From my experience there is a huge gap between very helpful CS employees with high knowledge about the game machanics and CS emloyees that don't even know that you're talking about SWTOR. When I reached out to CS for character titles that I didn't get because they were bugged I'd just send the same ticket every day until I got a person that took time to chat with me, even let me finish my raid and also help me with other things and answering questions about unrelated topics. But in order to get there I had to go through 2 bot answers and 2 answers like OP's. I'm glad I never had a serious account or payment issue so far, I don't want to take part in a lottery when it comes to such things. And even though this should be true, when I reported wintraders at the end of S10 I was getting these familiar sounding scripted responses, but each one of them was still very different. As if they treated my reports differently, even though the topic was the same, just about different individuals. Thanks for aknowledging @EricMusco. This is definitely something you guys should look over.

I disagree. BWs priority right now should be: 1. make the easy system changes that don't require a full rework 2. catch the obvious (1v4 at 6 AM) wintraders and leavers/decliners consistently 3. make improvement changes to the system (and maybe get higher population as a result) 4. NOW try to also catch the not so obvious wintraders and throwers As much as I'd like to see BW banning mentioned players, they have more important work to do first.

It's actually more than first 20. From my experience it's something like: first 5 games: +/- 45-50 5-10: +/- 35-40 10-20: +/- 25-30 20-30: +/- 17-20 from that point on: +/- 10-13 ofc in case of high elo difference you can still get +/- 8 or +/- 15 later but these are the average numbers i guess.

It still should not happen that players with high elo difference get into the same game. Like a 1000 times said before in these forums: For example if 16 dps in q, first make two groups, one with 1250-1600 players, one with 900-1250 players and THEN balance the teams. It should never happen that a 1600 player gets to freefarm a 900 player but he should also never have the 900 player in his own team.

That's what I'm trying to explain to Mero all the time. There is no big wintrading network. Just groups of people who wintrade for each other and are in a rivalry to others. Now it looks like they caught one group but not their "wintrade competitors". If BW keeps up the work they might get more of them.

Here we go again. I think you didn't really get my point last time. I agree with you in the assumption that there are groups of people that try to manipulate games in their favor by trying to get into the same games, on specific roles, with specific characters. And yes they probably sit in Discord channels. Now the difference is: I say these are groups of like 2-4 individuals, let's say members of the same guild or just people that have been playing together for some time. And yes there are probably a bunch of these groups, to go with your example let's say 30 people in total (wintraders and their partners in crime). You say these 30 people would organize on a global scale to have like a schedule or a plan of who gets which title from the very beginning. Now.. you know people. People are human. Humans are full of envy and rivalry. How do you think 30 people can possibly work together, I'll say it again, TOGETHER, on this? Don't you think person 16 doesn't want person 4 to get title X and rather have person 18 there? But then you have person 8 who wants 4 titles for himself, so person 5 would get none, also person 6 hates person 22 so much that they would never talk to each other. And so on... And if I understand your post correctly, you are implying that all 4 individuals of the podcast are part of that? That's a bold call.. There are certainly small groups of people that throw games for each other, and yes they are a problem, yes they should be punished. But they are also hard to detect. There are also people with rivalry that goes so far, that if on the same team, one would leave the game so the other person loses too. And yes they are also a problem, yes they should also be punished, and they are actually easier to detect. These people are ruining ranked for everyone, for people that never wanted to take part in this show because all they did was queueing for Solo Ranked. But instead of trying to convince the naive forum reader that there is a conspiracy going on that's just playing it's dirty game with you 24/7, you might rather give advice for how to react and report when witnessing obvious wintrading.

Thanks for organizing and executing this podcast! I also found it refreshing and watched all of it. I'd also appreciate another episode, there are certainly enough topics to talk about. I have to agree with these points though. The main conversation was happening between Krea and Snave which was good, Nightrain seemed tired but also probably didn't see a reason to interrupt the other two, Shek's comments were sometimes indeed irritating and I'd say the main "source" for getting off-topic. But I guess he hasn't done something like this too often so far, so it's all good. Next time he'll know better. And yes there was way too much talk about "the glory days of S8". As you all know S8 had even worse problems (jeezee, q-sync on pub, ...) which are fixed now. Not saying it wasn't better than current season but in retrospective you forget about the bad things a lot. good point! although the quote + comparison doesn't quite fit. On the one side you have a person that finds himself with people he was trying to avoid, on the other side you have actual credit exploiters. Rather than saying "everyone is involved" I'd say "everyone is affected". This fits for both rating manipulation and economy manipulation.

