...which is actually the first honest and valid opinion I've seen in a long pile of weasly rants. In which case, I can relate. I'm not too much of a KOTH fan either. But honestly, I don't feel it to be a KOTH mechanic. To me it seems more of a domination mechanic. The existance of multiple objective points shows that. If it had been a real KOTH in mind, the objective points would have been much fewer in numbers.

...as in, "simple enough so that my perfect premade party with perfect heals/deals/meatshields setup can just camp out one spot, defend forever, and win", I'd say. If you sift through these horrible comments, you get a really good picture on just what kind of new WZ people wanted. Another, boring, passive, "3 node, secure 2 to win" where you can get the perfect team setup to take charge and defend forever, which leads to wins and big heal/dps/taunt numbers to see on the socreboard and praise each other for how awesome they were. And they actually have the galls to use pugs as an excuse -- "too difficult for pugs" LOL! Fact check here: for a pug team, EVERYTHING is too difficult. For a pug team, just the presence of an enemy premade on the other side, is more 'difficult' than this new WZ. They didn't care about pugs for the last 5 years, and now, suddenly they are worried 'pugs won't get this new map' ??

LOL! People are speaking as if pugs currently 'get' the WZs we already had. Really, pugs don't get any of the WZs in the first place, so don't you be worrying about pugs. I mean, since when did people worry so much about pugs? If they were really so caring about pugs, they'd not be throwing that premade krap to the pug players in the first place. Now, after a new WZ with a quite different setup shows up and suddenly everybody is worried about how pugs will not 'get' it? Excuses, excuses. How about we be honest here and not use pugs as excuses, and simply admit "I don't get it, yet" ?

Exactly. Very acute observation.

This is my impressions and assessment as well. IMO it just shows how aggressively people resist when they are forced to leave their comfort zone, and adapt to something new and different -- be it 'good' different or 'bad'. Hey, I'm really sorry the new WZ doesn't agree with the SWTOR-standard, "we've got multi healers and tanks and DPS and the whole shizbang HAHAHA so we defend this node forever, you ain't nevah gonna take this node from us, like ever, so we win!" mentality. Does it feel uncomfortable leaving the protection of your babysitters behind and breaking into small groups to keep on taking the initiative towards capturing new objectives? Probably. Me, its not first time I've been in these type of instanced PvP settings. Maybe its a first for SWTOR, but not for me. Personally, I think its a LOT better than if they gave us yet another boring "capture 3 of 2 nodes, and react passively to incoming attackers and defend forever" setup. It pushes and rewards aggressive movement and initiative-taking. You can't defend everything forever, so go take more. It's ok. Not great, but certainly different. I give it maybe two? three? weeks until the whinings and rantings stop, and people just adapt to it.

Sorry if I gave such impression. I was merely trying to emphasize that, despite the popularity of stealth classes in many games, they are actually very difficult to manage well -- since, in order to get more than just personal gain/advantage as a stealther, you need to be able to use this tactical advantge really, really well. Its not just SWTOR, but in almost every game I've played, empirically speaking, stealthers have no 'middle ground'. It's always either a horde of newbies or select few super-players, and the efficiency of their actions are so drastic. In WZs, its always either a 'useless stealther' or a 'useful stealther'.. but seemingly, no such thing as an 'ok stealther', if you get what I mean.

