On Warzone Scoring and Rewards

[Varicite]

The two biggest issues are:

 

1) Imbalanced servers.

 

2) No Rated Warzones yet.

 

I play on Ajunta Pall, balanced server, queue pops <5 mins during prime time that I've got no time to properly quest.

 

Rated Warzones will put in a deserter debuff and if you want to leave, go ahead.

 

Most people don't leave on either side on AP.

 

I won a lot and lost a lot this past weekend.

 

Still got plenty of comms, xp, credits for losing. Not As much as pre-1.2 but I don't PvP warzones for these (maybe just creds so I can craft).

 

If you are on a crappy server, get off your crappy server and reroll until transfers come in.

 

Ajunta Pall definitely is awesome. : )

[danse]

Didn't see any mention of the reduced quality of matches due to Expertise affecting damage/mitigation/healing.

 

With increased damage % from expertise stat being increased, while damage-mitigation and healing effectiveness %'s left untouched, the matches have become less about using strategy/tactics (pre1.2 to some extent) and more about zerging/respawning.

 

Please consider leveling the ratios of damage/mitigation/healing as it was pre-1.2, for the improvement in the quality of matches.

---------------

edit: Also would point out that (in my opinion) much of the conversation about recruit/pvp/pve/etc gear is also rooted in the Expertise ratio imbalances. While Centurion gear was also inferior, the forums did not implode daily about pvp 'gear' problems.

 

Again, please consider balancing Expertise effect on damage/mitigation/healing to pre 1.2

 

Well said. The simplest solution is to revert to what we had.

 

Also - I'm working on my second Op healer. Left my rank 63 behind on my dead server - but that's another topic. I'm in full Recruit gear (teehee) and getting absolutely blammo'd by melee in WZ. I expected it, no problem - it's the price we pay for gearing up. Except losing the game is a major issue w/zero or close to zero rewards. And losing is guaranteed with a horde of rerolls in Recruit gear, dying to War Heroes that much faster given the melee differential.

 

The difference: on my first Op, I'd stick with the match and play all the time I could to rank and gear up. On this toon, with this patch: I'm sorta busy standing in the Fleet, getting infected so I can get that nifty green crystal (I don't care about the crystal).

 

Please revert, BW. Take your time and get it right next round.

Edited April 16, 2012 by danse

[ebado]

That may be true. But 3 days? Wow. Just run the thing through google translate, this crap isnt hard these days.

 

Because this forum needs more ways to misunderstand what devs say...

[Tenthletter]

Daniel,

 

First of all, thank you for the communication. I think it will go a long way towards mitigating things a bit from a community standpoint.

 

However, I think this discussion, and the current implementation of PVP rewards in general, show just how badly your team needs PTS character copy. You need it like yesterday. I'm sure people don't appreciate essentially beta testing your PVP system on live.

 

I know that the free month was given to players, and that is a good thing on your part, but simply having a healthy and thorough group of testers would have solved this issue weeks ago. Some testers did provide feedback that this system was flawed, and their opinion was apparently ignored. If Bioware is totally reliant upon their own metrics and not on the opinions of their testers, then you need PTS character copy even more than we thought, so these metrics can be generated on the PTS not on live.

 

I'm sure you already know this, but this patch was absolutely crucial to the long term viability of this game, and you guys dropped the ball big time. Your hardcore fanbase will never leave due to the IP, but you had a chance to take a big chunk of players away from the other AAA MMOs permanently. With GW2, D3, Tera, TSW and MoP on the horizon, things aren't looking too good for SWTOR at the moment. Very disappointing.

[Chockalot]

Why.. would you make only Imperials use the new system?

 

Not every server is unbalanced, y'know. Mine isn't.

 

Your "solution" sounds a lot more like vindication for some sort of perceived injustice wrought against you by people not rolling on your boring faction.

 

BW didn't make Jedi boring, and neither did Imperial players. <.<

 

Would move to your server in a second if it is balanced with a decent population. As to rolling imp versus republic, most people have more fun on the bad side. I play some sith alts and it is a lot more fun playing their story line. I just prefer good.

 

like I said, roll a republic toon on Death Wind Corrider and see how fun it is. I am glad your server is balanced, too bad BW cannot figure out how to balance servers. Even GW1 had a way to balance server populations.

[Dosvidaniya]

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.

 

Is it though? Mathematically speaking, this is just wrong.

