Bwahaha I purposely waited to see what would happen to this thread. The premade heroes don't even want to bump this thread by whining. The rest of the solo playerbase apparently is also too scared of not having a gear advantage either. That is the SWTOR PVP player base! haha

These deflections are so absolutely hilarious. If you PUG so much and the PUGs are so bad why does it bother you so much if it was changed to groups face groups? How would that change anything for you? What suddenly it'd be more challenging when you're PUGing because the premades would all be gone? Is that your argument now? The absolutely inconsistent, mind numbingly illogical posts never stop with you people do they? I'm not going to write them out, but we've now seen 3 ridiculous arguments that have constantly been disproven but the premade side won't stop repeating them anyway.

So why would facing other groups somehow change that? You'd still be playing in a group, you just wouldn't get easy mode wins while in that group. You wouldn't even have to be on teams with those PUG groups you claim to hate so much, but so desperately want to fight against. This game has already bled 2M subscribers. FTP is giving them a second shot, but they seem intent on blowing all the F2P interest they've gotten by sticking with the failed status quo. That is the definition of insanity.

I don't want premades on my side. That's why I want the brackets separated, that way I don't have to deal with them on any level. Of course you don't want that, because you want to belittle your PUG teammates when you lose, and brag about how great you are when you win (probably only against a full PUG, and probably with your PUG teammates carrying your ***).

The only way you'll get RWZ to pop is by making any group queue an RWZ queue. That's not going to happen, and would probably lead to those people that complain trying to queue pop in Solo queue anyway, they'll spend an hour to play a 10 minute WZ if they have to in order to roll in that 10 minutes. Still, if you're serious about wanting more comp at RWZ, that's really the only way it'll happen. Give groups a choice and they will go beat up on PUGs. Take that choice away and some of them will actually play against other groups, and then a lot will find out they actually enjoy doing so. The only thing your solution will do is cause PUGs to be stuck with even worse gear, and then the geared out premades just going to regular WZs to bully these PUGs more because of the even greater gear gaps.

Yeah, it's even worse if you solo took a node or did it several times. I'd win a lot of PUG matches because I'd go and take nodes by myself, and there were a few players I really liked playing with on PUGs because they'd attack the nodes at the same time as me, we'd just both wind up at a weakly defended node at the very right moment, flip it, and then we'd be ahead because of that. Smart players can judge a situation and the numbers and time it takes to travel and use that to their advantage. Usually you don't even kill the defender(s). You mezz them and position to take it on Alderaan for instance. Even in NC, there are many times you can grab a node without killing the guard. Your stats won't be great but that's so much more effective than sitting in mid with everyone else, not taking the node, and DOTing everyone up or what not. And of course when you flip a node, your teammates really should be heading out to help defend it especially if they see the enemy team moving to go for it. These are things that should be done even on a PUG level, and players that can solo take nodes are a huge advantage to have. But even outside of PUGs, the best premades all have really crappy stats. They have very low deaths, but they don't do much damage or get too many kills, because when you are properly playing you are controlling the field and quickly dispatching enemies, and then mostly just disrupting caps and keeping the field clear. Whenever I see people bragging about 500k damage or something, I know it's a scrubby player and team. You should be getting 150k or less damage spread out for each DPS, maybe on total you're cracking 500k but no one individual should be getting that number. Yeah the game has changed over time, no stun bubble in the past when I was active. Guardians were also fantastic in the previous game about a year ago to hold, especially with lower TTKs than now.

