There are a number of issues and a number of suggested fixes to look at in both the Fixing 8x8 pre match and in game threads. This thread started with 10 suggestions. In my recent survey of matches people continue to drop out but not more than three in any session. When a mid level session started it seemed balanced 4x4 but soon the teams were unbalanced and ended 5x6. This should not happen unless a player drops out. The players should be added in pairs unless it starts unbalanced or players drop. This mid level was not included in the below survey. In a very small survey (20 PVP 8x8 level 80 matches over 4 servers) the sides continued to be unbalanced. Under dogs win as defined by the winner killing less than the loser regardless of the kill ratio 2 instances Close games as defined by 2-1 ratio or less in kill ratio 5 instances 3-1 ratio in kill ratio 5 instances 4-1 and 6-1 kill ratios two each 7-1, 9-1, and 20-1 kill ratios one each Worse kill score was 110 to 0 needless to say it ended quickly Basically 10% chance underdogs winning, 25% chance of a close game, 65% chance of being blown out. Kill ratios then is a 90% indicator of who will win. These teams may not have been doing more damage but were clearly successful at focusing damage to kill and healing/protecting to keep up. While not investigated it is logical premades would be better focused and thus have a major advantage. Premade may also have an advantage on focusing on scoring and winning as underdogs although this hypothesis was not examined. Depending on the scenario killing can add points to the team's actual score such as in hypergate. This leads to a question as whether the value of kills should be reduced in such scenarios if teams can not be better balanced. It also suggests solo players need to act more like premade teams in focusing attacks by targeting individuals especially healers.

Very clear that PVP remains unbalanced as nothing has been done. Still not uncommon to see 10:1 or 20:1 kill ratios. Balanced is clearly not being done based on alts actual performance and that premade groups of 8 dominating PVP vs. pug groups. What is uncommon is close games. Highlight GSF seemed to be popular in galactic season.

One of the measures of the lack of success in balance is people taking the exit penalty rather than fight on. In todays sample set all three matches had people quit and one has 3 people quit. This is in pvp season. clearly the carrot is losing to the penalty stick. Need to fix the the balance. One match had a healer at 10M one at 4 and another at 3 all on the same side. the other side one healer over 1M. To keep games moving no team should have more than 2 healers. Another balance adjustment that is needed.

Historically PVP non ranked has had certain abilities set to a minimum. It was not uncommon for people to enter PVP without any armor although they did need weapon(s). So in 80 the grouping I believe even if you have 306 gear rating certain stats would be raised to something like 320 equivalent or maybe now it is 322. You are still out gunned by 340 plus especially fully augmented. There is nothing to apologize for having low implants. The match making should be designed to take into account not only the gear but the actual previous damage, healing, protections.... Threads on Fixing 8x8 discuss this and other issues.

The gear on the cartel market is rotated. Most cartel items sold in sets like all the pieces you are looking for. Covert armor is sold as a partial set and additional 2 pieces individually. Rascal toothpick is an example of a piece only sold single on the cartel market. I believe the mini skirt sometimes has legging depending on what else you are wearing. There are a few sets that have with and without cloak chest pieces. Patience of a Jedi is needed for shopping!

In void star, if neither team gets a door I think it is damage or kills that win after round 2. In huttball the team controlling the ball.last In GSF death match the team with the last kill. Unfortunately not enough close games. Unfortunately these games are rare.

It is my understanding that match making is not based on wins. Farming teams do not want scoring to end the session early. Farming for medals. Farming for high damage healing protection scores and kills. If they were avoiding wins all the time they would just be put against the next players that queue in.

I like huttball. One thing that should be done as noted in the Fixing 8x8 threads is to not repeat huttball or any other general map unless it ends in a close score. No one should suffer through three huttball wipeouts or any other game map in a row. to get a daily. There are times when the scores were even to the end and I would want ONE rematch! One would think this would be a relatively easy change to make as it requires no new voice overs, no new map...