 

So, we get 5 comms per medal. Lets say a player gets 6 after a game lasting 6 minutes. That player is looking at 30 comms plus the loss and time offset (unknowns). The players is getting 5+ per minute. Now, if the player gets 12 medals after 15 minutes, how many comms does the player need in order for your logic to be true? Oh, 75+ comms, that sure isn't going to happen! The fastest way to get rewards when you know you'll lose is to zerg for medals and let them win as fast as possible.

 

Do you guys even do math in your office?

Edited April 16, 2012 by Dosvidaniya

[KassKass]

Is it though? Mathematically speaking, this is just wrong.

 

So, we get 5 comms per medal. Lets say a player gets 6 after a game lasting 6 minutes. That player is looking at 30 comms plus the win and time offset (unknowns). The players is getting 5+ per minute. Now, if the player gets 12 medals after 15 minutes, how many comms does the player need in order for your logic to be true? Oh, 75+ comms, that sure isn't going to happen! The fastest way to get rewards when you come against a premade is to group up, zerg for medals and let them win as fast as possible.

 

Do you guys even do math in your office?

 

If i may also add, if your on the losing end, and the other teams is clearly cheating using known hacks etc ? Ehm... what incentive is there when you can't win match after match, night after night ! Really no incentive at all to play PvP let alone sub to game.

[Varicite]

Would move to your server in a second if it is balanced with a decent population. As to rolling imp versus republic, most people have more fun on the bad side. I play some sith alts and it is a lot more fun playing their story line. I just prefer good.

 

like I said, roll a republic toon on Death Wind Corrider and see how fun it is. I am glad your server is balanced, too bad BW cannot figure out how to balance servers. Even GW1 had a way to balance server populations.

 

Ajunta Pall.

 

Another poster mentioned it in this thread as well, so you don't have to take my word for it.

 

And here's a treat for you: On Ajunta Pall, Reps are generally better than Imps in PvP, though the Imps are starting to shape up lately. : )

 

So if you want, you can be good AND be good!

Edited April 16, 2012 by Varicite

[Meanerr]

tbh, 3 medals is so easy to get in a WZ now there really is no need to lower it.

 

Unless you join a game that's almost over, then you might not make your 3 medals.

 

And if you joined a losing game, get nothing, and have to wait a long time for the queue to pop again, then you have other issues not related to patch 1.2 at all.

[nakomaru]

Giving up and letting the other team 'win faster' is now the worst possible route you can take to rewards.

 

Wrong. It is fastest to lose with 8 medals quickly than to drag a game out. There is absolutely NO reward, even with the upcoming changes, to bust your neck to drag out a 6:0 Huttball game. The dominating team has some minor incentive to win quickly, but the steamrolled team has no reason to try after it's 3:0 with 8 medals.

 

Beyond that, your win/loss reward disparity is ridiculously harsh and will continue to be as that is clearly your intention. A 4 to 6 loss on Voidstar with 10 medals just got me 42 commendations (with 2 MVP votes). The winning team likely got ~100. What are you going to change it to? 50:100? 60:100? It's still bull.

Edited April 17, 2012 by nakomaru

[Glzmo]

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.

Also, could you change the daily and weekly PVP quests to pariticipate in a warzone instead of winning? I've been doing 10-20 warzones a day and have only been able to get 1 win in an entire week. And that was Denova against the same faction. There is almost no chance in winning against the opposing faction as the severly outnumber and outgear my faction on the server I play on. This is simply not fun, and it's just frustrating to be unable to finish a daily, not to mention a weekly quest even if you bust your behind for several hours a day.

Of course, due to this, it's incredibly hard for the outnumbered/outgeared faction to even gear up while the faction with better gear and higher numbers just has it even easier to gear up and become even more dominant, killing any chance at a fair and fun PVP experience.

 

Also, you promised that you would reward warzone participation in 1.2 and not winning. Winning should only get a small bonus for rewards and the reward for simply participating should be a lot higher to give people incentive to play. Currently, people are so frustrated by the situation that they are either quitting loosing warzones, letting their teammates hang out in the dry or even quit playing PVP altogether because their faction simply stands no chance to get good enough rewards to feel they are advancing at anything.

 

Also, I have a couple suggestions to support the outnumbered/outgeared faction:

 

If a team is outnumbered during a warzone, there could be a reward multiplier added for each team member they are fewer than the opposition.

 

Why not keep track of which faction was winning the most in a certain amount of time (day, week?) and adjust all the token costs for the loosing faction so their prices are around 50% or so?

