Our matchmaking system sucks bad, is why. I don't believe it has any or very poor parameters set for gear, spec, or class. So all it attempts, and fails miserably at, doing is filling games as fast as it can at the cost of a well rounded, fair, and competitive game. Our matchmaking system also fails badly at matching Pugs Vs Pugs, Pug Vs Premade is becoming all too common now days. Not because of the rise of the Premade population but because of the failure of the poor matchmaking system we have. When I run as a Pug, 7/10 games are against premades. When I run as a Premade, 7/10 games are against pure Pugs. Clearly a faulty system that sacrifices far too much to achieve fast queue pops.

I wouldn't expect another response until they're ready to reveal their proposed changes. There's nothing more they can tell us, they have already admitted the class is not where it should be, although a lackluster response and acknowledgement of the problem, it was a response. Hope for the best, we have a long road ahead of us fellow Commandos/Mercenaries.

This, and an abundance of other reasons. With how faulty and preposterously bad our current matchmaking system is, not to mention the abysmal pool of players to pull for matches due to no cross realm function. I was once one of those people that never left a Warzone, I even called people out on it and detested them but after a while, you realize that it's not worth the frustration nor the time wasted. The fault falls to the game itself and the framework behind it, it is very poorly structured and leaves much to be desired. Once they fix matchmaking, cross realm queues and Split queues for Pugs and Premades, then a penalty can be justified for leaving Warzones; as the system is now, people need a way to escape Pug Vs Premade games, or simply a very, very bad game, where your team is literally sitting in a corner eating paste (Farming Def Medals within a minute of game start.)

DPS Operatives/Scraps are pretty bad right now. Second worst only to Mandos/Mercs, I've long since abandoned both the classes and am working on a Powertech and a Sentinel. It doesn't look like it's getting any better for either of the Adv Classes (Operatives and Mercs) if you play either, I'd highly suggest you re roll.

My sincerest apologies if my harsh words offended anyone but please stick to the main topic. I would still like for someone to explain the downfalls of the 3 Solutions that were stated (Cross Realm Function, Adequate Matchmaking, Split queues). I repeat, beyond losing the opportunity for a Premade to be mismatched against a Pug the system allows for a more competitive, robust, and fair environment while allowing a new possibility, a much bigger pool for Ranked matches. This new system not only satisfies Pugs as they no longer have to suffer through mismatched games against better coordinated pre-made teams but gives the pre-mades a larger pool from which to be matched against each other. One sided games would still happen, but much less frequently as no Premades would be involved in the Pug bracket. If a one sided game occurs in the Premade Bracket, it can be blamed on the team and then as so many of your Premades suggest, "Get better." But honestly if matchmaking is adequately tended to, even these matches will be rare. The details of course would entail a safety measure to ensure no queue grows to preposterous in time, by then filling the missing holes with Pugs but first and foremost searching for Premade Vs Premade competition as well as Pug Vs Pug competition. There is no denying our current system is not doing a very good job at it. Our current system is a one sided dysfunctional pony. It does a poor job at satisfying everyone, now no system will do this admittedly, but the proposed 3 Function system does a much better job at it than our current one. If you disagree, please explain why and provide a better solution.

I am in one of the most active PvP guilds on our server. I run Premades around 75% of the time kid, it doesn't change the state of our dysfunctional system. The fact of the matter is, if the system stays the way it is, the game WILL continue to hemorrhage subs at the rate it has been if not faster. The 3 stated fixes make for a much more solid system, only eliminating the possibility of a mismatched Pug Vs Premade group. Queue times would remain the same for everyone. Please explain to me how this is a worse system than the current one? Other than Premades losing out on the Roflstomp of Pug opponents, the suggested combination of Cross Realm, Adequate Matchmaking and Split queues provides only for a much more attractive, fair, competitive and fluent system. Leaving the system as is effectively repels the vast majority of the player base just to keep the minority that is you and your 3 other friends happy ( along with the other groups that consider Premade VS Pug roflstomp fair and fun) with an abomination that should not exist, Pug Vs Premade. Don't know about you, but my friends and I don't enjoy playing against Pugs when we're in a premade group, short of getting our dailies done quickly it provides absolutely nothing for us. If on the other hand that turns you on, I can see your resistance to the change, otherwise the system takes away only Premade VS Pug roflstomp yet offers oh, so much.

