On Warzone Scoring and Rewards

[vibenode]

I just want to say I'm extremely frustrated with current PvP rewards. I'm also disappointed in the direction PvP has moved since 1.2. Decreased TTK has really sucked the fun out of PvP. I have been trying to keep queuing, but as PvP rewards have been decreased and I'm not enjoying earning those rewards as much...well, I just don't want to PvP anymore.

 

This isn't game-breaking, as there's plenty more to do, but I really enjoyed PvP before 1.2. I'd like it to continue to be something I enjoy in the future, and I hope it can be updated in the (near) future to be fun again. As it stands, I'll just be PvEing my way from here on out.

 

From the changes I feel that BW are actually forcing people in this direction. Thing is PvP was the strongest point of this game with very little PvE to do before 1.2. Now they released more PvE content they are forcing everyone to do it...NOT COOL!!! This game has many PvP only people. My Guild os 40 strong with only PvP players. We will stop playing before we are forced to do PvE, lets hope BW realises that people pay to play a game and expect to be able to get out of it what they want, not what BW wants!

[AryiaLee]

To refresh everyone's memories, one of the most important aspects of the new changes is that your team's performance inside the Warzone has a direct impact on a portion of the rewards you are given at the end of the Warzone. Even if your team is losing, the closer you can make the game the better your rewards will be - so don't give up hope! Giving up and letting the other team 'win faster' is now the worst possible route you can take to rewards.

 

Secondly, one of the things we have already identified to fix is to reduce the minimum amount of medals a player must receive to gain any reward at all. Currently that value is three (3), and we are going to reduce that to only needing one (1) medal to gain rewards. This should make sure we cover that all important backfill player while still protecting against the freeloaders.

 

First off, You can't "make it close" when the gap with gear is so bad, your pre-made four man groups with pug randoms can't go up against a team of pre-mades. I played seven warzones last night that I tried to make "close" and got steamrolled for five, won one, and only got close ONCE. I only got 300ish commendations for three-four hours of play despite being in the top three for my team with medals each time.

 

Its getting really frustrating. Our server is already seeing people drop out of PVP Pug groups, warzones that start with only 5-6 Pub against a full group of Imps, huge gear imbalances between factions, big troll wars happening between players arguing about a WZ they just were steamrolled in, and Issues getting spiked when our 300k+ healer can't out heal the dps.

 

Its created a very bad mood on the server. No one wants to really PVP anymore, no one wants to be that frustrated. I'm not saying gut the whole thing, but I do think that if you wanted to encourage more competitive PVP, you really missed the mark.

Edited April 18, 2012 by AryiaLee

[Zlug]

You proper screwed the pooch on the WZs Bioware.

 

More than ever people quit losing matches, if your unlucky enough joining a losing game near the end just turn around and dont bother yourself.

 

Even the lowering of the requirement to 1 medal is not going to help you.

 

And dont get me started on the weekly pvp reward, someone in devland is on the crackpipe.

 

The whole lot needs a thorough workthrough.

[Midyir]

To refresh everyone's memories, one of the most important aspects of the new changes is that your team's performance inside the Warzone has a direct impact on a portion of the rewards you are given at the end of the Warzone. Even if your team is losing, the closer you can make the game the better your rewards will be - so don't give up hope! Giving up and letting the other team 'win faster' is now the worst possible route you can take to rewards.

 

This feature is not working. I have been in several close fought WZs were I received exactly 40 comms and 2000 valor for my 8 medals. I am going to start taking screen shots and opening a work ticket every time unless I hear you are working on this.

 

Even if it is working . . . it is still more comms for your time to quit a losing WZ and join a winning one.

[kuey]

Firstly, I want to say thanks for the attempt to improve it. It's great to see you actually trying to do something.

 

That being said I'm curious as why you made the change you did. I have yet to get 1 or 2 medals in a match, but I can't imagine that the rewards would be very satisfying. Winning nets you 80+ comms. Losing with anything below 4 or so medals would net you about 20-30 comms. I still don't see the incentive to continue a losing game when you could easily leave and re-queue well before your previous WZ had even gotten half way. Unless you're in a losing streak of 3+, the chances are you'd gain more comms jumping out of WZs and re-queuing.

 

As someone who runs pre-mades (casually pre 1.2, now permanently in 1.2), all I can say is that PvP was far more competitive in 1.15 thanks to actually having people play against. These days if our pre-mades starts winning the opp just bails (I haven't seen any change of late so I can only presume the 1 medal change hasn't changed people's motivation). While it's still fun to win, it was more fun winning in 1.15.