 

On a related note, it may be a great idea to give rebates for all costs of rewards, credit costs and also an increase in quest rewards and credit gain for the outnumbered faction on the server to make the outnumbered faction more attractive for players to create characters for (a dynamic system - the more outnumbered a faction is on the server, the cheaper things like repair costs, mod switches in gear, GTN deposit/fee, vendor credit cost, vendor commendation costs, etc.).

Edited April 16, 2012 by Glzmo

[ebado]

Wrong. It is fastest to lose with 8 medals quickly than to drag a game out. There is absolutely NO reward, even with the upcoming changes, to bust your neck to drag out a 6:0 Huttball game. The dominating team has some minor incentive to win quickly, but the steamrolled team has no reason to try after it's 3:0 with 8 medals.

 

Beyond that, your win/loss reward disparity is ridiculously harsh and will continue to be as that is clearly your intention.

 

 

Read.

[Heideggar]

Give a team extra players if there expertise isn't on par.

 

if one team has 9800 expertise vs a team with 7000 expertise, give that team another player.

 

Here, let me put on my PvE gear to help you out with that expertise problem...

 

hehe, too bad there's a big loophole in that design. Not to mention, some people preferred to PvP in some PvE gear.

[TheSnipe]

You can move the expertise mods over to the PvE gear now btw.

 

1 set for each type hurr durr. and yes, it does cost a lot of money after awhile, but the option is there.

[ReconWillie]

As a Rep on Syth Worm I'd like to see some sort of underdog bonus for WZ's implemented to help fledgling 50's Valor and gear up faster to help meet the insane number of Imps that play. reducing the Medal min. to 1 is a start as now most WZ's we get nothing because of the imbalance but giving a bonus to the underdog would go along way towards enticing people to re-roll Pub and for new players to roll Pub at least on Syth Worm though I've heard it's pretty much the same story on all servers.

[SerikFox]

This contradicts patch notes which seem to promise a multiplier based on magnitude of your score.

 

From 1.2 patch notes:

 

 

So doesn't this mean close-fought 1-1 or 1-2 scores are much less comms for both teams than a 1-5 game?

 

No it doesn't - but I've seen this to be true. I got a large number of comms the other day from a close game where I lost. It doesn't seem to affect the other team. Simply the better your team does the more you get - same goes for the winners. Not based against each other (minus the bonus for winning) but rather based on the teams actual performance.

[Edgedy]

Honestly if it's the choice of losing 4 to 8 players, or having no Warzone queue at all.

 

I'd rather have no Warzone queue at all.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Edgedy

[SerikFox]

Didn't see any mention of the reduced quality of matches due to Expertise affecting damage/mitigation/healing.

 

With increased damage % from expertise stat being increased, while damage-mitigation and healing effectiveness %'s left untouched, the matches have become less about using strategy/tactics (pre1.2 to some extent) and more about zerging/respawning.

 

Please consider leveling the ratios of damage/mitigation/healing as it was pre-1.2, for the improvement in the quality of matches.

---------------

edit: Also would point out that (in my opinion) much of the conversation about recruit/pvp/pve/etc gear is also rooted in the Expertise ratio imbalances. While Centurion gear was also inferior, the forums did not implode daily about pvp 'gear' problems.

 

Again, please consider balancing Expertise effect on damage/mitigation/healing to pre 1.2

 

How about expertise removal? That's what I want.

[Ceasaigh]

Also, could you change the daily and weekly PVP quests to pariticipate in a warzone instead of winning? I've been doing 10-20 warzones a day and have only been able to get 1 win in an entire week. And that was Denova against the same faction. There is almost no chance in winning against the opposing faction as the severly outnumber and outgear my faction on the server I play on. This is simply not fun, and it's just frustrating to be unable to finish a daily, not to mention a weekly quest even if you bust your behind for several hours a day.

Of course, due to this, it's incredibly hard for the outnumbered/outgeared faction to even gear up while the faction with better gear and higher numbers just has it even easier to gear up and become even more dominant, killing any chance at a fair and fun PVP experience.

 

Also, you promised that you would reward warzone participation in 1.2 and not winning. Winning should only get a small bonus for rewards and the reward for simply participating should be a lot higher to give people incentive to play. Currently, people are so frustrated by the situation that they are either quitting loosing warzones, letting their teammates hang out in the dry or even quit playing PVP altogether because their faction simply stands no chance to get good enough rewards to feel they are advancing at anything.

 

Also, I have a couple suggestions to support the outnumbered/outgeared faction:

 

If a team is outnumbered during a warzone, there could be a reward multiplier added for each team member they are fewer than the opposition.

 

Why not keep track of which faction was winning the most in a certain amount of time (day, week?) and adjust all the token costs for the loosing faction so their prices are around 50% or so?

