Why do you not play ranked PvP?

[Isislol]

I'm only level 49 with my pvp char, and I can tell you why I have no interest in playing ranked...

 

People take the game too seriously. I've been cursed out. I've seen other teammates get cursed out. And I've seen idiots keep typing FFS all the darn time and insulting the whole team. I can imagine how bad they would be if it actually counted for real.

 

Nothing makes you feel worse than people raking you over the coals for losing. Sometimes it's your fault, and sometimes it's not either way, I don't want any part of it. I'd rather just play for fun and ignore sore loser loudmouths.

 

This is why the real pvp'ers want to do ranked. they are tired of being matched with trash pugs. I don't mind having undergeared people on my team as long as they actually know what they doing but most people in this game are too stupid to even call inc /focus healer/peel for other guy who is capping the node.

Sad thing is most people/guilds who don't Q ranked anymore blame it on lack of gear or class imbalance when in fact they're lacking skill to compete vs other organized teams.

Edited August 7, 2012 by Isislol

[Eommer]

I started my own guild to do more RWZ because my old guild leaders stop queueing after loose one game.

 

I have really good players but I dont have a Mara and PT with good gear. Plus at least three of that good playeres still dont have full WH. Im trying to recruit at least one mara for weeks and nothing. So we have a huge problem to form a good group.

 

a) RWZ is about speed, whatever get the turrets / ball first usually wins.

 

b) its really really f... hard get the perfect group. the best pvp guilds on my server ALWAYS queue with 1 Mara and 2 PT. Insane damage for our healers and our guild just get ***** over and over by the same guild with that composition so after two or three we call for the night. Perfect group on my server pretty much start with that 1 mara dn 2 pt. piss me off. every high ranked guild on my server queue with that set up.

 

c) my guilds are really disappointed right now and looks like they even log at schedule time to do warzones anymore. I kind few guilty but I just cant recruit a damn Mara with BM and full aug. I will not even talk about PT.

 

So basically, we dont feel too much motivated to queue right now.

Edited August 7, 2012 by Eommer

[Vertri]

There would be more people doing RWZ if it was put in with 1.2 but Bioware screwed that up and alot of people that wanted it in 1.2 were not gonna stick around for another couple months for it. My guild on Mind Trick all quit this game because of this.

It was promised in 1.2 and at the last second "oh by the way RWZ was scratched till next patch" good job on losing alot of players that stuck around only for that in 1.2 and quit when it wasnt put in.

[Eommer]

This also makes people really nervous to play their mains with a team that has the "wrong setup" (jug tank in huttball, undergeared people, too many sorcs/sages, no cookiecutter specs, marauder with speedbuffs etc etc)

 

Wich means unless you have a good setup it doesnt happen and you lose and people become more upset and on and on and on.

 

that's exactly what i did try to say above....

[panoukla]

1.) In order to win you need THE perfect group set up.

2 Operative healers

2-3 pyrotechs

1-2 Assassins

and SMASHers

 

They all need to have fully augmented WH gear and Voice chat (e.g. Teamspeak)

If you are not one of those classe then you don't get in.

If you play one of the wanted classes, you have to be in the "Inner Circle" of your guild aka. Brown Noses to be in the A-Team. If not - welcome C-Team (C stands for crap)

 

2.) Although this is pre-season and rating shouldn't matter to anyone people are still way too afraid to queue up for ranked warzones because they might lose some raiting.

 

3.) Althose groups that kept owning pvp before 1.3 realized they weren't as good and so went back to owning normal pvp with their pre-mades vs. PUGS.

[panoukla]

1.) In order to win you need THE perfect group set up.

2 Operative healers

2-3 pyrotechs

1-2 Assassins

and SMASHers

 

They all need to have fully augmented WH gear and Voice chat (e.g. Teamspeak)

If you are not one of those classe then you don't get in.

If you play one of the wanted classes, you have to be in the "Inner Circle" of your guild aka. Brown Noses to be in the A-Team. If not - welcome C-Team (C stands for crap)

 

2.) Although this is pre-season and rating shouldn't matter to anyone people are still way too afraid to queue up for ranked warzones because they might lose some raiting.

 

3.) Althose groups that kept owning pvp before 1.3 realized they weren't as good and so went back to owning normal pvp with their pre-mades vs. PUGS.

[RyanReagan]

For all of you solo que "normal warzone" folks, if you are not where I am at yet, you will get there eventually......and PVP will no longer be fun. To you folks at EA....this is one poor "business model".

 

I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Kalfear]

Why?

 

Because I cant get a dedicated group of 8 togather and dont feel like getting steam rolled by PUGing it.

 

Would love to do it but not till got a group of 8 togather of people willing to work togather

[JediDuckling]

It seemed that everyone was disappointed when ranked matches were left out of 1.2, but now that they are here with 1.3 there does not seem to be too many of them happening at least not on my server (Bergeren Colony).

 

The reason I don't participate in them is because I cannot find people that want to, their reasons vary, so I wanted to ask the general PvP populace.

 

Why aren't you playing ranked PvP matches?

 

If you are I don't really want to know, but it seems like few are.

 

rated need to be removed as people are just win trading and i dont realy want to be put up against a full team of flavor of the month nublets and the resolve dont work properly so there is more than enough reasons to not do rateds for me lol

[JMKnave]

I will post the same feedback I posted on the PTS forums pre 1.3 which have since been wiped. In answer to the OP: I have not seen the changes to several key issues surrounding PVP that I brought up in my feedback which would make me change my decision to not participate in rwzs. And now the PTS has since been taken down completely.

 

PTS 1.3 Feedback

The following are only my own opinions.