Is it any wonder some people would rather that this doesn't turn into a very specific, forum topic tendency? Logically speaking, premade apologists don't really have anything going for them. Especially when people are saying its OK to make premades, but just be sure to seperate them from solo queuers and be matched with other premades through matchmaking. There isn't any grounds for them to object to these line of suggestions openly -- as long as they remain in that facade where they pretend that premades isn't about winning easy, but about playing an honest, good game with your guildies and friends, and about competitive fights and good organized gameplay. I mean hey, then what's to object about matchmaking? - The premades don't get to bother solos, so they aren't flamed anymore. - The solo queuers get what they want -- a match where random teaming happens to both sides equally. - Solo queueing numbers will return, since they know they won't be ROFLstomped every night. - The premades get what they want -- they'll always be able to fight against other premades. The only drawback is that possibly, premade-queue times will be longer. But no sweat. With the huge numbers advantage the Imps have in all servers, you can be sure that plenty of premade vs. premade matches will still happen reasonably often -- its just that all the Imp premades will usually be fighting the same Imp premades -- but really, this is through their own doing, since nobody exactly forced them to all flock to the Imperial faction. They did that to themselves, so they don't really have anyone else to blame, do they. So, to paraphrase their own favorite logic(i.e. "If you don't like premades, make a premade yourselves") towards themselves, "If they don't like fighting same Imp vs Imp every time, they should switch over to Reps themselves and form a Rep premade". Let's see if they can gladly do what they've been recommending to others who have suffered under their hand for so long. I mean, just imagine how many vs Imps matches you'll be having if you're a Rep premade. It'll be like the only sexy, single woman stranded on an island full of sexy men! ... No reason to object to this at all, according to most of the self-described "agenda" most premade players and apologists seem to give us. Solo players made it clear that "we don't want to play with you". The system didn't give solo players any choice. So now, if matchmaking is working, then a choice is given. If solo players are bored with the lameness and low-standards of solo queues, they can make a premade themselves, and then go join premade queues! In reverse, premade players also have the same choice. If they tire of super-competitive fighting all the time, so hectic and intense, they can break up the premade, and join solo queues for relaxing matches, right? Equal opportunity, equal choice for both. Everything is perfectly fair for everyone. Everyone gets what they want. So then, why are most premade players and apologists objecting the implementation of matchmaking? Its really a no-brainer if you think about it. There's only ONE reason.

In this case I feel a bit uncomfortable in recommending stealth classes, because to be very honest the "survivability" under this context usually means the same thing as "liability" to the team. In other words, the excellent survival of scound/ops and shad/sins usually come from the fact that they are invisible, hence undetected, hence, not fighting. and hence, ultimately, not doing anything meaningful for the team and basically nothing more than a deadweight that's gotta be carried by the team. To pull's one's weight as a stealther, that means you have to be able to infilitrate enemy nodes with solo defenders and fight 1v1 and win very fast. If you can't win, then you're basically useless to the team, and would probably be better off fighting with the rest of the team at a hotspot -- in which case you're just as visible and open to enemy attack as any other player caught in open engagement. Even if you can 1v1 and take the node, if you spend too much time just observing for an opportunity, in many cases the overall scoresheet could be a big "minus" for the team as a whole. Even if you're fighting with the team at a hotspot, as a stealther you have a duty to disrupt the enemy rearlines of healers and ranged DPS. That's why they gave you that stealth. If you aren't going to be using it in any meaningful way, then there's no point of being a stealther. Hence, I don't particularly think stealthers are more "safe" than any other class -- especially not when stealthers are doing their jobs correctly. In other words, if stealthers are doing their jobs correctly and frequently enough to be a big plus for the team, then they're in as much danger as any other class. The only times when a stealther is safe and survivable is when its being a burden to the team than an asset. So IMO, stealthers are some of the toughest classes to use correctly. When they're pulling their weight, they are in combat, often at situations where no other friendly can help, and fighting at vital spots of enemy territory which enemy reinforcements are very likely to arrive soon. In this aspect I don't think stealthers are so "highly easy to survive." "Highly easy to survive at the team's expense" would be more like it. This is probably why stealth classes are all considered to be those that require more skill to use well, in all games, methinks.

