there no point staying in a losing WZ anymore.

[Jeopardydd]

This. I logged on to see what the fuss was about and got into 6 vs. 7 Voidstar. Lost and I still got 50 WZ Comms. Um...maybe because I got 9 medals and didn't afk and get nothing. You guys should really see if these things are true before you rant and rave.

 

And I personally hate every freakin one of you that quits a WZ because your down 1 point in Huttball or the other team caps mid in Civil War or they make it through the first door in Voidstar. You 12 year old whiny B***** need to grow up. You ever quit after the first quarter in a high school football game? No. And why not? Cuz the freakin game isn't over! Last night I won a Civil War match with 5 points left on our ship. Yeah, 5! The only reason we won is because A) we didn't give up and B) we 3 capped them.

 

 

by giving lots of us zeros or only a few comms for staying, and no penalties for leaving, they are incentivising leaving.

 

you give people incentives to leave rather than stay, and people will leave.

[Jeopardydd]

When you get 0 you still get coms. (I have 20 here)

 

 

PROOF:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75997010@N04/6925799006/lightbox/

 

Now ****.

 

wow, you got 20 coms and 0 credits for top healing.

great.

 

or you could leave and join a different one and get a heck of a lot more.

 

listen, you give people incentives to leave, many will leave.

[ttwistt]

so basically on my server we get facerolled by the same imperial premade repeatedly and get zip for our troubles.

so they get better and better gear while we get nothing. ^5 bw, your foresight shines through again.

[UnderatedNoob]

just played a hutball match ... other team scored after 30 seconds. my whole team left ... 2 mins later we lost 6:0 ... nearly no reward for me ... best one had 16 medals ... lame

 

So, your team lost a match 6-0 in about 2 minutes, and you received nearly no reward?

 

I agree that the problem is you received nearly no reward. You should have received absolutely no reward.

 

Players need to stop being bad. Is it your fault they quit? No. But you lost 6-0. Period. You should get nothing for doing nothing against the opposing team.

 

Consequences are good.

[Elrynn]

Whats the problem? The New Game Enhancements help out players who win and punish those who lose with less commendations so that they may be even further behind the winners. Just keep quiting WZs until you find one that is winning or just play with the faction that wins consistantly with a full group. If you can't compete at the top level of pvp, you shouldn't be there regardless if you're a paying customer.

 

Think thats about a good summary of the situation.

[wiazabi]

Werent they outphasing ilum because of faction imbalance and then make something that favors faction imbalance.

 

Faction imbalance , Tjeck!

Better Geared faction , Tjeck!

Make new ways for high population faction to gear up , Tjeck!

Make new way for low population faction to stay undergeared , Double Tjeck!

[Jeopardydd]

So, your team lost a match 6-0 in about 2 minutes, and you received nearly no reward?

 

I agree that the problem is you received nearly no reward. You should have received absolutely no reward.

 

Players need to stop being bad. Is it your fault they quit? No. But you lost 6-0. Period. You should get nothing for doing nothing against the opposing team.

 

Consequences are good.

 

 

you are missing the point then.

 

they lost so quickly because after the first few scores, everybody left, because they would get zero or very little reward even if they stayed and fought hard for the entire time.

[Schwarzwald]

if you lose a wz you get nothing, you don't get any real valor, no real comms. there really is no point in staying anymore. I liked staying to attempt to get my 4 medals but nope no point in doing that anymore.

 

As a juggernaut you can earn 13+ medals easily before 1.2 while in a losing game.

 

You are doing something terribly wrong.

 

So pretty much your argument boils down to you not being aware of how bad you are.

[RolyartNala]

It's just over. Play the game for the story, once that is used up, unsub. Problem solved and less headache. When you find yourself on these forums more then you play, it's time to go...

 

They had an opportunity to make a great game but just failed.

The nice thing about an MMO is that it's never over until they turn off the servers. Games have been known to make a comeback in the past, and some games that started off weak are now going strong.

 

BioWare seems to have choked on PVP this patch. That definitely sucks. But tomorrow's a different day.

[Jeopardydd]

so basically on my server we get facerolled by the same imperial premade repeatedly and get zip for our troubles.

so they get better and better gear while we get nothing. ^5 bw, your foresight shines through again.

 

 

but so-and-so said on the forums he was able to get 40 coms when he lost, so it's not a problem and so-and-so is just superior to you and me and everybody else and has a very big epeen.

 

don't forget that.

