Imagine having to put time, skill, and effort into accomplishing things....

Question to the 8v8 ranked master race overlords? Would there be a solo queue or only able to queue as a group? One thing I really like about solos, and I like this in any game with a competitive mode, is the convenience to fire up my computer and play at any time. I don't want to have to rely on 7 other people to be on to play ranked. If there is a solo queue, how often do you think it pops? solos on SF pop from 4pm-2am give or take on a night. With 2-3 games going at a time. So there is enough to potentially make one game maybe two if your lucky. Now think about trying to balance this 8v8 from a competitive standpoint. How many healers on a team and how many tanks? Now I have to sit in queue longer because there are only tanks in queue and no healers. Also, try to split the teams evenly using their ELO. I also believe it would be a very toxic environment. Now instead of potentially getting one bot on your team you will more than likely have 3-4 resulting in lopsided games, and at least in 4v4 solos its over quick. I'd be stuck in a Novare game for 15 minutes before I could get out. Even with a Group Ranked 8v8 system the good teams would farm the bad teams and it would die due to lack of population/participation. Look at any E-sport or game with a competitive mode, there are none that exist that exceeds 5v5 and for good reason. Look at WoW, they have the AWC which is 3v3 arena's not 10v10 rated Battlegrounds. That say's enough in itself.

If anyone is still having issues (as I am). I called customer service again today as this is the fourth day in a row without my account being moved from preferred to sub. I guess it's something they cannot just fix i.e. push my account through since I have paid. They are investigating the problem and said it should be resolved shortly but really did not provide any further details other than that I will get my full paid time subscription so any days that I have been in preferred I will get back. I understand games have problems, but I don't plan on unsubscribing from SWTOR anytime soon and if I have a reoccurring sub I wont really ever get those days back unless they track until I do decide to unsub and add them in there. I would prefer like a discount for this month or something along those lines instead.

Same thing is happening to me right now. Called customer service yesterday morning and my account has still not been restored to subscriber mode. Just sent an email . Hoping I can have my sub back by tonight so I can do subscriber related activities.

Good posts, I think this accurately sums up how most ranked players feel. I think most of the problem is population based. Especially when you throw healers and tanks into the mix. Right now matchmaking takes the highest elo player and the lowest and pairs them. When I feel the Q should do its best to separate higher elo players and stick them in to a match....but in low pop times with only 1 game going it is impossible.

I'm central time and ranked usually pops from 5 PM until midnight or later depending on the day with multiple games going. I have also seen a lot of new players in Q.

I agree 4v4 dps is so much different from tank/heal. I play a decep sin and it is not very good in tank/heal games and really good in 4 dps, therefore I have more fun in that comp. However, with coms and the ability to talk about a strategy, tank/heal games could be a lot of fun. It's definitely played differently, and I personally don't enjoy playing rounds til acid and then the team with the most pressure wins, but still requires skill, just different kind.

Like I said it has its problems, but if the cheaters get caught then those who truly are skillful enough to grind out a top 3 should be given that much more credit and it makes it that much more meaningful. Everyone seems to know who got their rating legit and who traded for theirs anyways.

How does it detract from it? and what does that have to do with the meta? I'm not arguing that there are problems with the mode, but it is the most meaningful mode because it is the only mode that measures skill. I don't care how broken you think it is. The best players play it, the best players consistently place high. It's just like any other game with a solo ranked mode, you have teammates, sometimes they suck, sometimes they play a bad class/champion, sometimes your team's comp is less favorable than the others. In the end if you are good enough the games even out.

Sure, you can argue that grouping is better than solo, but that doesn't detract from the meaningfulness of solo ranked. If players really felt that strongly that group ranked was so much more meaningful, that Q would be alive and well. I don't enjoy tank heal games very much either. Though I bet with voice coms it would be better.

Population or not, ranked content in any game is the most meaningful pvp mode. Anyone who thinks they are good at any game attempts the ranked mode. You going to tell me that people who play league think that being in challenger isn't meaningful? Thats a solo game mode with 4 other variables on your team every game. You going to say that 2v2 or 3v3 in WoW isn't meaningful? Until they find a way to revive group ranked solos are by far and away the most meaningful form of pvp in this game. You can say its not, but that doesn't change the fact that it is.