 

Communication

I believe that you need to open up some sort of dialogue with the PVP community. The lack of communication of the RWZ testing events has yielded almost zero useful feedback. You have the technology already of displaying patch notes and/or maintenance updates on the game client start. Announce the testing events this way as well instead of through a forum post. Some people do not use the forums. On that note, some people do not use facebook or twitter either. Social media is not the most efficient method of reaching your playerbase. Posting information on-screen at the client login is.

 

Surveys or polls at client login as well may yield more useful feedback than the forums as it would reach far more players. Open up dialogue with competent PVP players and guilds in regards to game mechanics. Some of your playerbase spends many more hours playing your game than you do. It is a waste to not tap into this resource and their experience.

 

Metrics

Stop saying metrics in your public PR interviews. Stop relying on metrics to make design decisions for your developers. Larry Mellon does not know everything despite what you may have been told.

 

Metrics is a useful tool but it must be tempered with experience and feedback. It should not be the driving force in your design. In fact, you should all purchase air horns and use them every time somebody brings up “metrics” in your team meetings. After several weeks of this air horn use, your entire team should develop a subconscious aversion to that terrible term. They may also become deaf by this time but I believe the sacrifice will be worth it. The silence may rekindle their creativity in their game design approach and stop their reliance on that “term that shall not be named”.

 

The fact that such and such particular class is under/over achieving some predetermined number on a spreadsheet and/or graph means nothing to most of your players. Games are created for entertainment. The driving force in your design should be the word “fun”. Say it with me…. fun. It’s a good word don’t be afraid of it. You can’t measure fun with metrics. Instead try asking yourselves: “Is this class/role fun to play?”

 

Balance

While were on this topic, let’s bring up balance as well. Trying to balance classes is futile. The only way to have true balance is to have one single class. You do not have that.

 

You have different classes that do different things. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some classes will be better suited to doing certain things than other classes will. This notion is understood. So I believe your time may be better used in ensuring that all class roles are engaging and fun to play in their own way.

 

Stop looking to the forums for class balance feedback. Most of the plebs on the forums post random nonsense that only pertains to them. If you want relevant feedback, seek out contact with competent and established PVP guilds and players.

 

It would also behoove you to implement different skill mechanics for both PVE and PVP. This would be a large undertaking but in this way you can make changes to one aspect of gameplay without interfering with the other.

 

PTS Transfers

As with 1.2, there is a serious lack of participation in RWZ events on the PTS. You have the transfer technology already from the mergers/server consolidations. Use it for the PTS as well. Is there no way to designate the PTS as a destination server and allow a few select PVP servers to become origin servers? And instead of a transfer mechanic, it should only create a copy of the character to the PTS without removing it from the origin server. Make an announcement on the client login page so players/guilds actually see it.

 

And fix augments being lost on transfer. Relevant feedback requires actual testing under optimal conditions as they would exist on live. (EDIT: this was not fixed even though it was reported multiple times and caused augment slots to revert to mk-1 which then had to be patched post-update)

 

Ranked Announcement

I read Gabe’s announcement on 1.3 RWZs. It seems like you’re already committed to implementing them with 1.3 when it goes live.

 

Here is the link to Gabe’s Blog: (which has since been edited)

http://www.swtor.com/blog/team-ranke...ame-update-1.3

 

Do you really believe they are ready for live even in preseason form?

 

I don’t. I don’t believe they will be viable without cross-server queues even with the recent population consolidation. I don’t believe the player pools are large enough to promote healthy competition. I also believe there are simply far too many bugs remaining for you to be able to provide a consistent and fair field of play. And without that consistency, the ratings will be meaningless. Games will instead be decided by chance. I believe this will eventually lead to several new threads appearing on the general forums when players run across these issues on live and it begins to affect their ratings.

 

Fix these first:

-respawning dead in respawn area

-players not showing up in ops frames

-players showing up as disconnected in ops frames

-op leaders not able to queue groups

-respawn shield timer skipping opening

-players being stuck in midair

-net code latency (players not where they appear to be on screen)

-combat delays

-camera view (poor movement, environment collisions, etc.)

-GCDs going off without firing off skills when keyed

-resolve breaks not triggering when active/available and keyed

-disconnects and/or CTDs

-dozen+ more

 

Ranked matches would be nice but I would happily exchange them for the items below:

 

1. The ability to queue as a group of 2-8 in ranked and unranked.

2. The group above carrying over and not being disbanded after every match.

3. Not having to ask everyone in the group above to drop queue so we could re-queue after every match.

4. The leader of the group above remaining the ops group leader while in and after the match.

5. Everyone in the group above showing up in the ops frames.

6. An easily visible targeting reticule that I do not have to lower graphic settings to see.

7. A better targeting system.

8. A proactive instead of reactive resolve system.

9. More maps. (different huttball arenas?)

10. OWPVP with valor/comm incentives.

 

Proactive Resolve System

What does this mean? I would like more control over my own CC immunity rather than relying on outside events to fill my resolve bar. I would prefer to fill my resolve bar immediately when I use my CC break thus granting me immunity when I choose it. Not when outside factors dictate it. More player control is always good.

 

Crowd Control

All debuffs that impede normal player movement should be subject to diminishing returns. This includes snares and/or other momentary skills/animations that remove character mobility from the hands of the player. Loss of character control in PVP, no matter what form that loss may take, can be frustrating. What is the difference between being chain-stunned twice in a row and suffering a coordinated chain-leap/charge by 3-4 different players? None. Both lock the player down for the same amount of time.

 

Net Coding

There is a serious discrepancy in what a player perceives on their screen and what is actually happening around them. The server/client synchronization needs significant improvement. There are many times when you may knockback or push an opposing player away from an objective only to see them being pushed towards it 2 seconds later. This is not acceptable. Random teleports around arenas are also a common occurrence in matches.