[Moryu]

I am now convinced for sure that the BioWare team have no idea about gamers behaviour from the latest patch introduced. As many are stating here the reward system is borked. A good proportion of the wz matches on my server the republic start with 5 -6 people, we all acknowledge it's a loss from the get go and gamely carry on, we may achieve our 3 medal total and get our 30 commendations. Now if a match goes on for 15 minutes in that time you can use 5 wz medpaks and 5 expertise ones which has just cost you 200 commendations, but more often than not you won't be using that many so lets say you spend 100 commendations on the consumables, it's a net loss.

Personally I am out of all consumables now and can't afford to replace them if I want to stand a chance of getting any War Hero gear in the next millenium.

Basically if we don't have 8 people at the start of a wz, I leave straight away now, I never did this before in any mmo. I will not waste 15 minutes of my life being farmed by the opposition due to lack of numbers and which also means they are getting far more medals. In fact I ask everyone in the warzone when we're imbalanced just to leave so the opposition don't get much out of it either.

[Redmyst]

Hey folks,

 

Some follow up news from observations of play and feedback over the weekend. In the next couple of days we will be deploying a small patch that will address the following issues:

 

• As discussed, minimum medals to gain rewards will go from 3 to 1 to better reward those who are backfilled.
  
• Warzones will once again be shutting down when population imbalance is detected. This was an unfortunate bug where a feature of Ranked Warzones (in full team play it is not desirable to let one team end the game prematurely by quitting out) was incorrectly implemented globally.
  
• Completion of Warzones will gain a large increase in the percentage of rewards it represents, so while scoring is still the primary driver, you will cease to see games that give no rewards if players have a minimum of 1 medal earned.
  
• We are extending the time we wait for a full team of eight to better make sure Warzones pop with complete teams.

 

A huge thank you to everyone who played this weekend and provided valuable feedback and analysis.

 

 

what is the ETA on when this hits live?

[MarkoJinn]

Says an Imp player from the leading faction.

 

We are NOT at war, dude! We are playing a game for which we pay money! If we leave the game, because it does not make fun anymore, YOU will have to leave, too, because then there is no game anymore at some point. We play "war", but we are all players who benefit from each other. The more you steamroll your enemies, the less enemies you will get. Then whom will you steamroll? Yourself? Please think before writing.

 

Excellent point my friend... I am very concerned about the future of this game for this very reason...

[tomor]

My point of view from my server:

 

Niman EU

 

Faction imbalance on a very high scale, empire had far more 50's back when illum was a feature. This allowed them to farm to Battlemaster rank way faster than the republic players. This then gave them more time to play the random number game and get their battlemaster gear.

 

Now faction problems and player drop off means still there is a higher number of ORGANISED pvp teams on the empire side as quite a few decent republic players left the server or switched factions. These players are now stomping through Warzones and I have seen players with 2-4 pieces of War Hero already. While the losing republic teams win on average 20 commendations per warzone.

 

The step between recruit and battlemaster is HUGE so new players are better off but still way behind the curve.

 

This will only make Rated tougher if it comes soon as the ORGANISED empire teams will have their full War Hero gear while we still struggle to gain BM / the first parts of WH.

 

Commendations awarded for losing are simply not high enough.

[Cheeseblaster]

what is the ETA on when this hits live?

 

Hopefully soon. SOunds like a step in the right direction.

[thestormiscoming]

Since 1.2 I had never had the issue of getting only 1 to 2 medals until today. We had 4 people leave the match and by the time we were on the offensive we didn't have enough time to get to the end to the computer room. To add to the already one sided match I ended up with just two medals. I was healing my butt off but the match was apparently too short and I rarely had time to heal as I was being beat up by a lot of DPS. I'm almost always #1 in healing, so this isn't just an unfounded gripe.

 

They can't change it back to 1 medal fast enough.

 

 

PS Please add the PvP queue pop up sound play when the game is minimized. I've missed a couple of matches already and I hate having to check on the game every 30-60sec while waiting.

Edited April 18, 2012 by thestormiscoming

[SinnedQWERTY]

what is the ETA on when this hits live?

 

My guess, prime time Friday night CET as last time. Just a feeling...

[Midyir]

[*]Completion of Warzones will gain a large increase in the percentage of rewards it represents, so while scoring is still the primary driver, you will cease to see games that give no rewards if players have a minimum of 1 medal earned.

 

Thank you.

