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Premades are hurting pvp participation


ralphieceaser

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You can try and justify why they should keep premades vs pugs all you want. But at the end of the day it will keep driving more and more people from pvp. Then it won’t pop at all.

I think more people would come back to reg pvp if BioWare removed premades than would leave. But I’m also fully aware that this is a social game and some allowances should be made to play with friends. BioWare can still address this by using a compromise and reduce premade sizes to 2 man.

 

I'm not after keeping premades vs pugs, I'm after Bioware fixing broken game design.

 

From an "as intended" design perspective, the simplest thing to do would be disable solo queue for arenas and warzones. Since it's designed as group content make it like Ops, can't get in without a group.

 

It would kill PvP in SWTOR, kill it stone dead.

 

The playerbase has changed and the game design hasn't kept up. I suppose my views are partly colored by having been on a PvP server where in 1.0 and 2.0 there was something vaguely approximating a healthy team PvP community, and even if you mostly soloed it was pretty easy to hook up with a team with a quick chat message on fleet. When a lot of teams are what fill the queue, the content works well with respect to game design.

 

What I'd like to see, is either changing the interface and reward structure enough to incentivize team play again, (an uphill battle to be sure, but if you look at the popularity of duels and world PvP I think the overwhelming evidence is that SWTOR's current player base doesn't like PvP period, they like winning and they like rewards), OR changing the content design enough (not just the queuing) to work with the de-facto solo-PvP population we currently have, which is definitely the more logical approach.

 

Just to emphasize the severity of the design problem, I'll repeat reworded, "If the only option for PvP content was to queue in the group size that the original design features were intended for all of the PvP queues in SWTOR would be completely and permanently dead." If given a choice between playing as intended and not playing, your customers universally choose not to play, your game design needs revision. SWTOR's PvP game design desperately needs revision, it has for years.

 

Sigh, 7.0's launch woes have me cranky about all the legion, "why have I been putting up with this crap" design flaws in SWTOR. My posts here are carrying about 8 years worth of accumulated PvP annoyances and frustrations in them. Not really having a go at your 2 person suggestion Trixx, but at this point even though I normally don't care about PvP outside of GSF the "eh, I'm used to it," for my occasional warzone has worn thin in terms of tolerating the design problems that are fully the Devs' responsibility.

 

What I'm tired of is justifiably unhappy solo-players slogging through group content because that's the only place there are rewards for PvP. That's a failure of design on the Devs' part and it's one they should attempt to fix. Really properly fix, not just tinker with queues.

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Jumped back in yesterday after a year away and there were four people teamed up. You spawned you got jumped and killed by the same four over and over.

 

Usually, people say about something like this : "Use this experience to get better".

 

I still hold the opinion that THIS way, especially NEW people just cannot learn.

 

... Besides ... Why not ask those four afterwards : "Can you give me tips how to withstand your slaughter ?"

If they don't give any actually useable ones, then they are ripe for the ignore list, imho.

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So any one want to answer the real question.

 

Why can't you make your own premade?

 

And also: Why should you be incentivized to not make your own premade.

 

Premades are were players learn, make friends, engage with the game. In a premade you can ask other players, who might be better than you, for advice. When I was a noob I always wanted to group with better players to get better and learn from them. Seems like if you take that group aspect away, you are just taking away 1 more way which players can learn how to get better.

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And also: Why should you be incentivized to not make your own premade.

 

Premades are were players learn, make friends, engage with the game. In a premade you can ask other players, who might be better than you, for advice. When I was a noob I always wanted to group with better players to get better and learn from them. Seems like if you take that group aspect away, you are just taking away 1 more way which players can learn how to get better.

 

That’s rich, considering you mostly queue solo ranked and not group ranked. How about we petition that Bioware remove the solo ranked altogether?

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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This is old story. It's like 10 years old ?

 

In this case you have two options really:

 

1 . make your own premade

2. become better player , and premades won't bother you

 

Flat Earth thinking i.e. ignore all data that disagrees with you. Explain how me getting better solves this 4v4:

Me DPS. iRating 306. Knows my class. Plays objectives.

My team all DPS. PUGs that run around like a bunch of slappys. 2 are undergeared and one has a shield instead of generator.

 

Them: Tank, Heals, 2 DPS. Premade. All i306. Ran many warzones together so they have their strategy down pat.

 

Explain how me losing is a L2P issue.

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Flat Earth thinking i.e. ignore all data that disagrees with you. Explain how me getting better solves this 4v4:

Me DPS. iRating 306. Knows my class. Plays objectives.

My team all DPS. PUGs that run around like a bunch of slappys. 2 are undergeared and one has a shield instead of generator.

 

Them: Tank, Heals, 2 DPS. Premade. All i306. Ran many warzones together so they have their strategy down pat.

 

Explain how me losing is a L2P issue.