The https://vulkk.com/2024/01/25/swtors-pvp-is-burning-to-the-ground/ makes at lot of good and sensible points some of which will be difficult to program. Some such as moving the healing nodes further away from the doors in voidstar should be easier. The PVP maps should be required reading whose links are there in the url. I wonder how difficult it would be to allow single players training mods to run through the maps like a mission tutorial. Even simple changes in visual effects can help such as making sage shields easier to see through especially when over lapping. Altering, (not elimanating) the premades and match making changes should be top on the list to do. Certainly part of the difficulty in changing abilities is it also affects operations. Changing the looks of icons probably not so much. The need to change the abilities is there. There are a lot of thoughts out there on what and how so I am not going to get into those aspects. I await expecting to see some changes being announced. I hope I will not be disappointed.

You should look at the two threads on Fixing 8x8. The penalty delay is necessary. It is the stick to the galactic seasons carrot. If you do not have it instead of 1 or 2 people dropping out you will have entire teams dropping. I have been in matches terminated due to drop outs. The penalty needs to be kept at least until the PVP matches are better balanced. Some people drop out as they do not like the map. sometimes it is because the map is repeated even though it was a previous blowout. Repeat maps in close games, do not repeat for blowouts. If the match making were better based on actual stats as damage, healing, protection... then boosting would be unnecessary. Stats over time so someone entering half way is prorated. Someone dropping out the stats are not used. Voice comms are big advantages and so is people watching the chat box.

I do not believe just nerfing the players and gear is the issue. The real issue is balancing the teams and setting slight map changes as discussed in the Fixing 8x8 threads. If there is a super player with 75 with set bonus... then that player should shift the team weight and be balanced lesser teammates. It is not only the gear it is the performance that should be part of the rating. When you have a large strong premade team it can be impossible to balance with random players. The size of premades is an issue. The threads also discuss a host of possible changes such as modified release times to help the game balance the teams before and during the play.

First gold spammers ( those that sell credits for real money should be reported by everyone and immediately banned). Historically and today they buy credits for real money to resell for real money and should be banned. You should by cartel coins for really money and sell the items. That supports the game. Another way gold spammers make credits is with bots picking up materials. Love to kill them in pvp instances or race ahead to pick up their mats. A real person would tell you off after doing that to them. Often spammers are selling things in huge lots such as 9999 item lots. Want to stop those gold spammers in game reselling do not buy their way over priced items. Be an educated consumer. Undercut them. There is a dedicated group for years that have been trying to stabilize prices. Trying to drive prices down when they get to high. A losing battle for years. Yes we pay a lot of taxes. We have donated billions in credits and items to guilds. We teach others how to gather, craft, sell and buy adding to the economy. When supplies get way too high the prices drop and we buy. Without the ability to do this there is no way to craft, gather... enough to increase supply to drive prices down. when they rise. A lot of items over an extended period are needed to drive the prices down. If prices are too low prices it deters people from gathering and crafting new items and making a reasonable return on their efforts. Do not be against reselling be against ridiculous high prices.

If the teams are even in size the option of not adding more is a viable one. If however someone drops out they should be replaced to even the sides. Here again there should be a limit. I have seen the game declare a victory when an 8x8 degraded to 8x5. I believe that was due to imbalance and not due to people total drop outs. The imbalance also appears as a means of declaring victory in GSF. Using a drop out total might also be useful in helping end premade farming. If that many people are dropping out and taking the queuing penalty regardless of restaffing end it even if that can penalizes remaining players if they have failed to make objective totals. The Two threads on Fixing 8x8 war zones have provided a host of ideas. Basically if the changes are not made drop outs will be the only option for players to pursue. Clearly the galactic and conquest carrots and the queue penalty stick approach are not enough to save 8x8 in the long run. Fix it, you have a wide range of suggested tools in these two threads.

