man it is one of the worst changes because i believe it will have a domino effect and not in a positive way.

and something about this line sets off a red flag with me .

100% agree. The domino affect will end be felt all the way to ranked.

At this point they may as well get rid of brackets altogether and boost everyone to 75 with gear and abilities. It looks like merging all reg pvp is their long term solution to dwindling player numbers (which they exacerbate with dumb decisions). If that is the case, then they need to make it as fair as possible for players so they aren’t limited in abilities and gear when facing higher ups.

-Chris

Chris, in case you missed it or it wasn’t passed on. Here is a thread with ideas to improve reg pvp.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=992476

Bioware, here are a set of steps or a road map for improving pvp in this game. They don’t include ranked, but the benefits would flow into ranked if more people were playing reg pvp and enjoying it.

 

The lockout and the win/loss change has driven down the player numbers in pvp (from my perspective, maybe your numbers tell a different story?). It’s a failed experiment in its current form and needs to be changed and improved if you want to keep these sort of mechanisms in place. The fundamental problem is you’ve sucked the enjoyment out of pvp.

 

1. Allow players some sort of choice with map type. Wether that’s direct choice or allowing some maps to be unticked.

 

2. Allow players who back fill the opportunity to leave without penalty or reward back fillers with a win even if they lose.

 

3. Change the win/loss back to a points system, but increase the ratio to 3:1 or 4:1. You can even increase the number to complete the weekly to 20.

 

4. Reward more tech frags for pvp (across the board)

 

5. Drop gear that is always atleast at or above your irating and not below (if you aren’t going to increase the amount of rewards)

 

6. Allow pvpers a dedicated route to obtain BiS sets for pvp that don’t require doing pve operations or playing RNG lotto at Kai.

 

7. Get rid of the lockout in lowbies

 

8. Add a small amount of tech frags as a reward for doing lowbie pvp

 

9. Improve the technology so the queue knows if you were disconnected or lagged badly enough that you get bumped out of the match. You shouldn’t get a 15min lock out for that and most other games don’t do it.

 

10. Improve the matchmaking system and make our hidden ELO visible to us so we can see if it’s working (doesn’t need to be visible to others).

 

11. Stop putting premades against pugs when there are other premades already in the queue and waiting for pops.

 

12. For lowbies, boost all players abilities and utilities to lvl 74 and give them access to generic set bonus gear (like Ossus ones and are available from lvl 10 vendors). GW2 does something like this for their pvp. Without a system like this, no one below lvl 50 is going to want to pvp anymore and you are going to kill overall pvp participation and reduce skill even more in lvl 75 pvp.

 

13. Revamp the medal system and then reward people who play to win. That would mean even if they lose, they may get better rewards, like more tech frags or gear vs people who don’t play to win.

 

14. Incentivise players to get better through rewards. This could be done by adding new pvp legacy achievements (examples only) :

* interrupting an enemy player healing a team mate

* mitigating damage

* target swapping

* stopping a team scoring with the Hutt ball

* catching a Hutt ball pass in the end zone

* intercepting a Hutt ball pass

* cleansing abilities from a team mate or yourself

* preventing an enemy from capping

* stealing an enemy node

etc, etc, etc

 

Bioware, you’ve been driving players away from pvp and reducing the enjoyment of players who still play with your big stick approach to fixing problems.

If you really want to make reg pvp viable (again) in swtor, you need to make it fun for players again.

 

Let me finish by saying, cherry picking player ideas without implementing the rest of the systems people suggest to support their ideas is how you’ve made pvp less fun and arduous. The lock out system would work better if you hadn’t added it in a vacuum and disregarded the rest of the ideas that supported it, like map choice and fixing back fills and matchmaking. Adding a win requirement only made the whole thing worse.

 

You can fix reg pvp and revitalise players enjoyment again if you are willing to do some work. But if you keep going down this path like reg pvp is an after thought and doesn’t matter to the game, you will kill it for good and that will eventually flow into ranked pvp too.