 

If you’re playing objectives in 4v4 you’re doing it wrong 😂

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I'm saying groups help people new players learn? How is that rich exactly?

 

You are promoting premades when they are hurting regs participation. But don’t play premade ranked because it’s more fun to play solo. It’s a kind of hypocrisy. What’s good for ranked isnt good enough for regs.

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You are promoting premades when they are hurting regs participation. But don’t play premade ranked because it’s more fun to play solo. It’s a kind of hypocrisy. What’s good for ranked isnt good enough for regs.

 

I play group ranked.

 

... but none of that matters because it's besides the point. I'm promoting premades in regs because it's the best way to learn. You calling it hypocrisy is just sidestepping my argument because you don't have an answer.

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I'm saying groups help people new players learn? How is that rich exactly?

Ah yes, roflstomping pug groups via coordinated premades totally helps new players learn and doesnt only result in getting them carried.

What's next? You are going to say having a pet healer makes you learn and doesnt in fact make you a worse player because the healer repeatedly has been saving your from your mistakes? Mistakes from which you cannot learn from since the consequences have been negated thanks to the group healer saving you from your mistakes.

 

If i wasnt clear, the last place new players are gonna learn, is through premades that roflstomp an enemy uncoordinated pug.

Edited by ralphieceaser
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You are promoting premades when they are hurting regs participation. But don’t play premade ranked because it’s more fun to play solo. It’s a kind of hypocrisy. What’s good for ranked isnt good enough for regs.

 

 

As much as I generally don't agree with Prum. He is right on this one.

 

What your not taking into account is exact what making a premade actually means.

Not going to make a super long detailed explanation, Ill give the abbreviated one.

 

Its about effort, willingness, and general goal of getting better.

If you can't even do the bare minimum of reaching other to others players to group with, asking for help, or researching in a mode that is not casual and requires game skill. (PVP is essentially putting your skills at the game vs another.) Then you don't deserve to complain.

 

Its like saying, I want to compete in Olympic bobsledding but only against other people who have not been in a bobsled before. (Shout out to Cool Runnings). You want to be competitive but don't put in the work to be competitive. That doesn't work. PVP is not casual in Regs or Ranked. There is no PVP Story Mode. Just the way it should be.

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Stop playing pvp entirely is an option. When 7.0 goes live I think I'll drop pvp completly. Fact that weekly will reset and winning 10 matches for me is impossible in a single week... I was convinced that pvp in the game does not make sense for ordinary players. You can be only farmed by competitive premade groups(in casual open pvp matches - BW logic here)... let them play the game on terms they like... and alone.

 

I know as a premade group is fun to rekt noobs left and right all the time... but if this system(no separate matchmaking for premade and solo or no progresion in weekly quest for loosing the match) will stay as it is... there will be much less casuals for those premade groups to rekt. Circle will be complete - pvp will become dead mode.

Edited by Davook
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Stop playing pvp entirely is an option. When 7.0 goes live I think I'll drop pvp completly. Fact that weekly will reset and winning 10 matches for me is impossible in a single week... .

Um unless you are so busy getting 10 wins is not that hard, I often easily get those by the end of the weekend by only playing a few hours on the week and a lot more during the weekened, even with a few losses queing non stop for a few hours during the weekend easily lets me finish it.

 

And tbh i am quite excited to see how pvp will be in 7.0, with a lot of mobility, stuns, defensives being removed from being baseline pvp might be a lot more interesting since people wont have a million defensives/stuns/mobility skills to depend on and will have to use what they have carefully.

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Its about effort, willingness, and general goal of getting better

 

Premades are exactly the opposite of that.

 

Premades are about running a meme build around a warzone with a pocket healer and wrecking people 4v1. Watch the streamers running their premades; losing the match to zero but patting themselves on the back for getting highest dps because they were essentially free casting aoe against opponents who were trying to run objectives. Then watch when they try and q solo, get wrecked and rage quit out in a couple of matches because they're "not having fun".

 

If people want to run premades, let them run premades in a premades q but if people want to run solo let them q in a solo only q. The only argument against that is that it might increase queue times but, if someone wants faster pops, they can join both queues and take whatever pops first.

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\You want to be competitive but don't put in the work to be competitive. That doesn't work.

 

For me it's not about being competitive. It's simply about having the space to get better.

 

I learned by grouping up with others. It was only by joining a pvp guild that I learned how to gear, to not packpeddle, to focus the healer, to not overlap my cooldowns. I got to where I am now because I found awesome friends that helped me learn how to play the game.

 

Of course pvp guilds don't exist anymore, but now you want to take away the only other way that people can learn from each other? I get if you don't want to make friends or get better yourself, but don't take that away for other people.

Edited by septru
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Premades are exactly the opposite of that.