This. And it is what the vast majority of the player base will do. This is at the very least, at worst the player will not bother with this pedantic and fruitless endeavor, the player will just flat out quit the game. Leaving the system as is IS NOT the answer nor will bring long term longevity to the game. Premades Vs Pugs should not exist and needs to be phased out. The solutions are: Cross Realm Function Adequate Matchmaking Split Queues

That should be a clue as to what the vast majority of he players are. Look, I play Premades around 60% of the time but there are times when none of my friends and/or guildmates are available, due to running FPs, full groups or an abundance of other reasons. When those times come, I solo queue because I enjoy PvP, the sheer amount of frustration when a Pug meets a Premade is palpable. All it takes is 1-2 of these horribly one sided and unbearable games to repel players from PvP and/or the game, permanently. It simply should never happen, the fact that this is an MMO doesn't justify that, the game has to be attractive, engaging and most of all, fun for the vast majority of it's players, if it's not guess what, the players quit and the game dies. Premades Vs Pugs effectively repels the vast majority of the player base (Casual Pugs) because for whatever reason, be it lack of time, experience, social skills, being new to the game and or level bracket, that player chooses to solo queue. It's called a solo queue for a reason, what we need is a better system for grouped players, there is no doubt about the dysfunctional state of our Ranked PvP system, it is nothing short of a failure and joke, which only contributes to the problem of mismatched opponents. The PvP community really needs to cease arguing within themselves and push for: Cross Realm Function, Adequate Matchmaking, and Split queues. It benefits all parties and makes for a solid, competitive, attractive, and most importantly of all, fair system.

Not quite. Although the solution offered is not exactly the best, I can see the reasoning behind it. The probability of matching two, 4 man Warzone groups together is fairly high and easy to accomplish, the lower the group number becomes, the lower the probability all the groups will land in the same Warzone on the same team, especially during high population times, and even less fruit full to repeatedly leave and attempt again. Not the best solution but at this point anything is better than nothing. The plague known as Premades Vs Pugs undeniably needs to be abolished, it is an abomination of life that does not belong in any way shape or form but it needs to be done in a proper manner, through the following: Cross Realm Function Adequate Matchmaking Split Queues If not done properly it could either continue to be a problem, foster an abundant amount of loopholes as the current system does or increase queue times for Premades. I run both Premades and solo queue quite frequently, while I don't think Premades deserve an atrocious queue time I also don't believe they should be matched up against a Pug group. A timely solution is crucial or we will lose the vast majority of the player base, which happen to be casual PUGers.

Until Bioware fixes their horrendously dysfunctional and loophole filled PvP system answer with the only reasonable option you have to this problem: Leave the Warzone the second you see these players on the other side or know they are there. It may not be the best solution but it will certainly demand attention the more people begin to do it, hopefully forcing a much better PvP system. I've yet to see this occurrence on our server, Jedi Covenant, and I sincerely hope the problem you mentioned isn't as widespread as you say, shudder to think what is wrong with the human race to do something so profoundly pointless, fruitless and dumb.

No. You're wrong, Foxmob is right. Please stop posting but thank you for your mostly worthless contributions and/or bumps to this thread, they are much appreciated. Bump for justice because Premade Vs Pug should not exist, in any way shape or form. We undeniably need the following: Cross Realm Function Adequate Matchmaking AND <---- Split Queues

This. Although it is a preposterously poor way to counter a broken mechanic, it is currently the reason you are still hit by an attack through Force Shroud. It follows the same rules behind saber ward, giving you 50% melee and range defense but if the opponent's remaining accuracy is higher than your combined 50%+Original Defense/Resist rating than the attack will still have a chance to hit. Please stop whining about your broken iwin button, very few classes even have the luxury. It will still work 95% of the time and to be honest it deserves to be nerfed to the ground.