Feedback seems to be positive for these changes.

a deaf blind mute can be carried. the win ratio is something like 1:3 or 1:4. but that's me running around doing 380k (not sure about the decimal) in a 4-round AHG on a concentration sent played very poorly (have to stare at quickbars) with 6-pcs victor's (ghetto) and all of 4 slots augmented. 4 matches per night is pretty easy to squeeze into an hour at all times of day (on SF). the only concession to "seriousness" I made was as close to 700 acc (853) and 1220 alac (1253) as I could get.

 

I think when he says it's not "fun," he means he's not having "fun," not that he cannot complete the daily. but iunno. some other ppl have said they flat cannot do it in 10 games. I find that very difficult to take seriously.

 

I noticed a world of difference on IO merc from leveling (taking any old gear that dropped for the ilvl) and then balancing stats, augs, set pcs, and amps. Easily jumped my output 30% all told. verdict is still out on arsenal as I'm bored with it and also out of money trying to get the right amps. so it is very easy to be carried when you're running around effectively hitting things with a pool noodle.

 

as for the "topic" of the thread, does anyone really need to comment at this point? unlike the other usual issues on this board, the 10-74 is universally disliked by the player base afaik. more so than even the consternation ppl showed when instead of starting season 1 of ranked WZs, BW canceled ranked WZs all together and said "HAI. LET'S DO ARENAS U LAIK MOAR WE PROMISE SNOOCHY BOOCHIES!"

Well they didnt say it wasn't fun or they weren't having fun, they simply stated they stopped participating. To me that sounded like someone who expected to lose the majority of the time and realized they wouldn't be rewarded for it so they just stopped playing.

Personally i am not a proponent of rewarding people for losing whether it be in real life or a game, thats just my attitude. I was brought up to work hard for what you want and for me, that hard work ethic carries over, even into games like this. You might might think thats silly, but thats me and my opinion. I'm not expecting anyone to see things my way, i just shoot from the hip.

When your data shows you that the massive drop of PvP participants correlates with your change to only reward WINS in warzones, then I really think you should buy a round of beer for the whole forum community.

Lowbie pvp died LONG before the daily change and the daily change had nothing to do with the lowbie pvp pop issues.

Lowbie pvp died and has been dead for the past several years because they removed warzone comms/legacy warzone tokens along with pvp gear and then introduced galactic command which was an extremely anti-alt system forcing people to focus only on their mains. Lowbies simply never recovered from that.

If they were to bring back the 4.X system with the warzone comms and the legacy tokens along with pvp gear I guarantee lowbies pop would pick back up instantly.

And to be blunt, if you're pvping for the sake of just completing an easy daily the only requires a single win.....well you should stop pvping because you're clearly not pvping for the sake of pvping.

@dev's

You wanna fix the bracket/pop issue? I have the perfect fix for you.

Make all characters whether level 1 or level 75 be level 75 in pvp with all their skills unlocked.

Create a specific zone that is a "pvp" area so the pvp template is unlocked and people can set their hotbars up and set their utilities there. This pvp area can also have striking dummies to practice on as well as a dueling ring for people to duel in between queues.

While you're at it, bring back warzone comms/legacy warzone tokens along with pvp gear and dealing with low level players and pvp gear is a super easy fix. Set the stats so that any player under level 75 the stats do nothing outside of pvp, but if you're level 75 the stats act as normal in pve and pvp.

Voila, pvp fixed.

Oh ya, and bring back 8v8 ranked....or give us huttball league....something. Put it on a rotation with arenas or something. Like one week is arenas and one week is 8v8.

Well they didnt say it wasn't fun or they weren't having fun, they simply stated they stopped participating. To me that sounded like someone who expected to lose the majority of the time and realized they wouldn't be rewarded for it so they just stopped playing.