 

Premades are about running a meme build around a warzone with a pocket healer and wrecking people 4v1. Watch the streamers running their premades; losing the match to zero but patting themselves on the back for getting highest dps because they were essentially free casting aoe against opponents who were trying to run objectives. Then watch when they try and q solo, get wrecked and rage quit out in a couple of matches because they're "not having fun".

 

Definitely sums up some of my recent premade experiences, these people knew how to dps but tried very little with objectives so they lost, yet they were extremely coordinated and just deleted anyone their group came in contact with by focusing one perosn at a time and couldnt be beaten because an unorganized groups CAN NEVER coordinate enough to burst the same person at the same moment as their main dcd is down while also ccing the healer, dps is all over in a pug thus why premades with pocket healers can be impossible to beat even if you have the same numbers of players.

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For me it's not about being competitive. It's simply about having the space to get better.

 

I learned by grouping up with others. It was only by joining a pvp guild that I learned how to gear, to not packpeddle, to focus the healer, to not overlap my cooldowns. I got to where I am now because I found awesome friends that helped me learn how to play the game.

 

Of course pvp guilds don't exist anymore, but now you want to take away the only other way that people can learn from each other? I get if you don't want to make friends or get better yourself, but don't take that away for other people.

 

That doesn’t negate what the other poster said about having a seperate queue. And it doesn’t negate what I said about having a compromise and reducing the premade number to 2 instead of 4.

Because for every one premade that maybe formed to learn as you say, there are 20 that do it to ROFLSTOMP solo players. They aren’t learning anything or getting better by playing like that because matchmaking doesn’t put them against people who can challenge them.

Like myself and others have already pointed out, it’s not the premades as such that are the underlying issue causing the problem. It’s the borked matchmaking system and the lack of players in the queue. Add premades who aren’t against other premades and are only doing it to ROFLSTOMP and they contribute to less people queuing.

There is no golden fix for this because BioWare have just let regs rot for several years and in some cases, actually contributed to player numbers declining in the queue, which makes matchmaking worse. I know you definitely understand this because I’ve seen you complaining on discord about similar matchmaking issues in ranked.

We are now at the point that there aren’t enough people in the queue for 4 man premades to work (even if BioWare fixed the matchmaking better).

And for all of ChrisS saying on Discord tor the last 12+ months that they have plans to grow player numbers so matchmaking works, I say it’s a pipe dream that will never happen. If they were capable of making that happen, why have they not done anything like that in the last 5 years of declining pvp population. Why wait till it’s dead and have some magical way to bring it back to life.

I’ve zero confidence that BioWare can improve anything with pvp. They’ve demonstrated their lack of will or money to even get rid of cheaters the last 12 months.

If the reg pvp game and probably pvp in general is going to survive, they need to make it more fair in regs. That will only happen if they address the premade situation.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
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Because for every one premade that maybe formed to learn as you say, there are 20 that do it to ROFLSTOMP solo players.

 

Hopefully that incentivizes players to make their own premade. I get that some players want to play solo, but group should always be incentivized because like I said, you learn more faster in a group than you do by yourself.

 

But the rest of your argument is understood and I agree.

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Maybe all the people whining about premades on the forums should find each other ingame and make a premade. They could even make a PvP guild and call it, "We are solo players being forced into playing as a group even though we don't want to but get offended when people that do play in a group in a group game mode deathmatch and kill us when we are by ourselves." Ngl even if they did make their own premades they would still get farmed.
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Hopefully that incentivizes players to make their own premade. I get that some players want to play solo, but group should always be incentivized because like I said, you learn more faster in a group than you do by yourself.

 

But the rest of your argument is understood and I agree.

 

That’s not an incentive, it’s a punishment to intimidate players to conform to other players way of thinking.

The game offers a solo queue experience that is sub optimal. Solo players pay a sub too and deserve a fun and fair experience as much as people who premade. All we are saying is BioWare should offer the same fair experience to reg players as ranked players.

 

Let me ask, do you think it would be fair if they combined the solo ranked queue and group queues together? Obviously that’s a rhetorical question because we know you and every ranked player would call blue murder if BioWare tried that.

The obvious fix is you have 2 queues for regs. But we know that won’t work cause there aren’t enough players to make a reg group queue work. The pop times would be enormous and would be a ghost town just like ranked group is.

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Maybe all the people whining about premades on the forums should find each other ingame and make a premade. They could even make a PvP guild and call it, "We are solo players being forced into playing as a group even though we don't want to but get offended when people that do play in a group in a group game mode deathmatch and kill us when we are by ourselves." Ngl even if they did make their own premades they would still get farmed.

 

Maybe people play on different servers or different time zones and have limited time in game.

 

Telling someone to stop whining because a game system is unfair doesn’t help anyone.

 

One could even say you are possibly trolling with inflammatory language or attacking legitimate posters because you are one of these premade ROFLSTOMP players who needs an unfair advantage.

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