[Bastus]

I am now convinced for sure that the BioWare team have no idea about gamers behaviour from the latest patch introduced. As many are stating here the reward system is borked. A good proportion of the wz matches on my server the republic start with 5 -6 people, we all acknowledge it's a loss from the get go and gamely carry on, we may achieve our 3 medal total and get our 30 commendations. Now if a match goes on for 15 minutes in that time you can use 5 wz medpaks and 5 expertise ones which has just cost you 200 commendations, but more often than not you won't be using that many so lets say you spend 100 commendations on the consumables, it's a net loss.

Personally I am out of all consumables now and can't afford to replace them if I want to stand a chance of getting any War Hero gear in the next millenium.

Basically if we don't have 8 people at the start of a wz, I leave straight away now, I never did this before in any mmo. I will not waste 15 minutes of my life being farmed by the opposition due to lack of numbers and which also means they are getting far more medals. In fact I ask everyone in the warzone when we're imbalanced just to leave so the opposition don't get much out of it either.

 

Agreed. My alt is a relatively fresh 50, with a mix of recruit gear and Columi as I get it. It literally too me all day yesterday to win 3 matches and get the daily over with. I almost felt like going republic, every battle was against a bunch of DPS healing capable characters with. Just consulars, those Commander things (the Mercenary equivalent) and gunslingers.

 

This wouldn't be such an annoyance if more people were motivated to get back on their mains and PVP again. All the freshies are basically getting farmed now. It's just not that fun anymore, I mean i can take a few losses, but I cant stand completing someone's weekly within one night. My alt is a Marauder, and my god, even their consulars are a hassle.

 

The gap from 49 and under PVP to 50 is HUGE. There needs to be some more brackets or something. Like 10-29, 30-49, and then the ability to purchase your lvl 50 pvp gear BEFORE you are 50. It's just stupid that you can't prepare by buying your gear beforehand. You can only max out your commendations and wait. All I know is, once I get 300 more commendations and buy my lightsaber, I won't be coming back to PVP on this char. It'll be Rakata-Colimi, and PVE rewards all the way.

[Occultsaga]

im tired of wining or loosing a pvp, and at the end at the score list we can see:

enemy 1 : 32 kills

enemy 2: 30 kill

enemy 3: 22 kills

your team: 4 kils

your team: 9 kills

you: 5 kills.

 

how this can be even close to fair? **** like this is happening because in most servers one team is aways outnumbered and have a late start, when do other players join at the middle of the fight it already is in a point of no return, and the loosers earn nothing for dont leaving the bg.

[Xsorus]

I'm honestly not surprised they let this go live, 1.2 in pretty much every regard has been a pretty massive failure, So big of a failure it probably just killed the game.

 

You don't put this much fail in a patch without doing it intentionally.

[sian_gali]

Hey folks,

 

Some follow up news from observations of play and feedback over the weekend. In the next couple of days we will be deploying a small patch that will address the following issues:

 

• As discussed, minimum medals to gain rewards will go from 3 to 1 to better reward those who are backfilled.
  
• Warzones will once again be shutting down when population imbalance is detected. This was an unfortunate bug where a feature of Ranked Warzones (in full team play it is not desirable to let one team end the game prematurely by quitting out) was incorrectly implemented globally.
  
• Completion of Warzones will gain a large increase in the percentage of rewards it represents, so while scoring is still the primary driver, you will cease to see games that give no rewards if players have a minimum of 1 medal earned.
  
• We are extending the time we wait for a full team of eight to better make sure Warzones pop with complete teams.

 

A huge thank you to everyone who played this weekend and provided valuable feedback and analysis.

 

I cannot wait to see how this works out, have my fingers crossed.

[Djoser]

On my server imps is a dominating side now. Sith warriors doing unreal damage. But not the point.

So after my work i wanna some pvp to farm comms for a bm gear. But i have only loses cos siths always beat republic...

Before 1.2 patch pvp was balanced at wz. I have ~ equal count of wins and loses. But now i think ill get my pvp gear within a year playing 2 hours after work I have no idea where is problem but it is.

 

It seems after 1.2 only playing 24/7 you can farm pvp gear and valor.

[Wanchope]

Dear BW,

 

Like most people on this thread, I have played matches where people just leave as soon as they think there is a chance we wont win. It sucks and should be addressed.

 

Ideas I have seen in this thread:

 

Punish desertion. Mandatory time out from PVP. Many have mentioned this has its own problems (alt hopping, refusing to play PVP). I also liked the idea of losing valor points (maybe exponentially if you quit over and over) for dropping. You could reset the scale one a day on valor loss.... Have a pop up message say 'you just lost XX valor for quitting the warzone. The next warzone desertion will cost XXX valor)

 

Bump up medals for losing team. Probably a good idea.

