1. Removed Solo Arenas as a Ranked gametype.

• Solo Arenas are now a Regular WZ gametype
  
• They reward Regular WZ comms
  
• Queuing for Reg Solo Arenas will put you only in Arenas, but the Reg WZ queue can still put you in both WZ and Arenas.
  

dont know why anyone is seriously debating this...truth is, mid season, its going to die out anyway on most servers.

I didn't necro this, and I don't care to defend it anymore. Competitive PvP is dead, and the majority of people left will fight tooth and nail to keep this game super casual.

As I said, your ideas would do more harm than good. The fact that you don't realise that makes me relieved that you aren't in any position to change anything.

In general if the only options are to get facerolled until you get better, or quit, most people will quit. Nothing you, I, or Bioware can do about that.

That right there about covers most recent PVP topics. It's why BW can't remove bolster and why they won't remove solo ranked. They want people to play, not put obstacles in their way.

I'm not sure what the real solution is, but the primary problem is that most players do not want competitive PvP. They want to be matched against players of even ability with an appropriate distribution of classes. They do not want to face the best and take them on. Unless that changes I don't see how you greatly increase ranked participation.

I disagree. Apart from the rage quitters I think the majority just want a fair fight.

I think people just don't what to face a more skilled opponent, or any opponent that has an advantage thir team doesn't. It's the same reason people complain about premades, 4 people on TeamSpeak is an awesome advantage. Nobody wants to play them when teamed up with a PvE player, 2 noobs, 2 DPS "rambos", and 2 legit players that will actually try to work as a team.

That's why I have to disagree with the removal of solo ranked but but agree with the rest. I think if you put enough reward to get the reg players to switch to ranked and build the ranked population up to the point where the ELO works, it may solve a lot of the problems. Good players don't get matched with noobs in pve gear or comm farmers that accept losses. Bad players have nobody but themselves to blame if they can't win when fighting noobs.

And once solo ranked grows and people get matched with players of similar skill you'll get more new teams forming to increase ranked group participation.

1)The game "NEEDED" X server queues shortly after launch. They failed to deliver. At this point, even if they brought this feature online I doubt it would bring people back. Cross server would have instantly solved the issues of queue times and would have allowed people to queue for only what they want to play.

2) The game "NEEDED" to be built in an engine that is capable of supporting large scale battles. EAWare failed to foresee the importance of this and as a result have a game that is stuck in mediocrity. It can never be what people want it to be.

3) The game "NEEDED" a scrim or skirmish mode where teams can actively set up practice matches and also create their own ladder style competitions and tournaments. This type of feature does a lot of the developers work for them. Communities use them to create their own fun.

4) The game "NEEDED" a better bolstering system. The present implementation tries to do too much and thus falls massively short of what is actually needed. What it "needed" to accomplish was:-

a) Address player stupidity.

b) Allow people to min max their mods without a silly stat overcharging system. The only bolstering that "should" occur is to boost, either up or down, the item level of individual slot components to entry PvP level. If you come in with full kell dragon PvE gear, you get bolstered DOWN to entry PvP level. If you come in naked you get bolstered up to a predetermined default level. If you come in with min maxed level 20 blues, you get bolstered to min maxed entry level PvP.

c) PvP gear should always be better than the entry level.

5) The game "NEEDED" dedicated game testers. Skilled players who are paid to play the game and provide feedback on game modes, warzones, class interaction. This feedback is used to drive balance changes and address core issues. Sorry EAWare but your metrics DON'T WORK.

I didn't necro this, and I don't care to defend it anymore. Competitive PvP is dead, and the majority of people left will fight tooth and nail to keep this game super casual.

But you ARE defending this insanity which means that you still find merit in the idea. And now you're just pouting because we "casuals" didn't want to be relegated to second-class status.

And once solo ranked grows and people get matched with players of similar skill you'll get more new teams forming to increase ranked group participation.

I don't see ranked growing as long as it's arenas. They are terrible. I don't care what reward they give, I'm not doing ranked as it stands now and I don't know many people who will. Just look at how many drop out of arenas as soon as they load in regs.

I disagree. Apart from the rage quitters I think the majority just want a fair fight.

In a nutshell, this.

For starters, put in a minimum gear requirement.

Wont keep the bads away, but will at least make them geared bads.

Problem with "rating" is that most of these terrible people who have no idea what they are doing will queue one evening then never again because they get blown up so badly, so their rating never actually falls a lot and stays near the average.

But: Main issue I have is ungeared people queing for solo arenas then dying in seconds and contributing nothing to the team at all.

I love a fair arena where everyone is a decently skilled and geared player. These can be a ton of fun.

But a lot of time the outcome is almost pre-determined due to one team having one exceptionally ungeared person, even if the rest are fairly matched.

Team arenas? Dont expect that to grow or take off. Same thing happened as 8v8s. Any revival will be very temporary.

You are a casual. Generally speaking ranked is not for casuals.

 

Convenience < quality of competition

Anyone who doesn't play this game for monetary reward could also be described as a casual player. Try not to be so condescending in your rebukes please, just because other players don't fit into your "vision" doesn't mean they don't devote a certain amount of time to something.

Basically i'm saying look at the larger picture, not at some narrow blinkered version that suits your purposes for any given arguement. As i've said, I agree with quite a lot of the points you put across. Just not in this instance.

You are a casual. Generally speaking ranked is not for casuals.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PanderingToTheBase

Quoted from the link :

So, just give the fans exactly what they want and everything will work out. Simple, huh?