[Fionah]

So there's no shutdown timer any longer when warzones are imbalanced and no reward for staying and fighting. This is seriously bad design. Ended up with 3-4 on 8, did the best we could got 0 across the board for rewards at the end. Whoever made this change needs to get a different job.

 

There should be a reward baseline that's significantly above zero and performance should matter whether you get shut out or not. The previous design was fine, this one incentivizes bad behavior.

 

 

I agree ... there is something drastically wrong with queing into a warzone after a 20 min que, just to end up in a game where everyone is bailing since they are loosing and my only option is to bail and wait another 20 minutes and hope I don't get another que into a lost match, over and over.... I cant believe this is how it was intended

[Superawesomerman]

Whats the problem? The New Game Enhancements help out players who win and punish those who lose with less commendations so that they may be even further behind the winners. Just keep quiting WZs until you find one that is winning or just play with the faction that wins consistantly with a full group. If you can't compete at the top level of pvp, you shouldn't be there regardless if you're a paying customer.

 

Think thats about a good summary of the situation.

 

There is exactly one level of pvp into which we are all thrown. I would partially agree if ranked was in, but the brilliance that is bioware decided not to include it while removing warzone close and consolation rewards, alienating all the solo queue pugs.

 

Right now, all the bm geared imp players are going to get wh gear relatively quick, while all the pub pubs are going to queue into a cascade of quitters. Its ilum 1.1 all over again.

 

And before you ask, im wh sent / bm sage. As much as I despise the baddies I feel they should have an opportunity to improve. The gear disparity between bh and recruit / champ is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

 

+10% dmg, -6% dmg taken just from expertise, not to mention raw stats.

[peterjohndevries]

Whats the problem? The New Game Enhancements help out players who win and punish those who lose with less commendations so that they may be even further behind the winners. Just keep quiting WZs until you find one that is winning or just play with the faction that wins consistantly with a full group. If you can't compete at the top level of pvp, you shouldn't be there regardless if you're a paying customer.

 

Think thats about a good summary of the situation.

 

I'm 'pretty' sure you are being tongue in cheek here because if you are not, then well....

So the game is not about good battles, but it is about ensuring that you game the system until you either get an overbalanced faction or manage to sneak onto an overpowering team that already is overgeared with little chance of losing

it is not then about 'competing' at PvP 1-1 or team-team but getting into a situation where there is actual NO competition because the odds are so stacked against anyone trying to 'join the PvP club'

of course this ALSO rewards those who geared up prior to 1.2 because now things are simply way worse so kudo's to the die hards who raced to the gear finish line early instead of those of us who enjoyed the rest of the game for a short while

[Corlantis]

So, your team lost a match 6-0 in about 2 minutes, and you received nearly no reward?

 

I agree that the problem is you received nearly no reward. You should have received absolutely no reward.

 

Players need to stop being bad. Is it your fault they quit? No. But you lost 6-0. Period. You should get nothing for doing nothing against the opposing team.

 

Consequences are good.

 

I suppose if everyone had roughly equal gear, that would probably be true. But, since the winners get rewarded with better gear, being bad is not the only reason for losing.

[Amerailis]

wow, you got 20 coms and 0 credits for top healing.

great.

 

or you could leave and join a different one and get a heck of a lot more.

 

listen, you give people incentives to leave, many will leave.

 

20 does not equal zero. So- again- stop saying you get NOTHING. You get SOMETHING.

 

Is it much less than a win? Yes. Is there a problem with that? NO.

 

Win = more.

Loss = less.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

Don't fix what ain't broke!

[DuriZap]

exactly.

 

People will probably flame you for making this post, but you are 100% correct.

 

Much like the valor gain imbalances on Ilum with the controlling side having huge buffs and the non controlling gaining over half a slowly, all that did was gear up one faction over twice as fast, and in a gear based pvp system this is crippling to the low faction.

 

Its a poorly thought out system if losing does not give at least 75% of what winning does... it only serves to create a gap between factions and ruin competitive pvp.

 

Yup, faction imbalance was here right from start, and it's like a self-driven gap. Even if the devs fix(ed) the issue which created the gap initially, the gap is still there, and the gap itself, helps the gap to widen, as one side is on average better geared than the other.

And with this new PvP patch of losers getting nothing, this gap will now explode.