Guard damage just happens, Omega. It passes through initial hit/miss and shielded/unshielded defense layers. But mechanics-wise, its not guard that is the problem. The problem is that the tank doesn't have any of his 'tanky' stats pulling its weight. It's a +50% DR to all damage by itself. Let's just leave out the extra 5% for easier calc. Let's say somebody hits the guardee with a 2.5k attack, this is initially mitigated down to around 1250 damage since it first passes the "guard" layer. This damage is then split into half, and 725 damage each goes to the guard and the guardee. Let's say the guardee is a sorc/sage with around 20% DR -- he receives 580 damage. The guard is a tank with 50% DR, so receives 362 damage. Let's assume there are no healers, and the tank decides to guard some other class who is under fire, and 3 enemies with a DPS of 2.5k/sec decide to focus your guardee... you receive 1087 DPS. This is actually not so bad by itself. You'll be able to fight for little over a minute with the enemies keep beating on your guardee. The problem is when the enemies, noticing this, just decides to turn away and attack you instead. Its a total of 7.5k DPS that falls upon you.. and since none of your defense stats are working properly, the only defensive mechanic that is working for you is DR -- which reduces the incoming damage down to 3.25k DPS ... an average tank with 70k HP is going to last just over 20 seconds in a 3v1 situation. Since people usually have higher than 2.5k DPS, and temporary max burst attacks also go over 2.5k DPS, in reality you last around maybe 10~15 seconds if you don't have any CDs. If all your CDs are ready to use, and also a healing item, you'll last maybe 20 secs. Now, the problem starts at this point, where you can just dump all tanking stats and go full blown DPS -- and you'll last about the same time. Without a healer, in those 20 seconds of fighting, if you're a "skank" in DPS set-up you can at least hurt one of those three DPS that's killing you bad enough to either kill it, or drive it away, thus reducing incoming damage by another 33%. In a real tank setup, no such luck. You obviously can't survive 33% longer even if you're a real tank. So the problem, if summarized, is this: 1. When you appeal your role as a tank for the team, its not really you and your tanking skills that's doing anything. It's a one-button toggle that does everything, and that's the only thing your teammates expect from you. They don't expect you to be "tanky" and hold out against many enemies for a long time. All they want is you to be the meatshield that burps out taunts.... and the taunting part can be covered by other DPS as well. 2. Your tanky stats can't tank at all. Imagine a situation where an enemy throws 10 attacks at you, all doing 3k damage, for a total of 30k damage inflicted. In theory, if you have 35% average defense chance as I do, then (despite relying on probabilites) the mathematical expectancy of that chance should dictate that I can usually parry/deflect around 3 of those attacks to avoid 9k damage. Unfortunately, since nearly half of the attacks people make are Force/Tech, out of those 10 attacks 5 attacks are just destined to land on me no matter how awesome my Defense rating is. So, out of the remaining 5 attacks, I'd deflect 1.5 of them. If we take in to account how accuracy over 100% just directly subtracts from my preciously acquired Defense chance, in reality, despite a heavy investment into Defense and sacrificing vital stuff like END, POW, CRIT, etc etc... my 35% Defense chance only allows me to avoid 1 out of those total 10 attacks thrown at me. So, out of 10 attacks made against me, 9 of them will land. DPS usually have around 35% crit, so out of those 9 attacks, 3 of them will land on me with no chance of being shielded. So 6 attacks remain, and finally now my shield chance applies -- in which case, with such investment into Defense, I have 35% shield chance at 30% absorption. So, of those 6 attacks, I can expect to shield two of them by 30%. Let's do a total count here. The enemy makes 10 attacks against me. 1. I get to totally avoid a grand total of 1 attack, despite 35% defense chance. 2. I get to partially mitigate 2 attacks by 30% with my shield. 3. 7 attacks land on me anyway, no mitigation whatsoever except my default resistance. So out of total 30k damage attempted at me, my grand investment into tanky stats allowed me to mitigate 4.8k damage. MITIGATION FACTOR OF a miserable, 16% ...and this is what I get for sacrificing my mods, enhancements, and augments into Defense. A guardian tank that is barely over 70k default HP, has bottom-feeder level of pitiful damage, but faithfully investing into tanky stats... and all I get is bloody 16% mitigation factor of total incoming damage. Count it mates. Bloody. 16. percent. You know what that's like? It's like you sacrifice all your major modding slots and augments, and the amount of extra "tankiness" you gain is worth less than the flimsy robes the sorc/sages wear. You invest 2,000 defense and gain an extra cloth robe. That's what this is. How the heck is this fair! Woop-dee-bloody-too. It ain't the guard damage son. Guard is actually fine. Why there is no point in tanks? Because in reality, no matter how you try hard, you can never really be a 'tank' in PvP in the first place. That's why people just dump everything into END. At least you can be a big hunk of a meatshield, even if you can't tank worth shi*. Unless defense works against all incoming attacks, and this stupid freebie defense-bypass of force/tech goes away, tanks will always be pointless.