 

Respawn Area Shield Timer

Why does this shield even exist? There are numerous times when the timer for the shield simply misses and/or skips an opening and strands multiple players behind it. You can see it quite regularly with notices of the “Deserter Warning” text popping up on your screen and occasionally leading to you being kicked out of a warzone match completely. Why are you telling me to please exit the respawn area when it is your very own shield mechanic that is preventing me from doing just that? Why not simply add the timer on death and simply not allow you to select the respawn button until it expires? This is the same mechanic you use in-game for PVE area respawns. At least I know that when I key to respawn I will immediately be able to run out of the respawn area. You could then remove the shield mechanic completely.

 

1.3 Going Live On June 26

I believe there are many items of higher priority than ranked warzones. It would be far more beneficial to spend time addressing these items first as they affect far more people and far more aspects of the game.

 

For example, people’s augments going missing upon transfer to PTS for 1.3 testing. Has this been fixed yet? Will I log in on June 26 and still see all my augments in their augment slots? I definitely will not be the first person to log in on June 26 to test it out, that’s for sure.

 

There are more points I could touch on but I think this is long enough already.

 

TLDR

Insufficient testing and no open two-way constructive dialogue with your playerbase leads to... ?

Edited August 8, 2012 by JMKnave

[Pistols]

I will post the same feedback I posted on the PTS forums pre 1.3 which have since been wiped. In answer to the OP: I have not seen the changes to several key issues surrounding PVP that I brought up in my feedback which would make me change my decision to not participate in rwzs. And now the PTS has since been taken down completely.

 

PTS 1.3 Feedback

The following are only my own opinions.

 

Communication

I believe that you need to open up some sort of dialogue with the PVP community. The lack of communication of the RWZ testing events has yielded almost zero useful feedback. You have the technology already of displaying patch notes and/or maintenance updates on the game client start. Announce the testing events this way as well instead of through a forum post. Some people do not use the forums. On that note, some people do not use facebook or twitter either. Social media is not the most efficient method of reaching your playerbase. Posting information on-screen at the client login is.

 

Surveys or polls at client login as well may yield more useful feedback than the forums as it would reach far more players. Open up dialogue with competent PVP players and guilds in regards to game mechanics. Some of your playerbase spends many more hours playing your game than you do. It is a waste to not tap into this resource and their experience.

 

Metrics

Stop saying metrics in your public PR interviews. Stop relying on metrics to make design decisions for your developers. Larry Mellon does not know everything despite what you may have been told.

 

Metrics is a useful tool but it must be tempered with experience and feedback. It should not be the driving force in your design. In fact, you should all purchase air horns and use them every time somebody brings up “metrics” in your team meetings. After several weeks of this air horn use, your entire team should develop a subconscious aversion to that terrible term. They may also become deaf by this time but I believe the sacrifice will be worth it. The silence may rekindle their creativity in their game design approach and stop their reliance on that “term that shall not be named”.

 

The fact that such and such particular class is under/over achieving some predetermined number on a spreadsheet and/or graph means nothing to most of your players. Games are created for entertainment. The driving force in your design should be the word “fun”. Say it with me…. fun. It’s a good word don’t be afraid of it. You can’t measure fun with metrics. Instead try asking yourselves: “Is this class/role fun to play?”

 

Balance

While were on this topic, let’s bring up balance as well. Trying to balance classes is futile. The only way to have true balance is to have one single class. You do not have that.

 

You have different classes that do different things. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some classes will be better suited to doing certain things than other classes will. This notion is understood. So I believe your time may be better used in ensuring that all class roles are engaging and fun to play in their own way.

 

Stop looking to the forums for class balance feedback. Most of the plebs on the forums post random nonsense that only pertains to them. If you want relevant feedback, seek out contact with competent and established PVP guilds and players.

 

It would also behoove you to implement different skill mechanics for both PVE and PVP. This would be a large undertaking but in this way you can make changes to one aspect of gameplay without interfering with the other.

 

PTS Transfers

As with 1.2, there is a serious lack of participation in RWZ events on the PTS. You have the transfer technology already from the mergers/server consolidations. Use it for the PTS as well. Is there no way to designate the PTS as a destination server and allow a few select PVP servers to become origin servers? And instead of a transfer mechanic, it should only create a copy of the character to the PTS without removing it from the origin server. Make an announcement on the client login page so players/guilds actually see it.

 

And fix augments being lost on transfer. Relevant feedback requires actual testing under optimal conditions as they would exist on live. (EDIT: this was not fixed even though it was reported multiple times and caused augment slots to revert to mk-1 which then had to be patched post-update)

 

Ranked Announcement

I read Gabe’s announcement on 1.3 RWZs. It seems like you’re already committed to implementing them with 1.3 when it goes live.

 

Here is the link to Gabe’s Blog: (which has since been edited)

http://www.swtor.com/blog/team-ranke...ame-update-1.3

 

Do you really believe they are ready for live even in preseason form?

 

I don’t. I don’t believe they will be viable without cross-server queues even with the recent population consolidation. I don’t believe the player pools are large enough to promote healthy competition. I also believe there are simply far too many bugs remaining for you to be able to provide a consistent and fair field of play. And without that consistency, the ratings will be meaningless. Games will instead be decided by chance. I believe this will eventually lead to several new threads appearing on the general forums when players run across these issues on live and it begins to affect their ratings.

 

Fix these first:

-respawning dead in respawn area

-players not showing up in ops frames

-players showing up as disconnected in ops frames

-op leaders not able to queue groups

-respawn shield timer skipping opening

-players being stuck in midair

-net code latency (players not where they appear to be on screen)

-combat delays

-camera view (poor movement, environment collisions, etc.)