 

Lot's of gaps here, but I all hope you get my point nevertheless

Edited April 12, 2012 by DuriZap

[Sworne]

So you want to penalize a game where you START the game 4 vs 8? Really? That's going to get a lot of people to play. You must be on the Imperial side and always have a full team. Come on over and we can show you what it's like to start a game and already know you've lost no matter what effort you put into it. Now that effort gets you NOTHING! GG

 

You misread my post, but I see what you're getting at here. The answer is to always start the warzone with even teams. If that means that imps have 16 guys queueing up, and pubs only have 4, then start a WZ with 4 imps vs 4 pubs, and start a huttball with the remaining imps.

 

Then as more players queue, the warzone can add them in when it results in an even number.

 

Honestly, I don't know why it wasn't like this before.

[Ian_Planeswalker]

I've played a couple of warzones today and as far as I can tell I have seen improvement on how people play in general. In my server you will rarely see an empire group doing actual teamwork, they all want to kill someone and doesn't bother with the objectives, but now they are really working as a team.

 

But yes there are some warzones whereing you are destined to lose since 2 players had quit already after the enemy scored their 1st goal, given that scenario I left the game as well.

 

I agree with giving the losing team more rewards like pre 1.2 and just give the winning team an extra bonus reward for winning instead of removing completely the losing team's rewards.

[Jeopardydd]

20 does not equal zero. So- again- stop saying you get NOTHING. You get SOMETHING.

 

Is it much less than a win? Yes. Is there a problem with that? NO.

 

Win = more.

Loss = less.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

Don't fix what ain't broke!

 

 

no, but lots of us are often getting zero.

saying "but i got more" doesn't mean that people are not getting zero.

 

and since your "more" amount is so pathetic that no normal person can get the better gear that way, the gear imbalance is going to continue to grow over time and your 20 will start turning into more 0's over time.

[Aelannor]

20 does not equal zero. So- again- stop saying you get NOTHING. You get SOMETHING.

 

Is it much less than a win? Yes. Is there a problem with that? NO.

 

Win = more.

Loss = less.

 

Makes sense to me.

 

Don't fix what ain't broke!

 

Except that PvP in MMOs doesn't work when you make it both gear-based, and require wins to advance.

[MelodicSixNine]

I've played a couple of warzones today and as far as I can tell I have seen improvement on how people play in general. In my server you will rarely see an empire group doing actual teamwork, they all want to kill someone and doesn't bother with the objectives, but now they are really working as a team.

 

I second that. PUGs improved!

[Sworne]

wow, you got 20 coms and 0 credits for top healing.

great.

 

or you could leave and join a different one and get a heck of a lot more.

 

listen, you give people incentives to leave, many will leave.

 

I don't get the leaving incentive, though. If you leave you still get no rewards, and you only have a chance of getting a better team. And all these times that you're leaving a game, you're not getting any better at playing. You're just getting better at quitting.

 

The problem with quitters, is most of them just want to be carried to victory. If their team does something wrong they don't suggest the correct course or try to step up their game. They just sigh, curse at the team for being newbs, and /quit.

 

Then they come to forums and ***** about the reward system.

[Elrynn]

Yup, faction imbalance was here right from start, and it's like a self-driven gap. Even if the devs fix(ed) the issue which created the gap initially, the gap is still there, and the gap itself, helps the gap to widen, as one side is on average better geared than the other.

And with this new PvP patch of losers getting nothing, this gap will now explode.

 

Lot's of gaps here, but I all hope you get my point nevertheless

 

Everyone may as well play on one side to have some type of balance. It's amazing how stupid that sounds but how true it is.

[Varicite]

The problem is... you have to. It is a must to give the losing team something, anything for their participation, because you are investing time and money, valuable moments of your life in this game you theoretically enjoy. If you are getting nothing in return there is no point...

 

And essentially on smaller population servers the winners do perpetually win, because it's nearly always exactly the same teams... except they will keep getting better gear and you will stay static... broken system is broken... you just can't deny it man.

 

I guess we will agree to disagree.

 

I don't think you HAVE to at all. That was never the case in the past; that's something that's become the trend in the past 10 years or so in gaming. (ie: this generation's sense of self-entitlement bleeding over into everything else.)

 

You see, I was simply making an off the cuff remark about how we used to play video games for fun in the past, and we didn't feel like it was "work" to play a video game. I enjoy PvPing against other players, which is why I queue up.

 

It's the exact same reason I pumped quarters into arcade machines when I was growing up. And no, they didn't need to "reward" me for the countless hours of my life I spent playing games, because the entertainment factor of the game itself WAS the reward.

