[GSF is even worse now]

You mean all three of you who are still playing GSF?

 

GSF queues pop even when there's no event. I would even claim GSF is pretty healthy on Satele, which is currently suffering from depop as players move to Star Forge for non-GSF related reasons.

 

Excluding the hapless noobs who stick their toe in the GSF pond to test the water, I'm of the opinion that the only players who still do GSF are either masochists or sadists

 

I don't think you'll find many masochists, given the kvetching that occurs when good players lose, but only a few players really didn't like the imba carry ships being balanced. As to sadists, well, I'm sure the internet has a flag for me and my fellows that we can wave somewhere.

 

 

And vets wonder why players AFK in GSF?

 

WoW has a bot problem in battlegrounds, and it's still a popular game. AFKing is very common in Fortnite: Save The World, to the point where I don't even bother queuing public games because Epic doesn't action the same way Bioware does (and they have no excuse, with the biggest hit in years in their pocket they aren't hurting for cash). GSF AFKers, it takes awhile to figure out- the game mode is alien enough that nobody wants to report a worthless noob, as everyone is at least briefly a worthless noob, there's no crime there. But repeat offenders who are clearly griefing need reports and action, and we do see that.

 

At the end of the day, it's very much the case that some people will play GSF, be disoriented by a three-space game, and simply never like it. Others will love the freedom offered by a game where you can fly anywhere and have all that matter, and will put in the effort to get better.

 

GSF being tied to SWTOR has historically been more blessing than curse, but there is an issue where the game experiences high and low tide based on the MMO content available. The game has been at low tide for a couple months, but there's reason to assume that more players will return in the future, with reasonably serious numbers of announced content. More SWTOr players means more GSF players- even the return of some missing aces can be expected, honestly.

 

TGSF is always going to be a terribly conceived and poorly implemented PvP format that remains an utter waste of development resources right up until the day EA puts a fork in the game and it finally shuts down.

 

GSF is so good. Hating it is like hating a puppy. I'm glad I don't live in your head man.

 

But don't let me dissuade you from doing your thing. You dodge those asteroids, Ace!

 

6/10 could have been snarkier and still not gotten actioned.

[Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a.... 12?]

I'm actually of the belief that 4v8 is not playable as long as any of the 8 can find their boost key, but I don't dispute your overall idea. The problem is that it is jumping the gun.

 

Right now we don't even have skill based matchmaking- we have a matchmaker that will roughly try to pair long term legacies against each other, and will *probably* handle groups sorta right (counting them as 4 copies of the most advanced legacy). This is an improvement over before, when the fabled matchmaker was literally just "YOLO WHATEVS", apparently.

 

Your first step would be to start writing some code that will make a reasonable guess as to skill level. Probably you want to base this off of wins/losses, but there's plenty. The point is, if you have some guess about this, you can then start actually matchmaking against a number or an ordered set, presumably with your willingness to make an unfair match going up the longer the longest-waiting player has been chilling in queue. Once we have that, we can start guesstimating how smart it is, and start talking about 9v7s or 12v10s or even 9v6s or whatever.

[GSF is even worse now]

This game is great, and the patch improved way more things than I can even post. Don't be bitter because some of us can dodge those asteroids.

[Add 6th bay to the available ships and 1v1 or 2v2 duel option to gsf tutorial map]

These are fine ideas, and certainly similar ones have been discussed before.

 

I will say this: we don't need 1v1 or 2v2 as much as we need a custom lobby. That would let us set up 4v6, or 3v0, or whatever we need for training or custom 7v7 matches, whatever. Ground pvp is just getting around to having this sort of thing in the Rishi stronghold and probably later based on dev comments, so hopefully GSF is somewhere on the priority list after that.

 

I'm a big proponent of a 6th ship slot available from pretty much anything. I'm less enthused about having multiple bars, though that would probably be easier for the developers. A world with a different set of bars for domination or TDM might mean that you wouldn't really need all five slots, for instance, and it would pretty much kill anyone who makes a build that is able to be played on both right now. I wouldn't be sad if we got those, but that wouldn't strike me as exactly ideal.

