PvP queue is pretty damn awful...

[Neleb]

I think the #1 problem with PvP right now is the group finder. It is absolutely godawful. It doesn't filter classes (once, I was put into a match with 4 powertechs, 2 juggers and 2 assassins!) and doesn't even attempt to balance teams. It is pathetic. Truly, truly woeful. The team with the most luck and the best combination of classes/most class counters wins the match. And the premades! How the flying **** are we supposed to win with a group having mostly recruit gear against four people (most likely with TeamSpeak or other voice comms) in elite war hero gear? Please, do tell me.

 

The first solution I think of is have the game check which skill tree a player has the most points in, and then queue him for that role. That way you at least get a chance, and you aren't cast into the warzone with no healer or, god forbid, no tank. As an alternative, you could just pick your role like in the PvE group finder.

I know it's more complicated than that, and it'll only really work in level 50 PvP, but it's more ideas than the dev team can come up with, that much is obvious. It's impossible to win a warzone when the odds are so stacked against you. It's very rare to get a close game in level 50 PvP - either you steamroll the enemy team, or you don't because of your crappy team composition. I'm not saying player skill should be the only winning factor, hell no - that's for FPSs. But I want it to at least be able to play a part.

 

Another problem with PvP is there are people who just want to complete dailies (I'm thinking of the level 10-49 PvP daily) and don't care about winning. It's bad sport and it's the second root cause (IMO) of bad warzones. Warzone stim farmers as well, in some cases. I can't think of any possible way to fix this one, but could you guys at least try? I play competitively and I feel like I get showered in turds by EAWare every time I get roflstomped by a premade, or lose just because the rest of my group doesn't give a toss.

 

Cheers for reading this through. The changes I spoke of will certainly not repair the current WZ situation as there is so much gear variation and imbalance at level 50 - but it'll help. It will damn well help.

 

EDIT: One more thing to talk about. The fact that I see people doing warzones in TIONESE GEAR when you get recruit-level gear FOR FREE. Didn't get that? FOR. FREE. Is this a red herring, or does this happen more than I think it does?

 

EDIT (21/3): One additional idea. Two WZ queues. One is for casual players, one is for serious PvPers. You can queue in both at the same time. The queue for serious PvPers might be locked so you can only enter as a premade of two or four people. Post comments with thoughts and improvements for this!

Edited March 21, 2013 by Neleb

[Crawelc]

tl:dr Its not a group finder its a que. Which is why people have loved it since launch. Its almost free xp/valor on a damn near instant pop. The fact that the devs were surprised that it was so popular is the mind blowing part.

[cycao]

I don't even know how long it would take for a queue to pop if it took into account what skills each player had. Its working as intended and why I am a fan of the field respec.

[Pistols-GS]

IAnd the premades! How the flying **** are we supposed to win with a group having mostly recruit gear against four people (most likely with TeamSpeak or other voice comms) in elite war hero gear? Please, do tell me.

 

While I don't disagree the match-making system (or lack of one) is needed, I can't help but want to comment on this.

 

Is it written somewhere that I don't know of, that ALL premades are fully EWH geared and will ALWAYS go up against PUG recruit players? Can someone link this for me please?

[Ottoattack]

I believe a dev mentioned before that they want the wait time to be below 30 secs (its usually around that at peak time on the Harbinger). Without cross server ques, it will not be possible to implement a match making system with the current population. Edited March 20, 2013 by Ottoattack

[Neleb]

I believe a dev mentioned before that they want the wait time to be below 30 secs (its usually around that at peak time on the Harbinger). Without cross server ques, it will not be possible to implement a match making system with the current population.

 

I have to wait ~2 minutes to get into a WZ, how will filtering it to get at least 1 of each role into the WZ make any difference?

Let's do the maths here, and let's assume there's a relatively equal population of each class. (which I know for sure there isn't, there's been a surge of juggernauts due to their massive PvP power, that much I know)

Sorcerer - healing/DPS

Mercenary - healing/DPS

Operative - healing/DPS

Powertech - tank/DPS

Juggernaut - tank/DPS

Assassin - tank/DPS

Marauder - DPS

Sniper - DPS

 

So that's three possible healing classes (3/8), two possible tanking classes (3/8) and 8 possible DPS classes (100%.)

