point being, I think from everyone including yourself, that the difficulty is not on par with the other 60hm fp's. They are on another level, not only of skill, but also of gear. Unless you can honestly say that your entire team did this in 178 blue gear. Also add, on servers like Harbinger, there is a massive Aussie population. Thus they have a much higher lag consistently because of the Pacific Ocean. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset by the difficulty, there should just be a new catagory of HM fps for these 2, or they should tone it down to the actual gear requirements and the lag issues of people playing in other countries.

So if you are not a hardcore raider, did you do this in 178 blues? This is what it the FP is supposed to be tuned to. If it's not, then it needs a separate catagory.

I think this is true, however, in total, there are 7807 participants across all US servers in yolo, and a whopping 900 in group ranked. hardly the definition of success. What I'd be curious to know is how many of those that did queue, queued with less than 2018 expertise. And from there, what the breakdown on numbers would be, ie of those that did, how many were less than 1k expertise, 1000-1500, 1501-2000.

honestly, you do need to include the top 100 because they are part of the statistics. The essence of the top 1000, though less than the top100 in terms of percentages, it still highly, highly favors the big 3 Sins - 262 PT - 230 Sorc - 232 jugg - 110 oper - 70 snip - 45 merc - 39 maur - 26 This with a total yolo population of 7807 in terms of class representation sins - 1800 - 23% PT - 1029 - 13.2% sorc - 1918 - 24.5% jugg - 1345 - 17.2% oper - 855 - 10.9% snip - 376 - 4.8% merc - 625 - 8% maur - 517 - 6.6% Thus the big 3 does have a larger population in all of yolo, roughly 60%. But are 75% of the ranking in the 100 and a larger percentage the higher up you go.

They really only talked about win trading. Queue syncing, there really isn't much they can do about it. And realistically, you can't punish 4 imp side players or 4 pub side players queueing simultaneously and that they are basically the only 4 people queueing. The other problem you'll encounter though, that the more games you play, the worse the harder it is to get your rating up.

doing unranked and the majority of time that's not 4v4, and since it's objective based and not kill, then it's not a realistic avenue for practice. Point is, the best way to get better is typically to play better competition, or people that are close to the skill level you and your team are at. Having a way to do that can't hurt. Will it happen? less than doubtful, as another poster said. And above poster also suggested separating out 4v4 and 8v8 unranked. Also a good idea and way to practice without putting your rating at risk for times when you just want to practice with a new player, or have an idea you want to try out. The other thing to consider, and IMO, worth merit, is that would it bring more people to ranked. Would it increase the population of players, and not only that, but geared toons who want to win. I think that it would. The flip side, would it cause people to quit over having an off day? Doubtful since the majority of it is done early in the gaming week or on the weekend.

I played basketball and volleyball in high school. Played d1 volleyball, starting outside hitter for junior and senior years. Pvp'ed in WoW and SWTOR, not necessarily at a high level, but I understand the need to practice and set up times with team adn scrimmage others. Now, I just play in the best city leagues in my area. We get together at open gym and scrimmage against other players. That gives us a chance to play together, strategize, and learn each others tendencies. And is especially helpful if we bring in someone new. They have to understand the offense our setter sets for us and how we play and positioning on defense. It's laughable to me that someone disregards the need for teams to practice and play together and to just go in cold and expect to play at their best. It's laughable to assume that Olympic athletes just step on the court and can play their best without any preparation.

The problem with a win/loss system in solo ranked is that you are grouped with pretty much anyone of random skill level since there isn't a high enough population of queuers, and said rating is based on said random group partners. Thus your rating is determined likely by 3 random strangers. The ones that end up with a high rating are those that off hour queue sync, and as thus can coordinate group in teamsspeak.

That was after Kunaark though. I was thinking vanilla eq.

I want to see the devs do this in 178 gear, and do it from Australia.

And thus another reason they need to get rid of ELO for yolo queue. It just doesn't work. There needs to be a large enough population on both factions to make it work. And the problem, unless you go both cross server, and cross faction, ELO just won't work with the population of pvp queuers. The only reason it worked in WoW was due to the larger populations in the game, with even then with cross server queues, and this was with arenas. ELO is definitely not going to work with no cross server, no cross faction, solo queues. There just isn't and can't be enough of a population make it work.

and yet every team in the Olympics actually does practice, not during game time, but on days off, or a morning practice for a night game. They continue to practice. And Beers pretty much answered my question, yolo ranked only, not good enough for the Show, the real endgame pvp as he likes to put it. He has no concept of team. Where one guy can destroy team chemistry if he doesn't play well with others. You can't know that unless you practice with them, or have some game time with them. And when you have just 4 people for grouped, that one person can seriously kill a team. Anyone in yolo knows this, and it goes it goes just as much for grouped, if that one other person ust doesn't work. Sorry, people that don't understand this just have no concept of team sports, or real team pvp.

ah, but before that, in EQ, druids did this in pve for great xp, doing the dot, and run thing, which was also effective in pvp.