[70 kill score for 12v12 TDM?]

I just don't see the point.

 

It's rare to see a game where both teams have scores that are racing up. Normally that happens when there are food ships on both sides who simply will not stay back and finish the match with 0-3-12 and sub 10k damage. I don't think it's worth making more games go to time just for creating a slightly more compelling experience for the pilots in that match, at the expense of the foodships.

[70 kill score for 12v12 TDM?]

I have had matches where I had to suicide to refill my missiles, that we won 50-11 or something, having it go to 70 wouldn't have helped anybody.

 

I recommend you seek powerups instead of suicide.

 

1)- If you suicide, you give the enemy a point, at no cost to them.

2)- If you go looking for a yellow and get ganked, an enemy had to come find you and that is a cost to the enemy team. This is your worst case scenario, and it is better than getting ganked.

3)- If you go looking for a yellow and find a purple, you are in much better shape.

4)- If you go looking for a yellow and find a red, you probably don't need missiles for a little bit anyway.

5)- If you go looking for a yellow and find a yellow, you'll be back in the game with minimum loss of time, and you didn't give the enemy score.

[Time to merge the US servers... again. Primetime window getting smaller and smaller.]

I haven't read the thread, but I don't think the existence of a popular WoW expansion necessitates all competitors immediately merge servers. BfA's massive devouring of playerbases is mostly transient.

[SWTOR finally going P2W]

We don't know enough to call it "pay to win" yet.

 

However, it does sound pay to win, in a way that nothing else in this game ever has. The situation where you can buy cartel packs, push them on the GTN for credits, and then use those credits to purchase BIS gear, is pretty much textbook pay to win. There's never been a time in SWTOR, FFXIV, or WoW, where the top gear in the game is available for real world cash- breaking that line is definitely a bad idea.

 

These guys could have a lot of thoughts about how to avoid this. The augments were fine at this: they were a nice piece that was part of your complete BiS gearset that interacted just fine with the GTN, and ultimately no one cares about someone getting top tier augments with cartel coins, using the GTN as an intermediary. The description given to us sorta implies that this will apply to the entire gearset.

 

I've never understood why more games don't simply put different BiS pieces from different sources. Maybe they have metrics that show that is unpopular or bad for some reason.

 

 

Anyway, putting BiS everything subject to the in-game economy, which is in turn subject to the cartel market, is pretty much pay to win. I'll still wait to avoid judgment until we hear the final plan on this, but it's absolutely worth being concerned about.

[Games ending early are absolutely unsatisfactory]

That's good to hear. I mostly confined my discussions to Satele and Star Forge, because I was able to look into them more. My experience on DM is more anecdotal.

[Games ending early are absolutely unsatisfactory]

My suggestion was to splitting into 2 groups to see if it happens less, not that it would be eliminated.

 

Will this somehow help with all the times this happens when we are not on?

 

I specifically made a thread about early ends to games. If you want to turn this into yet another cry thread about an unrelated topic like premades, why not make a thread about that so I can call you out, instead of bringing that crap into here, where we're discussion a topic that is happening all around the clock on multiple servers?

 

 

As you may know, to some people it isn't fun to be on either team of a pre-determined match.

 

...and these people are so sensitive that they preemptively don't take queue pops on servers we aren't logged into at times we aren't playing, right?

 

Because of us.

 

I still would like the queue to change to not start a game unless it has full people on both sides. The count-down should simply stop if someone drops and restart once both teams are full. This could eliminate 100% the need for a 30 second early end.

 

I think this is the wrong answer, but it is in the right vein. Usually, when the game is like 11/5 with 10 seconds to go, this would work pretty well. But there has to be some moment at which the game would go. If we're going with rules corrections like this, I'd say something like: increase the baseline time to start the match by 15 seconds. Reduce the pop timer by 10 seconds. In the game lobby, at 10 seconds left, a system message displays and the timer goes to 40 seconds. If the game still doesn't pick up enough to have it work, start it like normal and let it time out.

