Cross Server confirmed to be on the "back burner". How will Ranked survive?

[Pahomi]

As said in TORWars Podcast #120: Exclusive PvP Interview With Senior Systems Designer, Rob Hinkle

http://torwars.com/2012/12/07/torwars-podcast-120-exclusive-interview-with-senior-systems-designer-rob-hinkle/

 

In my opinion, this is a huge mistake. But I am not surprised, they simply don't have the capability and/or resources to do it. This sadly means that Ranked Warzones will never really take off. Normal warzone queues are OK since the servers are now big, but only 3 or 4 teams per server still play ranked. This number can only decline until Ranked completely dies off.

 

It's a shame really. So many good guilds that reign their servers would have had such epic fights against each other. So many new guilds would join in because the matchmaking system would have actually worked with a bigger player pool (and people would fight against similarly skilled opponents). Season One with proper scoreboards sounded so good, but let's face it, without cross server capability, it will never succeed.

 

I still had hope for PvP since it is so fun to play, and it has so much potential. Too bad BW won't / can't exploit that.

[Kaane]

That is what happens, game under performs and they cut the development staff to bare minimum and now you just get basic BS content updates to keep some of the players happy. They don't care about the hard core pvp crowd.

[ErosGyne]

and the pugs on PVP will continue to be faceroll by premades that dont have any place to go

not fun for pug and not fun for premade

[DarthOvertone]

Well...since players won't have an excuse for not being Full WH anymore, more people should queue for Ranked. While I agree that XServer, and a Matchmaking System for that matter, are absolutely necessary for RWZs, Ranked certainly has the potential to survive since the majority of players can now easily gear up their Mains and Alts to be competitive.

 

Personally, I ran more RWZs last night than NWZs for this very reason. Players on my team that wouldn't normally run Ranked did so because they were able to complete their WH gear set.

[Pvtcarnage]

With no x-server coming they really need to up at least rewards for ranked, what you get for amount of time involved in setting up teams is not even close to worth it.

 

I would prefer 4vs4 or 3vs3 ranked instead.

[Pahomi]

Well...since players won't have an excuse for not being Full WH anymore, more people should queue for Ranked. While I agree that XServer, and a Matchmaking System for that matter, are absolutely necessary for RWZs, Ranked certainly has the potential to survive since the majority of players can now easily gear up their Mains and Alts to be competitive.

 

Personally, I ran more RWZs last night than NWZs for this very reason. Players on my team that wouldn't normally run Ranked did so because they were able to complete their WH gear set.

 

If you think gear is the problem you are very much mistaken. If a new team of full WH geared players try out ranked they will get ripped to shreds. Most nights they would probably only meet the one or two teams over and over again. People are turned off because you don't learn anything when you lose huttball in 2 minutes and get 3 capped. Most of the time not even managing to get a single kill when the other team have 40 - 50 each.

 

Gear is not the issues here. The main problem is that teams can not progress this way. If the matchmaking system would go cross server however, you won't have to worry about facing the same elite team over and over again and could actually grow to be competitive.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Pahomi

[Pvtcarnage]

If you think gear is the problem you are very much mistaken. If a new team of full WH geared players try out ranked they will get ripped to shreds. Most nights they would probably only meet the one or two teams over and over again. People are turned off because you don't learn anything when you lose huttball in 2 minutes and get 3 capped. Most of the time not even managing to get a single kill when the other team have 40 - 50 each.

 

Gear is not the issues here. The main problem is that teams can not progress this way. If the matchmaking system would go cross server however, you won't have to worry about facing the same elite team over and over again and could actually grow to be competitive.

 

I agree, you can't practice 8vs8 anywhere and trying to step into ranked with people that are newer or even good it takes time to build synergy. I'll get flamed for this but I say let 8man teams que regular.

[islander]

They need to allow solo queueing....and 4 man queueing as well.

If they aren't going to increase the population of ranked by cross server, they need to do it by local means.