Which "others"? You were talking about top 3s and I "named" the first three people that came to my mind and took another three randomly from the Solo Ranked leaderboards. So these are 6 people that either rival each other directly or have absolutely nothing to do with each other. We could complete the list for last season, but that wouldn’t really support your argument in my eyes. Unless you finally tell me how that should look like in action or give me an example similar to my list.

Paranoia Part 1 Paranoia Part 2 I don’t think there is need to talk about Part 1, that one is pretty obvious. Part 2 should be obvious as well, but apparently for some people it’s not. You even say the word yourself: pvp. In what world is a bunch of pvp players working together? Especially because most of the better players (and also the wintraders) try to secure multiple spots for themselves. That place is so much about envy and rivalry, there is very little space for pacts or agreements or however you call it. Just as an example. Some of last season‘s Solo Ranked top3s, doesn’t matter if wintraded or not, without namecalling but you will know them: - the most prevelant mara/sentinel queuer, the guy with the hundreds of toons, always blaming people for throwing and in response threatening to throw for them himself. - the most prevelant French wintrader, botter and account buyer/seller, always trying to draw the picture of him being legit this season and channel the hate onto aforementioned mara/sentinel. - the PvE player that got top3 rating on multiple toons with a small amount of wins. - everyone‘s favorite Russian streamer that secured his merc spot in the last few days. - the highest rated character of S10 that just played at the start of the season but nobody passed him. - the 11 wins shadow from French server Now, please tell me how all of these people worked together. I‘m honestly curious.

Thanks for bringing this up! Yes @Mike, it happens sometimes that Solo Ranked matches are 5v4. I don't see it very often, I'd guess 1 in 200 matches or even less, but the fact that it can happen means there is a fatal error in the system somewhere.

Giving people another chance instead of permabanning seems good yes. The problem is there was no punish at all. Or at least not on the points that matter, in this case the cheated top 3 title. Not only did he get it, it was also not removed afterwards and even more important: the person that deserved it rightfully did not get it. He can regret and openly admit his mistakes as much as he want, there has not been justice, and that is the problem here. There are more examples of people that get banned for a week over and over again, you can say pretty much on a regular basis, still running around with S10 rewards, and never getting the permaban that you would expect at some point. If you don't want to get rid of people by permabanning, at least get rid of their stuff. Remove credits, mounts, titles, flairs, achievements, gear, whatever. Let them feel the pain so one day they might actually learn something.

This sounds easy. If it's as easy as you describe, wouldn't many people do it then?

Is the average Leviathan player weaker than the average DM player? And even if so, if everyone else is weaker than you, shouldn't you deserve to be the highest rated person then? Again, of course this is a problem for competition between servers, which unfortunately is what applies to top 3 titles right now, as someone of Leviathan can "steal your DM title". There is still no reason to call people just queueing ranked there "debatable".

Thank you! So what does it mean? A top 3 title earned on TH is worth less than a top 3 title earned on SF which is worth less than a top 3 title earned on DM because it's value grows with competition. I think everybody would agree on this. Now what Mero is applying is that top 3 titles earned on DM or SF are honest IF not manipulated, while titles on other servers are manipulated by default just because of lower population. And that is plain dumb.

MAJORITY means over 50% in my words. And you even say VAST MAJORITY. What season are we talking about here? And which mode, Solo or Team Ranked? In S10 TR I only know 2 players that got away. In S10 SR it's definitely more, and it's a shame how many it is, but I want to see proof for that >50%, because that is just not happening and once again an exaggeration. Oh I know players like this too. Annoying little kids that look at leaderboards and say: "I should be at his place" like 5 times per hour. But you know what? I know one that tried in S10 and didn't get it. Because he didn't wintrade. Others do, but not everyone. It's sad that we got this far, but once again this is supported by stating and spreading the opinion about how little Elo means and how "the vast majority" of players are wintraders. Again, this is not true and continueing to spread this opinion does not help to get back into the other direction. A lot of people care about wintrading. But a lot of them gave up the hope of wintraders getting banned, because it was not happening in too many cases. So the common sense became: "well they don't get banned, but I still want to play ranked so what can I do." But from my experience people do care. TLDR: Tbh, I think we agree in most parts of the discussion. But I don't like that shady taste that people bring into it once someone talks about Ranked PvP. That picture of the toxic, wintrading, throwing and openly admitting because he "deserves it" 24/7 queueing no-life kid might apply for a hand full of people, and yes they probably have Top 3 titles from whatever seasons, but it does not apply for the "majority" of Ranked players, not even for the "majority" of Top 3 title owners.

