This is actually entirely incorrect. Under a system like that, rating expresses only the amount of games a person has played. The worst player in the world could easily be the most highly rated if he simply played enough. The rating system the game uses is based off of ELO, which is a very solid rating system. The implementation just seems to be a bit off at the moment.

Screenshot for proof: http://imgur.com/oD0yXv8 Count-Crochula - 2258 Somnax - 1935 Yoshi - 1753 Gaurex - 1209 Casualcreep - 1308 Sadan - 1067 Ractus - 1136 Sikova - 1227 1788 Avereage vs 1184 Again, even from just the players in this game we could make a much more even match. How about Count-Crochula, Sadan, Gaurex, and Casual Creep vs. Sikova, Somnax, Yoshi, and Ractus. 1460 vs 1512. MUCH better. Or, it could have taken Insomniaq who was waiting in que at the same time as a DPS at 1416 rating to replace Yoshi, letting us get 1442 vs 1446. So, again. THIS. SHOULD. NEVER. HAPPEN. Really, it shouldn't.

I can confirm this. I was in this game. 3 players above 1800 versus a team of people all in the lower 1200 or so area. Lest I be declared a QQer, understand that I was on the winning/high ranked team. Therefore, not to sound ragey but I must say, THIS. SHOULD. NEVER. HAPPEN. EVER.

Games do not load if there are not two teams of 4. It only happens that you get less people if someone quits. I am ok with the system giving matches without healers - late at night you could wait hours for a que to pop if it required healers. The problem is evening out the ratings of players on each team.

Unfortunately, it isn't always even about talent at this point because of the kind of mismatches I have sought to illustrate here. I know on my own server several of the best players at their classes whose ratings are languishing in lower tiers because match after match they find themselves on teams which have a collection of average players, facing off against teams of 3 or 4 of the best players on the server. That said, your other concern is also a huge part of it. It seems to be almost universally the case, with some exceptions, that losing costs more points than winning earns. In other words, if you go .500 you do not remain at a steady rating - you actually go down. If you lose a match, you need to win greater than one match to catch up to where you were. Of course, if these gains and losses fluctuated purely according to the teams' comparative ratings, then we'd have no concerns. However, it seems as though winning - against just about any team - almost always gains less than is lost by losing - against just about any team.

That's true at times, but again, in the example I cited there players were all there to make fair and balanced teams.

Thank you very much for the reply, Eric. I think a very important point here is that whether it happens consistently or not is not really important so much as that a case as in this particular example can happen even once. I think just about everyone can understand when late at night or when the ques are not filled with a sufficiently diverse population that some mismatches are bound to happen. However, in this particular example there is no need for it to. The teams in this very game could have been evenly matched simply by swapping one player to the other team and vice versa. The question would be not so much, why does this happen often or infrequently, but rather, why does it *ever* happen that two same-faction ELO 2000 players wind up on one team against a team of four ELO 1200 players, when swapping one 2000 for one 1200 makes an even team? Swapping the healers would have produced an average difference of 67. Swapping Somnax with Acliptic would have produced a difference of 17. That said, I can say that it does happen with some consistency. Over the course of 30 or so games a night, I would say that in my experience at least 5 of them regularly result in some kind of rating mismatch of this sort.

As anyone who has qued many solo arenas knows, far too often teams come out grossly mismatched. Sometimes this happens by means of composition - such as when a team of 4 ranged is put against a team of 4 melee when they could simply be split up. However, what may be far more problematic is when game after game after game you get a weaker team, while your opponent is clearly stronger. Here is one example of such a game: http://imgur.com/DvmuwzR If we consider the ratings at the time of this game, we find this: Count-Crochula - 2045 Somnax - 1874 Rayste - 1376 Kruth - 1282 Gaurex - 1283 Blackness - 1222 Acliptic - 1223 Nazra - 1475 Even on the surface looking at this you can see that one team is stacked and the other is significantly weaker. If we average them out, we see that one team has an average rating of 1300.75, whereas the other is averaging 1644.25. Now if this were late at night and Imperial versus Republic and these were the only two teams available, then this would be a necessary evil. However, this was an Imperial versus Imperial match. Swapping either the two healers or Somnax with any DPS would have evened things out. Moreover, this happens all the time; this is only one example. This is a very large problem which is not only making games less fun and competitive, but is creating a vicious cycle of getting caught in lower brackets for some. It should be a top priority to correct.