How will this make it any harder to queue for warzones? In my opinion, it's worth it if it's going to improve quality.

[Neleb]

While I don't disagree the match-making system (or lack of one) is needed, I can't help but want to comment on this.

 

Is it written somewhere that I don't know of, that ALL premades are fully EWH geared and will ALWAYS go up against PUG recruit players? Can someone link this for me please?

 

I used that as an example, my apologies for not noting it as such. Either way, most premades are sent in from PvP guilds. They know what they're doing and they most likely have some pretty amazing gear.

I was in a warzone the other day. 4 people in our WZ group were from Requiem (Good PvP guild AFAIK), and we had two from Crimson Moon (Popular PvP guild). As soon as we set charges on the door (Voidstar) the enemy started to ragequit in droves. Only one player, a level 50 sentinel, remained. He was slaughtered by 8 people at once as soon as he set foot outside the spawn room while we waited for the warzone to force-exit because there weren't enough people to keep it going.

[Marius_Xerxes]

tl:dr Its not a group finder its a que. Which is why people have loved it since launch. Its almost free xp/valor on a damn near instant pop. The fact that the devs were surprised that it was so popular is the mind blowing part.

 

I don't know why they would be surprised. Warhammer Online has no filters on their scnerio Q's. Since Jeff Hickman did both games, EA owns both Mythic and Bio etc they knew it was a good system already.

 

As for those who want filters, I don't agree. You would be amazed the success that players can find in WZ simply by shaking up their team composition. Shoehorning those teams into a set format just limits the creativity teams can try out. Not to mention how long reg group finder Q's are for DPS players already. Sure tanks and heals can get pops all day, but DPS would have long wait times. It may encourage some to roll tanks and heals, but it would mostly just piss most of those players off.

 

Sure in pugs that means you can (and do) get poor matchups. But hey, it's solo pug Q's. It is what you get.

[foxmob]

While I don't disagree the match-making system (or lack of one) is needed, I can't help but want to comment on this.

 

Is it written somewhere that I don't know of, that ALL premades are fully EWH geared and will ALWAYS go up against PUG recruit players? Can someone link this for me please?

 

no. but the best players do grp together, so at the very least, they ought to be balanced by highly rated or heavily geared opposition. although I have run into premades of multiple ppl in recruit gear. like...really? and you're grp'd with each other? oye.

[Neleb]

I don't know why they would be surprised. Warhammer Online has no filters on their scnerio Q's. Since Jeff Hickman did both games, EA owns both Mythic and Bio etc they knew it was a good system already.

 

As for those who want filters, I don't agree. You would be amazed the success that players can find in WZ simply by shaking up their team composition. Shoehorning those teams into a set format just limits the creativity teams can try out. Not to mention how long reg group finder Q's are for DPS players already. Sure tanks and heals can get pops all day, but DPS would have long wait times. It may encourage some to roll tanks and heals, but it would mostly just piss most of those players off.

 

Sure in pugs that means you can (and do) get poor matchups. But hey, it's solo pug Q's. It is what you get.

 

It doesn't necessarily have to be shoehorning. As I mentioned in my post, it just has to be something as simple as forcing warzones to contain at least one of each role (healing, tanking). You have no idea how boring and frustrating warzones are when you're a healer, the enemy knows how to play, and there's no tank. Vice versa with tank but no healer, though to a slightly lesser extent.

 

And REALLY? We must be penalised for running in solo queues? So just because all the people in my guild are busy, I'll have to wait sometimes even a couple of hours for my guildies to finish what they're doing so I can enter a premade with them? That's pretty messed up. What would you do if there were no people who went solo queue? There's not that many people who go into premades regularly, and I thought you people really, really cared about how long it takes to get into a warzone in the first place.

[Neleb]

no. but the best players do grp together, so at the very least, they ought to be balanced by highly rated or heavily geared opposition. although I have run into premades of multiple ppl in recruit gear. like...really? and you're grp'd with each other? oye.

 

Exactly my point, my friend. What other games do is they balance premade groups with other premade groups. A premade group is generally more coordinated and they know eachother better, and most likely have voice comms. Balancing it over with another premade of similar size would certainly help. There's still the random gear and skill element to contend with, however. That's the problem we face right now and I'd like some more input on that matter from the community.