Personally i am not a proponent of rewarding people for losing whether it be in real life or a game, thats just my attitude. I was brought up to work hard for what you want and for me, that hard work ethic carries over, even into games like this. You might might think thats silly, but thats me and my opinion. I'm not expecting anyone to see things my way, i just shoot from the hip.

Problem with the no reward for losing is you can do all you can in your power to win, but if you get stuck with number farming, kill seeking, flex my e-peen teams over and over again what do you get for it? I big fat screwjob. If you play the match how it is supposed to be played and your team just doesn't care to win for the sake of the team. Then yeah I understand how people feel about the win to advance the daily/weekly. To top that off without being able to leave queue when you get stuck with teams like that is just down right stupid.

Problem with the no reward for losing is you can do all you can in your power to win, but if you get stuck with number farming, kill seeking, flex my e-peen teams over and over again what do you get for it? I big fat screwjob. If you play the match how it is supposed to be played and your team just doesn't care to win for the sake of the team. Then yeah I understand how people feel about the win to advance the daily/weekly. To top that off without being able to leave queue when you get stuck with teams like that is just down right stupid.

As an advocate for the no reward for loss system, i can say that i have been stuck on many teams that you described. It's not exactly fun and it doesn't always seem fair but i take it with a grain of salt and i don't blame the other team for being *better*, i fault my team for not being good enough, as is usually the case. The skill desparity in this game has grown over the years and it isn't getting any better. I can't tell you the last time i've been on a competent team that has been able to mark and focus a healer, even if a few team members focus that healer, noone seems to have the mental capacity to interrupt that healers casts. And if there happens to be 2 healers on the other team....then my team is consumed in chaos, they just randomly tab target and attack with 0 idea of what to do. Teams like that cannot be carried and they're pretty frequent in the pop but i still advocate for no rewards on losses, people need to have an incentive to improve themselves or they will forever be stuck in complacency.

I think Regs do not have much a problem in the game. MM would help, as in trying to put Premades vs Premades (i think that has always existed in Regs) how effective it is I don't know. I think the changes you made that loss equals nothing has improved the competitive game play in most games. That is until you meet the farmer/s of the day.

Choosing Map types is not so bad, I like the variety the auto que brings, what I have always voiced for especially when Ranked Season starts is for a separate Arena que. This should have been implemented since Arena where introduced in the game.

Ranked

Solo Ranked is a mess and while it is less a mess then it used to be, it will always be a big-gigantic mess whatever BW or any developer will do. For SR to work it has to be a 1vs1.

WinTraders, Botters, Que-Manipulation, Hackers of any kind, this is what this mode has brought to Swtor PvP, and unfortunately this happens in all MMOs. The fact that one can use Alts when the games are bad in SR shows how the game mode cannot be taken seriously for real Pro-Minded competition. That is like having a football team with 40 reserves, and another with only eleven players.

I would remove SR from being ranked and call it Solo-Arena and put all the attention to Team-Ranked (possibly Guild-Driven) in the game. If you really want serious PvP to flourish.

Leaving TR as the real competitive ELO in the game would also solve a lot of problems in the SR Que.

this is never going to happen. I preferred it then as well. but it's definitely a non-starter. pvp population is small. pve population that comes into pvp and does seed quests and conquest in pvp is high. the elimination of pvp gear is for them. also, that's the trend in other similar games over time. I don't see that going back at all. alas.

It's not only for them, it's also for players like me. I play lot of both so I had no problem to acquire both PvE and PvP sets but since I like to play some PvE during these long time sittings in queue for PvP it was a great hassle to constantly have to swap the gear. I am happy I don't have to do that anymore so for me bringing back separate gear sets with expertise is a big NO as well.

Actually, to be more specific I have nothing against expertise itself as an additional stat to balance classes for PvP without impacting the balance for PvE as long as there are no separate PvP and PvE gear sets, meaning all the sets will have expertise just the stat itself will have no benefit in PvE.