 

Mark any players that missed the queue with some manner of low priority thing. Up the chances of making an 8 man with the next game (maybe). In any event, the players that missed the queue should have a harder time getting into the next game, and be considered as less reliable, potentially afk, or potentially griefing, whatever. That black mark should be account bound and reasonably transient.

 

 

I only suggested that as a partial solution because I play pretty much every night, during prime time and almost the only time I see early wars end is during that phenomena.

 

Give me servers and times where it doesn't happen. I had it happen two out of three games one day on Malgus prime time, but I can only rarely even be on at Malgus prime time. I've been seeing it happen a lot. And again, this also happened during a whole week where we weren't playing.

 

We know something needs to be fixed with the start of war in the engine, splitting the aces would help some, not a complete fix, any improvement is a good one.

 

No, it wouldn't. It's a terrible idea too. If this only happened when we were queuing together, I wouldn't have made the thread.

[70 kill score for 12v12 TDM?]

I mostly do not think so?

 

A game that goes to something like 50/48 is usually pretty close to the buzzer. It's probably close to the dev goal for the longer end of a GSF game as well. A game that goes like 50/10 is often a shorter one, and making a less balanced game take longer isn't really a great goal.

 

In the really good recent Bad Feelings Podcast, they go over a goal to shrink the average warzone length to better meet player expectations. GSF didn't get brought up on that topic, but it seems to me like GSF lengths are usually about correct, assuming they same the same goals as warzones.

[Roadmap: Galactic Starfighter skirmish matches]

Oh, I recommend that. Not everything on a roadmap happens, holla holla stealth ships.

 

If skirmishes don't happen, it will be because they went out of scope somehow, not because they didn't actually mean skirmishes.

[Games ending early are absolutely unsatisfactory]

What I see most evenings is:

- Successful queues with most every war completing as normal for hours in the prime-time evening. Some long queue times but mostly fair queue times.

- Then a well known, much respected team of 4 uber aces begins queueing together at a certain time of the night. Then the w/l of every war is pre-determined and people stop queueing and start dropping before games start. Many 30 second ends happen, and queue times are long.

 

 

I think you are seeing what you want to see. As I stated in my OP, I actually see more games successfully start when we are playing as a group than at other times, probably because this is GSF prime time. I also have seen this issue in morning, afternoons, and early evenings, while solo queuing on fresh alts and established alts. I'm also seeing people complain about this and beg in /gsf.

 

If the game was just people dodging us, either by leaving at the sight of us or avoiding queuing when we are on, I wouldn't have made a post about this being a systemic problem. We would just adjust. But it is a systemic problem, with nothing to do with us, or any other group, hence this post.

 

Additionally, RL has interfered with our GSF group last week anyway, so we couldn't even bring a four man to the table pretty much any of those nights. As much as I'd love to oppress my fellow pilots each and every night, sadly, I cannot. That didn't stop me from hearing people on my team debate over whether our opponents were really us on alts, complete with guessing as to which one was which. At one point I was told to focus a gunship on account of that gunship assuredly being Verain. It's been pretty legit.

 

Also, as Drako says, many of these games quit while our team is down men, which also wouldn't go along with that theory.

[Roadmap: Galactic Starfighter skirmish matches]

What I think it isn't:

Custom match lobby, for either ground or GSF pvp

 

I disagree completely. They literally use the term "skirmish". That means at least two groups fighting by any manner. Nothing about this phrasing or placement involves it being anything else, except for the possibility that both groups in question might be restricted by guild (ex, it may be guild versus guild only).

 

They will specify the terms of the challenge, maybe the first team to get to 20 GSF battle wins, or the guild with more wins out of 20 games, or the guild who has the most wins by next Tuesday server reset 7 am ET, or the next daily reset.

 

None of this is a skirmish.

 

Also, there's basically a whole bunch of reasonably custom ground pvp stuff in the form of the new Rishi stronghold. It very much sounds like they are trying to support that with the GUI.