I used to always get stuck guarding solo as a Sage when I'd PUG. I'd still usually guard fine and have a ton of solo kills, but the class is garbage and not what I'd put as a guard strategically. I noticed though if I didn't do it nobody would, and I used to want to actually win in PVP so I'd just do it (and I won a lot even as a PUG). I really hate the map design that you'd even need guards. When I'd premade usually a Guardian would handle guard duty for us, but we'd always be really quick to handle incoming and rotate around. I'd always urge my teams to rotate guard duty, and even the better PUG players will cover on rotations too. It's more fun that way and it's also safer. Nobody actually wants to guard because it's usually boring, and nobody appreciates it. I can't tell you how many times as a PUG some warzone hero would look at my stats and loudly explain "you are a bad" to everyone, while he runs off just padding damage stats (and usually not being effective). The new VS with that wall is a little harder to rotate around but still doable. The other node capture maps are very easy to rotate on. This is why I like Huttball so much. It's the only map in the game not based completely off TTK. Half the ACs in this game are utterly worthless in the other maps. In Huttball every single AC is viable. And the smashmonkeys aren't even just automatically dominant. It's also the only map where if it's a complete blowout, at least the game should be over quickly. I guess the new WZ maybe also is rather fast, but I don't have much exp with it since it never pops anyway. I've played it maybe twice.

10/10 lol.

Why? There are barely any servers anymore anyway.

Calendar time or game time? The fastest way to level via game time is to use rest experience, group up, run planet/bonus/class/quick side quests. The fastest calendar way to level up is to run planet/side quests by yourself, the daily PVP and daily space missions. Of course if you can get a group it's still faster, but waiting for group members and timing being online at the same time is difficult if you're past say college and have to work for a living. You won't be using much rest xp with this method because you will be playing a lot every day. The calendar method will get you a 50, depending on the class, between 3-4 weeks or so. You can probably do it in 2 if you're really committed and have no obligations and don't sleep much. The game time method will likely take you roughly 2-3 months, but your /played time will be about half the calendar methods. It will also probably be more fun, provided you have those friends to play with. There is no substitute for real friends that you've known offline, but you can also possibly find a good PVE leveling guild and maybe if you're lucky find a few people to level with. But that's always going to be like sifting through hay for a needle.

PVP is just something you do when your friends aren't on. This is a PVE game. All the resources and time were sunk into PVE, Bioware has admitted this. PVP was tacked on afterwards and then they took some PVE devs off of PVE and stuck them onto PVP, and that's what we have now. All they've done is make bad decision after bad decision, showing why they were kicked off PVE in the first place. If you want true MMO PVP go play GW2, that's a PVP game built with that focus. SWTOR PVP is more a side game, a distraction. With the legacy system in place and the cartel market, and the new content in place, there is no reason to PVP anymore. People used to PVP because there was nothing at end game, that is no longer the case. Further the PVP gear is useless in PVE anyway, and carrying two sets of gear is a waste of time. They are not going to change anything in terms of PVP balance, gear or the premade vs PUG thing. I'm sorry but that's just the truth. Instead of ranting on premades and poor balance you need to vote by not queuing up. And the solution for what to do when your friends aren't on is to play an actual single player game, and maybe even go to freemium on this game if it becomes a common occurrence. I am subbed until my friends stop, and then I will just spend the cartel coins I have on stuff and then be off.

I have my own experiences and thoughts on this as well. I made a female toon as an alt back in WoW 7 or 8 years ago when it was really popular. I had heard female gamers mention being harassed but I chalked it up to mere attention whoring. I tend to try a different gender character in most of my games that have both options, usually there is no difference but sometimes there is and there's no real reason not to. Well I was shocked. The constant tells and some of the comments, honestly I guess some of those comments made me feel violated, and as a guy knowing I can just log off and I'd go back to normal it was really an eye opener. I haven't had that same issue in SWTOR and do think the majority of the population is older and things have changed. If you were back there in the WoW days you'd know what true harassment can be. On the vent issue, honestly, I never want voice chat in these games because I really don't want to talk to any of you people. I played a lot of sports and even served in the military, with the wrong group of people around you any competition can be a mess. With a bunch of low achiever MMO players and the bottom rung of society it's even worse. I am only willing to do voice chat with people I know already in person, because their maturity is higher and they're similar to me in terms of being considerate to other people. Even in the military, there were high achievers, but the younger guys could be really annoying, but the thing was since you were in person you could tell them to stop and they would. That won't happen in just voice chat when there is no face to face component. If you want to make new friends I don't think an MMO is the way to do it, there are a lot of activities you can do in person that will put you in contact with lots of other people. Sports but also many volunteer activities, hobbies or events. There is a stigma and stereotype for MMO players for a reason. Yes it doesn't apply to all, but it applies to so many that you do have to take into consideration that you're likely to run into those types. But honestly even outside of MMOs, a lot of people these days are rude and inconsiderate. I work at a pretty big company, I am on good terms with over a hundred people but I actively dislike many of them and there are only maybe 5 that I really enjoy conversing with and working with. Age is not the sole factor, and there are many annoying older people, but in general I've found the manners and upbringing I've had are more often reflected in the older generations than they are in the younger. And it's almost always by previous income levels (since currently we're all at about the same). I hate to say it but there is a certain refinement found among people that have had extremely high incomes at some point. These people are extremely unlikely to ever touch an MMO.