That was an entirely different problem, and not one we will face again unless we have a mass exodus of the game as an entity and not just a particular server. Back then the origin servers were so vast in number that the population was literally sprinkled far too thin, many servers peaked at 50-100 players online at any particular time (server wide, not just fleet), with perhaps half of that actually queuing for PvP, no where near enough to support a healthy pool for Warzones of any kind, this is what caused the disgusting problem we had back then, the abundance of problems this caused snowballed onto itself and pushed many to leave Warzones permanently and some even to simply quit the game. With the recent server merges, even the least populated realms have 150-200+ on average, peaking at around 500+ and hitting 60-100 at their lowest. These are fleet only numbers, the overall server population is obviously much, much higher and the total number of people queuing can also be much higher and or lower but we'll use these as baseline measures for the population health of a server. As you can see, just our Fleet only population is enough to overshadow the entire server population of what the origin servers could muster.

Back filling in it of itself is rather dysfunctional the way it is now but I won't argue that topic. Back filling a premade game with pugs should only be an option after the game has initially been formed, ideally matching Premade Combination A Vs Premade Combination B, using pugs to fill in the limited, talking anywhere from 1-4 spots maximum, for either side, again leaving this as a last resort if other grouped players in any combination cannot be found to fill in the gaps. Back filling these games when in progress should be done sparsely and only when the game is not an obvious victim of the "Jump Ship" syndrome; these type of games need not be backfilled and left to the Wz shutdown sequence to run it's course. Nothing worse than wasting a player's time when they are thrown into a game where 2 or more players decided to leave because it appeared to be a losing match. A steeper but reasonable penalty also needs to be implemented to discourage "jumping ship." Better yet an incentive to play the Wz to the end, despite it being a loss but all the more fruitful to push for a win or as close to a win as possible. A linear system as we have now, heavily encourages winning but offers very little to complete the Wz otherwise and has no penalty for abusing the leave Warzone option.

No, quit being stubborn and narrow minded. Proper matchmaking would make it less likely, but not impossible for Pug Vs Premade to happen, it won't alleviate the issue. You don't seem to understand the situation. All it takes is 1 horribly one sided, terribly frustrating game to repel players away, permanently. Split queues are crucial and undeniably necessary for long term success and prosperity of PvP, without it we will lose more and more casual and/or new players that have a horrible first time or common experience in PvP. With Cross Realm, population and queue times would not be an issue. There would be absolutely no reason to not implement 2 separate queues. Your pretense of longer queue times dissipates as the Cross Realm population would be massive. The only benefit to keeping merged queues at that point would be to aggravate the vast majority of your player base with the occasional and possibly common mismatched and unfair match.

Oh the irony. Please rise up to the challenge to overcome your mediocrity and fix your horrible grammar and spelling. On a serious note, not all posts may be constructive nor for a split queue system, but the overwhelming majority agree the system is not fine as is and are for the following in any combination and or order: -Cross Realm Function -Adequate and more robust Matchmaking System -Split queues for Premades and Pugs. All three of which are pure gold for PvP and all three of which we honestly need as they compound each other and make for a solid system which fixes many if not all problems, putting PvP in an overall much more attractive, balanced and functioning state. We as a community need to be pushing for all three and not just a single one. Alone none of these will fix PvP, instead it will become a slightly less annoying but still dysfunctional system. We need all three, no less, stop arguing and start working together to push for a much more robust, balanced, thriving and competitive PvP system for all.