-GCDs going off without firing off skills when keyed

-resolve breaks not triggering when active/available and keyed

-disconnects and/or CTDs

-dozen+ more

 

Ranked matches would be nice but I would happily exchange them for the items below:

 

1. The ability to queue as a group of 2-8 in ranked and unranked.

2. The group above carrying over and not being disbanded after every match.

3. Not having to ask everyone in the group above to drop queue so we could re-queue after every match.

4. The leader of the group above remaining the ops group leader while in and after the match.

5. Everyone in the group above showing up in the ops frames.

6. An easily visible targeting reticule that I do not have to lower graphic settings to see.

7. A better targeting system.

8. A proactive instead of reactive resolve system.

9. More maps. (different huttball arenas?)

10. OWPVP with valor/comm incentives.

 

Proactive Resolve System

What does this mean? I would like more control over my own CC immunity rather than relying on outside events to fill my resolve bar. I would prefer to fill my resolve bar immediately when I use my CC break thus granting me immunity when I choose it. Not when outside factors dictate it. More player control is always good.

 

Crowd Control

All debuffs that impede normal player movement should be subject to diminishing returns. This includes snares and/or other momentary skills/animations that remove character mobility from the hands of the player. Loss of character control in PVP, no matter what form that loss may take, can be frustrating. What is the difference between being chain-stunned twice in a row and suffering a coordinated chain-leap/charge by 3-4 different players? None. Both lock the player down for the same amount of time.

 

Net Coding

There is a serious discrepancy in what a player perceives on their screen and what is actually happening around them. The server/client synchronization needs significant improvement. There are many times when you may knockback or push an opposing player away from an objective only to see them being pushed towards it 2 seconds later. This is not acceptable. Random teleports around arenas are also a common occurrence in matches.

 

Respawn Area Shield Timer

Why does this shield even exist? There are numerous times when the timer for the shield simply misses and/or skips an opening and strands multiple players behind it. You can see it quite regularly with notices of the “Deserter Warning” text popping up on your screen and occasionally leading to you being kicked out of a warzone match completely. Why are you telling me to please exit the respawn area when it is your very own shield mechanic that is preventing me from doing just that? Why not simply add the timer on death and simply not allow you to select the respawn button until it expires? This is the same mechanic you use in-game for PVE area respawns. At least I know that when I key to respawn I will immediately be able to run out of the respawn area. You could then remove the shield mechanic completely.

 

1.3 Going Live On June 26

I believe there are many items of higher priority than ranked warzones. It would be far more beneficial to spend time addressing these items first as they affect far more people and far more aspects of the game.

 

For example, people’s augments going missing upon transfer to PTS for 1.3 testing. Has this been fixed yet? Will I log in on June 26 and still see all my augments in their augment slots? I definitely will not be the first person to log in on June 26 to test it out, that’s for sure.

 

There are more points I could touch on but I think this is long enough already.

 

TLDR

Insufficient testing and no open two-way constructive dialogue with your playerbase leads to... ?

 

Dayyyum, this is the post of the month right here. I'm sure they ignored it on the PT forums as well.

 

5 Stars.

[DarthSabreth]

I will post the same feedback I posted on the PTS forums pre 1.3 which have since been wiped. In answer to the OP: I have not seen the changes to several key issues surrounding PVP that I brought up in my feedback which would make me change my decision to not participate in rwzs. And now the PTS has since been taken down completely.

 

PTS 1.3 Feedback

The following are only my own opinions.

 

Communication

I believe that you need to open up some sort of dialogue with the PVP community. The lack of communication of the RWZ testing events has yielded almost zero useful feedback. You have the technology already of displaying patch notes and/or maintenance updates on the game client start. Announce the testing events this way as well instead of through a forum post. Some people do not use the forums. On that note, some people do not use facebook or twitter either. Social media is not the most efficient method of reaching your playerbase. Posting information on-screen at the client login is.

 

Surveys or polls at client login as well may yield more useful feedback than the forums as it would reach far more players. Open up dialogue with competent PVP players and guilds in regards to game mechanics. Some of your playerbase spends many more hours playing your game than you do. It is a waste to not tap into this resource and their experience.

 

Metrics

Stop saying metrics in your public PR interviews. Stop relying on metrics to make design decisions for your developers. Larry Mellon does not know everything despite what you may have been told.

 

Metrics is a useful tool but it must be tempered with experience and feedback. It should not be the driving force in your design. In fact, you should all purchase air horns and use them every time somebody brings up “metrics” in your team meetings. After several weeks of this air horn use, your entire team should develop a subconscious aversion to that terrible term. They may also become deaf by this time but I believe the sacrifice will be worth it. The silence may rekindle their creativity in their game design approach and stop their reliance on that “term that shall not be named”.

 

The fact that such and such particular class is under/over achieving some predetermined number on a spreadsheet and/or graph means nothing to most of your players. Games are created for entertainment. The driving force in your design should be the word “fun”. Say it with me…. fun. It’s a good word don’t be afraid of it. You can’t measure fun with metrics. Instead try asking yourselves: “Is this class/role fun to play?”

 

Balance

While were on this topic, let’s bring up balance as well. Trying to balance classes is futile. The only way to have true balance is to have one single class. You do not have that.

 

You have different classes that do different things. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some classes will be better suited to doing certain things than other classes will. This notion is understood. So I believe your time may be better used in ensuring that all class roles are engaging and fun to play in their own way.

 

Stop looking to the forums for class balance feedback. Most of the plebs on the forums post random nonsense that only pertains to them. If you want relevant feedback, seek out contact with competent and established PVP guilds and players.

 

It would also behoove you to implement different skill mechanics for both PVE and PVP. This would be a large undertaking but in this way you can make changes to one aspect of gameplay without interfering with the other.