[Hairyzac]

They can open up transfers to 1 or 2 specific servers who currently have active PvP/ranked communities. This way you can stay on your realm if you want. This is the best and only solution I think atm for people who are on realms where ranked matches are hard to come by. Forcing people to reroll on other servers, however easy some may claim it to be even with WH gear costing regular comms now...just is too much to ask in my opinion of the player base.

[Anastasius]

Hopefully it won't survive. Its a terrible system as it stands, mainly due to the terrible class balance this game suffers from.

[DarthOvertone]

If you think gear is the problem you are very much mistaken.

 

Gear is certainly part of the problem. Before 1.6, three obstacles prevented people from queuing for RWZs on a daily basis; Gear, No Matchmaking, Not Enough Teams Queuing. Post 1.6, #1 of those obstacles has been largely overcome. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I also believe it's possible that #3 will improve. I saw it with my own eyes last night.

 

If a new team of full WH geared players try out ranked they will get ripped to shreds. Most nights they would probably only meet the one or two teams over and over again.

 

This depends largely on how many teams are actually queuing. My Mara joined a team last night for the first time. We plan on making a go at Ranked but know a learning curve is required. The only other team in the RWZ queue was the best Guild on the Server (surprise).

 

Interestingly, we didn't get ripped to shreds at all, except in Huttball which was our first match. While we did lose all of the matches, we almost won half. Small rookie mistakes cost us the victories in the close matches, mistakes which we will smooth out as we queue more often and develop better team chemistry.

 

Now if #3 improves because the majority of players will be geared up, the pool of teams will be larger and we won't be stuck playing the best Guild on the server in every match. That certainly would get tired and old, not just for our team but for the other team too. My Tinfoil Hat is betting that more peeps will in fact give RWZs a shot now that they have Full WH. The gear hurdle is a huge psychological hurdle for most players and now they won't have that excuse anymore.

 

People are turned off because you don't learn anything when you lose huttball in 2 minutes and get 3 capped.

 

This depends on the team and the attitudes of its members. We learned a lot from every single match we played last night. And our performance improved with each match.

 

The main problem is that teams can not progress this way. If the matchmaking system would go cross server however, you won't have to worry about facing the same elite team over and over again and could actually grow to be competitive.

 

XServers aren't necessarily the solution for this. A better solution is a Matchmaking System, and my understanding is that this is actually in the works (per Damion Schubert in his last Q&A). A Matchmaking System would fix this problem better than XServers simply because XServer would still potentially match nub teams against elite teams from other servers.

 

XServers are important to enlarge the pool of RWZ participants. This is mainly for high rated teams that have out performed the teams on their home servers or queue dodge to preserve their high rating. Without a Matchmaking System, even XServer queues won't make much of a difference though.

[fungihoujo]

Problem is- there's no semblance of ELO without a good selection of teams.

 

If it was x-server, you could have a dozen great teams playing only each other, a dozen or so good teams playing each other, and all the pve guilds wanting to have a bit of fun, or put together in general chat RWZ teams would face each other.

 

It would make sense.

 

Right now- it might be better to scrap RWZ entirely, and put an elo system into regular queues so the best teams/players get balanced out.

[cashogy]

cross server is likely never going to happen. not sure what is so complicated about this. you dont design a game for cross server systems -> you dont have cross server systems.

 

the number of these threads is starting to match the number of "nerf mara" threads

[Pahomi]

Gear is certainly part of the problem. Before 1.6, three obstacles prevented people from queuing for RWZs on a daily basis; Gear, No Matchmaking, Not Enough Teams Queuing. Post 1.6, #1 of those obstacles has been largely overcome. Putting my tinfoil hat on, I also believe it's possible that #3 will improve. I saw it with my own eyes last night.

 

 

 

This depends largely on how many teams are actually queuing. My Mara joined a team last night for the first time. We plan on making a go at Ranked but know a learning curve is required. The only other team in the RWZ queue was the best Guild on the Server (surprise).