 

Again, they could fail to deliver this for any number of reasons- but this is basically a custom lobby that we have begged for, in at least some fashion- possibly restricted by guild.

 

Think of it like Conquest, except you actually specify which guild you are going to compete against and which in game activities will be objectives.

 

None of this would be a skirmish though.

[Roadmap: Galactic Starfighter skirmish matches]

While roadmaps need to be taken with a grain of salt, this one seems pretty great for GSF.

 

1)- A number of enhancements to GSF. This is vague, but it means that something or some things will be enhanced. Probably a good thing! Certainly better than the summer (and fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, and winter) of discontent a few years ago.

 

2)- "PVP Challenge System - Create custom warzone, arena, and Galactic Starfighter skirmish matches and track your record against other guilds"

 

There is NO OTHER WAY TO READ THIS except that Galactic Starfighter skirmish matches are planned in some form. If this is on the agenda, we ultimately will have some type of custom lobby, even if there are some restrictions on it. Assuming this doesn't come with any changes to normal play, this will be a huge boost to GSF. Because arena and warzone are listed here, there will be some manner of UI to make this happen- a GUI most likely- and it will definitely need to be reasonably featureful. The most barebones thing would be to insist that two guilds form 12 man ops and the GUI can place them against each other, ranging from being able to set up a 1v1, 2v2, 4v0, whatever, without guild-based restrictions. Who knows what they have in mind, or how far along they are. Probably worth discussing that and putting in requests to be considered though.

[Games ending early are absolutely unsatisfactory]

It's hilarious to me how you're filling this board up with post after post about things you don't like, as if your opinion somehow has more weight than any other player and that the devs will jump for you when you tell them to.

 

Hey cool that is not why I am doing this.

 

I wanted a thread specifically about this particular issue, because I've found that the other feedback threads normally get garbaged up with completely unrelated points.

 

Anyway, I'm super glad you made such a hostile post, especially given that you agree with everything in this thread. Goodness!

 

It's not the pop hitting and people not taking it. It's disproportionately filling up one team with a lot of players and the other with not enough.

 

That is also what it looks like to me. If it was the pop hitting and people not talking it, it wouldn't so reliably fill up like 12 v 7. I've certainly seen games that start like 7v8 and eventually fill evenly to 12v12, but it's less often than I would expect. I've also seen it take a 10v12 game and add a 13th. Oops, difference of three, calling the game now. That is an older bug that has been responsible historically for 9v7 games, and that's at least actually rare. But maybe they are related. This absolutely feels like a bug. Also, I have been queuing warzones, and I never ever ever ever ever see anything like this over there. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but I think something is wrong with specifically just the GSF matchmaker for some reason.

 

Anyway, I mentioned to the guy that was on that the queue had popped and he said he's done forever with GSF because he hates the new matchmaker. I didn't ask for details, but I wonder how many other people out there feel the same way.

 

It's at least more than are on this forum and on reddit. I suspect most of them just silently assume it will get fixed, or just play another part of SWTOR.

 

I'm not entirely satisfied with what it's doing but other than the uneven team issue, how is it worse than what we had before?

 

Well, I know at least on DM, a lot of people are upset about the 12s, but that's a topic for another thread (it's the one signed by a lot of DM players). But in the case of Gone Sithing, those guys each have a billion GSF games or whatever and there may the perception or reality that it might be matchmaking them unwisely based on the assumption that tons of games is the primary metric. Again, (a) I don't know that they think this and (b) my main matchmaker thread also talks about this.

 

There's basically three points about the new matchmaker. The first is the incomplete games. The second is the 12s, and the third is the matchmaking criteria. The latter two are already filling the forum.

 

So it might be important to try to find out if there's a sizeable population who feels that way and if so, what they want to be different.

 

Well, the very first thing to resolve is the games ending too early. Everything else the community can probably adapt too, or debate, or something. The games ending in 30 seconds, like, I'm pretty sure that's not navel gazing on my part and after spamming /who for a holiday weekend with a lot of players doing a lot of things, I'm about absolutely convinced that it is a seriously unsatisfactory issue that is at least affecting both NA servers and probably to some extent DM, because the whole mode is basically a crapshoot of "will it happen" that is absolutely and totally out of the hands of the players.

