It's OK for you as a player to think that but it's a bankrupt stance to be adopted by the developers of an MMO. If they want to keep selling this game "to the idiot casual PuGer" (not my words but I've used it so the owner sees how wrong that sounds) they need to find ways to deliver fun & entertainment to such players. If they do nothing, they fail, if they do it by detracting from your slice of fun, they fail, if they find a way to keep you (you as in hardcore) and the casuals happy then they win. It's not an easy thing to balance, agreed, but pitting full WH min-maxed geared toons that play in a group, against people newer to the game that play sub-par geared toons and they queue alone, it's wrong in any way, shape or form. If you can't see/understand that then never mind me or this post. I readily agree that it doesn't always happen but you can serve me cake all night long if at the end or the meal you serve me **** my dinner will be spoiled. Prolly on your shoes too . Title of this thread is wrong, it should be " Premades are ruining the non-ranked warzones for me". And there are a number of players that feel that way. Showing them the door or disrespecting their opinions it's not the way to deal with it. In 2 days F2P will hit the real servers and while it will take some time until the ones that opt for such a gaming style will ding 50 on their toons this problem will be pending for a resolve. Because you can be sure that the current state of the level 50 PvP will not bring any fresh subscriptions. LOL game is played by millions and it has nothing on SWTOR except a well thought ranking system which ensures balanced and fun to play matches. On a final note, I really think that resolving the team balancing problem will make a lot of other QQ reasons disappear (CC/resolve QQ, Class balance QQ, ability balance QQ etc). Not all of course but the majority for sure.

The problem of team balance always existed but it has become more apparent now because the game is getting older and it's player base is becoming more diverse. If 5-6 months ago most players were in BM gear and PvP team were not that well tuned, now we have a lot more high gear people and the PvP guilds have established their dominance over the instanced PvP since the open world one is ... not. That together with the influx of new players have made more obvious the lack of AI in match making and that we need some kind of player ranking even for regular warzones. Developers need to address this growing issue and they should do that fast especially if they expect to gain subscribers from the F2P crowd. I for one play this for over 10 months now (maybe that's and issue for me ) and I'm getting fewer balanced matches as time goes by. I don't think that banning pre-made from the regular WZ queue is the right answer but claiming that all is fine as it is now it's a mistake IMHO. Enjoy your PvP!

Don't want to be "Captain Obvious" but there is a "group only" section of PvP. It's called ranked warzone, dooooh. Maybe removing pre-mades all together from regular WZs will make all u "L33t awesome sauce PvPers" go where you belong, ranked. You know what killed ranked? "Idiot" pre-maders met "l33t "premaders got creamed and refused to queue again. Same thing is happening in regular WZs now "idiot" PuGers meet "now l33t" premaders and refuse to queue again. And down the drain all our fun goes. Used "idiot and l33t" just to assure I'm in the tone with the rest of the thread and because it looks like nobody is reading a post that doesn't contain the word "idiot" .

The concept it's simple really. How the hell it eludes you guys baffles me. Don't let Ferrari compete against Fiat. This is not about effort put in it's about paying same amount of money and expecting same amount of fun. I'm not working for BW so they evaluate my work and compensate me accordingly. Actually BW gets more value out of its casual costumers if you want to talk money. I'm the costumer and I pay for a product that promises to deliver entertainment. If the exchange it's not mutually beneficial then we have a problem, well the seller has a problem. Get over yourself cause this is not about you or me or your pre-made vs my PuG, it's about fun, enjoyment and balance. Achieve those and a s***load of problems will just disappear.

Yes Zhaker, you proved beyond the shadow of a doubt we have idiots in the game. Congratulations .

I like winning but I'm not very upset if I'm losing provided that I get to fight and maybe learn a trick or two. I'll talk about my experience and will not pretend I know what ever all others experience. I've spent 10 + months on this game my main char is short only 2 pieces WH gear (chest and head), I also have 3 more lvl 50s. I'm fully augmented and almost 20K HP on that slinger. I win more then I lose by a good margin and I do pre-mades as well as solo queues and generally enjoy the PvP in this game. You know what pisses me off the most? Not losing a game, not the pre-mades, not the CC/resolve conundrum, not the FOTM classes, not the gear disparity (got my battle master suit prior of 1.2 for those of you that knows what that means) cause most of the time I can deal with those "issues", but being ROFL stomped because the match making system have placed me in an impossible position really really really gets me upset (understatement). Can't have any more ROFL stomping crap after spending 10 months in the game (told you, this is just about me ). I don't even want to phantom how a fresh fifty must feel these days. On my server, The Red Eclipse, the population is large enough to support a better matchmaking system and I'm sure that if the matches will be better balanced more and more people will come in for the fun. Edit: Since filipesantana posted while I was writing my post I just want to say: " filipe, F-, your English is not your biggest problem, sit down" .