 

On a related note, it may be a great idea to give rebates for all costs of rewards, credit costs and also an increase in quest rewards and credit gain for the outnumbered faction on the server to make the outnumbered faction more attractive for players to create characters for (a dynamic system - the more outnumbered a faction is on the server, the cheaper things like repair costs, mod switches in gear, GTN deposit/fee, vendor credit cost, vendor commendation costs, etc.).

 

 

TOR has a serious problem on there hands.

 

There is a self perpetuating faction imbalance gear gap happening on a lot of servers. One side is simply dominating the other winning 90% of the matches and thus getting stronger. Pre 1.2 it was bad but it wasn't at the levels that 1.2 has brought.

 

Pre 1.2 I could win a few matches even complete a daily and a weekly in a timely manner. Since the 1.2 patch I have yet to win my daily PvP quest that I picked up patch day Thursday as of right now I am 0/3. I have played easily in access of 100 matches since Thursdays patch and have yet to even come close to winning. That is not balance.

 

I'm playing with the same people, we simply get smeared by a over geared team that dominates from the start usually we start with 3 or 4 people against there 8 so we stand a sub zero chance to win.

Edited April 17, 2012 by Ceasaigh

[Rhaj]

This may come off as a rant, and others may well have covered the points I want to make, but I have a few issues with the PVP rewards, especially post-1.2 and 25 pages of posts is a bit much to wade through since I'm not a regular forum goer and haven't kept up with this thread.

 

As an FYI, my main pvp character is a level 50 sniper, valor rank 53 as of this writing, ~1000 expertise rating (mix of champion and battlemaster gear.)

 

Firstly, the 3 medal threshold for reward eligibility is too high. It doesn't happen often, but I've been in a few matches where our team is so over matched it's a struggle to get one medal, much less 3. In these instances the best option is to simply leave the warzone and re-queue in the hopes of being more evenly matched next game. I find it quite odd that the reward system, in these instances, actually encourages people to leave war zones rather than participate. Reducing the threshold to one medal is a good step, but this brings me to point 2.

 

Imbalances with how easy/difficult it is to earn medals depending on class need to be fixed. As mentioned above, my main pvp character is a sniper. I can't heal, I can't shield, I can't place guard on healers or ball carriers, and all of these things are tracked and earn medals for the classes that use these abilities. All I can do is DPS. If PVP rewards are to be determined based solely on medal count, then the methods for earning medals need to be balanced across all classes. As is it's very difficult to reach the 8-medal threshold for maximum rewards unless I'm in a guild premade, and even then my medal count is half that of our tanks thanks to guard alone. That a passive ability like guard can earn so many medals is pretty silly.

[Rollento]

LOWER JUGG/MARAUDER or GUARDIAN/SENTINEL DPS! ITS STUPID!

 

ALSO, FIX HEALERS!

[Achyllis]

88,000 points healing done in a steamroll N Coast match. Rewards earned - 2 medals, 0 credits, 0 commendations, 0 exp. Account cancelled and f you very much.

[Marzinquan]

I've pvp-ed a lot in this game, where I've never pvp-ed before in others (I think 60 of my 75 valor levels came after 50), and have come to enjoy it, win or lose. The challenge of beating other equal or better players kept me going back. Getting rolled got me riled up to do it again, working through how I lost, and improvising. Stomping undergeared players/teams definitely felt hollow (destroying them in 3~4 GCDs as an infiltration shadow) and had me longing to be drawn against the imp premades again. I have lost 11 games in a row and still went back - not as diehard as some of the others in the thread, but we do have a rather healthy pvp community.

 

I got discouraged after 1.2 however, with the seemingly broken match-making system (game after game of 4v8 - filled out only when it was decided/too late). I caught myself thinking about quitting the match the other night, and I knew I should probably stop queuing for a while, and have played maybe 10 matches in the last two days (low for me).

 

It's a tough job balancing rewarding effort and excellence while trying to curb excess - I can appreciate the monumental task ahead (and behind) of the dev team. When working as intended (which seems to be a special case post-patch), getting my 40+ comms for a loss, and ~100 comms for my wins seems balanced to me. I haven't gotten zeroes yet, but that's because I'm a dps pretty much decked out in BM gear.

 

I personally like the 3 medal requirement to discourage afkers (just sitting at a turret gives you two defender ones already without doing anything), too many scenarios can arise (and examples given already in prior posts) in which people get screwed, simply by joining too late, or game ending too fast (huttball), etc. and the system needs to be refined. I too am concerned about lower geared players getting perennially screwed with gearing since comms gained could be 0 based on the many scenarios that can easily arise leading to not hitting the 3 medal minimum. Less pvp player base = less matches = less fun for me.