Star Forge

Hello, new player here. I just wanted to share my experience so far with ranked. After queueing a lot in preseason I decided I would give season 13 a whirl. Well i have had an absolute blast so far playing ranked. I have a small sample size right now (I am 8-10) around 1100 rating, but it has been a lot of fun. I'm a very competitive person so the challenge of getting better and trying to win has sparked my ranked thirst. So far the players i have played with have been good. Very minimal toxicity. Im very inconsistent right now, and players have done a good job pointing out what im doing wrong and i usually am able to fix them the next round. Of course I've had rounds where I've done poor DPS (usually cause I'm trying to taunt the right target and off guard) or get killed without popping cloak even once. This has led to me catching some flak for it, but i haven't gotten told to leave ranked or to KMS and honestly if this happens I deserve to receive a little flak because I played poorly. Some games/rounds weve lost people just automatically blame it on the new player, but ive had players stand up for me and also compliment me when I do something good. TBH most of the time there is hardly any talking good or bad. I dont know any of the players in the ranked community so I can't say oh yeah I've played with so and so and he is so toxic, but so far no one has really been toxic to me and I have been thoroughly enjoying ranked and I would say I am getting a lot better already. So for any new players that are getting turned off by all of the negative forum posts about ranked, I am here to tell you that you can have a positive experience and I would say the majority of the time you are going to have an enjoyable experience.

Oh I'm sure they do, I was just trying to use a generic example. My point was that its tough to please everyone because there are so many decisions made over the course of a game you are eventually going to upset everyone of your players in one way or another.

This is not a flame intended for anyone, just thinking outloud. But I see so much back and forth on these forums. I dont know the statistics, but let's just say half the people want to keep OPG and half dont. Well whatever decision they make they are upsetting 50% of the player base. Then there's an argument about deserter lockout. Let's say thats 50/50 as well but now you've alienated some of the people who wanted to keep OPG but not have a lockout timer. And so now you've successfully made 25% of your player base happy but upset the other 75%. I guess what I'm saying is its impossible to make everyone happy and there is going to be a decision somewhere along the way that upsets you. I think being mature about it and voicing your concerns is better than "im going to troll every game from now on because the developers didn't agree with me". Accept the decision and adapt. I don't envy anyone in power.

*gasps in utter disbelief* How dare players group and play together with their friends. Ughh and they're actually all good too, the audacity!! This cannot stand BioWare. Please make it so that nobody can queue together, unless of course I am better than them, then it is ok. But, If I by chance get put into one of these games where the other team is grouped and better than me I will not try to win because it is so unfair I will just try to ruin it for everyone else because if life isn't fair for me it shouldn't be fair for anyone. In fact from now on every game ever made should not allow players to play together, Especially if they are good!!! Screw it I think that is how America should be too, everything fair, easy, and equal.

I hate seeing this kind of attitude. "x" is to hard so therefore i'm just going to give up. Bioware is trying to do something to fix the state of regs where every game you get one team trying to play the objective and the other number farming, or half your team number farming and the other half trying to win. While I understand that regs are for more casual gameplay, that's no excuse not to try to win IMO. You don't go into Ops or FP's and go oh I hope if i'm not able to kill "x" boss that'll i'll still get loot for trying. Regs should be where you try to learn your class, how to play it more efficiently, what other classes do, all while still trying to win the game and this should be enjoyable for you cause if its not then PvP isn't for you.

It's currently 10:02 PM central standard time. I have been sitting in queue on SF for 20 mins and no pop. Somebody queue please. Is there a place where people can say hey i am going to go sit in queue now please do so also?

I haven't had a ton of time to play recently. I've sat in queue at random times during the day/night when i've been on and haven't gotten a single pop. Last night I sat in queue for around 30 mins on SF and it didn't pop so I went to bed. New player wanting to practice for the upcoming season so its been disheartening

Thank you for all of this. I've been deflecting before I've been shrouding to get the CC immunity just as that has been muscle memory, but will start shrouding first. I am still learning what other classes do and I need to get better at recognizing their abilities, this is one of the main reasons I haven't queue'd yet either. In regs I have been actively working on my targeting and guarding. I usually guard someone who is about to get tunneled or low HP, but haven't done a good job taking it off. I feel I have a decent understanding of my class and feel pretty good about using my damage abilities. Using my DCDs is ok, its just knowing when to use them situationally that I need to work on and that comes from practice. Also who and when to stun. Sometimes struggle trying to control 2 people. Using Low slash on my target vs other DPS or healer and such.