Can you please provide proof for "low population" and explain what you mean with "otherwise oriented (specifically TH)"? Also what is possibly debatable about playing on an official server?

What is wrong with playing ranked there? Are you implying players with high rating there are wintraders by default? Can you please stop with your Illuminati and Mafia nonsense? We're playing an MMO here, obviously people are connected in different ways and talk about whatever they want in the way they want. Like everyone IRL. Now we have an official place to discuss Ranked PvP ideas with developers (hopefully) reading here in the forums. But I can definitely see reasons why players who could say a lot about this topic are not participating. And I apologize for possible name calling in advance: 1. Being tired of people like you, that will always and at every point this comes up, automatically accuse all "top 3 ppl" for wintrading, botting, queue abusing or being part of your "Ranked Mafia". Not only do you really seem to think everybody would do that, but you also spread this opinion all over the forums. And you wonder why people don't like to discuss with you? 2. Being tired of people that don't argue with facts. Exaggerating and simply making things up just to have something to complain about and find someone to blame, which is usually BioWare. Granted, this is a pretty human thing to do in the internet, but it doesn't support objective discussions in any way. Sad part is, some of the most active people on the forums really enjoy doing that (hint: female). 3. Not having faith in the agenda. With the experience of years of nothing happening or BW not listening (ask snave) and even then: all you can do is to write a post that is only in line with previously mentioned people, so that even if they listen they might get a wrong picture and make wrong decisions. But in the end, I would agree with you. It's like voting. Every vote, every post counts, so everyone that cares about the topic should participate at this discussion if he/she likes it or not.

Thank you, I completely forgot about this. Yes, it is very important that matches that are not 4v4 DO NOT count any rating. No + but also no -. Obviously this has to go together with punishment for leaving, declining and AFKing. So to repeat myself and summarize, here are 5 easy to implement changes, that don't require a full rework of the current system. And they will be a good start to work further on matchmaking after: 1. Make Elo visible from the first game on! Every game should have the same Elo calculation, being it the 1st or the 101st game on a character. 2. Add minimum requirements for games played to achieve each rank: 30 games for Bronze, 50 games for Silver, 100 games for Gold / Top 3. 3. Punish leaving, declining and AFK queueing with a legacy wide queue ban of XY minutes. 4. Don't give any Elo +/- for matches that aren't 4v4. This protects players from losing Elo in a 3v4 because of someone leaving or disconnecting, but also not gives the other team the "free" Elo gain. It also eliminates the possibility of 2v4 or 1v4 botting / win-trading. 5. Fix Backfills! A leaving/declining player MUST ALWAYS be replaced with a player of the same role (T/D/H). If there is absolutely noone of that role in queue at that time, start the match as a 3v4, so that it does not count any Elo for the players in that match. Once again, thanks for working on Ranked PvP.

Please make this thread sticky, so people keep voting! 300 total votes is nothing..

I'm talking mostly from Solo Ranked perspective here, but some points apply for Team Ranked as well. Three important things, that should and can be applied no matter how the "new rating system" looks like in the end are: Remove the fact that your first 5/10/20/40 matches on a character per season are more important in terms of rating gain/loss than the matches after! Fix Backfills! Right now if a healer or a tank declines the pop or leaves the match early, it's completely random what role gets the backfill, even though a player of that role is in queue. Punish leaving matches (especially leaving before start) and declining pops (both actively and afking) legacy wide! Another problem right now is that people going for top 3s are not incentivized to keep playing their high rated character and try "camping" their rating instead and hope it would hold till season end. How to fix that? Make also Top 3s given for "highest earned", not current rating. Problem here is that highest earned is not shown on the leaderboards. This could be added easily though. But even if not, players would still be incentivized to play their main characters to push for a higher "highest earned" when they don't know where the competition is. BUT I can also see this being against player's consensus as the fact that current rating counts makes Top 3s somewhat special. Don't hinder high rated players by not only making them wait longer for invites but also teaming them up with the lowest rated players by default to "compensate". This is the reason why season 10 ratings were so incredibly low compared to all seasons before! This combined with my first point (the first 5/10/20/40 matches) made Top 3 positions for solo ranked in season 10 somewhat random and thus frustrating and even insulting. Well.. this kinda goes against BUT here is a solution: 1. Make pots sorted by elo. 2. The 8 highest rated players in queue will get into the same match, the players 9-16 into the next one, ... as far as roles (T/D/H) allow it. 3. AND NOW: For every "pot" don't balance by elo, but by classes. Step 1: Range/Melee, Step 2: Offheal/Offguard capability, Step 3: Mirror respective classes. 2 Snipers, so put one into each team. 2 Maras, so put one into each team. If this can't be implemented it should be completely random instead. Because the systems we had before either put all high elo players into one team to faceroll over the other (S1 - S9) or "balance" the teams out so the highest rated player would have a higher chance to have the 900 elo guy that gets globalled in his team (S10, S11). And both systems create situations that feel unfair. If it's completely random, everyone knows it's completely random. YES! Get rid of the "10 games" thing. Show elo from the first game on. I'd suggest following minimum requirements: - at least 30 games played for Bronze - at least 50 games played for Silver - at least 100 games played for Gold and Top 3 I say NO to this. There need to be other incentives for keeping the solo ranked queue active in general (like CXP/components in S8, monumental crystals in S11) but also people playing their main characters. Rating decay is not a solution. Thanks for reading this. I hope it helps. Also thanks for working on Ranked PvP! Edit: More ideas: Change the ranked weeklies again: Total points to achieve should be 30. Give 3 points per win, 1 point per loss. The 50 points change effectively killed Team Ranked. For "farmers" 30 losses is still punishing enough while teams that lose more than they win would have more incentive to queue than they have right now. Get rid of rating gain/loss determined by your elo compared to other people's elo in the respective match. Just have fix values like "10" for it.

