Ranked WZ - can they survive single server only?

[Plumz]

No complaint, or whines. Share your opinions pvpers (I know some of you still here waiting). Is single server system for ranked WZ sufficient to support a living, vivid ledger system of ranked matches? From your experience, how many active players do you think it needs not to become the same 2 teams compeeting over and over again at the upper levels?

[Raansu]

Depends on how BW handles the server transfers. Currently even a full server is too small to have a distinct variety of teams, so with that I would say no, ranked warzones wont work.

[irishtim]

Ranked Warzones as a whole will be cross server eventually, what is being released with 1.3 is the pre-season so teams can start getting geared and get an initial ranking but Bioware have said in a podcast (can't remember which one though i think it was mos eisley radio's 1.2 one) that they will be cross server because you can't get a proper ranking facing the same people over and over

[lexiekaboom]

Ranked servers are 8 on 8 only, so they wont have a huge impact on the population as a whole until that changes, except that ques for non-ranked servers are going to be stupidly long.

 

Why? In a server with 15 people qued for PVP on one side, 8 ranked, the 7 unranked people never get a que under any situation. If the 15 people qued for ranked can get a ranked match, they join an unranked match STILL as a team of 8. So if there is a ranked match, the team of 8 PVPs while the 7 solos wait. If there is no ranked match, the team of 8 PVP as the 7 solos wait (as that's the only way a WZ could be built with 7 solos and one group of 8)

 

So the new "pvp grind" is looking on and look for a group to join to do rank warzones. If you can't find one, no que for you. Which is likely a good thing because even if you got a que it's going to be your PUG team of 8 vs. a pre-made team of 8 with vent.

 

It's already live on test; go check out how horrible it is!

Edited June 9, 2012 by lexiekaboom

[sanchito]

I play on TOFN, and i fear that we will only have about 4 8man team running at any given time, so once the pecking order is established it's gonna be hard to get people to try and get destroyed over and over again...

 

i really think this should be cross-server (maybe by continent for lag issues), also because it's gonna be interesting to see who the best teams are, if there are a bunch of servers it's gonna be impossible to know which server is strong and which isn't.

 

I'd love to see a continental top 10 list or something like that, and then invite the best teams from every continent to E3 or whatever and have them battle it out in a tournament, that would be awesome imo :-)

[Postalz]

It will definitely be an issue, I don't care if your on the fatman, look at other games that have ranked PvP. On a high pop server on WoW there are maybe 2-3 teams q'ing at prime time. One may be ranked 1000 the other 1500 and the other 2000. How do you balance such varying ratings? Unless there are xserver q's you can't match teams with similar ratings.

 

Heck, look at LFG tool. There's 100 people on fleet on test server who are all 50's and even if you are not picky and join any group you will wait hours and no q ill pop.

[MooTheCosmicCow]

Depends on how BW handles the server transfers. Currently even a full server is too small to have a distinct variety of teams, so with that I would say no, ranked warzones wont work.

 

I agree.

[lexiekaboom]

It will definitely be an issue, I don't care if your on the fatman, look at other games that have ranked PvP. On a high pop server on WoW there are maybe 2-3 teams q'ing at prime time. One may be ranked 1000 the other 1500 and the other 2000. How do you balance such varying ratings? Unless there are xserver q's you can't match teams with similar ratings.

 

Heck, look at LFG tool. There's 100 people on fleet on test server who are all 50's and even if you are not picky and join any group you will wait hours and no q ill pop.

 

BW knows this and is doing nothing about it is what bother me. The tired ranked once before and saw it wouldn't work without cross server. They are seeing now the group finder is useless without cross server.

 

Are we getting cross server? No.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if group finder was pushed back, just like ranked, as they start to see it's simply no help to anyone. And the problem is so much simpler then you think; no tanks

 

You take guardians and make them the FOTM dps class. Then you nerf shadows to the point where all of them go DPS. Then you wonder why the group finder can't make groups. DPS x2 found, healer found, waiting for group ... get use to it.

[Shlamorel]

No complaint, or whines. Share your opinions pvpers (I know some of you still here waiting). Is single server system for ranked WZ sufficient to support a living, vivid ledger system of ranked matches? From your experience, how many active players do you think it needs not to become the same 2 teams compeeting over and over again at the upper levels?

 

Well, at least it's a start.

 

On my current server with our current PvP population, ranked matches would almost certainly non-existant.

 

I'm wiling to see if the server transfers can change things up enough to make the full 8-premade requirement viable.