One of the critic in the forum has pointed to poor training of players for PVP 8x8. So lets look at this from several points of view. Some of these are applicable to 4x4 and GSF (Galactic Star Fighter pvp in space ships) 1. Encouraging players to fight in low and mid war zones so players can work out map issue issues and become better before getting to top level. 2. Guilds should do more to train players. 3. Better training online, u-tube,... on rotations 4. Better use of RISHI stronghold for training. 5. Better decorations to allow the RIshi Stronghold to better represent hazards.... in war zones. 6. Freelance trainers. What else could be done? A. You have the maps for all the war zones. Why not allow training session where a player can be guided through the war zone. You can pick up the mission here on fleet. This is how you queue. Click to start. You start here. Pick up your mission here if you forgot to on fleet. When force field goes down go. Find your way to the hutt ball. Click it. There is an friendly player pass the hutt ball. Catch the hutt ball. Pass the hutt ball. oh it was intercepted kill the ball carrier. Run thru he npcs trying to kill you to the goal. Similiar basic obstacle course training for all the battle fields. B. Coaching. Same as above except a team of two does the walk thru without prompts. Designed for a coaching player to walk a trainee through the map. C. Team building. The idea of letting teams practice on the fields of battle has up and down side. It would allow new teams to work out together. The down side is premades would be able to get that much better and create even more lopsided results. Therefore this option appears to be a bad one as it does not focus on making better 8x8 players out of new players.

Another change that should be considered relates to adding people when the teams are not full. When the teams are equal size do not add player to the side that is substantially ahead unless there is another player to be added to balance the teams. In some cases only add players to even the sides since it is unclear who is winning. You can not have games with 10 to 1 , 20 to 1 or 190 to 0 kill ratios and expect people to want to come back. It starts with better team balance small grouping, and other small in game balances.

While I see SV operating well without the inflated prices I can understand people wanting to take their credits with them. In most transfers the legacy stuff are brought across such as datacrons, decos... Normally you are limited to slightly over 4.2 Billion credits in transfers. I tend to agree such a carryover would damage the the GTN market and two things should happen. Close the GTN for 7 days so everything on the GTN not already purchased is returned to sellers. Consider a limit carry over to 3 million credits or less. That is enough to blue remod a level 80 character. I could see even a 100k limit. Limit item stacks to 20. Unfortunately players have build guilds on other servers. and normally these are not transferable. Maybe consider allowing guilds to decommission flagships into encryption plans useable only on SV or create a decommisioned token that also carries over the decos. currently establish guilds may now lose their players and face the task of rebuilding. If here was a way to shift guilds into combined servers why not the reverse? .

Here is the truth about 8x8 and applies to 4x4 and why so many games in 8x8 are blowouts maybe 80%. not sure if the same in 4x4. You can not have balanced teams when the opposing team is totally premades. Effectively you get the premades vs whomever signs in. resulting is unbalanced player skills. The only thing that is somewhat balanced is the healers and tanks. To actually balance players against a premade, the premades would wait a long time before equivalent players queued. This is why a reasonable balance of players can only be achieved by limiting the size of premades to half or less of the group. Setting minimum on gear is not enough. the balance should look at the execution of the players using kills, healing protection and damage or objective points..... The failure here is the system probably does not balance actual execution on the field. It is like choosing team based on the based on giving the players a minimum uniform and filling the number of positions on the field not whether they can actually handle the ball on the field. or know what they are doing! Like a team of All Stars against a pick up team of random players. A lot of players are not in guilds and the training is certainly lacking except guilds already creating premades. You have to accept there will be unskilled players and spread them out. Also players skilled with one class may not be skilled with another. So the rating should not be by player but toon. No balancing can work with large premades! No balancing can work without looking at actual performance stats. The first part would be easy to do the second would be difficult to program.

Give them idea not just say it sucks The stick of delay does not work and the carrot of rewards will soon lose its luster. Do the hard stuff change the parameters to balance teams before and during the game. Hyper gate should consider quick release for team losing by 200 points, in huttball auto release for 4 in the dead pool.

