So in your mind these premade groups are going into warzones chuckling to themselves about how they're going to ruin others' experiences? Where is your evidence for that? In most cases premade groups are playing with their friends trying to have fun. Their version of fun may not involve playing objectives, which is weird to me, but I don't think that qualifies as "ruining" anything. Also, regs is not reserved for noobs...I'm pretty sure you're allowed to play them regardless of how good you are, how geared you are, or who you're grouped with. Obviously Bioware could improve matchmaking, but everything else you're complaining about is how regs has always been and how it will always be, by necessity. This is correct, and it's why I hardly play regs. But I also don't complain about it, because that's just how regs are.

"Premades crashing regs and farming lesser players" can also be described as friends grouping up and playing the game. I admit, I would probably get pretty bored of playing regs in a full tank/heal premade after a few matches, but I'm not sure how you can condemn people for just playing the game normally. And no, I do not think that's analogous to someone queueing ranked woefully undergeared and unprepared, because Bioware designed ranked to be endgame pvp. Just as nim raiders are expected to know mechanics and have proper gear, so should ranked pvpers. But I do not think Bioware has ever made any statement regarding skilled premades not belonging in regs. Also, right now it's preseason, and regs has been a reliable way to get gear.

What's really pointless is this melodrama. I barely play regs, because I enjoy ranked a lot more. When I do play regs, I play to win, meaning I almost always pay attention to the objectives. I have no use for number farming. My contention is you trying to equate "ruining" a regs match with ruining a ranked match. And they are simply not comparable. I don't see how me pointing that out is killing pvp lol

The existence of wintraders in ranked doesn't change the relative status of ranked to regs. Ranked is still the only game mode with stakes and actual competitiveness. I want wintraders banned as much as anyone, but they make up a small minority of the ranked playerbase. Not to mention, there are people that queue regs and literally afk in a corner if they don't like the map, so it's not as if you can put regs on a pedestal lol

You and a lot of other posters on these forums simply need to accept the fact that regs are fundamentally less important than ranked. That's how it works in this game, other games, and every other aspect of life (for instance, no one would compare a backyard tennis match to a wimbledon match). Furthermore, someone coming into ranked totally unprepared is not comparable to someone damage farming in regs, because as others have pointed out, damage farming in regs is often useful, and in many cases essential to winning. Here's another nugget of truth for you. You're the one with the wrong attitude here. If you hate facing premades, and if you want a more competitive solo experience...there's a game mode called solo ranked! And if you're too bad to do well in solo ranked, then just enjoy regs for what they are: casual pvp. Did you fail kindergarten? In what world do two wrongs make a right? And you want to lecture other people about having a bad attitude...

I believe you can prevent getting kicked just by doing damage to an enemy or getting defender/attacker points. So just try to be a part of the action as much as possible.

This is a stupid change if it's intended. Sure, people use /stuck to throw sometimes, but now trolls have another tool in their arsenal: they can just leave someone alive and draw out rounds, wasting everyone's time. Throwers will still throw. Literally nothing is solved by removing /stuck.

KOTOR 2 is indeed a masterpiece, but it was not made by Bioware. Anthem was an unmitigated disaster. Mass Effect Andromeda was a massive disappointment. Dragon Age Inquisition came out way back in 2014 and Dragon Age 4 is still in early development. Bioware has been in dire straits for almost a decade at this point, with key senior employees leaving left and right over the past few years. I hope Bioware turns it around. I hope the new Mass Effect and Dragon Age games are amazing. And I hope they keep updating swtor. But to pretend that they're still the same company that they were over 10 years ago is delusional at this point.

Yep. It's virtually always been this way, but you make a good point. It would be better for the health of the game if the forums were left completely unmoderated and the moderators were assigned to reading pvpreports emails lol. It's not as if they know any less about the game than the actual support staff that are routinely clueless even about the most basic functions of the game.

I agree. To me, the excessive amount of stealth outs has always been the main annoyance, not predation. Obviously they're intertwined now because of defel spliced genes, but I would happily leave predation exactly as is if maras could stealth out far less frequently.

I'm complaining about delusional mara mains, not the class itself. The fact that you think that "Maras are on the edge of viability for many players" is your issue that you'll need to find a way to deal with. Maybe go get some lessons from one of those "elite" maras you keep talking about.

The "infinite" part isn't about how long the stealth lasts, but how many times they can stealth out during a round. That much should have been extremely obvious. I do think they're annoying to play and to play against, but that does not imply that I think they're broken. As I said, that remains to be seen in my opinion. The great thing about forums is that people can express their opinions. You've said your piece about maras and I have disagreed. I've also seen delusional mara mains posting on these forums for years, even during 5.0, saying similar things to what you're saying. Complaining about a class that is 100% fine, probably even more than fine, is just sad and misleading.