 

Here are some other suggestions to addressing this: (sorry if these were already posted)

 

1- Track WZ desertions. You already track MVP votes, kills and stuff.... just add one more - WZ desertions. Make this stat visible, so everyone who wants to see it can (via inspect player or whatever). A little shame won't hurt.

 

2- Reward staying! Create a pool of 200 or so commendations that gets split evenly based only on % of time you spent in the warzone. These only get distributed to people who are at the warzone when it ends. So if all my team quits but me and 2 other people stick out the whole thing, and we get crushed.... we still will split 200 WZ amongst the 3 of us (plus any additional we 'earned'). If people join late and are only there for 20% of the WZ, they get some, but not as much (20% as much). If people leave, they don't get any of it. There are lots of ways to tweak it so it works...

 

Hope these ideas are helpful (and that somebody sees this).

Edited April 18, 2012 by Wanchope
edit for spelling

[Mopic]

I'm sorry Bioware, I just don't understand your PVP rules and/or game play issues., I'm not going to try and repeat alot of the comments people have already stated, but The warzones before the 3 did work at least it got republic's into the warzone, At which point I was telling folks to wait til "Ranking" comes out whereas you'll be

evenly matched (we won't know this til ranks comes out).

 

Even if you say a level 20 player's armor doesn't matter between levels 10 to 49, which I find hard to believe, the simple differences in abilites are still there. a level 48 force sweep is far more powerful then a level 15's force sweep.

 

Unless when you entered the game you are scaled up not only in hits, but abilities, that is, any abilities you would get from level 15 through 49 will just be scaled upward (or the highest rank in the arena). But since you're only 15 you won't get all the ablities a level 49 player of in your same class would have. So, Your force sweep and his force sweep will hit the same, +/- bonuses. thats about it. but he would probably have overhead strike which you wouldn't get so there, take that and get poped in the head..

 

NOW for the record I was talking with a guildmate who said, the other day he played on the empire side all day and the sure numbers of empire players resulted in limited wait times., He stated that there were like 200 + people on fleet, whereas on the Republic side maybe 50 to 70 people where on fleet. But, his basic statement was that the empire are alway in PVP so you're going to be out matched by the number of players they have to play and therefore the Republic side will never catch them in terms of points/gear and/or valor. I some how know you guys

at BIOWARE have seen this, what to do about it, I don't know. HELL, I hate the hold arena idea anyway and would perfer an open war where as you run away and make tough groups chase you down to kill you., . MORE of a DAOC player myself. I'm also in flavor of equal warzones where 10-20, 30-40's, 41-49 ranked players play.....

 

A couple days ago, I took a level 20 into an arena and was fighting and mixing up vs guys 10, 29 levels higher then me., Only to end the arena with 0 anything, how can you expect players to want to come back this.,

 

 

ATB

[Ekezial]

I live on Ajunta Pall (RP-PvP) Server and the Republic dominate warzones. It has made it nearly impossible to get my newly acquired lvl fifty a set of Battlemaster gear, besides for that. . . it's just aggrivating being on a losing team more often then not and getting maybe fifty commendations.

 

I do agree that previously farming commendations with no regard to wether your team won or lost the warzone was a problem, but now the problem is: Why stay if your losing a huttbal 0-2 in the first two minutes? Your going to lose.. myself and many more people simply leave.

 

I'm a firm believer in open-world pvp.. (I'm on a mac laptop) so lag is an issue on planets like tatooine with a pop over fifty, but they could simply award commendations for open-world pvp then allow you to trade them in for warzone comms at a 1:1 ratio. If not that they definetly need to find another way of encouraging team effort in warzones.

 

I for one hate the new warzone commendation system.

[Lanthanon]

What bothers me the most is that bioware made changes to the PVP system that are UNIVERSALLY HATED, DO NOTHING TO IMPROVE THE EXPERIENCE and were OBVIOUSLY HORRIBLE DECISIONS.

 

MMO PVP is not new. It's a tried and tested game platform with defined expectations. How is it possible for an experienced game company to make such obvious blunders? I guess it's more fun to sit around a table with executives and theorize about what gamers might not know they want rather than create a simple, equitable reward system.