Healing sorc/sage, and none other. In reality, the difference between most solo players and average premades are actually negligible -- and one interesting bit you can see if you play in Rep side, is that even if there are no Rep premades, if one of the more talented sage healers queue into the game, you can see the power balance between the two teams changing from what felt like 10:1 odds against the Reps, to at least a 6:4 against Reps. If the same number of solo healing sages queue to match up with Imp premade sorcs, then the game's almost 50:50 odds. This is why I view most premades as essentially not much more than "guaranteed healers setup" (...which means the 'oh we do it for competitive PvP' excuse is just bullshi*, and its really more about easy matches...), and at the same time the sorc/sage healers being way too powerful and influential to the outcome of the match. But as it is, if there is one class that is almost self-sufficient in any situation, and impact the game, then its sorc/sage healers. None other.

Numbers merely sketch a rough outline of a certain tendency at best. It simply portrays a certain amount of performance margin under conditions which you personally feel comfortable where you are free to leisurely rotate certain powers as close to as one's own theoretical maximum. I'm sorry for dragging in another premade argument, but typically if you're in a premade where the team you are in is very likely to win, you're at least twice... three times... four times more likely to have such leisure where everything is covered by everyone in your group where people babysit each other 24/7. Compared to that, some of the few, experienced Rep players teamed alongside all the hordes of casuals and newbies in a clearly disadvantaged situation, fighting against superior numbers of good players in the Imp side, would typically show less than half the numbers of an average Imp player and yet I'd not rate them any less than any of those premades. When's the last time you in your premade group had to just jump into a suicidal situation to desperately stop a cap twice... three times... four times.... as many times as necessary? Do this in a match and your score just plummets -- except regardless of the scores, a player doing such actions clearly 'takes one for the team', over and over again. Happens a lot when you're not playing in a privileged faction where every luxury is provided to you. I will admit that scoreboard numbers are meaningful in a game where both sides are evenly matched, equally well developed as a team -- in which case the overall conditions being similar, a difference in maximum output of heals, DPS or protection would depict a more or less reliable pattern that closely resembles a player's maximum performance. However, a typical, normal, average reg WZ match, and basically the scoreboard is nothing but a type of mental mastu**ation. The scoreboard doesn't tell you how many friends you've saved, how many good plays you've made, how many caps you stopped desperately, and just in general how well you did. As a matter of fact, it is actually more likely that high scoreboard numbers are an indicator of how dull and boring the match was, since typically it means that both sides were flooding sorc/sage heals. Like mentioned in that other "4k DPS sorc" thread, super high DPS/heals/taunts all happen in the most boring matches where nobody dies. Since nobody dies: - all the DPS live long enough to do their max damage rotations forever = high DPS - tanks live forever = guards healers forever = enemy DPS hit your healer forever = super high protection - healers heal nonstop to keep everyone alive forever = super high heals Is this an indicator of how good the players are? Not to me it ain't.

Only if you're an Imp. For the Reps in all servers, its a fighting environment where people don't really bother to make premades. At least, you don't see the Imp premade hordes as often as you do in max lv. PvP -- hence, it actually makes up the "roughly equal win chance for both sides" situation, since both sides are predominantly solo-queue players, and you don't get the premade 4-man arsehats in maxed out gear slaughtering people one-sidedly. There's a reason why some people consider lowbies and midbies way more fun than max lv.. It's the "no-premade environment" I always talk about.