Can't tell if trolling, or just really really sore losers. Really.

This is correct. Whether or not any given players could be better at beating his strategy, the fact is that there shouldn't exist any strategy which allows one player to beat four, for any reason.

You're missing a key point here: assassins that are doing this are able to remain in stealth even while remaining in the acid, or at least it appears that way. Folks will be congregated in the mid taking damage and looking all around for him, even after the acid has covered the entire map, only to have him decloak and hit them with the killing blow. I do not know how they are doing it. Perhaps shroud is preventing the acid from unstealthing them; I don't know. What I do know is that this is most certainly happening.

It's worth noting 2 things. First, this does not require death field. I saw it happen tonight with an assassin who waited in the acid and simply ran up and shocked the only remaining player when he was at around 10% HP from the acid. We started with 4, but for whatever reason the acid seems to kill some people faster than others. Another possibility would have been to swap to tank stance so that his discharge would deal AoE damage and use that. Second, assertions that other teams simply need to find him, use stealth scans, etc., are misguided. Tonight, we had a guildmate who happened to be on the assassin's team communicating to use over voice comms his exact location in real time. Even in that scenario, we could not get him out. Even moderately competent players can move away from people who are walking toward them, regardless of whether those people know where they are or not, and things like stealth scans need to land spot on. This is very difficult even with real time location information, let alone in regular old games where everyone is not in the same vent.

The description says it's a reward for "your guild's prowess in battle and living to tell about it." What exactly does this mean?

It seems ok to have a 4DPS vs 4DPS match a few times, but once its happened often enough you really start to appreciate how awful it is. As I said, there are multiple people who are so upset about this as to consider dropping the game over it. To me, that isn't trivial.

The fact that arenas balance compositions when the ideal of 2 DPS, 1 Healer and 1 Tank is not available is a good thing. I think most agree on that. However, most also seem to agree that arenas with no healers are awful. I even know a few long-time players who are fairly upset with this patch and down on the game almost entirely because of this one issue. Yes, it may make ques take longer - even much longer - at times, but I think it is extremely important for the health of the game that the possibility of getting an arena with no healer is eliminated. 1 healer and 3 DPS works. 2 tanks and 1 healer and a DPS work. Lots of compositions work, even if they are not ideal. Having NO healer, though, can make for some fairly un-fun arenas. PLEASE consider changing this.

Knockbacks and stuns are supposed to stop casts and channels. Being immune to interrupt means its immune to skills that ONLY interrupt, like the Powertech skill quell.

Demo/Heatseekers crit for 8 or 9 k very, very regularly. I don't have a max level merc myself, but have seen others hit 10k on that skill very often.

I hope you realize the utter absurdity of that statement. A British writer Gk Chesterton once wrote that, given a man who many people report to be fat and many others report to be thin, the reality is that he is very likely a man of average weight. If players from every class genuinely feel underpowered, then the reality is very likely that, for the most part, they are all even. That doesn't mean there are not problems to be fixed. My point is that given the kind of across the board conflicting feedback they are are getting, what else do you expect them to think?