 

Of course, I'm also talking about an era when people actually enjoyed rising to a challenge, instead of just giving up and going home as soon as it MIGHT look like a loss.

[KingAlexlol]

I would like to start by saying this is not a QQ post. I would like to be as descriptive and helpful of/with this situation as possible so we can get some real changes quickly.

 

This is going to be long. If you are impatient and mad at the world you probably don't want to waste your time reading this. Fair warning.

 

 

 

I understand some of the reasons for why this system was implemented.

 

First off, lets briefly talk about the old system.

 

On one hand, people didn't want to deal with medal farming during games where one side was getting *****. That is, the dominating team would simply farm for ~10 minutes and hold those unwilling to leave as medal slaves.

 

On the other hand, some people saw 4 medals as too easy. It meant that people able to guard like the assassin tank (which does comparable damage and has utility) didn't have huge advantages (not a monumental problem, but a notable difference). Yet, it also meant that AFKers, quitters, tunnelers, non-objective players, etc. gained equal rewards. (On a side note: Lets face it, the vote AFK system was probably not going to work well enough. People who AFK in windowed mode can just look back every now and then to see if they are dead or flagged.)

 

We now have a system where:

 

1. You have to gain 8 medals for the maximum benefits.

 

This seemed like it would be fine with all the new medals available; however, most people did not or could not predict what would happen with unbalanced matches. After all, there were several posts explicitly stating (I believe an example is Dulfy, though I may be wrong) that there were almost no pvp queues in the public test realm. It should probably be stated now, public test realms need to offer 50s to everyone. These changes need to be tested vigorously before being released. There needs to be what you might call a second quality assurance test by the community.

 

Moving on, some of the big points, at least from my perspective, of 4 medals was to deal with medal farming, imbalances with how by being a certain class you could gain more medals and thus more rewards (again, a smaller issue), and at the same time motivating people to focus more on objectives (rather than the damage and healing medals).

 

Now you have to gain 8 medals for the maximum amount of benefits. There were many medals introduced to promote objective based game play, which I will touch on soon. Unfortunately, most of the objective based medals seem to heavily favor the winning team. There is quite a difference between losing and receiving less rewards and losing and receiving no rewards. I've heard members of premade groups I am familiar with talk about how funny it was that they could make rivals and people didn't particularly like receive 0 valor, 0 commendations, 0 credits, and for some 0 experience. Several players are saying they are better off leaving losing warzones. A number of them make good points. For example, many players may end up with around 30 commendations in a very close loss. At the same time there is a new gear treadmill (partially due to the delay of rated warzones) requiring hundreds of games to gain war hero gear. This kind of crazy grind was the reason for moving away from valor. Now until rated warzones come out there is an extreme grind that some players will feel obligated to take part in. This is while dealing with frustrating situations with little to no rewards and participating in the type of grind this game was meant to move away from. Furthermore, if 0/0/0/0 is meant to punish AFKers I think it is notable that it is punishing people who solo queue, have less gear (especially with the changes in expertise), and in some cases less skill (although some players could care less about players who they deem have less skill). Also, if I am theoretically a new player that just hit 50 how would I reasonably gain gear if I am getting destroyed? The punishment for losing is greater than it should be.

 

2. You gain medals for "defending", winning quickly, doing other misc. objectives, etc.

 

First of all, on my support Sorc and healing Commando I am not standing by the door. Therefore, it seems I am not considered a defender. Is this a joke? I do watch the doors and interrupt, but it seems the melee classes (especially tanks) receive far more defending points.

 

Second of all, even with the healing nerfs it can be difficult to capture a point in a full pug. Defending in the Civil War will more likely imply that you are already winning. In more even games with lots of trading this isn't a problem, but this isn't always the case. Rather than risk getting 2 medals the entire game attacking I'm probably better off sitting at a single turret to "defend" and get healing medals on myself. I am more in a panic to make sure I am not getting shafted than I am in a panic to win in some games, generally the case when solo queuing on my lowest geared alt.

 

The "objective medals" aren't always encouraging or rewarding objective based gameplay.

 

3. The game doesn't end when there is less than 6 players on one team.

 

A lot of the arguments by players defending this change (and the 0/0/0/0 rewards, which is closely tied to this in some situations) seem to involve the idea that you should suffer because you play on a low population server. That argument is a joke. This is especially true now that players are even more invested in their legacy. Also, there are many players who have built communities and friends on their servers. Why should we all waste days and days leveling so that we can reroll on servers like Fatman when pre 1.2 the problems arising now weren't so bad. That doesn't sound fun at all.