[Games ending early are absolutely unsatisfactory]

Games end early, and in large numbers. GSF primetime, when our team normally plays, is the most reliable time for games that don't end early, but even then it happens.

 

I spent a decent amount of the holiday weekend on alts doing ground game stuff. I spammed /who a lot. I didn't take notes. But I did notice:

 

1- In GSF chat, six times players begged /gsf to join a game or it would end. This strategy seems ok at preventing games from ending, but I saw the game end regardless one of the times anyway. Maybe those other five would have gone on without the begging. Either way, hoping that enough of the community is online and not in queue is a poor way to make this work.

 

2- Many games end without filling up. I've seen this frequently on Star Forge and Satele at any but prime time. I've seen this without recognizable names anywhere. I've seen this while sitting in strongholds, or running around the lowbie planets on alts. I've seen this on alts in GSF. I wish I'd written down percentages, but honestly, I'm SURE that Bret and others can look at metrics on this. PLEASE LOOK AT METRICS ON THIS. These numbers have to be shockingly high.

 

3- Games ending early have a really bad effect on the overall game. At some level, GSF is competing with the rest of the game for player attention: because the rest of the game gives rewards per time spent, GSF needs to as well. Games that end early reward very little anything for a pilot. Games that end early are overrewarding for someone trying to complete dailies and weeklies, and have little reward beyond that. This is a bad incentivization, especially given that the new queue generally is considered to be an improvement for the ground pvp. At the very least I'm seeing mixed reviews with some positive posts- literally no one is pleased with the plague of early ends that GSF is faced with.

 

4- If anyone decides to grief the queue for any reason- and it's a pvp game, so there's motivation- it's going to be really easy, much easier than before, as there will be less pilots available for backfill.

 

I'm at the point where I think this is actually hurting player participation. Very few things can do this, and I'm not convinced of it, but it is extremely frustrating to have a 5 minute queue, game ends, 10 minute queue, game ends. Yesterday we had a game that was 11v9 right before launch, with our team having the 11. At the last second it adds someone to our team- a good pilot with a lot of games- and now it is 12v9. If matchmaker had placed that guy on the other team, it would not have ended the game. Why was he placed on our team? Failing that, why would matchmaker allow him to enter at all? There's only one wrong answer, and it is allowing him to enter and also putting him on our team.

[12v12 Player Feedback]

Anything that screws the way you guys play the game is just F-I-N-E by me.

 

Ok super, I'll disregard pretty much any of your points I guess. Given that your motivation is to mess with me, and you'll take any position if you think it disrupts group play. Maybe this also explains your demand to delete tensor in the other thread- I guess since anything that screws with a ship that I play in 70%+ of domination matches is fine by you for that reason, and that's why you want to delete an ability that helps teamwork.

 

Not very helpful!

[Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a.... 12?]

This is a terrible suggestion. Most matches I flew a type 3 scout, even prior to 5.9.2, I did not tensorcide. In fact, I see very few people tensorciding these days.

 

Quoting pyro for truth. It's rare to see a tensorcide now, the type 3 scout is normally flown by someone who wants to fly the type 3 scout. I can imagine a scenario where tensorcide would be optimal, but it's some niche comp that would require really more than 4 in voice versus a team where that matters. Even then, I think you'd be double tensoring and the double left tensor guy would SD and respawn at a beacon. If you aren't running two tensors or don't have a beacon bomber, you definitely wouldn't do it.

[Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a.... 12?]

What needs to be avoided are the "Warzone will end in 30 seconds" endings that have become more frequent as the matchmaker fills up one side and not the other.

 

Yes, this is absolutely unsatisfactory. This needs to be top priority.

 

But with regards to 12 v 12 against 8 v 8 matches, there is nothing wrong with 12 v 12.

 

There's plenty wrong with never having 8s. Each map is very different in 8s and 12s. There's plenty of people ticked about it, but they seem to all be ************ on various Discords. Discord is really a negative force for discussions, openness, and privacy.