 

I'd love, love, love for them to have kept the solo queue option (so long as there are separate rankings for solo vs. premade), but for now I'm crossing my fingers and willing to see if enough people are going to turn up from server transfers to have some ranked competition.

[vimm]

They should pull it out of the update a few hours before 1.3 goes live; I'd be okay with this.

[Xinika]

They should pull it out of the update a few hours before 1.3 goes live; I'd be okay with this.

 

This post made me lol.

[fungihoujo]

Most servers can't get pvp with all the solo casuals in it to proc- good luck getting 8 man queues to proc ever.

 

Only putting in 8 man teams, and not having x-server for it is a waste of time and money to appease maybe 16 people per server except for the big ones like Fatman.

 

Good job catering only to 1% of your playerbase BW, this is bound to end with your pop numbers soaring.

[timidobserver]

Ranked Warzones will not survive very long on my server. There is one guild that either cheats or is signifantly better than everyone else at PVP. They crit regularly for 15k on full WZH heavy armored opponents and ect. Ranked WZs will die once people try and fail at beating them enough times. Edited June 10, 2012 by timidobserver

[AlexGFX]

I play on TOFN, and i fear that we will only have about 4 8man team running at any given time, so once the pecking order is established it's gonna be hard to get people to try and get destroyed over and over again...

 

i really think this should be cross-server (maybe by continent for lag issues), also because it's gonna be interesting to see who the best teams are, if there are a bunch of servers it's gonna be impossible to know which server is strong and which isn't.

 

I'd love to see a continental top 10 list or something like that, and then invite the best teams from every continent to E3 or whatever and have them battle it out in a tournament, that would be awesome imo :-)

 

With the way Ranked is running on the PTS you play on TEAMS but are ranked INDIVIDUALLY. How in the world would you track the best teams? I'm so confused over this. Shouldn't we be able to form teams and have an individual rating and team rating?

[MiaRB]

With the way Ranked is running on the PTS you play on TEAMS but are ranked INDIVIDUALLY. How in the world would you track the best teams? I'm so confused over this. Shouldn't we be able to form teams and have an individual rating and team rating?

 

i think they said that will come in season one but not in pre-season of ranked WZs.

[Escarrabutxaques]

They should pull it out of the update a few hours before 1.3 goes live; I'd be okay with this.

 

Actually, you are right. Bringing ranked warzones now, without server transfers and cross-servers pvp would only make things worse. I mean, only on 2 or 3 servers(counting both EU&US regions) there are enough players to form decent pool of ranked teams. On the rest of the servers there won't be any ranked warzones at all or there will be the same 2 teams playing against each other over and over again in prime time. Eventually, players on those low populated servers unable to play ranked warzones or tired of playing against the same opponents, in order to enjoy this new feature will be forced to reroll on a higher populated server. But, let's be honest, only few will actually bother to reroll (because most dont want to do same low level content again and grind valor/pvp gear etc). So introduction of the ranked 8x8 warzones will lead only to the frustration and cancel of subscription of the significant amount of players on low population servers. You might say that its not a big deal, but it actually is, because at least half (or even more than half) of the players of this game are playing on light servers. So yeah, 1.3 and ranked warzones without server transfers available or cross-server matchmaking on a long run will only hurt this game. And we can expect even further drop in subscriptions few weeks after 1.3 hits live. So pulling ranked warzones out of the update and implementing them when the server transfers or cross-server matchmaking will be available would be a smart move.

Edited June 10, 2012 by Escarrabutxaques
english fail

[Rufik]

Having constantly 2-3 teams fight against each other is not that bad (although the core of this teams would be constant – they wouldn’t be online all the time and some other ppl would be invited to those teams for testing) so the outcome of the premades fight versus each other wouldn’t be obvious.

 

The most important thing with “on 1 server pvp” is that there are natural bounds between players. Some ppl will hate each other and some would love, some respect, some not, there would be some politics going on, some groups of interest and influence That is what (among other things) would make the reason to pvp. If there is no real reward for pvp it would be fun to at least kill the guy u hate or help some one u like.

 

In cross-server pvp u just killing stuff. U don’t need to care who u killed, who killed u, who is good or bad – that all doesn’t matter coz u won’t ever play against these guys again. Well u wont even have the same ppl in your team again so u don’t have to care about what they think of u, u don’t have to be nice, u can afk, u can do whatever – there is no consequences to whatever u do. That makes the things go down the toilet.

 

And that’s why I prefer maybe small group but of ppl I know/like/hate/care/respect than big group of ppl that nothing is or ever would bound me to.

