It's competitive. There are metrics you are going to be judged by during a pvp match, wins and losses. Would u show up to take a test unprepared? No you'd only fail yourself. So in a group setting if ur showing up to queue in pvp unprepared you are only doing a disservice to yourself and your teammates. That's why a group function even exists so you can accomplish the goal of winning matches while being a good team player. If you are hopping on to do a few matches because time restraints for example, that's fine but your expectations that you should be able to just log in and get 100% fair matches when you aren't taking the same amount of time and care other players are, is asinine tbh 👍😁  

I went and used the kessan's landing option in Solo activity finder, ported there on an alt I had not doing the story on yet, and the terminal was not able to be used.   This means if you didn't do the story on that alt, you won't be able to actually do the Daily Area, which we were supposed to be able to do in the last patch.

exactly, premade teams have innate advantages solo players do not have. If solo players group up and work together... that's called a premade team. just as a funny: "hey everyone, we have about 45 seconds until the warzone begins, I know we are all solo players but I am linking my discord and if everyone can tell me your builds and gear I'll coordinate us based on our abilities! GOOD LUCK!!"

Solo players have access to all that if they choose, if they decide they are too lazy to organize for a TEAM game, then that's their decision. I don't understand the care bear mentality. There's a learning curve in pvp if you want to become a better player there are plenty of resources out there to do so. When you queue for a match there should be no guarantee that you are going to play against someone that is the same exact level of skill as yourself, nor should there be because it's impractical. 