However, I understand the sentiment of players that want the separate sets as they want to have back an option to easy acquire sets of gear for PvP without the long grind involving PvE activities, but this can be achieved by introducing special free (or easy to obtain) sets for instanced PvP that are disabled in PvE, while the sets you have to grind will work both in PvP and PvE, so players like me won't be forced to constantly swap gear when swaping activities and players that are only interested in PvP will have the option to get the gear fast.

 

It's a video game, how unsafe can it be?

 

To be fair, I've heard reports from veteran players of people getting doxed, ddosed, and sent death threats because they competed for the top positions in ranked. With the new legacy ignore system, it is much easier to track players and harass them in game than ever before. I know a lot of players including myself that won't get involved with ranked because we don't want to deal with the harassment. There are ranked players on Satele Shan that have been reported probably hundreds of times, and still no action was taken on part of the devs.

I think Regs do not have much a problem in the game. MM would help, as in trying to put Premades vs Premades (i think that has always existed in Regs) how effective it is I don't know. I think the changes you made that loss equals nothing has improved the competitive game play in most games. That is until you meet the farmer/s of the day.

Choosing Map types is not so bad, I like the variety the auto que brings, what I have always voiced for especially when Ranked Season starts is for a separate Arena que. This should have been implemented since Arena where introduced in the game.

 

Ranked

Solo Ranked is a mess and while it is less a mess then it used to be, it will always be a big-gigantic mess whatever BW or any developer will do. For SR to work it has to be a 1vs1.

WinTraders, Botters, Que-Manipulation, Hackers of any kind, this is what this mode has brought to Swtor PvP, and unfortunately this happens in all MMOs. The fact that one can use Alts when the games are bad in SR shows how the game mode cannot be taken seriously for real Pro-Minded competition. That is like having a football team with 40 reserves, and another with only eleven players.

I would remove SR from being ranked and call it Solo-Arena and put all the attention to Team-Ranked (possibly Guild-Driven) in the game. If you really want serious PvP to flourish.

Leaving TR as the real competitive ELO in the game would also solve a lot of problems in the SR Que.

You mean Team Ranked where memme players sit in que 24/7 and farm casual teams ? Yeah, that's one hell of a competition that we must have in SWTOR at all costs .

Like it or not, Solo Ranked is the only form of real PVP in this game , with all it's flaws ... Unranked is just pointless waste of time ... where you get absolutely nothing for winning or losing and that's why players don't give a damn about it and play like garbage or they ignore obj and farm kills/dps . And now with these silly win only changes , you are forced to stay in games that are just frustrating and auto losses anyway , due to factors totally out of your control.

To be fair, I've heard reports from veteran players of people getting doxed, ddosed, and sent death threats because they competed for the top positions in ranked. With the new legacy ignore system, it is much easier to track players and harass them in game than ever before. I know a lot of players including myself that won't get involved with ranked because we don't want to deal with the harassment. There are ranked players on Satele Shan that have been reported probably hundreds of times, and still no action was taken on part of the devs.

Its funny how they talk about healthy competition when that happens, and im not talking about what you have heard, is what I have witnessed and reported as well. They ignored every single report for more than a year now, and they have the audacity to talk about healthy competition.

I'm not sure how you intend to make PvP fun again, but I would hope that your definition of fun is not "premades winning GSF Team Deathmatches versus PUGs just looking to get their daily/weekly POs out of the way by a verdict of 50-1."

Edit: Yes, it was a 50-1 scoreline, and yes I tried to capture proof but apparently my Print Screen key on my keyboard is not functioning.

Lowbie pvp died LONG before the daily change and the daily change had nothing to do with the lowbie pvp pop issues.

