contend with in solos just like granked... and the absurd amount of RNG because of bad players just makes identifying them even harder. The participation difference if anything just makes it harder to identify trades in solos now arguably... what goes on in solos shouldn't be used as a comparative metric.

So what are you saying? Merge the servers?

Nah, just make same as regulars in ranked, without arenas, i.e. you get 8 vs 8 random (arenas are separated).

I could play that.

A few players on DM and SF queued against their friends won 5-10 games and already having their top 3 spots. Some of them queued against other legit teams and made a few looses to make it look legit. How you are going to deal with it? 5-10 wins against one team can be considered as luck and coincidence even though it was a wintrading. It would never happen like this if tr was alive because wintraders would have to wintrade much more than 5-16 games for top 96 spots yet since tr is dead wintrading 5-15 games with a few fake looses on purpose is enough to be top 3.

How ironic. Devs removed mat farming from tr by changing number of games needed to be done to get mats because they thought mat farming "removes healthy competition" yet after they did it, tr became fully dead and even turned into a wintrading field where there is absolutely NO COMPETITION and only one team wintrades against team of friends.

It seems like most of devs actions aimed at making something better actually make things worse when mat farming existed there was a huge competition between top rated teams, middle rated teams and even mat farmers but now there is no top teams, middle teams etc but only a few of wintraders

How ironic. Devs removed mat farming from tr by changing number of games needed to be done to get mats because they thought mat farming "removes healthy competition" yet after they did it, tr became fully dead and even turned into a wintrading field where there is absolutely NO COMPETITION and only one team wintrades against team of friends.

 

It seems like most of devs actions aimed at making something better actually make things worse when mat farming existed there was a huge competition between top rated teams, middle rated teams and even mat farmers but now there is no top teams, middle teams etc but only a few of wintraders

I found an interesting article about the difference between the devs' point of view of ranked and the ranked community's expectations.

https://mmobits.com/2018/08/28/a-rare-peak-behind-the-curtain-swtor-developer-interview-by-bad-feeling-podcast/

TLDR - the devs want everyone with a reasonable amount of ability to play ranked. Ranked players intentionally drive off newer players because they're not "good enough," either intentionally or inadvertently leading to a smaller ranked playerbase, slower queue times and practically nonexistent teams. I don't know if they do this to promote win-trading or maintain an elitist attitude, but neither is good for the game.

It's interesting the devs mentioning that rewards aren't based on "skill" but instead "time invested." This makes sense, because their goal is to keep people subbing, not promote the happiness of 60 players by turning away hundreds or thousands.

It seems like most of devs actions aimed at making something better actually make things worse when mat farming existed there was a huge competition between top rated teams, middle rated teams and even mat farmers but now there is no top teams, middle teams etc but only a few of wintraders

Top rated teams queue dodging each other and only farming mat farmers for rating is not "huge competition."

Nothing justifies wintrading, no matter how dead the queue may be. The blame should be placed primarily where it belongs, the wintrading scum themselves.

TLDR - the devs want everyone with a reasonable amount of ability to play ranked. Ranked players intentionally drive off newer players because they're not "good enough," either intentionally or inadvertently leading to a smaller ranked playerbase, slower queue times and practically nonexistent teams. I don't know if they do this to promote win-trading or maintain an elitist attitude, but neither is good for the game.

As a non-ranked player who is participating a bit in ranked lately, it doesn't seem to me like *most* people are super elitist. And I think most "ranked" players would agree that they would like people of reasonable ability to participate. There are some different opinions about what "reasonable ability" means, naturally.

I've only met a very few who take it to the extreme. I mentioned in another thread that at one point 1/2 my team, and the entire other team, conspired to vote kick a couple of us from the game. "Conspired" is exactly the right word, since they literally negotiated over /say leaving one guy on my team alive, so that they could do it. I had to stop looking at the leaderboards, because I reported that, but the guy on my team that did it is still right there in one of the very top spots... pisses me off that s/he didn't lose a thing for abusing the system, but whatever.

That aside though, I've seen a LOT more people that offer help, and continue to try to accommodate my newbie status.

That said, I stopped for a couple weeks, but just recently started queuing again, and I have noticed that participation is WAY down. I used to get pretty steady pops from earlier afternoon (EST) on. Now I might get a few sporadically all the way through early prime-time (8 PM or so). I hit a losing streak yesterday after the first win, for example. So it took me 6 matches to get the daily, and I barely had enough. (Oh, SR of course - I think this thread was about group... sorry!)

What, actively discouraging players from participating in part of the game means there's less population, leading to less competition?

Who'd have thought.

As a non-ranked player who is participating a bit in ranked lately, it doesn't seem to me like *most* people are super elitist. And I think most "ranked" players would agree that they would like people of reasonable ability to participate. There are some different opinions about what "reasonable ability" means, naturally.

 

I've only met a very few who take it to the extreme. I mentioned in another thread that at one point 1/2 my team, and the entire other team, conspired to vote kick a couple of us from the game. "Conspired" is exactly the right word, since they literally negotiated over /say leaving one guy on my team alive, so that they could do it. I had to stop looking at the leaderboards, because I reported that, but the guy on my team that did it is still right there in one of the very top spots... pisses me off that s/he didn't lose a thing for abusing the system, but whatever.

 

That aside though, I've seen a LOT more people that offer help, and continue to try to accommodate my newbie status.

 

That said, I stopped for a couple weeks, but just recently started queuing again, and I have noticed that participation is WAY down. I used to get pretty steady pops from earlier afternoon (EST) on. Now I might get a few sporadically all the way through early prime-time (8 PM or so). I hit a losing streak yesterday after the first win, for example. So it took me 6 matches to get the daily, and I barely had enough. (Oh, SR of course - I think this thread was about group... sorry!)

