right? it's like, "do I wanna get quad tunneled by a team that also has a guard swap and dedicated healer while 4 of my team are standing on our one controlled node?" or "do I follow around the 6m kill squad and do wholly meaningless dps b/c everyone dies inside of 3 gcds?"

correct. also, I'd like to be able to leave such matches,both when I'm on the 6-7m team and against them, but then I'm penalized with a deserter debuff. i really don't understand the deserter debuff. it's the same as the /stuck issue (in arenas): does anyone think the player who would use /stuck or leave the match is going to do anything remotely constructive? back fill sucks arse, and I think it should be a box that you tick when you queue that you will back fill if something opens up, but wouldn't you rather take the chance that a back fill will join and try to fight than have someone afk or kill himself? iunno. there's no leaving. there's no choice of map. there's no way to enforce that teams try to win and don't prolong matches to kill more fish in a barrel. I get that the ideal is ppl should group up. I'm all for grouping up. but I also just cannot fathom how these premades (and it's really only a fraction of the premades that I run into on SF) even find any enjoyment whatsoever in annihilating players that could do more dps just mashing auto attack than w/e it is they're doing when they leave spawn. but I do concur with samcuu that the MM is working as intended. prum and cease report similar wait times (even as solos) because of high winning %. the rated arena and WZ queues are the only evidence for splitting grp and solo, and they suggest that grps will be left out to dry if that were to happen, and I think it's pretty clear at this point (and with the "all in" move to allow 8m premades) that BW wants ppl to grp up. and since the ppl running the game at BS are basically the same as those from BW (albeit fewer in number), I don't see that attitude changing. then again, these are the same ppl who made that 8m decision in the same patch that they unleashed a hoard of space barbies and story mode players into pvp with little chance of doing anything but getting wiped and running to the forums to decry how unfair it is that they have to pvp for their samurai bounty hunter fetish.

no. you chose to go after achievements.

I actually think BW's/BS's goal is to keep things as cost effective (less maintenance) as possible. shorter seasons for sure would help, but I'm not sure that any sort of rated system would work for them. I think they want to set it and forget it. Like creating the seasonal rewards is work enough for them - and even then, only because it sucks in large swathes of players who don't actually pvp (like galactic seasons chasers). policing anything is too much for them, imo. but I do agree on short seasons lessening the load on policing...just not what BW/BS is willing to delegate for it. edit: and it would likely solve the problem of large numbers of players not playing to win or afking...so long as wining and rating remain the gates for rewards.

arenas are a great inclusion to the game. the problem was making them the premier form of pvp and downgrading WZs to meaninglessness. also, it's solo arenas, imo, that really tweaked the balance issue. i preferred solo rated arenas just as I would prefer solo rated WZs - because I'm lazy: they're easier to put together and they're easier to win. but if it means popping 8v8 without tanks or healers? or heals on one team and tank on the other (as the current queue does)? omg! what an utter disaster for balance and matchmaking. solo rated became its own ecosystem that exacerbated the balance issues of arenas in general. outside of win trading/pick-up games and troll comps (2 heals + 2 tanks), group arenas were straight trinity, which transfers reasonably well between the two formats. iunno. I would not get rid of arenas. but then...who was it advocated arenas that wanted to get rid of RWZs? I remember plenty of the inverse but not any of the former. iunno. I say iunno a lot about this game's decison-making devs/game-designers/whatever.

I was going to mention that had I not decided to stop arguing against a brick wall. 😄

just testing if everything I post requires "moderation" or if it was just the specific thread as I received no warnings nor do I recall saying anything "inflammatory." (unless saying someone is flat wrong is judged inflammatory). edit: ok. it's just the thread that's moderated. as for ^this quote, I'm not sure what you mean. most of the time teams ignore objectives to DM, they lose. all yo have to do is keep sending them some fresh meat and they're happy to chew on that. it really sucks to on that team or fighting against it tbh.

what you describe is something that only works in rated WZs. you need teams of a certain caliber to go toe to toe in 7v7 fights, especially when they know how to focus. and let's face it, it doesn't take a lot of DPS to put someone in respawn (as you've gone over a few times). it's not that i'm opposed to going mid. but once it's established that the other team is just going to wipe mine, there's really no point. you kinda have to look for those 1v1 and 1v2 opportunities. anyway, it's my experience the WZs are generally more lopsided than arenas, and the outcome is determined long before the match ends, which is an endless frustration for everyone NOT there just to pop heads.

i'm gonna try this one more time. then leave you alone to rant away, because clearly no amount of common sense is going to get through. players, especially random players, cannot be relied upon to judge a vote to kick. it always has been and always will be used to bully other players. you seem incapable of understanding this because you seem to think since you would never do this that it didn't happen ALL THE TIME. it did. pvp gets ppl emotional. they find a focus for their rage at losing, and they lash out at them. that happened A LOT, and no, the person being voted out need not have been dead. it could just be a bad player or a player you don't like in spawn. and I don't give a tom, d.i.c.k., or harry whether that's something YOU personally would do, b/c I've seen it many many times. it has happened around me. it has happened to me, simply because I disagreed with our healer who was buddies with the other two players. pure spite. that's what vote to kick boils down to. that's why players absolutely cannot be trusted with power over others. I don't know how else to explain this to you, but you have your fun crusading for a meaningless "tool" instead of addressing the far more important macro issues that allow players to gain credit toward their seasonal goals. the latter is clearly the cause, while you're advocating the equivalent of treating an infection by slapping a band aid on it. how do you not see this? really. it's absurd. it's in the first post of this thread.