[foxmob]

you people

 

it starts....

 

[Neleb]

tl:dr Its not a group finder its a que. Which is why people have loved it since launch. Its almost free xp/valor on a damn near instant pop. The fact that the devs were surprised that it was so popular is the mind blowing part.

 

But there's still the problem for competitive players. Being roflstomped just because you were unlucky in the queue is no fun AT ALL and it's a colossal waste of time. Why play PvP if you're not competitive? If you don't play to win, why do you play PvP at all? Some people are missing the point.

So, is it the cool armor? The titles? The Longspur Recon? As you put it, it's most likely the "free xp/valor" which brings the most uncompetitive people into warzones and it is truly deplorable. Why play a blatantly competitive game when you couldn't give a **** about winning? For the free XP/valor even if you lose, of course.

[MidichIorian]

I don't even know how long it would take for a queue to pop if it took into account what skills each player had. Its working as intended and why I am a fan of the field respec.

Probably not as long as some people claim, or atleast not during the more populated hours. The filter could be off between 1 AM and 5 PM to make sure that those hours had reasonable pops too.

 

During primtetime:

1. Healers queue as their role

 

2. Some form of rating, could be as simple as dividing the population into three brackets. After 3 minutes wait without a match it will expand the search one bracket, meaning that the mid bracket can face both higher and lower rated players but the lower bracket will be saved from instantly having to go up against the highest rated players. General rating will be a legacy thing but can be affected of success on individual chars, this to make sure that premades arent screwing over the overall team rating by bringing two top players on new chars.

 

3. No seperate queues for premades. Granted that most premades probably are better than four average pug players BUT I believe that skill disparity is a bigger factor than just the advantage of superior communication in a premade and the ability to bring a healer and both those things should be taken care of by [1] and [2]

 

It will never be optimal until we have one player pool, x-server, with 100K players or so but I believe this would improve the situation. And if you're not willing to wait 3 minutes extra then you're probably not that interested in playing good games either. Personally I've never played a good game that had its' focus on instant pops. Instant pops are for people who, for one or another reason, are more interested in the rewards than actually playing the game.

Edited March 21, 2013 by MidichIorian

[Neleb]

Probably not as long as some people claim, or atleast not during the more populated hours. The filter could be off between 1 AM and 5 PM to make sure that those hours had reasonable pops too.

 

During primtetime:

1. Healers queue as their role

 

2. Some form of rating, could be as simple as dividing the population into three brackets. After 3 minutes wait without a match it will expand the search one bracket, meaning that the mid bracket can face both higher and lower rated players but the lower bracket will be saved from instantly having to go up against the highest rated players. General rating will be a legacy thing but can be affected of success on individual chars, this to make sure that premades arent screwing over the overall team rating by bringing two top players on new chars.

 

3. No seperate queues for premades. Granted that most premades probably are better than four average pug players BUT I believe that skill disparity is a bigger factor than just the advantage of superior communication in a premade and the ability to bring a healer and both those things should be taken care of by [1] and [2]

 

It will never be optimal until we have one player pool, x-server, with 100K players or so but I believe this would improve the situation. And if you're not willing to wait 3 minutes extra then you're probably not that interested in playing good games either. Personally I've never played a good game that had its' focus on instant pops. Instant pops are for people who, for one or another reason, are more interested in the rewards than actually playing the game.

 

 

2. Some form of rating, could be as simple as dividing the population into three brackets. After 3 minutes wait without a match it will expand the search one bracket, meaning that the mid bracket can face both higher and lower rated players but the lower bracket will be saved from instantly having to go up against the highest rated players. General rating will be a legacy thing but can be affected of success on individual chars, this to make sure that premades arent screwing over the overall team rating by bringing two top players on new chars.

 

This one made me think a little bit. Ratings - and especially legacy ratings - would certainly help in terms of balance, but how about taking it one step further? MVP votes would contribute to rating and there could possibly be other methods of player feedback to vote on who was detrimental to the game and who was an asset. This will certainly leave us with less trolls and flamers.