 

4. The game ends in Voidstar if one team gets further.

 

This change is okay. You don't have to play for an unnecessary amount of time, but the losing team also has less time (in specific situations) to gain medals so that time spent is rewarded.

 

5. The change in Voidstar no longer allowing you to jump across by using sprint.

 

I understand that some players disagreed with this being possible. It seems the developers agreed. I personally think it was a cool mechanic that required skill, coordination, and awareness for defenders and attackers because of the various ways it could be used. I also could see how defenders could get trained on in some situations. It isn't a big deal, but I also thought this was the coolest part of Voidstar.

 

6. Class nerfs and buffs.

 

Lets get something straight here. It isn't enough for you to "test" damage and healing outputs and make assumptions that don't factor in all the variables involved in actual high level PvP. Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but I'm pretty sure it was stated in developer interviews that a lot of these changes were based off changes being brought up at a table (sounding very casual, but probably not), some kind of dps/heal test, and duels by Bioware employees.

 

At this point, two of the best healing commandos/mercs on my server have unsubscribed. One of the better healing sages has also unsubscribed. These were all respected players who showed skill and were generally acknowledged by the community of The Twin Spears. Many good players have unsubscribed even before this due to IRL issues, disagreements with the state and direction of the game, and other reasons. The players that quit recently didn't even QQ in game or in the forums. They simply unsubscribed. They were just fed up with what honestly seemed like random nerfs and imbalances throughout a period of about six months. They were fed up with delays and, as you can see in the rest of the pvp forums, surprise delays. You might say that this is because gamers are "entitled" or just whiny, but I think it would be best to look up TotalBiscuitt's (a Youtube and Gaming personality) opinion on the matter for one. We devoted so much time into this. I know lots of players who played days and days to prepare for ranked warzones to be disappointed. That is not to say that many of the hard working people at Bioware didn't devote time, but our collective frustration and anger isn't purely the product of unjust entitlement or unreasonable crying.

 

Having said that lets talk about the healing commando nerf, the healing sage nerf, and the healing operative buff.

 

At this point commandos are complaining about the loss in energy regeneration, but the ones I know seem to be dealing fairly well with the loss in survivability.

 

Sages seem to be mixing around their specs and playing around with the changes. Sorcs seem to be mostly complaining about their inability to effectively use spells like DI. Some sorcs claim they are performing with the use of new specs and different methods to abuse healing mechanics, the details of which are unclear to me at this point.

 

Good operative healers on my server seem to be having a lot of fun based on comments they have been making. The consensus amongst people I know seems to be they are now incredibly hard to kill and perform very well as healers.

 

Additionally, healing bonuses from expertise are smaller than damage bonuses. Furthermore, dps classes were mostly left untouched and some even received buffs. Warriors, mercenaries, and assassins seem to be doing very well.

 

I understand healing being nerfed is intended. Invincible healers that are guarded and healed by others combined with, for example, the side speeders in the Civil War seems to have been very frustrating for some players. It can also lead to many ridiculous stalemate games in Voidstar. Yet, operative healers seem to have been buffed tremendously, which goes against the intention of nerfing healers (counter intuitive).

 

I would like to talk more about this final topic, but I am having trouble having productive conversations about these nerfs/buffs. Commandos and sages no longer live in the lap of luxury of having near infinite resources to heal. Scoundrels, who seemed to have had to do more management before 1.2 now are having an easier time. I feel it is very difficult to objectively look at this topic without having actively played an scoundrel healer and a commando/sage healer. Yet, I also feel that the present buffs/nerfs and the buffs/nerfs that have happened in the past are nowhere near the mark of balanced.

 

 

 

Well I am going to stop here for now. Maybe I will add more and edit later after having thought about the situation more and done additional research.

 

EDIT: I forgot to mention. I do feel that some people are more motivated to play objectives purely because the punishment for losing can be very harsh. While it seems to be effective in motivating some players, I'm not so sure this is the best method. Oh well. We'll see what happens in the coming weeks I guess.

 

Also, I took those losses on my low geared commando like a champ to the best of my recollection. I don't think people should just be handed things. I think that is one of the factors that ruined WoW. I also think people shouldn't be tortured and punished in a video game.

Edited April 12, 2012 by KingAlexlol