IMO AHG is one of the more rare, all-out power fights where its less about tactics and more about brute force full-frontal assault. Its one of the WZs where the weaker team can't really make do with clever alternate tactics to offset its disadvantage, and where even the slightest difference in relative team strengths show up as vivid results. I think that's one of the reasons why people don't like it. It's too honest.

The Imperial Agent is right there, filming Jason Bourne, and then we have the Smuggler on the other side filming a skit from SNL.

Well what did you expect, when the game has given us not one or two Mary Sues, but rather an entire Empire of Mary Sues?? Don't get me wrong. I like the Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion character. Very good acting and some deep dialogues. I love KotFE in that it is a narrative-driven experiment that looks up to a lot of the old single-player RPG elements. But the concept of the EE itself... Jesus Christ... I know SWTOR was pushed away from canonity since EP.7 hit the theaters, but even still, it was ONCE canon that was striving for a balanced storyline. In that sense, the very existance of Zakuul is a big middle finger to the entire Jedi, Sith, Force, and the KOTOR/Revan lore.... where a horde of Mary Sues from a Mary Sue Empire suddenly turn up to kick both the Republic and the Sith Empire in their shins, and then make all of the Jedi and Sith look like juvenile fools. "Dark Side? The Light? What's that? Us Zakuulans are the ultimate force users that don't give a shi* about how the light or the darkness may effect anyone in their body and spirit. We are the yin+yang, we use both aspects to our freedom without any repercussions or problems that for some reason every non-Zakuulan Jedi or Sith always run into. Losing balance, too much obsession with power or hatred? Nope. Doesn't happen to us. Peace, calmness, serenity? Nope, no effect on us. We don't have to align ourselves in any such way, we don't need to focus or hone our Force to any principle. We just get to use its full power without doing any of that." If this isn't a Mary Sue horde of characters from a Mary Sue planet of a Mary Sue Empire.... I don't know what is.

They're currently beating their heads against the wall in trying to find a way to make tk/lightning work. Or so I've heard. Hehe.

A crock of bullshi* if I'd ever heard one. So in the name of "fun", you make premades, because supposedly it's not fun playing with other 'scrubs' is not fun... and yet, for some mysterious reason you've got no problems at all if its you CRUSHING the horde of pugs on the other side. In reality, that's just another way of saying you enjoy easy fights, is it not? You don't like being teamed with scrubs, but you don't have any problems at all playing against scrubs and just steamrolling them. To me that spells a very evident, nice, double standard. But really, we understand. winning is fun. Losing is not. As long as you're the winners, c'mon, you don't really care whether you're fighting at scrub level or not. How about a spot of truth for once? The "friends" theory? The "we like competitive fights" theory? Total, crock, of, bullshi*. You want really competitive fights? Bring your guild over to the Repside and I guarantee, every fight you queue onto during peak hours, you've got an Impremade on the other side. At this moment, if there is one move you can do to be part of the most competitive PvP where you are guaranteed every opponent you face is at the least a premade, it's moving to Reps. PvPers certainly don't care much about the lore or immersion, so what's stopping you from being a part of the toughest matchups in that you're not always superior anymore, and everytime you will certainly face someone stronger than yourselves? Do I really need to write down the answer for the above question to which everyone knows the answer?

Go ahead. Tell us how you really feel, some more. Because in the end of every "premade" discussion, premade-apologists just revert to that attitude: "this is the reality, you ain't gonna be able to do shi* about how we walk all over you, so bite me. :D" Of course, nothing personal -- just pointing out that the trend of discussions and debates associated with premades, in the end, just all flow this way -- regardless of what game you are playing. The exact same thing happened with my last game, which I now disclose to be Neverwinter, by Cryptic. The premade situation there... horrific. The queue takes more than 50 mins to get even a single match, and that single match you spend most of your time being spawncamped, if you're not a premade. The PvP's effectively dead. And some of the most prominent and notorious premades/guilds are nowadays actually offering to split up people and not make premades... ...of course, everything's too little, too late there. It's gone. PvP. Luckily, SWTOR isn't there yet. But don't doubt even a second that its coming. It just makes me wonder, just which part of "Pick on somebody your own size" you guys cannot understand. Rather, you guys are saying, "If you don't like being bullied, c'mon, grow up to our size and stand before us". Really?