I have to add a post fight ideas to this that I saw on other topics. Get rid of the kill listings at the end. If anything it encourages people to not play objectives. At worst is shows in the frequent kill ratios over 4-1 and even over 20-1 how imbalanced the fights are. Better off going back to MVP rewards even though often they are just given to friends. Is it good for defeated players to see the team kill no one or each member of the other team had more kill then their entire team. This stat is probably encouraging people to quit PVP. It has been years since I played in a RISHI ship PVP premade team. Perhaps guilds should do more training there.

I think you have to be careful about kicking healers. Been more than once as a healer was left to defend an objective despite calling for a replacement. Kick me and there is no one there! Kicking players is not the solution. Well when they stand at the edge of the hutt ball pit jumping up and down so they can be jumped to for an easy score yea maybe they should be kicked. Balancing teams should be more than just kicking players that are bad off the team. it should be putting bad players evenly to the teams.

There was one more thought during the matches. There was/is a pin cushion reward for being killed 16 times. It would seem to me that people that die in combat numerous times sacrificing themselves against impossible odds should be rewarded more then that that are just group camping at the end. Two to three campers should get points for camping when there is nothing to do. Give the rest zero points. People actually fighting are getting points for kills so no camping points. If you want people to try you have to have a system that rewards trying. The down side is a winning team will realize that many are getting no points camping when the losing team retreats to their one objective and may attack that last objective. Assuming they leave 2 to 4 defender behind they will do so at a numerical disadvantage. I hope people will read the thread on the pre-match 8x8 thoughts too. I think there were some great thoughts expressed especially on the end zone camping rule. The thought of defining a larger areas for the rule to apply is one thought. Maybe the design the design focus should not be on the single stealth player but rather to stop teams from leaving 3 to 6 people in the greater end zone area of the opposing side the entire game.

These are not in any order. Another topic is on prefight balancing. *Ease of player understanding *1. Team shot clock similar but longer than individual to prevent stalling tactic to prolong unbalanced matches. 2. Limit the number of non forward passes another stalling tactic. 3. Limit the number of times a character can carry the ball on a team possession. *4. Huttball auto release when your team is scored against. *5. cleanse on death. *6. Barrier release time adjusted based on scores. 7. Hypergate no ramp stealth camping. *8. Two credits for match loss. 9. 15 second rule standing in other teams endzone. *10. At the end of game allow the revealing the name of character class.

These are not in any order. Another topic is on infight balancing. Balancing Classes is not discussed in either. 1. We do not need to know the sorting algorithm is to think it is busted. Revise or prove it isn't. 2. Publish stats on team scores. A benchmark as to how good/bad the balancing actually is. For example percent each huttball games won with +0 score, +1, +2, +3, ... Another example what are the kill ratios based on winning side. 3. Limit the size of premades, often suggested as 4. 4. Let the number of premade players on a team be no more than +4 compared to the other team. 5. Limit to 2 the number of any subclass or cross faction equivalent on a premade. 6. Count each premade character as the rank of the highest as done in GSF. 7. When the final score is heavily imbalanced do not queue up the same map next. 8. When the score is tight rematch the same map. Look at kill ratios to ensure balance. 9. Use solo fighting for ranking. This suggestion I think is ok when the player is queuing solo. 10. Algorithm should consider character ranking not player ranking. We do not know which or if both are actually done.

Another idea. It is unclear to players what the pvp groupings are besides level 80. The low and middle groupings change over time as maximum character level increases. I suggest on the screen for joining it notes the players grouping level. Worst recent kill ratios seen 386-21, 469-10, 92-0, and 89-0. The later one was an upset. Hurrah for the underdogs that stick to objectives. Large premades can be a problem for queuing if the premades have heals and tanks and only solo DPS are queuing. I least I suspect there is an attempt to somewhat balance non-DPS. Here again limiting the size of premades might help game to pop faster by limiting non DPSs in smaller premades

Please never allow character transfers as such would forever muck up the economy. Let people have something closer to the original experience.