Just had a brain fart and felt like this is the right place to share it . JUST REMOVE THE FRIKKIN QUEUE SOLO BUTTON. Problem solved. How does that smell ? P.S. To understand where I'm coming from you'll have to read what I have posted previously on this thread.

Very good post! I agreed with all your points but would like to add that the 4th one regarding CC derives from your 1-3 points, meaning unbalanced matches where you get the short stick you'll fight outnumbered almost every time thus u get CCed into oblivion. Sadly it's a slippery slope. Also on the gear disparity I would like to add an idea. Standardize all War Zone gear stats wise (not aspect), let's call it military gear, and give only e-peen awards (possibility to personalize it ?!), but in the same time put gear rewards in Open World PvP so people that enjoy min-maxing have their slice of cake too. Wanna join the army? "OK Sir, this is your gear." Wanna do a mercenary job? Bring your own gear. Grats again for a good and thoughtful post o7. Edited : That was what I used to think too xxIncubixx. But I honestly don't think that is the case. Or the system is so crude that it will pit a 4 man pre against a 2 man pre considering them as equal .

@Little _Dorrit. The first experience that you are talking about is the correct one (doing heals and having fun). The second type (dead in 15 seconds) isn't intended and should be greatly improved by what Doom is suggesting (guards/peels). Question is, should you be forced to make sure you get guard/peel, prior to signing up for the war zones, in order to avoid the second experience, or not? Maybe an "If you tick that box you might have an unpleasant experience" tool-tip should accompany the solo queue button . Should be easy enough to program in .

The developers would have to establish some ground rules first. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that they decide that a team of 3 people may become a deciding factor in the economy of a war zone. Then they should consider teams of 3 or 4 people as a potential unbalancing factor and seek to equalize its influence. That will lead that teams of 3 or more should be labeled as pre-mades for programing purposes. On a second idea, none of the instruments that we know to be in game can't be reliably used to measure a player prowess in PvP (played/win ratio maybe?) so balancing pure PUGs around that is impossible. But maybe they could try to balance around the advanced class or maybe even ask people to tick what spec they are playing (heal/dps/tank) when joining the queue. One thing is clear to me though, they need to put some brains in that match making system and stop letting the odds decide what type of a PvP experience a player may have upon entering a war zone.

NEWSFLASH!!!! If you have a team of eight you can queue for RWZ and while waiting for a match to form you can do normal WZs with 2 groups of 4 (game accounts for columns in ops window). The match making may even pit the 2 groups against each-other which is quite funny to play if you are sane in the head and don't win trade. My only problem now is that besides the natural and unsolvable (or very hard to) balance problems like faction/class population the match making creates some very awkward games. Ex: 1 We were queued for rateds and while waiting we queued for normal too, both of our 4 man groups ended in the same team against some unfortunate PUGs. 2 Same faction Huttball game my team got mostly troopers&smugglers the other team got mostly force users. Horrible game for me, luckily it was very short . And I have quite few more but I won't bother you with them. This issue needs to be addressed before F2P. I for one don't care about queue time (to be honest on The Red Eclipse PvP matches pop very frequently) as much as I care for balanced and fun to play matches. Give fun and balance to the masses and they will flock to enjoy themselves. With the new super servers I don't even think you need Xserver queues all you need is to get people interest up.

It is unbelievable how some of you are unable or unwilling to understand a simple concept. Unbalanced WZs matches are a bad thing to have in a game, any type of game in RL or in a virtual world. That's why you have leagues of different valor. How much fun any of you would have if you get in a boxing match against Vitali Klitschko ??? We must have pre-mades in SWTOR and those need to be able to queue for normal WZs but they must face other pre-mades in order to keep things balanced and fun. How hard is to understand that? It's not frikkin rocket science!!! P.S. Stop drawing conclusions from 3 batches of data samples. You are making yourself look bad.

LOL Grats to you friend. Hope you are having fun. Now try to explain why should one be forced to do that in order to have fun. No quarell with pps that run in premades. To each his own but why people that enjoy that shouldn't be matched against people of similar taste and valor? Wouldn't that be the right path to follo? I mean how can a new commer enjoy the pvp when they are put against teams of well geared veterans? If we have gear progression shouldn't be appropriate to have some sort of skill progression? And, as somebody said above, this is a game people play for fun so that should be the paramount concern for the devs. Most people will leave if they dont have fun and between the gear grind and fighting uphilll battles fun eludes the newer players and the casuals. That is IMHO biggest flaw SWTOR PVP has at this moment.