 

Let's examine the LoL rating system. At the end of a game, you can rate someone as:

a) helpful

b) good teamwork

c) friendly

d) honorable opponent (n/a to SWTOR, can't speak to opponents)

 

These stack up and you can get a cosmetic reward. Instead of a cosmetic reward, this could be built on and modified to suit SWTOR and it would affect one's rating.

Now, what this has to do with balance i have noo freakin' idea but I typed a lot so let's leave it in.

 

I'm scared to think that a rating would be set by wins/losses because in the game's current state, you can't really change whether you win or lose... you can only AFK at the spawn room or use guard on your tanks. However, if warzones were more polished in that respect, it would be possible.

 

Overall I'm unsure about a rating system in general, I think the queue should take things into account such as average armor rating PLUS expertise, average DPS in combat, average healing/sec in combat, average damage mitigated/redirected, etc but not in a huge way. I think that if the servers were larger and more people were interested in the competitive side of PvP this would be easier to implement, but for now if it at least judged people based on these following things, the game would be a lot more fair and more fun for all.

a) ONE TANK AND ONE HEALER IN EACH WARZONE! (at least)

b) Premades are matched against other premades, along with PUGs to fill the gaps.

c) Average armor rating is taken into account (and this includes weapon/relic/implant/earpiece rating...)

[Kaedusz]

Didn't read everything but i wanna say that i am satisfied with the pvp queues in this game.It is always short 3,4 min max,even at the late hours of the night.

 

I remember in WoW the pvp queue in 4 am was 3,4 hours if there was any queue at all,and if it was short then it was filled with bot programs.90% of every1 at night was a bot.

 

At this game i don't have any problems.

Edited March 21, 2013 by Kaedusz

[Neleb]

Didn't read everything but i wanna say that i am satisfied with the pvp queues in this game.It is always short 3,4 min max,even at the late hours of the night.

 

I remember in WoW the pvp queue in 4 am was 3,4 hours if there was any queue at all,and if it was short then it was filled with bot programs.90% of every1 at night was a bot.

 

At this game i don't have any problems.

 

If you didn't read all of the OP before commenting, i think you should delete that comment. I've been trying to think of ways that will make PvP fair in most cases without delaying the queue time too much.

[Capt_Beers]

While I don't disagree the match-making system (or lack of one) is needed, I can't help but want to comment on this.

 

Is it written somewhere that I don't know of, that ALL premades are fully EWH geared and will ALWAYS go up against PUG recruit players? Can someone link this for me please?

 

Here ya go.

[LarryRow]

What if the Matchmaker did its best to balance the legacy-wide valor of each team. That's the best, least manipulatable metric I can come up with.

[Atramar]

What if the Matchmaker did its best to balance the legacy-wide valor of each team. That's the best, least manipulatable metric I can come up with.

 

So, in short, the longer you play, the less expierience players you will get in your team.

it's punishing players for playing.

 

think about it. Let's say you are hi-end elite 6h a day pvper. You have highest valor level on your server.

This match making would punish you by adding a low expierienced player to make it equal to other team.

for 4 people ranked 100 (elite war hero BIS augumented), you will get 4 people ranked 20 (recruit with some columi), and other team will have 8 players ranked 60 (War hero, augumented, some EWH).

is it equal? both teams will have rating 480. it should be 'fair and square'

 

Total random que is most fair it can get. You have equal chance to get team of fools or team fighters, AND equal chance to get 50/50. Nothing to exploit.

If, by playing a lot, people will get punished, I see short future of SWTOR pvp.

Edited March 21, 2013 by Atramar

[Neleb]

So, in short, the longer you play, the less expierience players you will get in your team.

it's punishing players for playing.

 

think about it. Let's say you are hi-end elite 6h a day pvper. You have highest valor level on your server.

This match making would punish you by adding a low expierienced player to make it equal to other team.

for 4 people ranked 100 (elite war hero BIS augumented), you will get 4 people ranked 20 (recruit with some columi), and other team will have 8 players ranked 60 (War hero, augumented, some EWH).

is it equal? both teams will have rating 480. it should be 'fair and square'

 

Total random que is most fair it can get. You have equal chance to get team of fools or team fighters, AND equal chance to get 50/50. Nothing to exploit.

If, by playing a lot, people will get punished, I see short future of SWTOR pvp.