This reasoning is, I think, deeply flawed. They should listen to the class reps? Certainly not without an extremely critical eye. By the very nature of the "position," class reps are going to suggest all kinds of things that would make their class too strong. I don't say this to disparage the players of this game by any means - i'm one of them after all. However, people are people. Given the chance to speak about something that they have a vested interest in, most people are going to "take advantage of it." Sure, they shouldn't be ignored, but they shouldn't just be listened to as if their suggestions are golden. Do you want evidence? Just look at the threads in the PTS forums. Sorcerers are underpowered. Powertechs are underpowered. Mercenaries? Also underpowered. Operative DPS are underpowered. Assassins are underpowered. EVERYONE is underpowered!!!! The point is that everyone is saying their class is broken and underpowered. It's the way it works in these games. The questions were all the same: every class just had 3 questions about how their class is underpowered in one way or another. That's why they can't simply listen to the reports of class reps or anyone else. They need to see more than that.

Time for some real talk: if you wait that long, guys, you just flat out won't have a game left to balance. This is very probably the most unhealthy I have ever seen the community, with people unsubbing left and right, folks who have stuck it out a very long time simply quitting, and even those who are still playing doing so with the constant air of dissatisfaction. I was around when the population tanked after 1.2. I was here when it did again after 1.3. I saw people becoming happier during the stretch from 1.6 - 1.7, and the dropoff again after 2.0. There is no question that you cannot wait. You don't need to make perfect changes. You don't need to make final changes. However, you do need to do something to show that you really do care about this stuff and to give the countless disenchanted players something to get them excited again.

Nonsense. The sentinel answers were nearly as bad. Their explanation for the intention behind each of the three specs not only doesn't match the reality in the game, it was also nonsensical and garbled. The truth is that people who play games with classes will always feel that their class is in need of work, regardless of how good or bad they objectively are. If you play Protoss in Starcraft, you think Protoss is too weak. If you play Terran, you think Protoss is fine or strong but Terran is weak. That's the nature of gamers. It's also far and away the nature of those most likely to be using the class forums, since folks don't spend a lot of time posting in there to say how much they love their class. It's generally a place for complaints and asking for improvements. My point is that in agreeing to answer questions selected by the community, they put themselves in a position where any answer was not going to be good enough for many people. Now I agree that the last two were particularly weak. There's no question. That doesn't change the fact that I really don't believe doing this could produce anything but negative reactions, because there is no way that they were ever going to go ahead and buff any class in any particularly significant way.

I honestly am not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea. The fact is that one way or another, they were going to have to tell people things they didn't like to hear in response to questions. No matter what they said, it was going to aggravate a lot of people. It's kindof a lose-lose program to be honest.

I agree with the sorc replies, at least for DPS. I know its a tough thing for a lot of people to hear, but the class really does have a very high skill cap. Players at the very top of the chart can do very, very well because their kiting, LOS, and positioning are very good. Players who are average or even above average will not do as well. To me, this is fine. Sorcs really are glass cannons which do so much damage that they need to be extremely squishy otherwise. For healers, the answers are not good enough. But this is not the place to discuss that.

Precisely. The answer was not all that bad, really - I actually agree with it, in fact. Pre 2.0, Powertechs' lower survivability was offset by their tremendous offensive power. They were a glass cannon. If by "perception problem," the developers mean that they are perceived to have poor defense because their offense is not currently where it ought to be, then that makes sense! I can buy into that. However, by just calling it a perception problem in the way they did, it comes across in a really terrible, awful way. They need to get someone to review these things before they go out and make sure it comes across far better.

This is spot on. Look, whoever is writing these answers is doing, in many ways, a terrible job of communicating ideas in a way which doesn't come across poorly. The same things could be said in much better ways. That being said, the questions they got really weren't phrased in the most cogent or helpful way, either. Some of what the BW rep said was correct: comparing classes in the way that the question did is never going to produce useful results and is going to produce all kinds of unhelpful perceptions. Some of what was said in the response was incorrect, too, but the way to demonstrate that is with metrics and figures and numbers, not shouting and whining and crying. Moreover, we have already seen that the changes to AP have been very good in the PTS. The most recent changes to the pyrotech tree is impossible to test now, because of the cylinder being broken on the PTS. My point is that, yes, the answers weren't great and were worded poorly, but calm down, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture.