While I could continue down the rathole of you folk's idiosyncratic definitions of passive, I'm more interested in seeing if anyone has a better solution to the problem of people deserting matches without any consequence and failing their way to daily/weekly mission completions. (If you want to see passivity, go back to failing to complete. ) While there may be changes to the daily/weekly missions, I don't see the deserter debuff going away, ever. Still, if you have a solution that solves all the problems don't be shy about presenting it.

Actively doing something else is, by definition, not passive. ^_^ It's a choice of where to put your effort. Do nothing and just whine some more about how 'unfair Bioware is being to one' or actively involve yourself in other parts of the game for fifteen minutes. Time will tell. What we do know is that not having the deserter debuff and being able to fail your way to mission completions didn't boost player participation. Trying something new, something that rewards winning and sticking around is better than watching PvP stay on its downward spiral.

That's like saying, to use an old example, getting a busy signal when you tried to call someone and doing something else productive while waiting to try again is passive. Equating other activity in the interim with no activity at all is a new one.

My understanding is that there are contractual issues about the number of servers. For example, EA might have signed a long term hosting contract in order to get a more favorable rate. There's also the issue that a single server (cluster, really) might not be able to handle the entire US player base. Adequate performance and all that.

If you can come up with a solution that fixes the issue of deserters / false disconeents and doesn't penalize those folks with a genuine disconnet, I'm ready to hear it. It's also hardly passive to understand that sometimes things go wrong and one might need to wait a bit until they are better to continue.

I've had unexpected disconnects, power outages, etc. It happens, but I don't blame Bioware when something out of my or their control occurs. When I get back in I just play other parts of the game until the debuff wears off. Unfortunately the behavior of a sizable group has caused problems for everyone, but getting pissed off about having to wait just fifteen minutes says more about the player. If my connection is an issue, I choose not to be a liability to others in group content. I just go enjoy the other, solo content in the game.

I, too, am a Founder and have played since day 2 of the early release. Every time I've heard people talk about "thoughtful changes" it has generally meant "changes that only benefit me". Change is a process. It takes time to move a community in a certain direction. As far as spotty internet goes, it's neither Bioware's or the player's fault when things go wrong. That said, the player needs to accept they were taking a risk of doing group content given their connection issues. Instead of blaming Bioware maybe, just maybe not queue until their connection is better, since it is likely to crap out on them for all group activities. If they have "vindictive sibling", then that's their issue to solve. The sibling is to blame, no one else.

As someone who has played PvP in an MMO that had map selection (it was eventually removed), it isn't the pancea you might think it is. I suspect whenever map selection goes live folks will start complaining about queue times.

It's one thing to queue for a flashpoint with 3 other friends who don't mind if you need to step away for a few minutes in the middle of things. It's another to do so unexpectedly with up to 7 or 15 other random players trying to do group content on a timer. None of the things listed will kill PvP. What they will do is put a consequence on disruptive players, which has been needed for a long time now.

Then perhaps you shouldn't queue or be in the middle of a PvP match when you have something you know that you'll need to take care of? If your friends don't want to wait a few minutes you can always join the group when that task is done. Note: I'm not talking about unexpected emergencies.

I would suspect you're right back at making failure the way to advance the mission rewards. Folks will just go 'defend' (stand around, actually) at an objective and never bother to try to win a match.

I suspect this change is to make the legacy window easier to use for accessibility software. Non-standard UI features are always a problem for those tools. Of course, I could be wrong. It would be nice if Bioware explained the change.

Participation in a match is not the same as completion. Participation is just being in the match. Completion is winning the match (under the current rules). By your example, completion in PvE would be like sitting at the load-in-point and doing nothing in the flashpoint, not even killing a boss and expecting to get rewarded after a timer ended. Tying the rewards to a win is like expecting a group to clear a flashpoint.

Simply deleted retailclient_publictext.version did not work. I deleted every file and folder with the word "test" in them and restated the PTS download. That grabbed everything and it all installed and worked just fine, then. I am running Swtor under Steam, so when I did that install I had copied my non-Steam Swtor files over to the Steam games folder to avoid a full redownload. I thought I had cleaned up the test stuff then, but obviously not. It's all good, now. Oh, btw, when I logged into an Agent I previously had on the PTS it gave me the Steam achievement for a level 75 Agent. That's a character that was boosted on the PTS and is not level 75 in the live game.

This is a good change. It turns Guard fromm being something that gets constantly used into something that requires a decision to use.