[Escarrabutxaques]

Having constantly 2-3 teams fight against each other is not that bad (although the core of this teams would be constant – they wouldn’t be online all the time and some other ppl would be invited to those teams for testing) so the outcome of the premades fight versus each other wouldn’t be obvious.

 

The most important thing with “on 1 server pvp” is that there are natural bounds between players. Some ppl will hate each other and some would love, some respect, some not, there would be some politics going on, some groups of interest and influence That is what (among other things) would make the reason to pvp. If there is no real reward for pvp it would be fun to at least kill the guy u hate or help some one u like.

 

In cross-server pvp u just killing stuff. U don’t need to care who u killed, who killed u, who is good or bad – that all doesn’t matter coz u won’t ever play against these guys again. Well u wont even have the same ppl in your team again so u don’t have to care about what they think of u, u don’t have to be nice, u can afk, u can do whatever – there is no consequences to whatever u do. That makes the things go down the toilet.

 

And that’s why I prefer maybe small group but of ppl I know/like/hate/care/respect than big group of ppl that nothing is or ever would bound me to.

 

Actually, the scenario you describe with 2-3 teams is what is currently happening on light servers without any ranked warzones. What ranked warzones would actually add for those 2-3 teams? Different kind of badges to farm? Doubtful honor to be part of top1 team of the server (out of 2 teams in the ladder)? What actually would be the point of playing ranked warzones instead of normal ones on light servers besides the gear grind?

[Magnesium]

Server transfers are going to be important but the truth of it is that x-server ranked are needed, you want to be able to face multiple teams/groups constantly and it will be better for the matching system.

 

Single server will mean very few teams waiting on ranked and then the amount of teams doing ranked and waiting for them will mean that the match up system will not work because there will be very little variety and in the end if you have a strong team always winning then they will not get any more competition from their server.

[Totaltrash]

Actually, the scenario you describe with 2-3 teams is what is currently happening on light servers without any ranked warzones. What ranked warzones would actually add for those 2-3 teams? Different kind of badges to farm? Doubtful honor to be part of top1 team of the server (out of 2 teams in the ladder)? What actually would be the point of playing ranked warzones instead of normal ones on light servers besides the gear grind?

 

^Indeed!

 

My server, Darth Sion, has a pretty active pvp community - most people are Battlemaster+, properly geared and pretty competent. Warzones run daily from noon to midnight - we are not the Fatman, but there are about 70 US servers worse off than us.

 

BUT there are still only about 30-40 players active on an everyday basis - so naturally, you will see the same guys in every warzone, either on your team or the other - which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not enough to form more than maybe 3-4 teams for ranked.

 

So after the initial release hype, I doubt we could sustain ranked warzones with so few teams on my server.

[Rufik]

Don’t get me wrong I’m not against merging servers to make few but more populated ones. The more the servers are populated the better but cross-server pvp is something else and I’m against that

[Veeius]

Depends on how BW handles the server transfers. Currently even a full server is too small to have a distinct variety of teams, so with that I would say no, ranked warzones wont work.

 

Exactly this.

[RachelAnne]

The best pvp I had in an MMO was vanilla wow, and it was server only.

 

You will know who you play against and with and this makes it so special, xrealm will never achieve anything like this and is very boring.

 

Unfortunately made BW the mistake with solo queue´s as we dont have them at Tor. So about 80% of the players cant do pvp, even if they wanted to.

[DarthNuke]

No complaint, or whines. Share your opinions pvpers (I know some of you still here waiting). Is single server system for ranked WZ sufficient to support a living, vivid ledger system of ranked matches? From your experience, how many active players do you think it needs not to become the same 2 teams compeeting over and over again at the upper levels?

 

No, single server system isn't sufficient, imo.

 

Reason is simple, the demise of my server, Infinity Gate. Faction imbalaces gear out 1 faction faster. If that faction has better players....it's exponentially worse.

 

On my server, the Imps outnumbered us 5 to 1 easily. Hence, they got more Q pops. They had better players overall. They won A TON more than lost. Mass exodus ensued. Servers transfers....the same thing can happen.

 

The most effective and logical solution is to make these cross server and only offer Huttball as a same faction option. Imo.

Edited June 10, 2012 by DarthNuke

[DarthNuke]

The best pvp I had in an MMO was vanilla wow, and it was server only.

 

The best pvp I had in an MMO was Age of Conan. It was full on free-for-all. If you be red, you be dead. Could get killed at quest givers. Could kill anywere. Total freedom. Only the people in your guild were safe, couldn't kill them without a /gkick.