 

Interestingly, we didn't get ripped to shreds at all, except in Huttball which was our first match. While we did lose all of the matches, we almost won half. Small rookie mistakes cost us the victories in the close matches, mistakes which we will smooth out as we queue more often and develop better team chemistry.

 

Now if #3 improves because the majority of players will be geared up, the pool of teams will be larger and we won't be stuck playing the best Guild on the server in every match. That certainly would get tired and old, not just for our team but for the other team too. My Tinfoil Hat is betting that more peeps will in fact give RWZs a shot now that they have Full WH. The gear hurdle is a huge psychological hurdle for most players and now they won't have that excuse anymore.

 

 

 

This depends on the team and the attitudes of its members. We learned a lot from every single match we played last night. And our performance improved with each match.

 

 

 

XServers aren't necessarily the solution for this. A better solution is a Matchmaking System, and my understanding is that this is actually in the works (per Damion Schubert in his last Q&A). A Matchmaking System would fix this problem better than XServers simply because XServer would still potentially match nub teams against elite teams from other servers.

 

XServers are important to enlarge the pool of RWZ participants. This is mainly for high rated teams that have out performed the teams on their home servers or queue dodge to preserve their high rating. Without a Matchmaking System, even XServer queues won't make much of a difference though.

 

Wow you are really an optimist. I don't really understand how people can be so optimistic after how many times BW let us down. I for one learned my lesson.

 

If you really just started playing ranked and almost won half the games against the server's best team it can only mean that you guys are very good or the server's best are not that good. Usually, if your average pvp-er makes an 8 man team and start queueing for ranked, it goes horribly wrong and they are immediately put off by it.

 

I also don't understand why you think that the number of teams queuing will increase. That's illogical. The numbers of teams queuing can only go down unless something changes. Just because one or two teams on your server decided to try ranked on a random night does not mean anything. Statistically, the trend can only go downwards.

 

Regarding what you said that a matchmaking system will fix everything: There is already a matchmaking system in ranked. But it can not possibly work if it can only pull from three or four teams.

 

Cross server is needed for competitive PvP.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Pahomi

[Kevinor]

Speaking as a PvP Officer from one of the few remaining PvP guilds on ToFN who actually queue for RWZs; I believe this is the single biggest issue facing PvP in this game going forward.

 

Whilst it's probably true that it's the minority of people who want to play RWZs; I can honestly say that it's an incredibly active and profitable minority. Plenty of people in my Guild are splashing out lots of money on Cartel Coins for sparkly things and doing everything they can to support the game... but the feeling within the Guild is increasingly one of resentment towards BioWare for their treatment of PvPers.

 

In my mind and in the mind of others in my Guild; the biggest single feature that BioWare could implement to breathe new life into PvP and keep the current PvPers subscribing for some time to come is to implement a simple cross-server queueing system. Once they actually have that cross-server queueing system it them becomes almost trivial to allow 4-man and solo queueing for RWZs, and allow competitive games to become the rule rather than the exception.

 

I really hope BioWare are listening and still working on this feature; because I for one am not sure how much longer I'll continue supporting the game if they can't deliver on the promise of RWZs and/or competitive PvP.

 

TL;DR: Some of the bigger and better PvP Guilds are losing interest in the game due to lack of competitive RWZs... and many of the people in those Guilds play more and generate more revenue than the average player.

[Debaucher]

I don't know about the rest of the servers, but on ToFN we have a really nice hardcore PvP community. It was more or less built by earning each others respect from ranked.

 

Being a member of the same guild as Kev i can tell you, judging from the applications that we receive, that people are in fact interested in playing ranked. Probably more people than you think. However the whole PvP system is so broken its hard to play properly for plenty of reasons.