I did not give up. The minute I'll do that you won't hear from me again on the forums or in the game (I find people that threaten to unsub, if not this or that, ridiculous). I can live with how the things are now but that doesn't mean that all is perfect and there is no room for improvement. If you really want to know my view on the issue you should read a couple of posts above.

Or you should get 4 more friends and go do ranked. How about that? I bet you don't like me telling you how to play the game but what goes around comes around .

The poster above me refuses to admit the problem hoping that denial will resolve the issue. I do know to call incoming and I win well above 50% of the war-zones I play but still sometimes I get in a team that is stomped that badly that sucks the desire to play the game out of me. That usually happens when my PuG team is facing a pre-made that should be in ranked WZs but since those are dead they are having their fun in regular ones. I don't blame them at all since I occasionally do it with my friends. I don't think pre-mades are ruining the normal WZs but utterly unbalanced matches do that (sometimes it happens in same faction games so there is no excuse of population balance there). I don't think separate queues are the answer to the problem either. With the risk of repeating myself, I'll say again, the match-making system should make sure that if in a team it puts a 4 man premade then the opposing team should get one too (mandatory, not ifs and buts). That should give an almost equal footing for the teams. And yes, I know that some pre-mades are better then others but at least the lesser one should put a good enough fight so the match is at least enjoyable. In all honesty I can live with the actual system but if BW wants to attract subscribers from the F2P base then they should make sure those won't get ROFL stomped the second they set foot in a WZ. But again maybe the F2Pers will have their separate queue (bad idea IMHO but much better then pitting them against fully geared 10months on the game PvPers).

Biggest problem that SWTOR PvP has right now is that match making lacks AI completely (I've been in a lot of same faction games where the teams were very unbalanced). But to be honest that is a problem mainly for the PUGs in regular WZs since upon entering RWZ you should bring your best team, gear, tactics etc. You and your team just got trumped into the ground and because you feel you know a thing or two about PvP you reached the conclusion that PvP is broken (I've been there ). Sorry for you, but that's the way it is in reality, the other team beat you fair and square playing with the same rules that made you say that PvP is broken (unless they cheated/hacked but then you should report that). Devs already stated that if the rankings between the teams of a match are disproportionate that is going to reflect in overall loss or gain of rankings at the end of the match (a bone thrown to the under-dog to keep it in the fight ). I do agree that a TTK a tad longer will only add to the game but .... . And also they should add brackets accounting for team rank level and the possibility to refuse matches with a team 2 brackets above your own team rank. ProTip Most roots, slows and a good number of mezzes (soft stuns) can be cleansed. If it's your healer that is mezzed get the fight near him and hope a smash will wake him up .

Yeap noticed it too. No animation, no knock back but the ability gets on cool down. What makes me think is a bug and not a position synchronization issue is the lack of the ability animation.

You can not have competition as long as you don't have balance, and one can't improve unless he is competing against others of similar skill level until he best them all and then moving to the superior level. In order to have balance, hence competition, some rules must be used when organizing matches. SWTOR doesn't have that, as far as I know, which leads to some very one sided WZs. Such WZs, where there is no real competition, are detrimental to the PvP mentality, class perception, core mechanics perception of the players that find themselves on the weaker team (weaker = neck stomped) . And last but not least to their fun meter . BW should consider taking steps in improving their match making system as the least they can do for the PvP aspect of this game. P.S. I agree with all those that preach grouping, improving, getting to the next level etc. But in all fairness guys you have ranked WZs for that end level PvP play and sadly those look like a haunted house right now. So maybe you too should put the effort in to make those work instead of limiting yourself at farming regulars. Not that I don't do that occasionally, but it gets old fast, at least for me .

Everybody should try to enter PvP in a pre-made, I give you that. Is good fun and really unleashes the game potential at end-game. But nobody should be forced to do it by the fear of meeting such a pre-made and being stomped in a utterly frustrating and striped of fun match. Had such an experience short time ago while facing a 4 man pre-made with my latest char that is wearing mixed WH/BM gear with the main and offhand being WH (fully augmented). I;ve experienced death while being stun-locked in that match more that I had it happen in weeks and also 6 seconds TTK. Nothing to say, those guys were all good players and would have loved to learn a trick or two from them but I was too busy re spawning. Bottom line, pre-mades are a good and fun thing to do when PvPing but one shouldn't be forced to enter one to PvP in a balanced environment.