Thank you very much Mike. And yes, please make it happen! More communication = more better. With seasons lasting 6 months that would be 6 posts per season. I think it could be more than that. I personally would love to see an update about what's going on every 14 days and so we players can give faster feedback about who or which type of violations you might have missed.

There are 2 questions everyone has to ask himself/herself: 1. What do I want? This sets your goals for what you want to achieve. 2. Am I honest to myself? Very often people present themselves in a way where they criticize other people for exactly their own behavior to make people think they are "different" or "better". Number 1 leads to the question of the meaning of life in the end so everybody will have a hard time answering that. But number 2 is like they most prevelant and also funny behavior to watch in this game. People say: "I don't care about the game, I have RL" "My sub is running out, duuno if I even refresh it" (after they have subbed 4 years in a row with playing 30+ hours a week) There are more examples but my point is: once you get to know people saying things like this just a little bit, you can already tell that they're lying. Maybe they know and just try to keep their specific "ingame face", maybe they're also lying to themselves. And I don't even want to highlight specifically you, Mero, but you just gave a perfect example. You do bother. You did it in S9 and you know it was not easy. Or maybe it was easy in terms of low risk but it was certainly a huge time investment. And all that by knowing what your name will go by in the Ranked community after that. You can not that easily be top 3 again. You either would have to tryhard in the way "LinkinPein" was describing it in the "State of Season 11" thread (which I don't know if you're practised enough to pull of) or you would have to do the same shenanigans as you did in S9. Either way huge time and energy investment, which makes your word "easily" a straight lie. I'm sorry for that pinpoint as I usually like they way you're thinking and kinda like it how hard you went for that 100% achievements (even tho you had to cross the borders of ToS for it).

There is nothing bad about that IF the amount of total players is very high. Because then ELO brackets actually do work and eliminate the problem of good players, bad players and mat farmers (in S8 CXP farmers) getting together into one arena. You could see this working in team ranked queue just 2 weeks before 5.10 (Ossus patch) when team ranked was still very active on Darth Malgus on a weekend. I was queueing with a 1400-1500 team while 3 high rated teams (1700+) were in queue. They only matched against each other, we were facing decent teams, but we were not facing a single straight mat farm team with like 4dps, using no dcds ... (because their elo was like 900) You could also see this working in solo ranked in S8 with the CXP farmers and in the beginning of S9 when just a lot of people queued. So yes to every incentive to queue, being it mats, CXP or whatever. The more people queue, the better the ranked experience for everyone.

Why are you making things up? Is it so hard to argue with facts? You just missed it. But no, it probably was bugged..

This is correct, BUT: Jugg is still one of the best classes to get into solo ranked. It's one of the easier classes to not get globalled, so by achieving that you can start to learn the mechanics of the game mode and improve your gameplay. On many other classes beginners just get globalled over and over again and thus get hardstuck in their learning curve, while on classes with a bit more time to react or with the ability to use something while stunned they would start improving. So feel free to get into solo ranked on jugg, even tho your class is not FOTM and you will often be targeted first.