 

Perhaps Bioware thought that the story and eaz mode pve would be enough to maintain a profiting population. Apparently they were wrong. As for more teams getting formed now that the gear gas has been practically eliminated. Doubt its gonna work sadly. It takes time and effort to set up a team that might be competitive and, i am sorry to say that, by the time we understand theres a green group q'd we are gonna join the q really fast. Aiming not to roflstomp them, but to fulfill the sole purpose of our guild, which is ranked, hoping for a tough game.

 

TL;DR: PvP needs Ranked in order to survive according to all those premade posts and Ranked need X-Server to survive. Perhaps a reset of the ratings as well. Sure new non elite teams will get stomped for one or two days, but eventually every team will end up where it should be, providing games versus players of the same skill/gear.

[Vladnar]

Ranked Warzones to moved to the pug system, but you will need 3 pieces of Epic (150) and rest all WH (146) to be able to put your name down.

[Smashbrother]

As said in TORWars Podcast #120: Exclusive PvP Interview With Senior Systems Designer, Rob Hinkle

http://torwars.com/2012/12/07/torwars-podcast-120-exclusive-interview-with-senior-systems-designer-rob-hinkle/

 

In my opinion, this is a huge mistake. But I am not surprised, they simply don't have the capability and/or resources to do it. This sadly means that Ranked Warzones will never really take off. Normal warzone queues are OK since the servers are now big, but only 3 or 4 teams per server still play ranked. This number can only decline until Ranked completely dies off.

 

It's a shame really. So many good guilds that reign their servers would have had such epic fights against each other. So many new guilds would join in because the matchmaking system would have actually worked with a bigger player pool (and people would fight against similarly skilled opponents). Season One with proper scoreboards sounded so good, but let's face it, without cross server capability, it will never succeed.

 

I still had hope for PvP since it is so fun to play, and it has so much potential. Too bad BW won't / can't exploit that.

 

I'm pretty sure I heard in that podcast they were thinking about changing up the group sizes for RWZ when season 1 comes out, to allow more people to Q.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Smashbrother

[Pahomi]

Thanks to the Coral guys for the input. I agree with you and it's nice to see constructive feedback from players. This is not a hate thread like most of this forum, there are actually lots of people who love PvP in this game and want to see it succeed. Even on the PvE servers, there are lots of warzones going on all the time so there is much interest in PvP.

 

I understand a proper season one with cross server functionality may not be as easy to implement but I'm sure they could do it if they wanted to. I have a feeling that all this was well on their way. If you guys remember, there was that ingame text that said season one will feature cross server and then it was removed without warning. That happened around the same time they decided to go F2P and I have a feeling their resources were cut and this is one of the things that they scrapped. Either way, if they could just add this functionality they would benefit from it greatly. PvP-ers don't burn through content like PvE-ers. We could play the same content for a very very long time without feeling a need for more because our sense of progression comes from getting better and defeating other players and those are always changing, rivalries forming, maybe alliances, new contenders to the throne etc etc. I hope the suits up there realize that adding proper functionality to PvP would be a great investment . Adding new warzone maps from time to time will not solve the core problems.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Pahomi

[Veniras]

You really do believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny it seems.

 

Cross-server is NOT coming.

[Digimanbyte_ID]

As said in TORWars Podcast #120: Exclusive PvP Interview With Senior Systems Designer, Rob Hinkle

http://torwars.com/2012/12/07/torwars-podcast-120-exclusive-interview-with-senior-systems-designer-rob-hinkle/

 

In my opinion, this is a huge mistake. But I am not surprised, they simply don't have the capability and/or resources to do it. This sadly means that Ranked Warzones will never really take off. Normal warzone queues are OK since the servers are now big, but only 3 or 4 teams per server still play ranked. This number can only decline until Ranked completely dies off.

 

It's a shame really. So many good guilds that reign their servers would have had such epic fights against each other. So many new guilds would join in because the matchmaking system would have actually worked with a bigger player pool (and people would fight against similarly skilled opponents). Season One with proper scoreboards sounded so good, but let's face it, without cross server capability, it will never succeed.