 

The people who like to make dominant 4 man groups don't like it because it's harder for them to pervert the outcome by stacking one team.

 

Did they tell you this? I run in a four man team for most of my games, and this is not my reason for wanting 8s/12s to be closer to 50/50. Can you quote someone who actually has complained about not being able to win because of 12s, or anything to this effect? Or is it just, you want to believe that because you always have a beef with people who play with teams?

 

The more people there are to fill out teams and balance their group, the better it is for balance and competitive matches.

 

If this is true, it's only barely so. And I'm not sure it is true anyway.

 

One thing that might be a consideration to affect the "race to the satellites" component of a domination match. Eliminate the tensor ability.

 

Lol. Eliminate? Here's how this conversation starts. You, or someone else, comes in and says "hey, we should start tensor on cooldown because it is too good at the start of a match." Then people discuss that, which I don't agree with. Tensor is great for team play, a cool buff, good in general, and very good at the start of a match.

 

 

It only serves one purpose in the game

 

Tensor field is a truly excellent ability that I have plenty of uses for. I routinely use tensor to:

(1) Refill teammates energy in domination after they run someone to ground, or as part of that.

(2) Greatly reduce time to go from satellite to satellite, especially on Denon.

(3) Counteract the two biggest weaknesses of the bomber class, engine inefficiency and poor top speed.

(4) Ensure dominance on node by buff the speed and turning of myself and at least one ally.

(5) Orbit kite on node with a defensively built type 3 scout (probably my generally most common play on domination)

(6) Help teammates who are dealing with gunships off node by providing them with greater evasion stat and line of sight ability.

(7) Get allies who are paused for breath behind a rock back into the battle much faster.

(8- bonus for this broken patch!) Tensor at the start of a TDM that is going to end soon, so that my team can yolo into battle and hopefully get that one precious kill.

 

and it's so useless otherwise that people self-destruct their ship after using it at the beginning of the match

 

This is relatively uncommon now. I'm sure there's still some time where it is better to tensorcide, but I don't think it's with a 4 man team. Perhaps a full premade 8v8 or 12v12, but even then, having a tensor on the map really helps.

 

Minus the tensor ability, you have more incentive for people to fly scouts at the beginning of a match

 

Scouts get to the node faster whether they have tensor or not. Tensoring a type 2 scout all but ensures that your team will get to the node faster than a team that doesn't tensor, or doesn't run a type 2 scout. Doing the same with a type 1 scout can ensure it, but they aren't appreciably faster than type 2 normally.

 

the weakest scout

 

I practically main this ship in domination man. It's not the weakest scout. It has serious defensive and utility capabilities. If my team was going to lose the use of a single scout permanently via imperial decree, we'd choose the type 1 scout. Which is also a good ship- we could just get away with its loss.

[Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a.... 12?]

Possible, only if the game is extremely poorly designed making it harder than it should to make simple changes.

 

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that exact solution would allow for griefing while also putting the game into an indefinite state. It has nothing to do with how hard it may or may not be for Bioware to make the change, and everything to do with how adding to the griefer arsenal might make things bad.

[Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a.... 12?]

Trivial to grief, games can take an indefinite amount of time. The exact proposal you have may be a non-starter, but you could easily adapt that in some way to something that adds time to start under some conditions, or whatever.

[The new matchmaker]

If PvP is more about the player and not the character, why is valor still by character and not a legacy stat?

 

The post is about GSF, because this is in the GSF forum. GSF has a relatively short gap between "create a fresh character" and "fully geared". Ground pvp is not apples to apples.

[12v12 Player Feedback]

Is your entire point that you hate 4 mans?

 

Also there's like a dozen signatories, whose dominating issues vary by player. Should they all come in and address your "screw 4 man" point? Were you willing to address any of theirs?

[Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a.... 12?]

RedFantom posted a response to this, signed by some of the European players (and the non-Malgus players who hang with them), but put it in a dupe-thread:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=952955