 

Lowbie pvp died and has been dead for the past several years because they removed warzone comms/legacy warzone tokens along with pvp gear and then introduced galactic command which was an extremely anti-alt system forcing people to focus only on their mains. Lowbies simply never recovered from that.

i wouldn't say this killed lowbie/mids, as there have always been pops. but this was a serious blow to the game. it used to be a solid tradeoff if you leveled via pvp: you missed out on story, and w/o boosters, it was a little longer to level and you didn't always have access to the best gear (unless you bought/crafted it on the way, which was FUN to craft your own gear/armorings). on the plus side, you could stock up on WZ adrenals and be ready to buy legit max level gear for pvp the second you hit max level. no gimped wet noodles running around WZs offering free kills.

as I posted above, even with bolster, there's a huge difference between having full set piece armor, the correct amps and augs at 75. 20%-30% is a massive increase in output. it's the difference between being able to put away an opponent or not. bolster was much more effective in 5.x before amps and tacticals, imo. but you cannot do that these days b/c it would allow players to skip gear progression in pve.

@dev's

 

Oh ya, and bring back 8v8 ranked....or give us huttball league....something. Put it on a rotation with arenas or something. Like one week is arenas and one week is 8v8.

hard no. can't do it. the maps are broken. the engine cannot handle it. that would require a wholesale rework of core class abilities (movement buffs). back in the day when only one or two classes could do things, ranked was feasible. but you can't do it now. HB is hopeplessly broken by desync. op roll makes CW/Yav a joke (it used to be having a combat sent was necessary for certain maps, now any sent can give the max pred buff, almost any class can carry the huttball). there's just so much about the objective maps that can be easily cheesed with modern movement abilities and that the game engine cannot deal with.

that said, I want objective ranked. I just don't think it's possible w/o sweeping changes.

I'm not sure how you intend to make PvP fun again, but I would hope that your definition of fun is not "premades winning GSF Team Deathmatches versus PUGs just looking to get their daily/weekly POs out of the way by a verdict of 50-1."

 

Edit: Yes, it was a 50-1 scoreline, and yes I tried to capture proof but apparently my Print Screen key on my keyboard is not functioning.

you know you can change your binds, right?

Its funny how they talk about healthy competition when that happens, and im not talking about what you have heard, is what I have witnessed and reported as well. They ignored every single report for more than a year now, and they have the audacity to talk about healthy competition.

What’s sad (and I know from reading discord that many ranked guys think it’s sad too), is that even when Bioware ban players for improper behaviour, it’s not permanent. They unban them next season to do it all over again. Some players are serial pests. Every season they’re banned or queue locked and then Bioware slaps them on the wrist and unbans them at the first opportunity.

If Bioware had a firm NO cheating, NO hacking, NO exploiting policy from the beginning, they could have weeded most of these individuals out of the game over years. I’ve lost count of how many people have left the game in disgust because of Bioware lax attitude towards serial repeat offenders. There is no integrity in the process. Reporting people feels like you are pissing into the wind and wasting your time while getting it all over you.

Other games I play have a ZERO tolerance policy to cheating. It’s doesn’t matter if it’s win trading, hacking, exploiting, aimbot or what ever, if you get caught, they instantly close your account permanently. There is no second chance in most of the other games I play. These other studios are much more transparent with reports about how many they ban a month and what behaviour they banned players for. Some studios even go further and name and shame said players who they ban.

This approach upholds the integrity of their game and players can see they actively care about the quality of play over only their bottom line.

Its funny how they talk about healthy competition when that happens, and im not talking about what you have heard, is what I have witnessed and reported as well. They ignored every single report for more than a year now, and they have the audacity to talk about healthy competition.

Exactly, I know people that have send in full videos of teams caught win-trading, and still no action on the part of the devs.

What’s sad (and I know from reading discord that many ranked guys think it’s sad too), is that even when Bioware ban players for improper behaviour, it’s not permanent. They unban them next season to do it all over again. Some players are serial pests. Every season they’re banned or queue locked and then Bioware slaps them on the wrist and unbans them at the first opportunity.