I play a sin! I'm in the sin discord and have been using your guide and asking questions in there frequently!

I'm new and have been wanting to try out solo ranked. I am still currently min/maxing my stats, but would like to start queueing soon. I don't want to ruin anyone's games, I should not be put in a game with people I don't belong with. But what are my options? If I know i'm going to get obliterated by 1k plus and up players why bother to queue. I want to practice and get better, but against players of my own skill and then work my way up from there. Maybe if players knew they weren't going to get put into games with players of much higher skill they would be more open to queuing? With all the people that play regs I don't understand how they can't find a way to get them to try ranked.

My thoughts on the matter are that nobody should just blindly hop into a highly competitive playlist right away if they have no fundamental idea of how the game works. Knowing how your class works and how to optimize it is probably the starting point. But after that, in order to be good, a comprehensive understanding of how every other class works is needed. Then comes the other parts like LoSing, guard swapping, etc.. other game knowledge. Then of course becoming mechanically skilled enough to perform such maneuvers in a timely and efficient manner. Reading guides and watching videos all help to give you an understanding of how things work and what you should be doing. But truly improving only comes from practicing and I think that's where the large problem with ranked PvP in SWTOR is right now. There is no where for people who want to start practicing for ranked to do so. How is one suppose to start developing game sense/situational intuition when all you get are WZs where everyone just smashes there heads against the keyboard for 10 minutes. You get an arena 1 out of every 10 reg matches it seems so what good is that. They need a separate queue for regular arena. When people finally do get the gumption to queue ranked because they want to play and improve they are vote kicked and harassed. Everyone cries about queue times and low population but then they destroy everyone who plays a wrong class or isn't a known name. It's absurdly annoying to see no one take responsibility and blame others for every single loss or to simply give up because they have a certain player on their team. I get it, when you see someone undergeared I can understand, need to make that a requirement, but just because someone isn't playing something meta doesn't mean they aren't trying or don't want to win. Personally feel they need to either add a regular arena so people can practice in that environment, lower it from 4v4 to 3v3, heck even a 2v2 queue. a lot easier to learn what's going on and what classes do what when there are fewer people and would increase the number of queues. Better matchmaking would also help so the number 1 rated player isn't fighting a person in their 3rd ever ranked game.

I just posted on your new thread. But I am new here and want to hear your thoughts and concerns on ELO?

1. Add a 2v2 unranked and ranked queue. 4 Less players = more chances of getting games. Less intimidating than 4v4 and offers newer players a chance to get better and learn how different classes work. 2. Need a rating/ELO system that works efficiently and doesn't deter players from queueing because they are afraid of getting stomped/flamed/trolled. 5-10 placement games and then a rating system with parameters on how high of a rating you can match with. 3. More desirable awards and I want to break this down into 2 separate categories. First an incentive to get people to queue whether it be mats, items, tech etc.. normal gives watered down version and ranked gives a bolstered version or something you can't get in regs. I would also add a big incentive for people that play 100,200,300 ranked games a season, give rewards just for queueing. 2v2 and 4v4 have different rewards (4v4 being more desirable). Then for the people that want to grind rank and rating. Add specific rewards for certain rating tiers (flairs, titles, items, armor sets you cant get anywhere else, credit bonuses) Besides wanting to be the best there has to be a reward for grinding and being better than other people. 4. Requirements for entering ranked queue: Level 75, certain item level required, and I would even put a potential number of regs played account wide. 5. Lastly a very strict cheating policy. BioWare needs to crack down on any wind of wintrading, botting, etc.. with a potential higher population it would hopefully be tougher. I would like to see an MVP vote and rewards for getting voted MVP. People will abuse any kind of voting system, but a potential 'block' button that would prevent you from queueing with certain trolls for a certain number of games. With the small population and elitest behavior I could see this getting abused but just an idea. Also, you lose rating by not playing after a certain amount of time. That's my 2 cents, hope it spurs some conversation and more ideas.