I'd agree to it under the specific condition that the functional self-preservation in form of self heals is directly linked with tanky stats. If its another one of those things that you can just use it in the same way when you're a DPS-gear setup in tanking stance, then it solves nothing and makes it even worse. ... Just for example (not carefully thought out -- literally, just for sake of exampling), like when Defense stat works against all incoming damage, and so defense/immortal guard/jugg will heal for 5% of its HP every time it successfully parry/deflects incoming damage... if something like this happens a real defense tank has something like around 35% average defense chance, and 83% defense chance when Saber Ward is on. It will shrug off around one out every three attacks made against it and heal itself, and when SW is activated, will be pretty much 'invincible mode' -- at the price of using almost of its mod/augment slots for defense mods, since you need around 2,000 defense to achieve these stats, which, for the record, is also a stat that is absolutely terrible in regards to diminishing returns/softcap. (Also, defense augments don't have any END stat on it, and therefore, your overall HP is also a tad lower than most) So if its something like this, then obviously this trait is useless to a 'skank' build -- it works only if you really go tanky and give up all them offense mods/enhancements/augments and invest heavily into defense. The price you pay for being tanky, is ofcourse, your lightstick hits like a featherduster. If its setup this way, so that self-healing will not be added on top of 'skanks', but will be directly linked with the tanky stats, to be effective for those who really build tanks as it is originally intended, then I'd be up for it.

The thing is, anyone can do that "bothersome" role, provided that there's enough heals to go around. As a matter of fact, in terms of being bothersome -- as in, being a nuisance and prohibiting enemy players to perform normally -- something like a sent/mara with a healer behind its back, would actually be better, since nobody is going to just facetank/ignore a sent/mara waving its double lightsticks in one's face. In a sense, the only saving grace for a "tank" in terms of role distribution is the guard function, since even DPS classes can taunt... and the great irony is that you don't need to build a real tank with tanky stats to guard someone. You can just build a skank, go DPS oriented, and do the same. Another big irony is that the guard function -- the one skill that differentiates a tank class from others, is essentially detrimental to one's game play. Without healers, guarding cuts down on your lifespan seriously. What this means, is that to be a tank, to do your own designated role in combat, you need someone else behind your back. Which class in the game needs someone else to steadily do one's role? I mean, a DPS class with a healer behind certainly helps to do its job better, but its prime functionality as a DPS isn't effected by it. Same with healers with a tank guarding it. Sure it helps it with the survivability, and certainly makes healing easier, but is the healer's healing function seriously effected if there are no tanks to guard it? In contrast, guarding someone without a healer is viewed by many as just "controlled suicide" in most cases . For pity's sake, real tank players really, really need their Defense stats working for all incoming damage types for the initial hit/miss calculation.

You're saying as if I said something different. This was always what I've said in any post I've written upto date. Two different balance problems, one concerning heals, others concerning matchmaking.

What I would be really, really interested in, is if the devs have any "big data" on the win:loss ratio of total matches played in WZs. Because in a PvP game, usually even a 5% mark is a huge indicator of imbalance, contrary to what most people think. For example, in a PvP game which has personal ratings and stats, the absolute majority of players -- "average" guys who are not particularly good or bad, usually have a win chance of around 47~48%. When a player/team has a 50:50 even win-loss ratio, that's actually pretty decent, and when it goes over 55% its actually a very good score. The really top-of the line, super-skilled players have 60% or over... and when this goes over 65~70%, people genuinely reckon that there's some foul play involved -- as in, doing cheesy stuff like fighting in only winning matches, and leaving matches to avoid a loss record. In that sense even a 5% is a huge difference concerning win-loss data. If the devs do collect such data, and if it shows the win-loss data of Reps being under 46~48% of winning, it can be considered evidence of serious imbalance -- as in, "the Reps are losing at a rate that is unnatural, if we assume both sides are more or less evenly populated" <== in which case, the conclusion would be "both sides are NOT evenly populated, and there is genuine, serious imbalance in the population"