 

I fail to see how it punishes players for playing the game. Sure, a coordinated team of ~WH gear will dominate a team of 4 EWHs and 4 recruit-level players, all you have to do is coordinate and focus the recruit level people first. But since this already happens in warzones already, what do we lose? Most games will not be like this, and will be at least relatively balanced.

 

Total random que is most fair it can get. You have equal chance to get team of fools or team fighters, AND equal chance to get 50/50. Nothing to exploit.

 

Just NO.

PvP should not be about getting a lucky team combination. You should have to actually put some effort in to win. This is the problem I've been going on about through this WHOLE thread.

[Neleb]

Here ya go.

 

Five hundred internet points to you, my friend.

[ubermouth]

So, you expect people to respec each wz to play a role? I mean, a skilled payer could respec and play any role on the fly, but you'd also have to be willing.

 

Some what same phenomena happens in <50 flashpoints where a dps/heal class won't heal because they queue'd with the intention of dps'ing, and aren't willing to adjust just to meet the group need. Not quite the same, but similar in that the individual has to be willing.

 

That being said, the wz queue works to throw us all together, but doesn't organize us to reduce luck of good composition.

Alternately, be the change, role tank or healer and pitch in.

 

 

I used that as an example, my apologies for not noting it as such. Either way, most premades are sent in from PvP guilds. They know what they're doing and they most likely have some pretty amazing gear.

I was in a warzone the other day. 4 people in our WZ group were from Requiem (Good PvP guild AFAIK), and we had two from Crimson Moon (Popular PvP guild). As soon as we set charges on the door (Voidstar) the enemy started to ragequit in droves. Only one player, a level 50 sentinel, remained. He was slaughtered by 8 people at once as soon as he set foot outside the spawn room while we waited for the warzone to force-exit because there weren't enough people to keep it going.

[LarryRow]

So, in short, the longer you play, the less expierience players you will get in your team.

it's punishing players for playing.

 

think about it. Let's say you are hi-end elite 6h a day pvper. You have highest valor level on your server.

This match making would punish you by adding a low expierienced player to make it equal to other team.

for 4 people ranked 100 (elite war hero BIS augumented), you will get 4 people ranked 20 (recruit with some columi), and other team will have 8 players ranked 60 (War hero, augumented, some EWH).

is it equal? both teams will have rating 480. it should be 'fair and square'

 

Total random que is most fair it can get. You have equal chance to get team of fools or team fighters, AND equal chance to get 50/50. Nothing to exploit.

If, by playing a lot, people will get punished, I see short future of SWTOR pvp.

 

4 rank 100 players would be pretty rough against a bunch of 60s.

[Atramar]

I fail to see how it punishes players for playing the game. Sure, a coordinated team of ~WH gear will dominate a team of 4 EWHs and 4 recruit-level players, all you have to do is coordinate and focus the recruit level people first. But since this already happens in warzones already, what do we lose? Most games will not be like this, and will be at least relatively balanced.

 

Total random que is most fair it can get. You have equal chance to get team of fools or team fighters, AND equal chance to get 50/50. Nothing to exploit.

 

Just NO.

PvP should not be about getting a lucky team combination. You should have to actually put some effort in to win. This is the problem I've been going on about through this WHOLE thread.

 

It's punishing people who play long by FORCING very little expierienced players in their team for the sole reason that they spent much much time doing pvp.

Why it shouldn't be about luck? Luck is part of a game. Even if perfect match making system will be created (yeah, right, there is nothing that can't be exploited, also 'make something idiot proof, and I will find a bigger idiot' rule), it will still go down to luck of composition of classes (both teams have equal number of tanks,healers and dpses, but team A healers are operatives, dpses are PTs/Marauders,Tanks are juggs, Team B's healers are sorcs/mercs, dpses are mercs and tanks are sins in dps gear).

Curently players on both sides have equal chance. (ofcourse, they can increase their chances by grouping with friends with brains).

 

4 rank 100 players would be pretty rough against a bunch of 60s.

 

I'd rather be in 8x60 team. it's 4x100 against 8x60, with 4(20) people who didn't get grasp of pvp yet and will jsut get in the way.

Edited March 21, 2013 by Atramar