seam 😄

already been over this. two guys standing on the node. nobody's attacking it. one is afk. one is actually present and guarding. they're both getting defender points. go on. tell me which one is which? and encouraged ppl to run orbs in ahg is the height of stupidity. the person might as well be afk for all the good he's doing. the number of ingrates who try to pick up orbs in the midst of a fire fight is mindnumbing. that is entirely self serving. you may get attacker points for the orb, but you're screwing your team over who are either A) dying 3:1 for every orb, or B) have such control over the map that there is zero need for the points your orb brings in. literally worse than the dude afking on the node. (ok. not worse. the same.)

ok. so the fight is going on on the other side of CW. you control mid and east (the battle is west). there are two guys apparently just standing there at east. which one is afk? you're in a grp of 4 and you don't like someone on your team solo q'd? bam! /kick the absolute worst players I ever encountered in s2 were this pair of healer/tank running around in 276 and ~300 gear. I couldn't even ask them nicely if they knew how to gear or suggest that they not queue together b/c they're both ridiculously easy kills, and being on the same team all the time will...you know...be an anchor to the team. after I kindly made the suggestion, they said something to the effect of "we play the way want. piss off!" your genius /kick would give those 2 the power to kick me. yeah. no. fix the game. don't patch it with kick. edit: fix the game as in structure rewards so that you can't just /stuck you way to your seasonal goal. /kick? no. was bad. was mostly useless except for those who used it vindictively for ppl they didn't like in arenas. that crap ain't going away just b/c rated arenas are gone. dude is bad or new and dies too quick (happens to the BEST of us) and a couple of regs/friends vote to kick. you're just flat wrong on this.

that only requires 2 o 3 in arenas, and it got abused to high heaven by kicking ppl who were already dead so they could not fight. it also isn't solving anything in wzs except an actual afk or stuck person. aaand how do you distinguish from the guy afking at a node from the guy guarding? suppose 4 ppl just wanna troll the guy guarding or they're upset with him for w/e reason. he just sucks? /kick? no dude. /kick was abused 3x for every time it actually worked. and the most egregious offenders (in 8m always) are not dumb enough to sit there. they just walk into combat. respawn. go back to their corner and troll. edit: also, y'all know the dude created a brand new account to seed this *cough* discussion the same day it was posted, right?

iunno. i’d /stuck like that all the time if i knew how salty it would make you. or at least stop hoarding my nades. 🤔 never understood the try hardery of throwing nades in regs… other than maybe cybertechs who want to make the game more grindy/expensive.

So what you’re saying is you found more than one person on the other team even trying to win the match? That is impressive for hb.

it shifts with the tides (xpacks), but my most memorable experience of the lower brackets was weaker players flocking there to get away from big bad max level pvp. not rated, mind you, regs pvp.

one like wasn't enough cuz i liked the first paragraph then read the second and though, "I WAS JUST THINKING THAT GREEN TEXT WAS PRETENTIOUS! and does this person pvp?" was no point commenting on it. but when you did it gave me a chuckle. 😃 edit: caps cuz excited in the moment of reading not yelling. prolly didn't need to clarify that. lul

there was one dev post that slapped a few of those commonly held beliefs on the board. i personally think the biggest factor was it was too much effort to do right. they literally half arsed the thing from the beginning. imagine a solo q that is not x-faction in a competitive format. couldn't even give out seasonal rewards properly (wrong ppl getting gold mounts and platinum flairs). i'm certain population size and toxicity played into it. just chiming in that it was a mix of incompetence and unwillingness to do the work necessary to police/run the system properly. ironically the same basic complaint of many high end gamers about casuals. fwiw i'm casual but when I play for months at a time, i put more game time down than 99% of players do in a year. the term is more about how much i care to research or work. i think the pruning was done (predictably) poorly, but your analogy to CoD is completely off. the pruning has successfully highlighted the importance of going into battle with guard and healer on your team. full stop. that is an irrefutable fact. i will die on that hill. pvp in this game needs more trinity comps. i'm 100% behind balancing for trinity. before you get your hackles up though, i agree that the end result is a mess. pruning was not done judiciously or with an even hand. the number of global erasures seems to be way up in my experience. meta spec comment is prolly overstated though. everyone smashed in the smash era. then the tactics aoe slow area (to counter smash). and the bubble stun era. all the way back to assault spec VG (s1 and earlier). remember when enet first came out? responsive safeguards? both times everyone raged about all the mercs. etc. now it's maddness sorcs. the complaints usually have a grain of truth to them. just saying that the state of meta specs turning WZs into CoD isn't new. 👍 tbf, when i stopped rated and reg wzs were all that I had left to do, that was why i left. nobody cared to play the wzs (also I hated opg and quesh).