Its just simple demographical logic. Premade is just another word for a "party" that's present in any MMORPG. It just boils down to "does your side have people that would go through the trouble of finding regular playing buddies, or form a guild to secure such buddies all the time, for the sake of PvP". Most of the Rep population are casual players, light players, or not very fond of PvP in the first place -- because like I said, the population imbalance was here from the start. Rep players -- like so with any other PvE players -- would gladly make premades, "parties", to go on OPs... FPs... any other PvE content. But would they go through the trouble of doing so in a content which they were never interested about? Nope. I dunno why PvErs are inclined to get PvP rewards in the first place, but they still want it. So they come in for the dailies and weeklies, and at the same time would want to enjoy PvP in the 'lightest' manner possible -- as in, "who care if we lose. I'm just in it for the 4x" type of people. If you see 8 people in your Rep team, you can bet that around 2 of them are experienced PvPers, 4 of them are daily questers, and 2 are casual PvPers who like PvP but not really good enough, nor have time to enjoy and practice it daily to get really good. Take a look at an Imp team and at least half of them are premades, or premade-level players. Yes, Reps have good players, too. Reps have premades and PvP guilds as well. But like with any premades these guys operate only with each other, and since there are so few of these guys, only in maybe 1 out of 5~6 matches the casual players and newbie level players get that "assist" from premades -- whereas for the Imps, you can bet that there are premades or premade-level players in EVERY match that happens. There are low level, casual-level players solo queuing on both sides. Rep players are reminded of this fact every match in a very vicious way, whereas Imp players have it really, really, really easy since in almost every game they have premade level players behind their backs. That's why the pop. imbalance is a problem. There's just not enough real PvPers in the first place. Imagine if some of those PvPers all flocked together at Imp side, were at the Reps -- then nobody would be complaining about premades, or matchmaking in the first place, since both sides would have roughly similar ratio of both good and bad players, hence most matches will teeter-totter around 50:50 odds of losing or winning. Win or lose, at least the game would be enjoyable -- instead of being a horror story every night. Enough of these horrible nights, and people just lose interest, or the will, to push that "queue for PvP" button.

Trust me. 90% or more of the people playing PvP can't use their classes/characters to the full potential in the first place, hence inter-class balance is hardly of any real issue in reality. Balance becomes a real problem only in matches where both sides are full stocked with good players -- in which case the fight is close enough for that initial imbalance between classes to start making a difference. Absolute majority of "class balance" complaints, are actually "match balance" problems, which is actually a "faction population/players imbalance problem" at heart.

UTC 8:00 AM, Harbinger Dromun Kaas: 108 players Imp Fleet: 167 players Coruscant: 57 players Rep Fleet: 98 players What's interesting is the amount of people in the Capital worlds, which, along with starter worlds I view as an indicator of new player/character population. Starter worlds are split apart, but eventually both storylines gathers everyone from lv10 and above to the Capital world -- which IMO at any given time can be viewed as how many people are making new characters. In case of the fleet, with those numbers I'd estimate at least 15~20 Imp players queueing for PvP at any given time, whereas among that 100-ish people in reps, I estimate around maybe 10 at most, are queueing for PvP, and among those 10 maybe 1... or 2 people are from renowned PvP guilds. With these numbers there'd be around 1 match going on that has a full Rep team, that has no premade or no PvP guild players, who are going to fight against a full Imp team with at least half are either premades or from PvP guilds. At the same time, since there aren't any more Reps queueing, the rest 10 players in the Imp side will be split into an Arena match against each other that goes on simultaneously as the reg WZ match. Of course, all of this is speculation and supposition. But I'd bet my arse this is close to reality. Until the numbers fire up in the Reps again at peak hours, every Reps queueing for the time being will be likely to lose. So after exactly 4 matches, Reps will stop queueing, and the PvP queue will go dead, and every Imp queueing will be either fighting other Imps in 4v4, or in "training simulation" WZs.