There's a reason why World of Warcraft and other highly populated MMO's are overwhelmingly successful and we're not. An abundant of other superfluous reasons aside that do not pertain to the topic, they sure as hell do not force the horribly dysfunctional and terribly unbearable Premade Vs Pug atrocity on players and they fully support Cross Realm function. Arguing that this game is new, is no excuse, the company should have been wise enough to foresee this problem coming into the MMO industry, this is nothing short of a blind oversight and ignorance. With the new influx of new and returning players, a queue for lesser geared/skilled and coordinated players looking for a casual experience is crucial. It's not a question of laziness, or being social or not, it's a matter of attracting and holding onto new players with the game experience. All it takes is 1-2 terribly one sided, unbearable games to repel players away from the said content (PvP) or the game entirely, permanently. Be realistic here, do you honestly think the vast majority of the playing population's first thoughts are going to be, "Oh gee, I just hit level 50 and had an absolutely terrible experience in PvP in this game, I want to do that again, I'll spend countless hours looking for geared players naive or generous enough to take me into their premade group and from now on constantly dance around other people's schedules just to avoid an unbearable game experience?" No, the answer is no, the average, casual, player (which constitute the vast majority of the playerbase) will simply quit, it is far easier and much less time restrictive and consuming. There are far too many games out in the market to settle for something so archaic, annoying and not to mention preposterously dysfunctional. I play premades all the time, heII I just came out of one, we roflstomped 3 games in a row. I also suffer through solo play from time to time because I enjoy PvP an no friends or guild mates are around. I wouldn't so much say I have a bias one way or the other as I would say I grasp the overall concept of what makes MMOs attractive, fun and successful; a frustrating, relatively unavoidable or unreasonably time consuming problem for the average casual player is not part of that equation. Clearly PvP and arguably the game itself are slowly dying, this is one of the top 5 reasons why.

Instant Tracer/Grav would be beast. The competent and experienced Mandos/Mercs will be monsters with this but the average one will put out mediocre to decent damage before they're quickly heat capped. It'd be nice but I'm not so sure it would fix our dysfunctional state in Ranked play, it still would offer no reason to bring us. At our best, we do decent DPS, not great or amazing, and this is if we're completely left alone. Making Tracer/Grav instant would emulate this, still leaving us in an awkward state for Ranked. Therefore as much as I would love instant Tracer/Grav, I don't believe it is the answer, we still would need more buffs and or tools to be competitive/effective and desired for ranked play. Asking for the instant and more utility would probably bring a flood of whiners calling OP but to be honest that's what it takes to make this poorly designed class viable.

Done. Every Mando/Merc that has not yet dropped the game entirely would do well to bump the thread.

Bump for justice. If you (Bioware) have not yet noticed the overwhelming discontent with the Commando/Mercenary class you failed to properly balance and adequately develop, here is a link to another warm and fuzzy thread with over 28,000 views and 640 replies: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=541411&page=17 Fix this horribly dysfunctional class for competitive, Ranked PvP.

Cute analogy, could not agree more. Actually thought this myself since the "Game dropping" epidemic started a few patches ago. Although I've won several games where our team was more than 300 points down, 2-3 goals down, 2-3 doors behind the opponent, I don't much enjoy these games because this only rarely happens. The vast majority of back filled games happen because that team was losing and trigger happy players jumped ship, those games just need to die out, they are not fun for the overwhelming majority. Steeper yet reasonably forgiving penalties need to be instated, something that will punish the cronic Wz dropper yet not punish poor Bob over there who's dog is on fire. No, just no, stop posting. I have never seen a more ignorant, self gratifying and blatantly wrong mentality than yours. Telling the vast majority of your player base they are "lazy" and need to play the game a certain way and only that way in order to avoid a frustrating and annoying experience is just plain childish. Being social is a choice, not requirement. Your attitude is a classic pretense to maintain something that benefits or gives an advantage to a small portion of a population mainly or only facilitating that small portion's comfort zone at the cost of the remaining population's. Telling and forcing your player base to play a certain way in an age of clear choices will only push them away from your horribly dysfunctional paradigm. While having options to go above and beyond, improve and conquer is reasonable, forcing your players into that being the only "fun" way to play will not go over well.Just stop. First coherent post you've made that actually makes valid points. Stick to this. Being against a Solo/Ranked Split Queue system is your opinion and right but it is clearly evident the vast majority of the player base and the game itself would benefit from it the moment it has the tools to support it (Cross Realm) stop arguing against it, the benefits of this system vastly outweigh it's costs. All we'd be losing is Pugs being roflstomped by Premades at the cost of little if any queue time increase when implemented in tandem with Cross Realm. Until then, thanks to people with your hilariously dysfunctional mentality we will have this -------->