Mercs were way better than every class in 5.0...mainly because of their dcds. So you'll only be satisfied with mara if they are vastly superior to every other class? When was the last time mara has ever "fallen short" in ranked pvp? What are you even talking about? They're "glass cannons" that have essentially infinite stealth and a near constant speed boost. Yeah, poor maras. I'm not saying the class is broken or will be overpowered. It's way too early to say. But please stop pretending maras are a class that's just barely on the edge of viability lol

Maras were fotm throughout 5.0, second only to mercs. They were also still quite good throughout 6.0. Nobody should be pretending that fury mara is some woebegone class that needed buffs to compete.

You mean once the season starts, however many months from now that is. Obviously we can all learn some degree of class strengths/weaknesses, but I maintain that preseason is a totally different beast, and we really can't draw any firm conclusions until the season actually starts.

It really doesn't though, and I already explained why. The fact that you don't respawn in ranked is an added complication that far outweighs objectives, because the interplay of dcds and dps has to completely change depending on the circumstances, not to mention target priorities. And there's also acid to consider. This is still wrong. The added competitiveness and organization of 8v8 ranked make it a completely different game mode from regs, which have only a tiny fraction of the competitiveness of ranked, and almost no organization outside of occasional premades. These facts are not only relevant but foundational here. 8v8 ranked hasn't existed for years and it will never exist again. I understood the meaning the first time, and it's still nonsense even after you've unnecessarily explained it lol People desperately trying to glamorize regs and 8v8 ranked on these forums always amaze me. Invariably it's because they're bad at arenas, but I also don't know you in particular.

In that line you quoted, I meant actual ranked, not preseason ranked. Incorrect. You just made up that having more than one way of achieving victory automatically makes it more complex. In regs, surviving is not nearly as important as it is in ranked. In fact, it is often better to stay in the fight, die and get a quick respawn, rather than wasting time kiting away and healing to full. The "complexity" of ranked is juggling survival and damage in a way that is rarely relevant in regs. Not to mention having to make critical choices about who to cc, who to chase, when you need to run away yourself, etc. Pretending that regs has some kind of complex dynamic that ranked lacks is the true delusion here. And I say this as someone that virtually always plays objectives when I play regs. I have no use for number farming. The objectives are all straightforward. Regs requires far less brain power to succeed at than ranked, so where exactly is the added "complexity"? Finally, 8v8 ranked hasn't existed for many years, and has no relevance here. We're comparing ranked to regs.

Because it's still preseason, I do encourage everyone that wants to to queue ranked to practice. That being said, the rest of what you said is quite wrong. The "objectives" in ranked, are often more complicated and difficult to achieve than those in regs. Those objectives are killing the other team and surviving. If you view that as simple, you're showing that you have no conception about the difference in focus between regs and ranked. If you come into ranked and you just mindlessly hit enemies, pop all your dcds suboptimally and die without having tried to kite, stealth out, etc, you will virtually never win games. By contrast, you can win games in regs by doing almost nothing. Ranked is not the place for clueless pvpers. Regs is where you practice for ranked, where you can learn to dps and pop dcds, not the other way around.

No, "most" people didn't at the time I made that post. A certain subset of hardcore players got their legendaries that fast, by that method, but a simple inspection of gear at the start of regs matches showed me many people without legendaries, or only having one, during the first week. Also, it's great that you can manage to get gsf wins without bots; that's quite an achievement for you.

Chris is not the dev in charge of balance. And he also hasn't posted in the theorycrafter discord in months, and he's no longer even a member of that discord.

I would be utterly shocked if we got rewards before the start of season 15. Their flip flopping and lack of consistent, accurate communication regarding ranked rewards has been happening for the last few years. So as disappointing as it may be, no one should be surprised by this stuff.

It's a bit absurd to me that anyone can come to any remotely confident conclusions so early in the expansion. First, many people haven't been playing with legendaries on, not to mention gearing itself is all over the place. Second, there have only been regs and probably a handful of preseason games. It is way, way too early to come to any firm conclusions at all. Honestly, until solo ranked properly starts (however many months from now that will be), I think it's going to be very difficult to get a handle on what the real "meta" will be. Unless you're only focused on what's meta in regs, in which case...it's a pretty frivolous discussion.

I can't speak to exactly how pvp gearing will go in 7.0. In 6.0, doing some pve drastically sped up the gearing process. No raids required, just some master mode flashpoints. As for raiders coming in and destroying pvp veterans due to gear difference...that is unlikely to ever occur. If you put similarly skilled people against each other, gear can make a big difference, but if there is already a big skill gap, a set bonus is unlikely to save them.

This argument would have merit if gear was difficult to obtain in this game. It is not. Or at least it hasn't been throughout 6.0. Getting a good tactical and set bonus for your class is really all you need to be competitive with anyone. Properly aligning your stats, getting the right augs and amps, min/maxing mods and enhancements, are all quite small differences overall. Set bonus and tactical do make a big difference, but again, they've been easy to obtain so I don't see how that should be an issue for anyone. This is still a mmo.

This is correct. This is incorrect. The cheaters are still a small minority of the ranked population. Ranked is still a million times more competitive (and therefore more fun, in my opinion) than regs.