I've noticed that time of day seems to make a huge difference in the people you run into. When lots of newer players are in queue, the experience is much less toxic than in the evening when every queue or two seems to bring the same people.

I've noticed that time of day seems to make a huge difference in the people you run into. When lots of newer players are in queue, the experience is much less toxic than in the evening when every queue or two seems to bring the same people.

I agree.

Class also make a big difference I think. Mediocre dps are I think more tolerated than, say, a newbie healer. Healers are fairly rare at the times of day I play, and so if there are any, there are usually only 2. If one is significantly better than the other, I think that has a much larger affect on the outcome of the match than if the difference between the teams is that one of the dps is much better than another. So people complain more if they get the "bad healer - bad!".

Back to group ranked though... I'm actually kind of surprised there is not more group participation even with the daily up to "10 points". With grouped you can get a CMT per day, plus the 5 for the weekly, so you could in theory get 12. Where solo only nets you max 3 per week. Honestly, with the way people focus on getting the shiny in this game, I'm surprised that "mat farmers" aren't queuing up in teams and just trading wins back and forth to get the dailies done. They'd only have to do 4 games to get each side "done with the daily".

I found an interesting article about the difference between the devs' point of view of ranked and the ranked community's expectations.

 

https://mmobits.com/2018/08/28/a-rare-peak-behind-the-curtain-swtor-developer-interview-by-bad-feeling-podcast/

 

TLDR - the devs want everyone with a reasonable amount of ability to play ranked. Ranked players intentionally drive off newer players because they're not "good enough," either intentionally or inadvertently leading to a smaller ranked playerbase, slower queue times and practically nonexistent teams. I don't know if they do this to promote win-trading or maintain an elitist attitude, but neither is good for the game.

 

It's interesting the devs mentioning that rewards aren't based on "skill" but instead "time invested." This makes sense, because their goal is to keep people subbing, not promote the happiness of 60 players by turning away hundreds or thousands.

The feature is we are talking about team ranked where no one is trying to drive anyone away but even happy when bad players are queueing since mat farming teams are easy wins. Mat farming teams allowed highrated teams to queue too and they often matched against each other due to theirhigh elo. But now when devs removed mat farmers almost all skilled, legit and mat farming teams stopped playing tr. Instead, win traders took their place by winning 5-16 games against their friendly team and making a few looses against same team to make it look "legit". And i doubt these win trading teams will be punished since thosewho i know for doing this are still on leaderboards

The feature is we are talking about team ranked where no one is trying to drive anyone away but even happy when bad players are queueing since mat farming teams are easy wins. Mat farming teams allowed highrated teams to queue too and they often matched against each other due to theirhigh elo. But now when devs removed mat farmers almost all skilled, legit and mat farming teams stopped playing tr. Instead, win traders took their place by winning 5-16 games against their friendly team and making a few looses against same team to make it look "legit". And i doubt these win trading teams will be punished since thosewho i know for doing this are still on leaderboards

"Skilled"

"Legit"

"Mat farming teams"

Think about that a second. The devs removed 1 of those 3 - "mat farming teams" and the whole system went to pieces? Why? Because "skilled" and "legit" players didn't want to play against each other? Because they enjoy farming unskilled players instead of facing off against other people of the same skill level? No way!!!

"Skilled"

 

"Legit"

 

"Mat farming teams"

 

Think about that a second. The devs removed 1 of those 3 - "mat farming teams" and the whole system went to pieces? Why? Because "skilled" and "legit" players didn't want to play against each other? Because they enjoy farming unskilled players instead of facing off against other people of the same skill level? No way!!!

Exactly right.

"Skilled"

 

"Legit"

 

"Mat farming teams"

 

Think about that a second. The devs removed 1 of those 3 - "mat farming teams" and the whole system went to pieces? Why? Because "skilled" and "legit" players didn't want to play against each other? Because they enjoy farming unskilled players instead of facing off against other people of the same skill level? No way!!!

It was not that bad as you think. Ofcourse, there was some queue-dodging yet when a dodging team gets to high elo system forces it to stay around 10 min. in queue to get a pop against lowrated team. AND if at least one highrated team gets in queue - system puts these teams against each other. So literally when two highrated teams are queueing they will always be matched against each other and it is almost unreal to dodge so easily as you say. The only way for a non-skilled team which actually wanted to get gold tier or top 3 is to queue only when there is NO higher skilled/rated team in queue which was mostly unreal since those team were almost always in queue fighting each other.

To sum up, i can definitely say that mat farming made team ranked alive and active and dodging wasn't an easy thing to do due to matchmaking forcing higher rated teams to fight other highrated teams.

And what we have now? No highrated teams, no skilled teams, no teams which tried to dodge but only wintraders with 10-30 games who played against their friends and did it clever with some looses and queueing against other teams so devs can't even track their wintrade. Now wintraders in team ranked with 10-30 games will get easy top 3 spots with having no skill at all and with no effort.

Well done, it is definitely better than it was before......(No )

How ironic. Devs removed mat farming from tr by changing number of games needed to be done to get mats because they thought mat farming "removes healthy competition" yet after they did it, tr became fully dead and even turned into a wintrading field where there is absolutely NO COMPETITION and only one team wintrades against team of friends.

 

It seems like most of devs actions aimed at making something better actually make things worse when mat farming existed there was a huge competition between top rated teams, middle rated teams and even mat farmers but now there is no top teams, middle teams etc but only a few of wintraders

This is absolutely false. Devs enabling mat farming in 4s only made things worse. These so-called "top" players were dodging each other and coordinating que times to only que into the subpar and mat farming teams to gain elo baskets. I'm so glad it was removed. It hyperinflated the elo of these "top" players and further enabled wintrading.