 

PTS Transfers

As with 1.2, there is a serious lack of participation in RWZ events on the PTS. You have the transfer technology already from the mergers/server consolidations. Use it for the PTS as well. Is there no way to designate the PTS as a destination server and allow a few select PVP servers to become origin servers? And instead of a transfer mechanic, it should only create a copy of the character to the PTS without removing it from the origin server. Make an announcement on the client login page so players/guilds actually see it.

 

And fix augments being lost on transfer. Relevant feedback requires actual testing under optimal conditions as they would exist on live. (EDIT: this was not fixed even though it was reported multiple times and caused augment slots to revert to mk-1 which then had to be patched post-update)

 

Ranked Announcement

I read Gabe’s announcement on 1.3 RWZs. It seems like you’re already committed to implementing them with 1.3 when it goes live.

 

Here is the link to Gabe’s Blog: (which has since been edited)

http://www.swtor.com/blog/team-ranke...ame-update-1.3

 

Do you really believe they are ready for live even in preseason form?

 

I don’t. I don’t believe they will be viable without cross-server queues even with the recent population consolidation. I don’t believe the player pools are large enough to promote healthy competition. I also believe there are simply far too many bugs remaining for you to be able to provide a consistent and fair field of play. And without that consistency, the ratings will be meaningless. Games will instead be decided by chance. I believe this will eventually lead to several new threads appearing on the general forums when players run across these issues on live and it begins to affect their ratings.

 

Fix these first:

-respawning dead in respawn area

-players not showing up in ops frames

-players showing up as disconnected in ops frames

-op leaders not able to queue groups

-respawn shield timer skipping opening

-players being stuck in midair

-net code latency (players not where they appear to be on screen)

-combat delays

-camera view (poor movement, environment collisions, etc.)

-GCDs going off without firing off skills when keyed

-resolve breaks not triggering when active/available and keyed

-disconnects and/or CTDs

-dozen+ more

 

Ranked matches would be nice but I would happily exchange them for the items below:

 

1. The ability to queue as a group of 2-8 in ranked and unranked.

2. The group above carrying over and not being disbanded after every match.

3. Not having to ask everyone in the group above to drop queue so we could re-queue after every match.

4. The leader of the group above remaining the ops group leader while in and after the match.

5. Everyone in the group above showing up in the ops frames.

6. An easily visible targeting reticule that I do not have to lower graphic settings to see.

7. A better targeting system.

8. A proactive instead of reactive resolve system.

9. More maps. (different huttball arenas?)

10. OWPVP with valor/comm incentives.

 

Proactive Resolve System

What does this mean? I would like more control over my own CC immunity rather than relying on outside events to fill my resolve bar. I would prefer to fill my resolve bar immediately when I use my CC break thus granting me immunity when I choose it. Not when outside factors dictate it. More player control is always good.

 

Crowd Control

All debuffs that impede normal player movement should be subject to diminishing returns. This includes snares and/or other momentary skills/animations that remove character mobility from the hands of the player. Loss of character control in PVP, no matter what form that loss may take, can be frustrating. What is the difference between being chain-stunned twice in a row and suffering a coordinated chain-leap/charge by 3-4 different players? None. Both lock the player down for the same amount of time.

 

Net Coding

There is a serious discrepancy in what a player perceives on their screen and what is actually happening around them. The server/client synchronization needs significant improvement. There are many times when you may knockback or push an opposing player away from an objective only to see them being pushed towards it 2 seconds later. This is not acceptable. Random teleports around arenas are also a common occurrence in matches.

 

Respawn Area Shield Timer

Why does this shield even exist? There are numerous times when the timer for the shield simply misses and/or skips an opening and strands multiple players behind it. You can see it quite regularly with notices of the “Deserter Warning” text popping up on your screen and occasionally leading to you being kicked out of a warzone match completely. Why are you telling me to please exit the respawn area when it is your very own shield mechanic that is preventing me from doing just that? Why not simply add the timer on death and simply not allow you to select the respawn button until it expires? This is the same mechanic you use in-game for PVE area respawns. At least I know that when I key to respawn I will immediately be able to run out of the respawn area. You could then remove the shield mechanic completely.

 

1.3 Going Live On June 26

I believe there are many items of higher priority than ranked warzones. It would be far more beneficial to spend time addressing these items first as they affect far more people and far more aspects of the game.

 

For example, people’s augments going missing upon transfer to PTS for 1.3 testing. Has this been fixed yet? Will I log in on June 26 and still see all my augments in their augment slots? I definitely will not be the first person to log in on June 26 to test it out, that’s for sure.

 

There are more points I could touch on but I think this is long enough already.

 

TLDR

Insufficient testing and no open two-way constructive dialogue with your playerbase leads to... ?

 

I think this was a great post and agree on everything except this:

1. The ability to queue as a group of 2-8 in ranked and unranked

there is no reason to steam roll over pugs. if players need a 8 man premade to win a pug then they are pretty lousy players.

Edited August 8, 2012 by DarthSabreth

[JaerunSaway]

Ranked Warzones failed because they were not implemented in 1.2 and as cross-server from the start. An ELO rating system works only if you have a sufficient population to support it. I don't know that any server has this at the moment. Maybe you think yours does.

 

The life span of a PVP guild in any game is to show up, dominate for a time, declare they've won the game, and move on to another game. I'm not judging here, a PvPer looks for a challenge, and when he no longer finds one, he moves on -- why stay if it isn't fun anymore.

 

This game had a healthy population pre-1.2, with a good buzz about the new operation and the ranked warzones coming. Then ranked warzones get dropped from the patch, the operaton doesn't come in nightmare mode, within 2 days hardmode EC had been beat in both 8 & 16man settings, within three weeks most servers had at least one guild doing so, and in the intervening 2.5 months -- as summer starts and people begin traveling -- people got bored, tried out new games (D3, etc.), moved on.