The Arena is one life, it plays much more strategically and is over way faster. Inevitably you will face some sort of control or focus & pressure where whereas in 8v8s often you will go by potentially never having to deal with such. It is dishonest to compare the two when it comes to TDM, I am not saying you are saying that but rather explaining the large difference between the modes. While you can get away with a lot of things in Arena, you will get away with a lot more in warzones. Part of the appeal honestly to me, for SWTOR PvP was the ability to both impact but also not impact so heavily I cause a loss when it comes to 8v8. While one person can carry it, it's not designed that way and has way more forgiveness across the board. It is still in fact this way, the meta, however, is far more punishing and if it was to change it'd be more obvious to see.  The issue with Arenas in general is that it's not competitive and just used as a conquest farming simulator. Most players who are remotely good at their class can achieve way higher than just a 50% win rate in the arena and often the losses they'll take aren't even in their control. Even when it was ranked it was at times this way, it's essentially gambling with odds, and those odds are betting on yourself. There's so much that can go wrong that you just can't control and with it not being anything more than a casual outlet it's not going to change. Here's a great example of the current state of Arena & showcase of those out-of-control situations. Until there's better matchmaking or more of a restriction on group sizes/group composition requirements for match start it'll be a mess competition-wise.  I've said times before, though I am really just talking to myself at this point. Restrict group size limit to 4. This allows groups to face off more often as odd-sized groups are more often pitted against solos & 8stacks are left in queue till they get solos. Restrict Arena Group DPS limit to 2, enforcing tank and heal roles to fill 3rd and 4th slot. This allows better match making and less abuse of solo players.  Rework MMR, while it's a useful factor - there are too many things to account for. Average damage, healing, and so on is a metric that should heavily enforce MMR. Note this short video for more info. Give incentives to play below max level PvP - Tech frags, commendations, something to allow gearing without being max already. Not having gear going into lv80 PvP is miserable period. While there is truth in what you say - regardless of how many people will say otherwise, no one can speak for everyone. Not everyone is out there to flex or want to play against pugs. I often have to sneak online just to play against another group just to get one match and they'll disband afterward. Which I have no issues with it at all but a lot of other people do. Do I think they should be forced to play other groups if they're in the queue? yes. Do I think a 2-man should go against an 8? No. The problem is MMR system doesn't work and when groups are involved they functionally are useless. Often these group leads or groups in general will have a low win rate meaning MMR means almost nothing. The role queue and premade vs premade need amped up more than what it is to have any functionality and MMR as a whole needs reworked. Reducing everything to a 4-man limit would band-aid 90% of the problem as it's impossible to fix it completely.  Alternatively, make the mercy rule functional and giving an ability to avoid all backfills like you can with a group finder queue for queued PvE help. While the mercy rule would need to be adjusted per map, it would end the incredibly unfair matches quickly allowing people to have more fun in the long run instead of having less fun and more likely to log out after the match is over. Balance will likely never be obtained due to the randomness of SWTOR's PvP & skill differences while also having blaring balance and meta issues it's silly to make players sit a full match of 0-600+. 7.2 was supposed to be the "PvP" rework, instead we got less content, ranked removed, arena gutted into conquest simulator, and larger groups for warzones so players who couldn't handle that one guy can now bring 5 of his buddies to make sure the job does get handled. It's truly a shame and I did multiple videos and countless threads over the years talking about potential changes etc, all quite reasonable and likely low effort by them that'd still meet the quality and replayability standards of the original game. Just to share one of those with you guys is the idea of Solo Ranked 8v8,  I have posted about it many times and advocated for it many times. This would be a fun seasonal thing during summer or winter that'd amp the population and show players how the game modes get played when everyone's working together. It'd also seep out into regular play because regular matches could be used as practice grounds. If they simply just added the slightest effort and did away with top3s/class-specific rewards we could still very much so have a format of ranked to this day. Sure it wouldn't be as expressive and some class combinations would be better from season to season, but that doesn't even need to be a conversation, make the rewards legacy-wide.    Anyway, I haven't played in nearly a month which is one of the longest breaks I have taken since 2.0 that resulted purely out of me being bored & lack of PvP player base acknowledgement. Sadly, other games see so much effort from their development teams over the years while this one progressively gets worse. Without gutting the game further we were in a state that could have gone into maintenance mode and still been rather fun. The bones & core of this game's PvP was leagues above majority of other games. Things it got right are.  No Macros - More room for human error, more engaging gameplay, and strategies evolve slower. Amazing visual clarity - meaning just by playing you can tell everything going on not requiring things like Addons or programs to help you. A unique combat trinity - While most games have t/h/d they do not all have the guard mechanic nor the same taunt functionality. This allows for less brain-afk gameplay & more finesse in gameplay to deal with good tank players.  Amazing audio clarity - Every ability sounds good for the most part with a few exceptions. Before glowy buttons, we had audio cues when things were ready. Some still exist, audio reaction time is twice as fast and this was incredibly engaging and still is. Every class was unique - Nothing was generic, while now we're closing into that looking at PT the most generic melee I have ever seen. It didn't used to be that way. All the support roles were different enough and effective enough to create completely different strategies.  Warzones with exception of OPG & Quesh were designed well, with plenty of reasons to engage in combat. Minor exceptions Civil war speeder removal. OPG is king of the hill but too big, quesh's biggest mistake was removing leap to in zone. Punish bad play, not reward it.  Utility - Before both times we were pruned we had a lot of it, now we have less. There's certainly a fine line but 5.0 was a good example of having enough and so were 4.0 and 2.0.  There's some more but most games fall flat when it comes to having enough depth but also being in general clear visually and still engaging. The Star Wars appeal brought me in as someone whose still not seen the movies in 2024, I am coming close to 30 now and I really have no excuse to still have not watched them, but I stayed for the amazing design fundamentals they had. I say a lot of things in the past tense here because, in the current state of the game, I don't feel the same way anymore. It's a shell of what once was and players are unhappy, so much so they'll sabotage each other's fun, for fun.  tl;dr anyway, PvP is in shambles, the arena is dead for a magnitude of reasons, and competitive left years ago. The core of the game is fading away to cater to a casual audience forgetting it's an MMORPG. Part of the appeal of playing MMORPGs is character progression and depth. There are many layers and simply the wrong layers are being peeled. The great mishandling of BnS PvP in NA pales in comparison to what's going on here.