 

I still had hope for PvP since it is so fun to play, and it has so much potential. Too bad BW won't / can't exploit that.

 

I think that means queues with premade ranked is going to sky rocket. You either want to be a big fish in a pond or really go up against every team on every server.

 

Personally I would prefer every team on every server. I don't see ranked teams on my server Master D doing any matches.

[Debaucher]

I think that means queues with premade ranked is going to sky rocket. You either want to be a big fish in a pond or really go up against every team on every server.

 

Personally I would prefer every team on every server. I don't see ranked teams on my server Master D doing any matches.

 

I think what most ppl want is to be able to play versus enemies from any European server.

 

Always refreshing to see new faces.

 

It would be awesome if we could get a responce from BW about the future of ranked warzones.

[TheHybris]

PvP-ers don't burn through content like PvE-ers. We could play the same content for a very very long time without feeling a need for more because our sense of progression comes from getting better and defeating other players and those are always changing, rivalries forming, maybe alliances, new contenders to the throne etc etc. I hope the suits up there realize that adding proper functionality to PvP would be a great investment . Adding new warzone maps from time to time will not solve the core problems.

 

I couldn't have said it better.

 

And as an example. Coral was, at the start of the game and until Summer, a hardcore PvE guild. What does it mean? We were burning new content in one week and farming it for months without anything new, which led to players bored leaving the game and not coming back. But the guild didn't die, because who stayed? The minority of us who also enjoyed PvP. Even if we have been playing the same 3, then 4 warzones for a long time, as Pahomi is saying, it's always changing since it is based on people and not on a pre-established setup that will always be the same.

So we turned into a PvP guild and Ranked warzones coming was one of the better improvements of the game so far. The problems came related to other PvP features as gear, resolve or class balance, which I am not going to explain since there are so many topics already out there, but that means PvPers become fed up of being wiped in seconds, smashed, rooted, stunned to death, etc etc. Not only that; after some time where everyone was feeling new to the rwz system some guilds were improving fast and would only really enjoy playing against good contenders, and new guilds were feeling owned by these "old" teams and not keep on queueing because somehow the match making system was not working, or to be more accurate... the pool of teams was too small to make it work.

That brings us to the current situation, in which only a few teams keep playing rwzs, plus some randoms that want to try or to farm commendations. Nothing else. And I can see in our guild the desmotivation in some members if we don't get to play good games against good teams. That's the start of the end for PvPers, and that's why we need cross server queues. So please, take this thread in account, and any others that speak up about the same issue, and you will have PvP population sticking to the game a lot longer.

Edited December 13, 2012 by TheHybris

[Theodulus]

cross server is likely never going to happen. not sure what is so complicated about this. you dont design a game for cross server systems -> you dont have cross server systems.

Which is kind of funny since from a technical viewpoint the hero engine is designed to make instancing and cross server easy to implement.

[funkiestj]

I agree, you can't practice 8vs8 anywhere and trying to step into ranked with people that are newer or even good it takes time to build synergy. I'll get flamed for this but I say let 8man teams que regular.

 

I understand that cross-server is a lot of work, so given the state of the business of SWTOR, I figured cross server was dead. That said, there are several improvements they can make that are probably within their budget:

1. 8-man challenge matches. No commendations or XP for these, just a chance to practice or brag
   
2. an option to not get matched against a team with +-<x> rating than your team's rating.
   

 

Given that #2 might get a lot more teams queuing, queue times would probably be the same or better than what they are now for RWZ. Think of the possibilities: You could agree to silly matches like all sages vs all operatives.

 

#1 would allow 3rd parties to run tournaments, grudge matches and a chance to practice. The development effort required for these features should be minimal

 

I believe that even for casuals, being able to play an 8-man team with everyone in voice chat is more enjoyable than 4-man + pugs, as long as the match is competitive (i.e. casual 8-man is not playing the #1 rated RWZ on the server).

Edited December 13, 2012 by funkiestj