 

Not quite. Generally speaking, the more intensely devoted fans in a fandom are usually outnumbered by the casual fans, but the more devoted a fan becomes, the more active (and louder) they become in the fandom. So while a few million casual fans might enjoy an episode without ever making it widely known, a handful of devoted and occasionally unhinged fans are screaming on a web forum about how the show is now Ruined FOREVER, which can be seen and heard by everyone... including the people making the show. The producers may then start pandering to these voices exclusively, believing them to be the voice of everyone watching (which they will often claim to be) — but "everyone" in this case may in fact consist only of a handful of people, and what this minority wants and what the other, less noisy fans want can differ drastically.

 

This presents a major problem. The property can end up becoming a private club, accessible only to a select few. Excluding the casual fans means they'll simply drift away to find something else to spend their time on, and raising the entry bar too high means you run the risk of locking out new fans who may have possibly been interested in the property, but now find it too difficult to access. While the vocal minority might now be satisfied (and you can't even count on that), they rarely translate to enough ratings and / or sales to justify the property's continued existence — and to make matters worse, even this hardcore minority may begin to drift away for numerous reasons (changing tastes, burnout, lessened interest, etc). This results in diminishing returns ending in eventual cancellation if unchecked.

 

Furthermore, the overall quality of the property can begin to suffer; just because someone is intensely committed to a particular work of fiction doesn't necessarily mean they know what makes good fiction work. The hardcore fans are generally fascinated by the backstory, trivia and continuity which can build up around a franchise, but this doesn't necessarily make riveting entertainment to anyone less interested in all of this stuff. And if you somehow get the story's continuity hopelessly tangled up or make any mistakes, this makes things worse; not only have you lost the interest of the people who don't care about this stuff, you've annoyed the people who do, and it's now guaranteed they won't be shy about saying so. In many cases, pandering to the base rarely succeeds in making anyone happy, not even the fans it's supposed to win over, because ultimately what most devoted fans want is the same as the casual ones; interesting and engaging stories, not just constant pandering.

15 teams would give you a big enough pool to have mostly balanced matchups. 25 or 50 would be much better, but you certainly do not need 500 to have ranked be successful.

15 is nowhere near enough to do what Cash is talking about. With only 15 you will be lucky to have two other teams in your ELO bracket. If they are not on you are getting steamrolled or are farming anther team. You really need something like 100+ teams for ELO to begin to mean something.

I disagree. Apart from the rage quitters I think the majority just want a fair fight.

 

I think people just don't what to face a more skilled opponent, or any opponent that has an advantage thir team doesn't. It's the same reason people complain about premades, 4 people on TeamSpeak is an awesome advantage. Nobody wants to play them when teamed up with a PvE player, 2 noobs, 2 DPS "rambos", and 2 legit players that will actually try to work as a team.

 

But you have just agreed with me. By saying you want a "fair fight" and not to have to fight against players that are more skilled or may have better gear you are saying you do not want competitive PvP. In pure competition you take on all comers and are willing to take your lumps to get better. If you are wanting to avoid being matched against the best of the best, then you do not want competitive PvP. This is fine because the majority of players feel this way, but lets not contradict ourselves by saying we want a competitive ranked seen and then say it needs to be fair in matchmaking. Those are two different things.

Imo if you remove solo a lot of people will stop playing ranked. I mean you have to find 4 players, get the right composition and stuff. It's too much of a bother.

I actually prefer 4-man ranked, even when we get repeatedly facerolled. It is simply more fun to have 3 friends in voice chat as teammates than having 3 randoms.

The reasons my guild queues for solo are

1. we've been waiting 30 minutes for 4-man queue with no pop. **** it, lets queue solo.
   
2. we don't have 4 players on who want to queue rated
   

More the first than the second.

Solo queue would be a lot more fun if we had in game voice chat.

the work around for the 4-man queue not popping is to queue 2 teams -- then you are guaranteed to have an opponent. Sadly, we rarely have enough players that want to do this.

I actually prefer 4-man ranked, even when we get repeatedly facerolled. It is simply more fun to have 3 friends in voice chat as teammates than having 3 randoms.

 

The reasons my guild queues for solo are

1. we've been waiting 30 minutes for 4-man queue with no pop. **** it, lets queue solo.
   
2. we don't have 4 players on who want to queue rated
   

 

More the first than the second.

 

Solo queue would be a lot more fun if we had in game voice chat.

 

the work around for the 4-man queue not popping is to queue 2 teams -- then you are guaranteed to have an opponent. Sadly, we rarely have enough players that want to do this.

Sadly groups with your attitude are rare. If this wasn't the case the 4 man queue would not be dead.

Anyone who doesn't play this game for monetary reward could also be described as a casual player. Try not to be so condescending in your rebukes please, just because other players don't fit into your "vision" doesn't mean they don't devote a certain amount of time to something.

 

Basically i'm saying look at the larger picture, not at some narrow blinkered version that suits your purposes for any given arguement. As i've said, I agree with quite a lot of the points you put across. Just not in this instance.

Ranked PvP is not about looking at the broader picture....... It is for the top tier of players.

Sadly the vast majority of competitive players have bailed on this game long, long ago so there is no population to support any kind of competitive environment.

The point of this post was that since we cant get people to queue for the sake of competition, try getting them to queue by dangling shiny objects in front of them that require Ranked play to get. Which is a crappy method, but in this game seems to be the only way to increase participation (see how the Yolo Queue population skyrocketed after Rancor was announced).

since we can get people to queue for the sake of competition

*can't*

The daily reward for ranked play should have been in the game since the start of ranked PvP.

It was a huge oversight by the developers to not offer a daily ranked reward. This basic reward gets people who would normally not even step into ranked an incentive to try it and perhaps learn that they like it. The solo queue is a crap show anyway so having all mix of skill is a good thing.

It's too bad we had to wait until season 2 but at least its coming.

*can't*

Ye thanks.

/signed

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