 

By the time 1.3 rolled around a significant chunk of the population had moved on.

 

Using Jung Ma as an example, by the time 1.3 launched we had 1 good guild in its prime left. A second popped on for a bit with server transfers, but then transferred back out to Bastion. A few republic folks made a go of forming a team, but whether due to gear gaps, communication or class composition, they didn't cut it, and what was left was several decent teams who could manage against one another, but didn't hold a candle to the big boys.

 

You're left with one team in the 2k-2200 range going up in rankings painfully slowly. a bunch of teams in the 1200-1600 rankings that can't get higher because they eventually draw the 2200 team and get beat down. For ranked warzones to have worked, Bioware needed to pool the entire talent pool and make it a world-wide cross-server competition. Rankings would have had meaning, the best teams would have other best teams to face, the pugs would have other pugs to face, and decent guilds would have similarly situated teams to face.

 

Why don't I play ranked warzones? as a sage, 1) operative healers and vanguard/shadow/sentinel dps are preferred; 2) any guild I join to do ranked wzs will have at least 5 other sages competing for 1-2 spots on a ranked team, and 3) by the time i level and gear a vanguard/shadow the game will have changed.

 

Put another way: My PVP friends quit. my PVE friends don't PVP competitively, and it's too much effort to start over~ In fairness I did try to start over a couple of times only to have people quit or transfer to Bastion. So now I'm waiting for the next round of server merges, until the inevitable loss of my character names, which at this point may be the deathknell to my interest in this game.

[Sock_Bramson]

Just gonna reply to pan's post about there supposedly being only 1 viable group comp:

 

You do not "need" to stack certain classes to be successful. In fact, having too many maras/PTs/whatever class the typical forum goer can't seem to cope with is often counter-productive. The key to a good rated team is having a variety of classes.

 

Our guild's fortunate enough to have great players of all the classes. We do not only queue with one A-team; we take whoever's available as long as we have a good mix of classes/specs. Yes, we often have a PT, but we do fine with just one, 2 at the most. We have 1 mara most of the time for delicious predation purposes, but we can be and are still able to do well if he's not available. Our guild leader is a smash jug and usually plays every night, but not always. We also have a fantastic vengeance jug who we regularly use, but we don't have to stop everything if he's not able to play. We have 4 fantastic sins of various specs to choose from. We usually use 1-2 of them, but last night we had a blast with 3 of them in the mix.

 

As far as healers go, I usually bring my sorc, while the other slot is filled by one of our 3 awesome Ops. However, I don't play every night (recently got Skyrim, play too much of it), and we have another great sorc healer. We do well with 2 sorcs, 2 Ops, or 1 of each. Plus, the Ops either have dps alts or are able to rock out as Concealment. We also have a great merc healer, but he hasn't been able to get on during ranked time recently. (at least that I've seen)

 

Depending on who's on, we'll make use of some solid sorc dps, a sniper, or basically any other dps online at the time.

 

Long story short, it's all about the person behind the keyboard. We're lucky enough to have (imo) the finest selection of pvpers from Dreshdae Cantina at our disposal, so we're able to get a good rated team going almost every day. So, stick with it, make some friends, and enjoy.

 

-Hedley Melange <Physics>, Dreshdae-->The Shadowlands-

[Bethmora]

It seemed that everyone was disappointed when ranked matches were left out of 1.2, but now that they are here with 1.3 there does not seem to be too many of them happening at least not on my server (Bergeren Colony).

 

The reason I don't participate in them is because I cannot find people that want to, their reasons vary, so I wanted to ask the general PvP populace.

 

Why aren't you playing ranked PvP matches?

 

If you are I don't really want to know, but it seems like few are.

 

Because no one wants a full WH Operative thats does over 300k damage and objectives, that would be a start for me. Also I never see anyone looking for ranked wz anymore so i dont think its all that anymore.

 

It needs to be solo ranked, whats the point of showing kills and or MVP votes?

[KShafe]

i don't play much

( and i would... ) because you can't simply go into a queue and PUG.. it requires a set group... just not likely to take off in current fomat.

 

I realize that the idea of the Rankd WZ is to create good teams, and the idea of PUG'ing is not really the same thing, but there isn't real interest otherwise, especially considering that there are far more players that truly have NO CLUE how to pvp as a team... Its amazing how many do nothing to try to accomplish the objectives nor to work as a team... they just view it as a giant 'Team Deathmatch' which its not.. so, to play RWZ with a bunch of people that have no clue to how play in the first place really isnt a lot of fun.. i konw that it's a contradiction in itself, but to build a team ( because that's the only way to go into RWZ ) and then to find out that there are several who have no business playing pvp and don't do anything to improve is beyond frustrating.

 

they need to have an option at the end of the standard wz to "form group for rankd war zones" ( very similar to how Halo's Multiplayer works... ) and that way people could try to PUG first, and then if a good group is formed, they can try to stay together and go ranked.. that way, also, they can vote or kick out players that don't belong.

 

If the above option is able to be implemented, then Ranked War Zones would take off.... IMO

[Theodulus]

I mostly PUG and the 4 rwz matches I played I only had one close game that we still lost. It didn't matter because it was fun. The other 3 warzones we were basically 3-capped and camped at the spawn. Since I got less rwz comms from such losses than I got from a loss in normal solo queued warzone I simply didn't see any point getting steamrolled.

 

I'm sure Bioware's metrics show that most people trying out rwz go back to normal wz. I'm guessing their conclusions why are wrong though since they removed the solo queue and x-server text from the pvp window in-game. I guess they need to focus on cartel coins now.

[Zemn]

I'll admit, I didn't read all 40 pages of this thread. Do we have any reliable information regarding ranked groups in sizes smaller than 8? I thought for sure I saw something about 4 man ranked groups coming soon. Maybe I'm on crack, but 4 man seems so much more manageable and less time consuming to form.