I think this is the biggest issue. Especially on servers like Harbinger with a high population of Aussies. The lag check is brutal for them. IMO, the difficulty of the 1st boss is what a bonus boss should be. This needs to be toned down a bit to account for the lag you get from across the pacific ocean.

both of you are correct, IMO. A change is needed, and while a higher population of queuers would help, the challenge with SWTOR, queue is not only server based, but faction based. Thus diminishing the pool tremendously,. And regardless of how you slice it, and no matter the rating, etc... you are still at the mercy of the toons you get queued with. If you get decent toons, then you will stand a very good chance of winning, and if you get bad, and massively undergeared toons (esp since there is no gear/expertise check) , then you will lose. And realistically, has very little to do with you. And on low population servers, or faction imbalanced servers, the advantage swings drastically. For example: a low population pub side vs a high population imp side server, the advantage drastically swings to the pub side. They can easily queue sync and as thus be in the same groups consistently, be in a voice chat together, and roll over pugs pretty easily. It is also the way a lot of win trading happened in the past as well. But as above poster said, yolo is just for fun. And I agree. The suggestion I'd make though is just to abandon ELO altogether and come up with a new rating system. Keep ELO for group ranked as that is where the actual endgame pvp takes place. Change the reward structure to where group ranked gets the best rewards, and have yolo get different less flashy rewards. For example: a flashy new mount for group ranked, an actual new mount not a reskin, and reward yolo with a reskin of last years group ranked.

bottom line, we are not going to agree. I'm going to guess you have a decent team, probably not one of the best, but do okay. But you really don't want extra competition. You really want the status quo to stay as is because the less skilled people that actually play the better off you are to keep your ranking. And add that as long as you have a stream of people wanting to check out ranked and see how it is, the better for you because in those cases you get to faceroll a team which is what you really want. And you want that other group ranked team to bring in someone new because it's an advantage for you. Because you can exploit those weaknesses. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but the less coordination and skill you can play against only benefits you and your team. Heaven forbid you actyually get skilled, prepared competition, because I thought that's what endgame pvp was about. The best of the best. Prepared, ready, fight to the finish. But then I guess that's not what you really want or are able to really compete well at.

nope,sorry, not the type to rage quit. Only quit a few matches in my time, before the match starts when I know for a fact, outside of gear, that the toons I'm playing with are bads. Why? Because I played with them before. Also realistically, how do you know someone, doing ranked groups will work out with your team? How do you if the synergy works well? Maybe they are a great player, but great players don't necessarily mesh well with others or play well with others. Having a time or a day to do this can only improve ranked teams coordination and synergy. So yeah, endgame content, and team composition help. Just as top end guilds will give a toon a a trial run before they let them join their permanent ops team. just as a 5min dps parse doesn't really tell you if a toon is any good. You need practical actual game time against good competition to see if that toon will work well with you. And whereas in endgame content, wiping a million times learning a boss fight doesn't really hurt you in the long run, having bad teamwork coordination, composition will destroy your ELO pretty quickly. And gets harder and harder to raise the more games you play.

There are always reasons to continue it. Just because you have a pre-season to get new toons to 60 that required everyone to get new gear, is just that - basically time needed. Pre-seasons won't really be needed down the road when new seasons come up because for the most part, there will be tons of min/maxed dark rev toons out there. That just doesn't help out the newbie or just gotten into pvp people down the road. By doing this, you give people chance to get a look, play some matches without consequence of destroying their rating if they aren't ready and as a result, never queUe for ranked ever again. By doing something like this, you open the door for a whole new generation of toons. And realistically, doing a rating freeze one day a week doesn't hurt anyone.

point being that there are a lot of people that don't want to play ranked and keeps them out because they don't know if they can compete on a decent level. This kind of window could open the door to tons of players. And add that, it can also show a ton of players that they just aren't ready for the big dance. Let's face it, 2 of the biggest issues with ranked are 1) the number of people queueing, and 2) baddies that try to play. How does giving them a window opportunity hurt? And how is this a whole new game mode. This is already done in conquest where you don't accrue points on Mondays, this is essentially the same thing.

while true, this really doesn't help the person that's just gotten into the game, and/or just leveled a toon to 60. Basically, in about 5 hours they won't get a chance to see how well they stack up against ranked type players. Giving them a window of opportunity is a good thing. And really it wouldn't take long for them to realize their skills and/or gear just isn't ranked ready. From there, they can then go back to unranked, get help on their skills and get the gear needed to compete. Then a week or 2 down the road, they can try again and see how they stack up. This is a good idea.

however, most raiders have basic comms to burn, thus they could buy a full set of 162 purples with just basic comms and not spend a single cred

i like it, I would even go further into suggesting, just do this on Mondays to coincide with Conquest. No ELO gained or lost. It would allow for people to try out specs, allow people to try out ranked, try out new team compostitions, etc... Keep the dailys and weeklies in place for this kind of time period, just not ranking.

honestly, madness doesn't need much, maybe a small bump in dot damage to compete with the burst, but if you give them dots and burst... game over. If anything, what the class needs, as a whole, better survivability skills whether thats active or passive or talented. Granted, that's pretty much what mercs/mando's need as well.

The issue is that people don't care. They are their for their daily/weekly and conquest for their guild. There is no real relevant reason to get 162 gear. I would add though that BW/EA could do something as simple as place a note in the patch notes, or even run a check ingame for people who queue with less than 2018 and let them know that they can buy 162 pve gear with basic comms on oricon. Thus it won't actually cost them any money, and further, once the sell timer is over, redeem that for creds. Or if they get a few gears quickly, get their basic comms back. What would actually help immensely, make oricon vendors available in the pvp area. You could easily reduce the training area down to 2 rooms, bounty/agent and warrior/inquisitor, and give a room to Oricon level vendors. That way people have extremely easy access to 162 gear.

Not completely sure how they are related, but I do see a lot of pvp guilds in the top ranks pretty consistently. And I thnk it's simply because they pvp every day. I think the crafting part of the reward schedule is pretty much over. And I guess technically it is a competition between guilds, and as thus a form of race pvp....?