Why The Death of Ranked is a Good Thing

[DarthSabreth]

in my opinion, patch 2.4 is going to make que times almost unbearable, I don't care if they add arenas but atleast try to add cross server pvp ques.

[LingeringDrama]

im not sure i would call ranked warzones "content" its just a grouping system with its own separate rewards. its the same maps.

 

and i do believe i saw some new pvp maps to come, and im told there are new arenas on the public test server.

That. is new content.

 

I'll start off by saying that I've pretty much all but stopped pveing in SWTOR. I do really enjoy the in game events. I level alts through pve content and do the odd flashpoint. Over the last 6 months the ONLY thing that has kept me in game has been watching (TwitchTV streamers) and playing rated pvp... It is content. Taking away 8v8 objective pvp is removing content. You can not argue this point. We are getting 4v4 non-objective team death match arenas in its place. I'm all for adding the arenas... but why should it come at the expense of the current pvp community and don't tell me its a SMALL community... Just check out the SWTOR tab on TwitchTV the bulk of the popular streamers advertise RATED matches. I have numberous friends that don't play in rated pvp but love watching it. At the end of the day I really feel removing this content will only hurt the SWTOR community.

[snave]

I discussed this topic and specifically this particular post on my show yesterday, if you're looking to hear the opinions from some of the key figures in the ranked community.

 

Skip to about 56 minutes for the part directly related to this post, I'd recommend listening to the whole thing if you want to get all the various aspects as to why people aren't happy with the change.

 

https://www.youtube.com/snave1208

 

Show is called: Reality Check Episode 3 - PVP'ERS UNITE!

[Kevinor]

I am not a programmer, so can someone plz explain to me why cross server ques are imposible with the hero engine and if it was then why did BW choose the hero engine to begin with?

 

They're surely not "impossible", but BioWare clearly don't want to invest the resources necessary to implement them.

 

Based on their comments in the past; they made a strategic decision to go for a reduced number of larger servers to make the need for cross-server less obvious and/or immediate. Nothing I've seen makes me believe they've changed that stance.

[Daystarr]

Shinarika, I'm really disappointed in your point of view regarding ranked warzones as I have been an avid fan of your previous work and I would have thought you'd have been for all types of pvp in the game. I know that you have been an advocate of hybrid specs for your Shadow and Sin and would have thought that you'd have been for diversity in the overall state of the game.

 

Regardless, I'm voting this thread a 1 as terrible because in my opinion the death of ranked is NOT a good thing and would only alienate the staggeringly small pvp community that we already have. I love this game and want to see it succeed.

 

I'd like to divert players who share my sentimentality towards Bioware's Reality Check and also for all the Marauders in the community to voice their opinions on post #137 in the marauder class rep question/discussion thread.

[Gren-Aluren]

Well, you admit it is a small community? You are not Bioware's target audience for PvP.

 

This game hit many failures after release and they lack the resources to support a serious competitive PvP environment so they are going for the next best thing. It should be obvious that they are making PvP more accessible to casual players and PvE'ers who like to optionally PvP every now and again. Also the ranked scene has caused their own demise from their rampant exploiting and macro abuse. Bioware doesn't have the resources to fix objective based maps, macro abuse or balance classes around 8v8 (Especially when they allow more then one class or spec to fill a slot on a team.) They most certainly don't have the resources to implement cross server warzones.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Gren-Aluren

[Raazmir]

Nightmare mode operations are a tiny audience too, yet they continue to be released and supported.

[Daystarr]

Well, you admit it is a small community? You are not Bioware's target audience for PvP.

 

Of course it is, but it is not as small as the end game pve progression community which is arguably 30% smaller than the end game pvp community

 

So why keep end game pve when it's not as profitable as end game pvp? I will copy a paragraph from my original post on the marauder class discussion/question thread which further validates my point and question:

 

Since 2.0 my Republic guild, Coral, on Tomb of Freedon Nadd, has faced 34 different guilds. That's just ONE Guild alone on ONE server. According to this thread only 20 guilds across a multitude of servers have attempted end game pve progression since 2.0 (linky spreadsheet).

 

So why remove a feature of the game that is used much more often by the community when it seems to be the biggest return in terms of subscribers?

 

Again, let me reiterate directly from that passage, Coral have faced 34 DIFFERENT guilds in ranked pvp... that's just ONE guild alone on ONE server.

 

So again, why exactly remove a feature that is being used much more according to statistics and numbers? Why can't they remove end game pve and redirect resources to a target audience that is more popular than it's pve counterpart?

[Gren-Aluren]

Most of the people playing end-game PvP are not the people who are complaining about ranked 8v8 being removed. Rank was destroyed by cheaters and poor warzone map design as well as Bioware's ignorance to allow more then one class spec per team slot into a warzone. The ranked community destroyed itself because Bioware lacked the resources to stop you from abusing their ****** PvP implementation.