 

Oddly, bioware seems to both encourage alt. characters but, at the same time, discourage anyone from having any hope of gearing two toons. The WOW model for normal people was one toon for life, too much effort to level a second. SWTOR seemed to encourage multiple toons for normal people by having less grinding to 50 but the PVP gear grind is just as bad as WOW.

 

IDK. I leveled to 50 to PVP but it's disappointing. I'm not going to forever-grind, just to get decent gear, so I don' t get squished in the BGs.

 

Also, thanks a bunch for the epic weapon kit that I can't use on my main. Totally useless.

[Damagez]

Faction and Premade team domination always happen in PVP. But not getting any reward for trying is a no go for me. Last night me and my friend were playing in Novare Coast, we were going up against a pretty organized group, and we were just getting rolled, we end up getting 0 and 1 medal for trying we stay from the start to end with no rewards… that’s for trying to put up a fight. Guy who were hugging the power tower got 5 medals. (I have 5/6 BM Armor and BM weapon rest is recruit gear, I just ding 50 like 2 weeks ago, I been saving 2K com before I ding 50, I get 3-16 + medal 90% of the time, but seeing someone for trying and not getting any reward it is just B.S imo)

 

Not sure how many of you guys have played Rift before (Not the Best but it allow the Faction/New Comer to Catch up with Gears). Their point system is more rewarding for the people who actually try and put in effort for their gear progression. They also have a deserter buff for quitter a 30mins debuffs preventing them joining another warzone again. AFK probably is one of the hardest one to fix, personally I think this really falls in the game master side, and all we can do is report the player for being AFK during warfront.

Please give us cross server warzone que with East and West coast server, this way we can pvp any time with at lease a full team in it.

 

Allow us to purchase gear before 50 and set more bracket for lower level.

 

Please excuse my English. It is not my main language.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Damagez

[Bladeprophet]

1. There needs to be a deserter debuff on people quitting WZ's It needs to be long, like 15 minutes + new reque time. Currently what is happening alot on my server is as soon as one team is losing, 2-4 players quit leaving the rest of the team shorthanded and in farm mode the rest of the match.

 

This suggestion is ill-considered. Ask yourself why people are deserting. Actually the first post in this thread answers that question very clearly. The problem with the recent changes, despite what Daniel Erickson has said in this thread, is that losers are effectively being punished, and the reduced rewards for losers make it far less rewarding to quit the match than to stay and fight. Imposing a debuff on deserters only punishes them more, making it even less worthwhile to participate in PvP. In practice, the debuff will have very little effect, because as others have pointed out in other threads about the PvP rewards changes, a player so affected will simply switch to an alt, or do something else until the punishment expires.

 

The bottom line is that punishing people for avoiding gameplay that isn't fun is bad business. You'll turn people off from even wanting to participate at all. When that happens, everyone loses. The right solution is to encourage participation. In my experience, with the 1.1.5 PvP rewards, desertions were usually actually quite low, especially as compared to now.

 

I do not quit a match, i fight to the bitter end in these games. But if this continues as it is, i would likely just move on from PVP in general in this game and do PVE only or move on to the next game completely (this is not a threat, just what happens when players lose interest in a current game)

 

But that is exactly what deserters are doing, for exactly the same reasons, only on a smaller scale / timeline. They are leaving the match because it isn't fun, and the rewards are inadequate to justify spending their time in the match. They're only doing what you're threatening to do, only on a more immediate basis.

 

Premades rule all now. As in all other games previous to this, premades destroy pugs. I actually really thought the 4 member max premade was a brilliant move previously. It allowed players to group up with freinds and que, but also added a random element to each WZ. Now it seems it is a steamroll fest.

 

Exactly right, and this, combined with the drastically lower rewards for PvP, has made the PvP experience pretty unrewarding for PuGers. I've mostly stopped playing war zones for that reason, at this point, and I'm really hoping that Bioware takes to heart the criticisms leveled in this thread. They are spot on.

 

Taugrim recently posted that prior to 1.2, SWTOR was one of the best-balanced MMOs in the industry:

 

http://taugrim.com/2012/04/13/swtor-pvp-in-1-2-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

 

That's a great post, and I agree 100% with his assessment. The changes that went into class rebalancing and PvP rewards have, IMO, completely wrecked PvP in this game.

Edited April 18, 2012 by Bladeprophet

[Bladeprophet]

I hate the hold arena idea anyway and would perfer an open war where as you run away and make tough groups chase you down to kill you., .

 

Right, so on servers where the Empire outnumbers Republic 5:1 (or the other way around), you just camp the spawn points and own the zone. That's fun.