 

After slogging through all 24 (25?) pages, there are some excellent suggestions / comments that have been brought up. Without going too far off-topic, I'll add my thumbs up/2 credits and hopefully add to the discussion:

1. PVP devs should set aside time (if they don't already) to do some homework on live servers - roll your favourite character, decked in recruit, and queue solo all day/night. Seems like a good way to get perspective on the human dimension? You can even share your insights / organize the teams to raise our game (and don't get all "I'm a developer you have to listen to me" - just let it play out). More OT is probably in order unfortunately.

2. As mentioned, a lot of imbalanced games starting - seemingly much more than before. Rather discouraging, and screws people over for comms. Lowering to 1 medal would seem to help, but doesn't do anything for the afk issue. However, it is perceived to be more just to over-reward than to over-penalize (better a guilty man walk free than to punish an innocent).

3. With regards to the issue of imbalanced games starting - prior to 1.2, it seemed to many of us on the server that games start because people were queued up, and people not taking the queue is why teams would start short/late. Is that still the case post-patch, and would a simple solution be to not default to "auto-queue for wz" at the end? Seems strange that we would go half a match without fills, and then everyone magically appears after another wz ends.

4. I like the suggestion of scaling minimum medal requirement to time spent that was put forth in an earlier post. Say 3 if you stay the whole game, 2 if you joined after the 2/3 point, and 1 after the 1/3 point. the duration should be calculated based on actual match time of course. And maybe a 10comm participation reward minimum just to cover those who get filled 30s before the game ends or something.

5. There was an excellent post about the potential issues with scaling of rewards now that we will get the timer back - kudos sir/madam (sorry I can't go back and dig it up again). It'll probably cause quite a bit of complaints after tonight's patch.

6. Edit to add: I like the increase of rewards for people who stay in an outnumbered team... nice twist.

 

It does seem that BW's internal processes are a bit borked right now... perhaps the sub count has resulted in some unrealistic pressure from some suit up high who doesn't game. What does seem apparent is maybe better project controls is needed (the right project manager who can juggle all the moving parts), and maybe a full time community outreach person who'll proofread everything posted from the team (or one who does a better job). The whole ranked wz backlash could have been mitigated simply by adjustment of the timing of the announcement to coincide with the 1.2 patch announcement I believe.

 

Oh, and it seems that no BS would be appreciated more in these forums (because we like to think we are smart). Then again...

Edited April 17, 2012 by Marzinquan

[Crennel]

Please rebalance soon. I'm a healer on the republic side and I don't know how its fair! PVP nerfs healing am I suppused to dps with my healing battlemaster geared smuggler (which is poor idea). Maybe I should switch to dps... wait that would be regrinding a thousand games to get dps battle master gear..... oh and wait then if i want to do pve flashpoint or op i get to respec to heals each day. Or maybe we don't need heals anymore in swtor for anything. Hears are getting messed over by pvp debuffs then are falling behind in gear because they get considerably less metals. Make if fair: 1) respecing from or to heals is free

2) anyone selling any pvp gear can get most or all the tokens back to buy different pvp gear.

 

 

At least as far as I have noticed.

[Aariok]

Dear Bioware,

Since patch 1.2 I have found myself leaving warzones exponentially more often. "Why" you may ask? Simple. There is no reward for staying in a losing warzone. I have stayed in warzones where I haves earned 10+ medals, but my team lost. So, what do I get for my effort? 0 credits, a nominal amount of commendations, and a nice big slap in the face. Thanks a lot.

Now, before the patch, I found it actually worthwhile to stay in the warzone and get the credits and commendations I had earned. Now? Well, Since 1.2 I have left warzones more times in the one week it's been out than I ever did in the four months prior. Total. I've left more in one week than I have in four months.

The rewards just aren't worth it. With a loss, one gets roughly 40 commendations. Now, with the increase in the price for warzone medpacks and adrenals, those 40 comms are only enough to replenish one of each, let alone try to get rated warzone comms for my war hero gear. And that is assuming I've only used one of each in the warzone. Sorry, but it's just not worth my time to stay in a losing warzone where my team is clearly outmatched.

Now, granted, with a close loss, one will get slightly more comms and about 1500 credits. But I digress, this just isn't enough to make up for my losses. I'll leave and try to catch a new warzone and hope for a win.

 

Sincerely,

Aariok