😄 yeah. fair. I was thinking more along the lines of Stalkuh. in RWZ, he was left guarding the off door cuz stealth. and he'd be bored to tears, but he did it, cuz he's playing to win. in regs, he was never guarding. but he'd be attacking the off node. delaying/occupying 2-3 enemies. or he'd be in the mid scrum laying down heavy dps to take mid. that's like the prototypical "great pvper" back in the day, particularly when in grps. by 5.x, you'd have 2 high caliber sins go mid all day. and they would do nothing but farm dmg as much as possible with no interest or regard for the map. anyway, that was my experience. /shrug

i think there are a lot more reasons. ppl trying (and having a clue how) to win WZs has been a thing for a very very long time. the biggest thing I've noticed...really since the abandoning of RWZs, is that heavy premades show zero interest in "winning" the WZs. you would never see a player from a top pvp guild node guarding in a reg WZ, but you would absolutely see them breaking off to help when called. the good players in this game, particularly the good premades, stopped "trying" around that time RWZs were cancelled (I mean half of them rage quit the game, but that's where I trace the first massive disinterest in winning regs started). ^this just reiterates your point that taking away the major league kinda turns the minors into mush.

🤔 😉 splitting the queue is definitely adding content. arenas don't pop in a mixed queue that only pops when there aren't enough players to form a WZ. defacto no arenas. now there are arenas on demand. there are seasons. they are the first consistent seasons in the history of "seasons." and just to reiterate my self-quoted reply: they added more than they took away. was it a net positive? brutha, please. that's like saying it was a net positive when they finally allowed paid transfers just to kill RWZs and create Rated arenas. +2. -1. net loss. welcome to BW. thank you. see U l8r. edit: there's a good chance they don't know how to gear either. 😄

the more changes are made to core/signature abilities, the less I like pruning. and I was/am a huge proponent of pruning...specifically the seven thousand DCDs that every class has to run around without support from their tank(s) and healer(s). that said, the end result of pruning was (predictably, I suppose) broken (i.e., devastating to some classes while comparatively meaningless to others). some of the pruning was just petty. like...stealth scan is a signature ability of troopers. one could argue that it was never really powerful, but it had its uses. in fact, I learned how to use it to great effect over the years on both ACs. it was never going to stop someone from opening on you, but holy hell! in 7.x, mercs are slow af, and then they have to pay an ability choice tax just to get the chance to guess where the stealthy went on his attempt to run away and recharge. WTH? but then they spice it up with all sorts of buffs. like, "hey. you have to pay for SS, but now look at all the neat things it can do." I look at it and think, "this sounds like the IRS telling me they're doing me a favor by allowing me to reclaim the money I 'overpaid' them in the form of a tax rebate." it was my money in the first place! it's even worse with force shroud. I'm surprised I didn't have to select trauma stabilizers just to get reactive shield. oh. and thanks for changing the SS bundle to include DR while stunned. wait. what? there's a 5s difference between the active time of the scan and when I can deploy a new one? doesn't that kinda make it useless to a stealth with half a brain (or any opponent really)? I can't deploy SS while stunned. so...thanks?

I'm biased. I realize this. but I feel like pvp is arse backwards with this situation. pvp should be burst heavy, particularly single target. dot/spread should be pressure. wear out the other team (good in trinity matches). it's not like I can't play dots. iunno. I get that burst has been king for almost every meta. but that's kinda how it should be, imo. at least if you're focusing down individuals. now, the best option for every ranged is a dot single target and aoe. there's no distinction between pressure and burst. edit: or I should say, the distinction is in the choices you make in your dot build.

Sadly it was prolly the 20th time I had met them in arenas in 7.2. No excuse really. I got yoinked and carbed. I got off flares before carb. Popped shield with stim. I felt fine at 80%ish. Eat another stun iirc start to move again and my hp bar is gone. The pt and I were laughing. It reminded me of that <skill capped> sent who was in a rishi against Vinny’s guild. He tried to break, stealth, and pred. The basic escape sequence every Mara does a million times, but he missed one of the binds and got absolutely deleted and he groaned something like “that’s gonna get clipped forever.” Ah…good times.

I don't know how you can have this in swtor. while i personally would remove quesh without...queshtion, it's easy to see how any sort of democratized map skipping/selection will kill the queue. I cannot convey how many ppl I see complain that AHG is their least favorite WZ. it gets played inefficiently all the time, but it has solid aspects of both node clicking and draining HP bars. you can basically do w/e you prefer and contribute constructively without even thinking about it. there's just so many varied opinions with such a small/fragile popultion...and so many ppl who 1.) don't know how to play the maps and 2) don't care about winning (different grps), that the voting would just be all over the place, completely uninformed on the one hand and disinterested by the others (or worse, with motivations that are about funneling more ppl into a kill box). on the other hand, not being able to quit a WZ without deserter penalty is infuriating when I get zero choice about the map, and I'm given zero recourse when either the other team or my own aren't even trying to win. iunno. I should've just stopped with "WZ are F'd."