[Roiz]

I do not play ranked and won't try them anymore because they are actually broken. Queue time are very long even on the most populated European PvP server. Gear grind is rediculious, to do descent RWZ you need full augmented WH gear.

 

Why the hell i have to spend 3 weeks leveling and two months grinding gear just to be able to participate in RWZ?

[Zemn]

Besides a full set of WH gear, is there anything really worth earning with ranked comms? If not then ranked seems like a waste if getting a match going is as hard as people are claiming. It seems like a catch-22. Getting WH gear is a pain through regular WZ's, but to participate in ranked WZ's people want you to already have all your WH stuff?

[SwordofSodan]

I will post the same feedback I posted on the PTS forums pre 1.3 which have since been wiped. In answer to the OP: I have not seen the changes to several key issues surrounding PVP that I brought up in my feedback which would make me change my decision to not participate in rwzs. And now the PTS has since been taken down completely.

 

PTS 1.3 Feedback

The following are only my own opinions.

 

Communication

I believe that you need to open up some sort of dialogue with the PVP community. The lack of communication of the RWZ testing events has yielded almost zero useful feedback. You have the technology already of displaying patch notes and/or maintenance updates on the game client start. Announce the testing events this way as well instead of through a forum post. Some people do not use the forums. On that note, some people do not use facebook or twitter either. Social media is not the most efficient method of reaching your playerbase. Posting information on-screen at the client login is.

 

Surveys or polls at client login as well may yield more useful feedback than the forums as it would reach far more players. Open up dialogue with competent PVP players and guilds in regards to game mechanics. Some of your playerbase spends many more hours playing your game than you do. It is a waste to not tap into this resource and their experience.

 

Metrics

Stop saying metrics in your public PR interviews. Stop relying on metrics to make design decisions for your developers. Larry Mellon does not know everything despite what you may have been told.

 

Metrics is a useful tool but it must be tempered with experience and feedback. It should not be the driving force in your design. In fact, you should all purchase air horns and use them every time somebody brings up “metrics” in your team meetings. After several weeks of this air horn use, your entire team should develop a subconscious aversion to that terrible term. They may also become deaf by this time but I believe the sacrifice will be worth it. The silence may rekindle their creativity in their game design approach and stop their reliance on that “term that shall not be named”.

 

The fact that such and such particular class is under/over achieving some predetermined number on a spreadsheet and/or graph means nothing to most of your players. Games are created for entertainment. The driving force in your design should be the word “fun”. Say it with me…. fun. It’s a good word don’t be afraid of it. You can’t measure fun with metrics. Instead try asking yourselves: “Is this class/role fun to play?”

 

Balance

While were on this topic, let’s bring up balance as well. Trying to balance classes is futile. The only way to have true balance is to have one single class. You do not have that.

 

You have different classes that do different things. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some classes will be better suited to doing certain things than other classes will. This notion is understood. So I believe your time may be better used in ensuring that all class roles are engaging and fun to play in their own way.

 

Stop looking to the forums for class balance feedback. Most of the plebs on the forums post random nonsense that only pertains to them. If you want relevant feedback, seek out contact with competent and established PVP guilds and players.

 

It would also behoove you to implement different skill mechanics for both PVE and PVP. This would be a large undertaking but in this way you can make changes to one aspect of gameplay without interfering with the other.

 

PTS Transfers

As with 1.2, there is a serious lack of participation in RWZ events on the PTS. You have the transfer technology already from the mergers/server consolidations. Use it for the PTS as well. Is there no way to designate the PTS as a destination server and allow a few select PVP servers to become origin servers? And instead of a transfer mechanic, it should only create a copy of the character to the PTS without removing it from the origin server. Make an announcement on the client login page so players/guilds actually see it.

 

And fix augments being lost on transfer. Relevant feedback requires actual testing under optimal conditions as they would exist on live. (EDIT: this was not fixed even though it was reported multiple times and caused augment slots to revert to mk-1 which then had to be patched post-update)

 

Ranked Announcement

I read Gabe’s announcement on 1.3 RWZs. It seems like you’re already committed to implementing them with 1.3 when it goes live.

 

Here is the link to Gabe’s Blog: (which has since been edited)

http://www.swtor.com/blog/team-ranke...ame-update-1.3

 

Do you really believe they are ready for live even in preseason form?

 

I don’t. I don’t believe they will be viable without cross-server queues even with the recent population consolidation. I don’t believe the player pools are large enough to promote healthy competition. I also believe there are simply far too many bugs remaining for you to be able to provide a consistent and fair field of play. And without that consistency, the ratings will be meaningless. Games will instead be decided by chance. I believe this will eventually lead to several new threads appearing on the general forums when players run across these issues on live and it begins to affect their ratings.

 

Fix these first:

-respawning dead in respawn area

-players not showing up in ops frames

-players showing up as disconnected in ops frames

-op leaders not able to queue groups

-respawn shield timer skipping opening

-players being stuck in midair

-net code latency (players not where they appear to be on screen)

-combat delays

-camera view (poor movement, environment collisions, etc.)

-GCDs going off without firing off skills when keyed

-resolve breaks not triggering when active/available and keyed

-disconnects and/or CTDs

-dozen+ more

 

Ranked matches would be nice but I would happily exchange them for the items below:

 

1. The ability to queue as a group of 2-8 in ranked and unranked.

2. The group above carrying over and not being disbanded after every match.

3. Not having to ask everyone in the group above to drop queue so we could re-queue after every match.

4. The leader of the group above remaining the ops group leader while in and after the match.

5. Everyone in the group above showing up in the ops frames.

6. An easily visible targeting reticule that I do not have to lower graphic settings to see.

7. A better targeting system.

8. A proactive instead of reactive resolve system.

9. More maps. (different huttball arenas?)

10. OWPVP with valor/comm incentives.

 

Proactive Resolve System

What does this mean? I would like more control over my own CC immunity rather than relying on outside events to fill my resolve bar. I would prefer to fill my resolve bar immediately when I use my CC break thus granting me immunity when I choose it. Not when outside factors dictate it. More player control is always good.