There are some players that have been permanently hardware banned through steam. From what I understand, at some point bioware banned a bunch of players for wintrading. One of those players brought up a valid argument against that ban that really applied for his case only, and bioware used that reasoning to unban a bunch of players accused of wintrading. Obviously many of these players were wintrading, and there's new evidence to prove it since the new season started. The issue is these reports are being ignored for no reason.

 

There are some players that have been permanently hardware banned through steam. From what I understand, at some point bioware banned a bunch of players for wintrading. One of those players brought up a valid argument against that ban that really applied for his case only, and bioware used that reasoning to unban a bunch of players accused of wintrading. Obviously many of these players were wintrading, and there's new evidence to prove it since the new season started. The issue is these reports are being ignored for no reason.

Many circumvent steam hardware bans by using the original client that doesn’t have that sort of ability to detect hardware. They also aren’t perma bans. They are just time outs.

This has been happening well before swtor was even on steam. Bioware never perma banned someone, the longest an account would be banned for was 12 months. Some of the serial pests would have multiple accounts and just rotate through their accounts as they came off bans and were put back on. They never learnt their lessons Bioware were supposedly trying to teach them.

The accounts should just be closed and locked. People don’t accidentally cheat with wintrading or hacking. Those sorts of behaviours should be perma banned without remorse. Other games do it and it gives the community confidence the studio cares about the integrity of the game. Bioware don’t do it and it’s why the same serial pests end up encouraging new serial pests to try cheating because everyone knows Bioware don’t really care or make an effort to prevent it. They are too worried about losing them as subscribers. Sadly, they lose many other players who think Biowares handling of said trouble makers is a joke.

There's a player I reported who was blatantly multiboxing last season, running at least 4 accounts. Still queues. "Top 3" sent despite being mediocre at best.

Unironically, he told me that I'm bad despite the fact that I "live on swtor" when he paid for 4+ accounts for months last year so he could "earn" a badge. Can't make this stuff up.

If bioware want to have a safe and healthy culture in pvp they need to take an active role in moderating the community in-game.

There's a player I reported who was blatantly multiboxing last season, running at least 4 accounts. Still queues. "Top 3" sent despite being mediocre at best.

 

Unironically, he told me that I'm bad despite the fact that I "live on swtor" when he paid for 4+ accounts for months last year so he could "earn" a badge. Can't make this stuff up.

 

If bioware want to have a safe and healthy culture in pvp they need to take an active role in moderating the community in-game.

Its incredible that cheating and toxicity of this degree still exists in game. Swtor has so much potential if it could just take a hard stance against cheating and toxicity. In this case, a hard stance is better than no response at all. There are so many players that want to get involved in ranked, but can't because of the gatekeeping and extreme levels of toxicity.

are you the same ****tards who decided to give players flags earned in rated arenas to smash down on players in regs? just wondering how that fits into your safe, friendly, welcoming, and POSITIVE environment.

You mean the 100% safe and non trollish mechanics that promote friendly, welcoming and positive environment in swtor pvp

(Sarcasm)

 

Our overall goal for PvP is to support modes that accommodate safe, healthy competition. We believe that if we can do this, we can encourage more players to try out PvP and foster a growing, positive community. The more players we have playing PvP modes, the better quality the experience becomes overall. As a result, queue times are reduced and matchmaking algorithms have more players in the pool to work with. To get there, we have been working on what the future of PvP could look like.

explain to me again how flagging players in regs contributes to that healthy and positive community to me again. I'm having difficulty doing that math? but you sound like a smart guy. perhaps you could explain it?

explain to me again how flagging players in regs contributes that healthy and positive community to me again. I'm having difficulty doing that math? but you sound like a smart guy. perhaps you could explain it?

Try asking on discord. We know Chris doesnt read the forums

Try asking on discord. We know Chris doesnt read the forums [/QUOTe]

i could care less about the discord whining. I really don't care if he hangs out there or who he talks to in there.

 

but I'd like to have him play a night and get flagged over and over just to see how positive and community-building he thinks it is.