Bump for justice. Although half of these changes are not exactly what we need, we definitely demand attention this patch, nothing less will be accepted. If we go another patch without viable and adequate changes, I'm done and unsubed permanently. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 20-30m Jetpack ablity, either targeted or backwards from out current point. Castable while moving full auto. Reliable way to proc Sweltering heat snare. Reduced cooldown on our knockback concussive charge down to 15 seconds again, this nerf did not make sense. Increase charged barrier damage reduction back to 2% per point, this change also did not make sense. We're a heavy armor class, let us actually have the damage mitigation heavy armor demands. Keep the knockback in addition with the snare of Concussive force, giving a RANGED class a 4m snare is just plain counterproductive, at least make it worthwhile using and a real game changer. Drastically reduce resolve produced from knockback. These are a few of the less intrusive changes the Mando/Merc Community has been suggesting for months and to be honest I still think we need more to be ranked viable. If nothing is done in 1.6 the extinction of Mando/Mercs is absolute.

Bump for justice. Support all 4 but #3 is pure gold. You sir deserve a cookie.

Very nice, although that is seriously a poor way to fix overall game balance and further discourages faith in a development team. On the bright side, if the class balance totem pole remains as it is now the extinction of Mandos/Mercs will be absolute and a giddy flood of newfound Vanguards/Powertechs will frolic like never before. Honestly can't wait, love my Mando but hate how dysfunctional and not viable it is for ranked play.

This, a thousand times this. The main aspect and limiting factor for most solo players is playtime; many simply don't have the luxury of time to put a premade group together at their leisure, much less an optimized one. Does that mean the player should then avoid SWTOR PvP for their 30min-1 hour session of free time because they are unable to put a premade together in order to avoid a horribly frustrating and unbearable experience? I guarantee you this epidemic won't get better with time and telling these players, "lol Go form a premade, we have the time to form them thus we deserve to roflstomp you, deal with it." Will NOT go over well for the game. Know why rated queues are dead, among many reasons one of the top is it simply isn't fun for most groups, only the top and truly skilled teams enjoy the competition and challenge, the remaining groups stop playing them after a short while because guess what.... they get roflstomped... which then brings those teams to Regular Warzones. Pushing this on Pugs is and will continue to have the same effect but with a much more drastic consequence, a gamewide genocide of Pug players (AKA the vast majority of the playerbase. Premades are the minority, accept it and stop deluding yourselves.) The problem here which needs fixing as both sides have agreed is matchmaking, a temporary one with very steep and moderately flexible guidelines. The overwhelming emphasis needs to be placed on facing players of similar rating against each other and making certain grouped players play against other grouped players. Should the queue always adhere to this rule, no, due to a gross consequence of long queue times but just as paramount is that the system never allow for a Premade A (consisting of anywhere from 2-8 players from a particular premade or groups of premades) to face Pug B (which consists of 100% Pugs) <----- This right here is the problem, and instead the system needs to put more emphasis on evenly splitting premades to face one another amongst the pugs they use to fill the groups instead of grouping them together just to achieve faster queue times. This system would be used until we have cross realm function, which undoubtedly needs to be a top priority for Bioware, once Cross realm is available, Premade Vs Pug of any combination needs to be completely phased out and never allowed to happen again. Something like this would be amazing but be realistic. A team consisting of both Republic and Imperials will never happen, although I could care less for the game lore and would prefer a system like this for overall game balance, queue time efficiency and availability of Warzone competition, I don't see it happening from an overall game perspective. We're more likely to succeed if we push for Cross Realm, Matchmaking and Split queues.