 

Crowd Control

All debuffs that impede normal player movement should be subject to diminishing returns. This includes snares and/or other momentary skills/animations that remove character mobility from the hands of the player. Loss of character control in PVP, no matter what form that loss may take, can be frustrating. What is the difference between being chain-stunned twice in a row and suffering a coordinated chain-leap/charge by 3-4 different players? None. Both lock the player down for the same amount of time.

 

Net Coding

There is a serious discrepancy in what a player perceives on their screen and what is actually happening around them. The server/client synchronization needs significant improvement. There are many times when you may knockback or push an opposing player away from an objective only to see them being pushed towards it 2 seconds later. This is not acceptable. Random teleports around arenas are also a common occurrence in matches.

 

Respawn Area Shield Timer

Why does this shield even exist? There are numerous times when the timer for the shield simply misses and/or skips an opening and strands multiple players behind it. You can see it quite regularly with notices of the “Deserter Warning” text popping up on your screen and occasionally leading to you being kicked out of a warzone match completely. Why are you telling me to please exit the respawn area when it is your very own shield mechanic that is preventing me from doing just that? Why not simply add the timer on death and simply not allow you to select the respawn button until it expires? This is the same mechanic you use in-game for PVE area respawns. At least I know that when I key to respawn I will immediately be able to run out of the respawn area. You could then remove the shield mechanic completely.

 

1.3 Going Live On June 26

I believe there are many items of higher priority than ranked warzones. It would be far more beneficial to spend time addressing these items first as they affect far more people and far more aspects of the game.

 

For example, people’s augments going missing upon transfer to PTS for 1.3 testing. Has this been fixed yet? Will I log in on June 26 and still see all my augments in their augment slots? I definitely will not be the first person to log in on June 26 to test it out, that’s for sure.

 

There are more points I could touch on but I think this is long enough already.

 

TLDR

Insufficient testing and no open two-way constructive dialogue with your playerbase leads to... ?

Great post except for: "The ability to queue as a group of 2-8 in ranked and unranked" *** were you thinking here? Pugs already get stomped by pre-mades and pvp is suffering because of it so why make it worse? There are far more people pugging than there are people doing pre-mades. Such a change like this would kill pvp all together in this game. After such a idiotic suggestion it's almost difficult to take you seriously.

[Trimethicon]

Quite simply I prefer to solo queue. I have small children and an active house, I need to be flexible in my schedule.

[Nullmatrix]

It seemed that everyone was disappointed when ranked matches were left out of 1.2, but now that they are here with 1.3 there does not seem to be too many of them happening at least not on my server (Bergeren Colony).

 

The reason I don't participate in them is because I cannot find people that want to, their reasons vary, so I wanted to ask the general PvP populace.

 

Why aren't you playing ranked PvP matches?

 

If you are I don't really want to know, but it seems like few are.

 

can solo queue so i don't

[darknagashadow]

this is what happened on Jung Ma as well as several other servers where i have buddies

 

too many excuses here the reason RWZ are unpopular is because people are used to getting together on vent with several friends and just facerolling random uncoordinated pugs, with a halfway decent team talking on vent you will win 95% of your normal warzone games. these same people thought that since they won 95% of their games, that they actually had real skill at the game. these same people got RWZ teams together, and won about 30-40% of their games, this got them incredibly pissed, their ego's wouldn't let them believe that they deserved these losses so they quit and made the following excuses:

 

FOTM(every single AC is effective in RWZ.)

(sorc heals are common, and i've also seen madness lightning hybrids used effectively)

(assassins are very common, almost every group has one)

(operatives are the best healers in the game)

(mercenary heals are common, their pyrotech spec is also very viable in ranked)

(marauders are very common almost every group has one)

(powertechs are very common almost every group has one)

(Juggernauts are common, Rage tree is very good pressure, intercede is a game changing ability in huttball, Rage-immortal hybrids put out crazy damage while doing great protection)

(marksmanship sniper is common and very effective if used correctly)

 

FOTM did not kill RWZ every AC has at least one spec(usually two) that are effective in RWZ, if you are losing in RWZ it is NOT because of your class, it is because of your teams skill level only.

 

hacking/exploiting(although they do exist this game has the fewest hackers that I've ever seen, most hacks/exploits i've seen come in regular wz)

 

BW did make some major mistakes, they were

no solo que(this would have increased gear acquisition, opening up a greater part of the player base to RWZ by decreasing grind)

 

no X server(too few teams per server to have enough variety in skill levels to make matches interesting.)

 

terrible rating system(a pug should never play the best team on the server, ever even if they are the only ones queing, the rating system has a grind component to it as well, to an extent it rewards repetition instead of skill)

 

RWZ will always be a minority of the player base, just because you and a couple friends get on and win every game you play every night does not mean you will fare well against competitive teams of 8 that have been playing together for months/years

[Daiyukie]

this is what happened on Jung Ma as well as several other servers where i have buddies

 

too many excuses here the reason RWZ are unpopular is because people are used to getting together on vent with several friends and just facerolling random uncoordinated pugs, with a halfway decent team talking on vent you will win 95% of your normal warzone games. these same people thought that since they won 95% of their games, that they actually had real skill at the game. these same people got RWZ teams together, and won about 30-40% of their games, this got them incredibly pissed, their ego's wouldn't let them believe that they deserved these losses so they quit and made excuses

 

This.