You were rooted. And it was a root type that breaks on damage hence the "briefly". If you still claim it was a stun then you should take this to support forum and make a bug ticket as it was not supposed to happen.

The thread title should have been " Pitting Premades against PUGs is ruining non-ranked war zones" in order to hold some value. I'm playing the game since January and I have 4 (each main class) characters at level 50 and I PvPed with each and everyone for quite a good amount. Not bragging just trying to point that, although I don't consider myself a good PvPer, I have enough experience to identify when something is completely Fubar. And it's completely Fubar to put a 4 man pre-made with coms and experienced players against a random PUG team even if it has experienced players. The ability to call for protection, heals and reinforcements in real time and over voice it's very powerful and can be match only by the other team same ability. Two simple solutions can be applied here, one (which I don't particularly like) it's to not allow groups of more then 2 to enter a war zone against a full PUG team. Of course teams of 3-4 should be pitted against similar groups. Or the second, which I find the appropriate way to handle this, is to add in-game voice communication (optional of course) for all groups at least for WZ purposes. I mean, if CCPGames can have that for EVE Online, BioWare can surely add that for SW:TOR. Edited: Also getting some brains in that match-making system would go a long way to alleviate some of the problems. I mean try to balance the teams as you do in the PvE group finder. Would the queue timers go up a bit? Maybe at beginning, but give people nice, balanced, fun to fight matches and more and more will queue up so you should expect a shortening of those timers over medium and long horizon of time.

I'll be completely honest with you, I think the problem is two fold. First is the L2P issue (and I'm not being condescending here) as part of a team. Because you are right, there is very little a player can do by themselves to avoid being CCed or, worse, stun-locked to death. Yes you can pick the fights you enter, try not to get into 1vsX situation, all valid points but when you want to win you can't be too coy about entering a fight . Just the other day my shadow attacked east gun in Novarre along with a sentinel team-mate. We only encountered an operative healer there. I said to myself "OK, nice catch" and proceeded to kill the pest but, to my surprise, the sentinel decided to try and cap while the operative was still alive. That operative was a good one he kitted me around delayed me and interrupted the sentinel several times w/o the sentinel even thinking to abandon his futile pursues and come help me kill him. By the time I had him killed 3 of his team-mates were coming to the rescue. They killed the dumb sentinel and forced me into cloak. I told this story so you get an idea how clueless some players are. Second fold of the problem is the absolutely horrendous PvP match-making system that doesn't account for anything (class, spec, expertise, valor) when setting up a match and puts pre-made against pug. I don't think I'm a good PvPer, I'm average at best ( I think to myself that I'm above average but meh who am I kidding ) but last night I "fought" three matches against a pre-made and it felt like I'm the worse scrub that ever PvPed. I'm not talking about your PvErs "let's go have some fun in PvP" regular pre-made but about a hard-core PvPrs "let's go roll faces" pre-made. Man that was painfull, insta peels of the healer (peel=death for the assailant) taunts and a stun fest with focus fire to death like I rarely encountered. End screen they had from 35 to 50 kills while we had from 2 to 7 and no it wasn't hutt-ball . We, as in "we the pug", should never be put in a fight like that cause it's just horrible. I felt like the TTK was too short, there are too many CCs, healers are overpowered and my class needs a buff for sure (because I can't be that bad ). Bottom line, being in a heavily out-classed team will lead into a very bad PvP experience which will lead to a deformed perception of the game and its mechanics. P.S. For the record, I think the change that make overlapping CC abilities to add less resolve is a bad one and only caters a careless user of CC. The other changes made by 1.4 to CC/resolve system are good.

You are not persistent you are stubborn, there is a difference. My reading comprehension is fine, thank you, but when you say something as equivocal as "is something I actually do not do but it's still the only way" I don't know, maybe my reading comprehension is not good enough to understand your flabbergasting posts . On another idea, I'm getting CCed too often when I play with people that don't know when to use their CCs, taunts, heals or when to focus a healer. Rest of the time I'm fine . When you'll grow up, you'll understand that what goes around comes around . So does CC abilities.

The statement in red is so wrong that wins you a "L2P". Meh just kidding! Try to learn the other classes and you'll understand that you want to CC a sniper (no entrench doh) when he's aligning an ambush shot or a mara doing his ravage or a merc healer when he has the shield up and he's uninterruptable (if that's a word ). Plenty of other situation when you want to use a stun. Using a CC to counter a CC is maybe the worse way to use it . "It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." Sun Tzu.