lol this lame class, the people that play it don't even know their abilities, they just assume people are standing there stupidly because they are so much better players than them. As someone else stated, it already does that, it pretty much does everything except make toast.

If you're looking to spend the least money then generally the big name manufacturers like Dell or HP are your best bets because they actually get deals on the components that the regular retail consumer can't get. I build my own PCs because I want higher quality components and it's a bit of a hobby for me. My next build I'm going to water cool. I would say anything under $800 you are better off just getting a Dell most likely, although that's right at the edge of where building your own is worth it. If you're willing to spend more than that, or eventually more than that, I think you're better off building. It is awfully hard to upgrade a Dell however because they machine build them and it's not really designed to be upgraded. Just keep that in mind. Most people don't actually really upgrade though, for all but the biggest enthusiasts you can go a solid 3-4 years without changing your CPU or VGA. Just try to get an upper mid-tier when you first buy it. I am still running an AMD 965 and a GTX 470 right now, and won't get a new build most likely until the end of this year or sometime next year, pretty much whenever Fallout 4 is released.

There used to be a lot. But poor class balance, gear gap, and the premade vs PUG thing has turned off a lot of people.

Well said. Those hard fought PUG vs PUG matches really are the best, especially in a game like huttball. It's like playing a pickup football game vs. an organized one. And also I agree on going after teammates, that's the fun part. In HS I played QB for our football team. I had to have organized games and practices of course. But I also played a lot of pickup games, every day there was likely to be one and it was fun getting a short game in during lunch period or another off period. Well one time one of my WRs came by and we were on the same team. We ran a couple of plays, got easy scores, and everyone else then insisted we weren't allowed on the same team. And that was fine with us, we went right at each other on opposite sides the rest of the game and everyone else had more fun that way. It would have been pointless to continue pretty much owning for free, we might as well have just been at practice without a defense. It's just a different game. Really I still don't understand how any premade can really have fun going against PUGs or even having PUGs on their team. Premades are all about organization and executing a set gameplan. PUGs are all about not having a real gameplan and knowing tendencies to begin with, but rather figuring things out on the fly. The premades don't have to do that so they have a huge advantage already and it's a different game. The PUGs do and have to work without even having tools in place that they won't be able to overcome against competent premades. I'm guessing the premade vs PUG win rate is about 90-10. Pug vs pug it's going to be 50-50.

So why can't you do that against other groups? You realize that solo queue is balanced out when it's all solo because both sides have the same things to deal with? When you premade against solos you are putting the opposing team at a disadvantage, because they have to deal with all PUGers with possible bad gear and almost definitely poor team composition, but you do not. Premade should NEVER have been with the solo queue. I posted this exact thread in beta to the devs. I heard the same dumb arguments against it. Several other beta players and myself literally farmed the premades in beta when this issue came up to try and show people how bad of an idea it was. The devs blatantly ignored it for their own stated dumb reasons of not wanting a full premade vs a full PUG (yet their match making precisely would do this, we actually took apart a full 8 premade with just 4 over and over and over until they'd finally stop queuing). The gear was another issue, and why 10-49 should always have been separate from 50. It wasn't in beta or launch. It is now because the devs took so much heat after release that EA forced them to make that change. I don't know how this isn't making them change either, it seems to be a hot button issue.