You may infer that, but I did not imply that. Putting together your own group is a premade. Yes, it's a pickup group, but it's still premade. It's is just so funny that some forum posters think that groups playing group content are the 2nd greatest evil in PvP (with Operatives being 1st ). People claim there's a problem with premades, yet when folks point there is an easy solution people throw their arms in the air and say they can't do that. It feels like some just want to whine about the 'evil premades in warzones' instead of actually, you know, grouping up for ... group content. It's certainly a first to see someone claim grouping for warzones is trying to "exploit it".

You don't need friends to start a group. Just sit on fleet and advertise for a few people to do the daily with. If you're the one building the group then you can remove anyone who you feel is being disruptive to your group. You may never interact with these folks again, but then you might actually find people you like to group up with. I mean, that's how we did it in MMOs before group finders... TL;DR: Be your own pug premade.

Having seen a bigger MMO add map blocklists and then later remove it, I suspect folks are going to end up dislike it in Swtor when their queues get longer. Someone queuing for all the maps is going to find matches faster than someone who cherry picks what they want. Sure, some will be fine with a longer queue time, but I suspect the average player won't. I also wonder how the devs will handle rewards. Currently with Flashpoints you don't get a daily reward if you block a flashpoint.

It's been suggested by a number of us that Bioware ought to spin off Arenas in to their own queue. That way folks who want to deatchmatch (albeit in a team form) can just run those. It has the added bonus of giving those that want to do ranked an easily accessible game mode. DPS show-offs, people who fight in the middle of nowhere, etc. are a burden all PvP modes have. There's no simple solution for that. By structuring the rewards and the penalties right you can nudge people towards playing objectives. Anecdotally, things appear to be trending towards that. As with any changes it takes time for them to percolate through the player base. Yes, new people can often be lost in content that is, well, new to them. Time fixes that issue, one way or another. Playing the way you want is fine when you're doing solo content. When you join group activities playing the way you want gives way to what is needed for the group to succeed. In an operation would you tolerate a person constantly pulling trash, breaking CC, pulling the boss every moment they could, not doing mechanics? The same group orientation is expected of people when they PvP as in when they do group PvE. One disruptive person's sub is worth less than the subs of 7 or 15 other people who do want play properly.

It's a solid change that nudges folks actually trying to win. The devs have consistently said that they can give better mission rewards this way. Imagine if the flashpoint missions were to complete 5 flashpoints or fail 10? Do you really think that would be a good experience for anyone involved? Also, heaven forbid that an online game has incentives for group play. Maybe people could try to group up for a change? You can even form your own group -- can't be booted from your own group -- and queue that way.

It's a good change to Warzones. Having someone leave affects the game the other fifteen players are having. The "why bother to PvP" moment comes when you see people constantly dropping, disrupting matches while they selfishly attempt to find their perfect matches. The deserter debuff is a small incentive to keep people from dropping at a whim. Actions should have consequences. We all have "bad" matches where things don't go well, where we lose, sometimes in a very lopsided way. These things happen, you just brush it off and requeue.

I never said that. Different, yes, but neither is inferior to the other.

I imagine most of the devs do ok. Not stellar, but ok. I suspect that the best PvPs that work for Bioware would be in the QA department since they are the ones that have to play the game all day long. As far as the videos go, I'm sure they look bad. Being on stream chatting and playing at a high level is not an easy thing for most people. It takes experience and a certain type of personality to do both at the same time. Before you laugh at the devs, try playing a warzone well and keep up with a few hundred or thousand viewers. As long as the devs understand the issues and can figure out decent solutions to the problems, I really don't care if they are a Top 3 person or a 200 ELO wannabee. Understanding all the systems, visible and behind the scenes is the skillset I want them to have, not necessarily a ELO worthy of epeen-waving.

No. Like many words, deathmatch, can have multiple meanings. Granted, part of the problem is that deathmatch isn't a well defined term, consistent across all genres (unlike, say ELO). That said, in an MMO deathmatch is used to indicate a situation where the objective is to kill other players. The same is true for an FPS, but the rules are somewhat different to facilitate the style of deathmatch. You'd be better off arguing that arenas are Team deathmatch (even if we solo queue), versus a more traditional deathmatch which is a free-for-all, such as the PvP instance of Outlaws Den. ^_^

For me, deathmatch is when you focus on eliminating the enemy players. Whether you can respawn or not is immaterial. I have no problems with arenas. I just would like to see them live in their own category so that folks can decide which types of PvP they want to engage with. If you want the fastest queue, queue for both and take the first pop. It's no different than queuing for Flashpoints and Operations at the same time. Separating warzones and arenas potentially gives the option of using arenas as training wheels for ranked. It's not perfect, but it would be a better place to start your learning than by trying and dying in solo ranked, for example. At least, if you queued just for arenas then you have a more focused goal than hoping there isn't enough players in the queue so that arenas pop more!