It either will pop up more or less people will be grouping at all. I mean they have to go somewhere right? All these people are saying they would do ranked but it just doesn't pop or they don't have the perfect composition, well, if there is nowhere else to go then ranked WILL pop and teams WON'T have perfect composition because that's the only place they can go. Unless of course people would rather quit playing this game than go up against other groups or play in the solo queue. Either way we'd find out pretty quick. If they did just quit, I'd imagine the groups quitting are more than offset by the new solo players the game gets from having a solo queue. It has been stated before the majority of players queue solo, and it is pretty obvious from these boards the majority of solo queuers hate facing premades when solo queuing, so ostensibly many don't queue anymore or would queue more if it was a true solo queue. These are all very simple logical follow throughs.

The other bonus is with separate queues, ranked/grouped is going to pop more. People aren't just going to stop grouping, without being able to roll PUGs they'll just face other groups. The groups that are bad now will just get better because it's an even playing field. People only get better when they are forced to, and the gap isn't too big. If you actually like playing against other groups (as I'm a proponent of) you WANT the queues to be separated so you actually have a competitive scene that improves. Of course if all you want to do is roll PUGs and get easy wins you'll be kicking and screaming. And we all know what this community consists of.

Why not queue for ranked instead?

The premades will cry and scream desperately to avoid it. Personally I think if Failware will be this stupid about it, they should just let premades queue as an op (so 8 of them) and let them just bully PUGs. It happens anyway, but let's put that in as a "feature" so the premades can enjoy themselves more. Then maybe the moron PUGs will finally stop queuing completely. If solo queuers stopped queuing completely Failware would then act, even if for a week or something. I still don't get why people keep solo queuing and putting up with it.

Haha the arguments were always funny. They'd always whine that queue times would go up too much, meanwhile the populations cratered and we needed merge after merge until what we have now. If things go as they've been going we'll be left with 3 US Servers and maybe 3 other World servers. Bioware is the same company that used to only have 1 PVP bracket, from 1-50. Then they moved it to 10-50, but of course the 50s still abused everyone. Finally after much complaint and after probably losing about 500k subs, they moved to 2 brackets, with 10-49 as one and 50 as the other. The 50s whined that nobody would queue so the brackets shouldn't have been split. Reality though was that the 50 bracket was fine. Same thing would happen with splitting Solo and Group queues. The Group queue people would whine and complain but in the end it would be fine. If it ever became that big of an issue you'd just Solo queue anyway. If you were actually any good you'd still be fine in solo, but you'd have to deal with variance like all the other solo queuers. But I know this won't happen, and this game's PVP will continue to be on life support and be a joke. This isn't a game that would ever make it to Major League Gaming or any of those other tournament level groups. Bioware is not interested in that, and either are the people that play this game, it is what it is. But the posts on it are imo entertaining.

That is a fallacy. I am a better player than you that's why I get bored rolling PUGs with a premade, and why you duck the hell out of me and my guild on ranked so you can go roll PUGs and actually win. At least if I solo queue and play against other solo queuers I am not guaranteed wins, which is what makes it interesting for me. You and your ilk of weak players ruined this game for anybody that has any competitive bone in their bodies.

After about level 21 or so, where you have enough skill points to get 1 ability in the third level of a tree, most of the classes are viable pre-50. This is the same for ranged and melee, prior to that you have to mostly play hit and run and that's going to favor classes with ranged stuns, although they've been taking that out, and some ranged attacks. After that, I have had no issues with any class, and the Mara at those levels and above completely melts down opponents. Once you get Force Camo you pretty much get to dictate engagements and if you cared about pre-50, which you shouldn't honestly, you can absolutely dominate and only get stronger. At the time this thread was made, you did have to be closer to 50 and part of that was ranged actually had their abilities early, especially Sorc/Sage. They always scaled very poorly so at later levels generally the Marauder was an absolute nightmare to handle for everybody, but the poor players generally favored the class and simply lacked awareness and ability so they QQed a lot and we got the mess we have now.

This is all the proof we need. Nerf Sorc/Sage DPS, buff Mara.