 

Casual PvPers will be solo queuing. Since it has a role matchmaker it will avoid a lot of issues 8v8 has.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Gren-Aluren

[SEANeD]

It's been said by most pvpers already that leaving ranked battlegrounds with arenas is better than just arenas. Why does bioware need to go out of there way to go against what most people want. Also respecing in warzones will be taken away so it won't be turtle the node hardcore anymore, but as far as peels go teams should be peeling anyway. If you get the node you've earned the right to play defensively. To all the teams complaining about that please explain to me how you lost the node and gave them the opportunity to be able to turtle objectives in the first place. Thats whats fun about ranked. There are arena like moments with actual plays thrown in. How is leaving as is more difficult than taking it out and explaining to everyone why it's not working with pathetic reasons for why it wasn't workin. For every reason bioware said it wasn't working the community solved their problems for them, (cross server queues, ladder system) but they were disregarded.

[Sammennn]

Nightmare mode operations are a tiny audience too, yet they continue to be released and supported.

 

/thread

[SEANeD]

Nightmare mode operations are a tiny audience too, yet they continue to be released and supported.

 

Biowares goal should be to add new content and make old content better for pvp. Every weekly maintenance is fixing a one and a million bug on a fp that no one plays. This is why all pve and rp servers are heavy population, because we'll add so much pve content no one can keep up and we'll make people stop playing so we can fix a flashpoint instead of fixing pvp problems and listening to the community

[Gren-Aluren]

/thread

 

That's a stupid argument, PvE only affects the group who is doing the content and not a mass audience that expects a queue to pop in a reasonable amount of time. There is a reason they don't add 16-mans or nightmare modes to the group finder queue which is the same reason they removed ranked 8v8. They cannot afford to split up their population into dozens of queues. This is also why they are allowing F2P access to non-ranked warzones.

[Sammennn]

That's a stupid argument, PvE only affects the group who is doing the content and not a mass audience that expects a queue to pop in a reasonable amount of time. There is a reason they don't add 16-mans or nightmare modes to the group finder queue which is the same reason they removed ranked 8v8. They cannot afford to split up their population into dozens of queues. This is also why they are allowing F2P access to non-ranked warzones.

 

So many invalid reasons.

 

First of all, what is the difference of having 16 players doing an operation and two 8 man teams in PVP facing each other?

 

You're implying that because we have a AUTOMATED SIGN UP SYSTEM therefore it makes it less unique than nightmare modes. Oh sorry I forgot the community nowadays code the game. Are you even reading what you're saying?

 

You still can't ignore that a lone guild has faced more teams in ranked than what guild has done nightmare mode.

 

So sure, argue about removing ranked warzones. But don't argue that enough players aren't playing it because that is complete utter stupidity and hypocrisy removing X content due to Y but not removing Z content due to the same reason as X.

 

In before Bioware removes ranked content and then apologizes in their blog in a few months that it was a stupid mistake.

 

Feels like deja vu.

[Gren-Aluren]

You still can't ignore that a lone guild has faced more teams in ranked than what guild has done nightmare mode.

 

 

No **** since you can only do operations once a week.

 

You're implying that because we have a AUTOMATED SIGN UP SYSTEM therefore it makes it less unique than nightmare modes. Oh sorry I forgot the community nowadays code the game. Are you even reading what you're saying?

 

Yes. It would be different if 2 teams of 8 can challenge each other directly.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Gren-Aluren

[Arunas]

Shinarika, I'm really disappointed in your point of view regarding ranked warzones as I have been an avid fan of your previous work and I would have thought you'd have been for all types of pvp in the game. I know that you have been an advocate of hybrid specs for your Shadow and Sin and would have thought that you'd have been for diversity in the overall state of the game.

 

Regardless, I'm voting this thread a 1 as terrible because in my opinion the death of ranked is NOT a good thing and would only alienate the staggeringly small pvp community that we already have. I love this game and want to see it succeed.

 

I'd like to divert players who share my sentimentality towards Bioware's Reality Check and also for all the Marauders in the community to voice their opinions on post #137 in the marauder class rep question/discussion thread.

 

Your position is understandable But in reality its not the ranked you want, but the ability to face other pvp guild teams in 8v8 warzone maps. The ranked portion of ranked warzones is a flop with limited participation even on PvP servers anyway so it does not matter. This is exactly why most people do not care about this since rwzs was not something they could do anyway. Reality is that guilds doing rwzs regularly are hardcore and its not a bad thing just it is so niche. This is why there are so little viewers on rwz streams since most people do not watch what does not pertain to them. Its not your fault, rwzs were screwed since beginning by launching with no cross-server so the limited populations of separate servers could not sustain entry-level teams like pugs or casual guilds leaving only hardcore guilds doing rwz regularly.

 

For majority of playerbase the only pvp left then is normal warzones which are very bad experience and alienated a lot of people from pvp with no matchmaking and no role balancing leading to a lot of one-sided or boring games. A lot of people that still do them now quit at the first sign of losing or when their perceive their team to be bad. Since the cross-server seems to be off the table lower scale pvp is the only way to get matchmaking with limited server populations.

 

I personally I am sad that 8v8 queuing is going away. Did not had chance to do much ranked myself, it was exciting even in the old pyro PT FOTM days. Seems like Bioware reworked the queuing system and decided the drop support for ops queing for pvp. I don't remember but I think there is an option to queue as an ops group for operations so the capability still remains in the game in some way so not sure how hard it would be to leave this queing option from technical perspective but I think Bioware wants the rwz community to do the new arenas instead of splitting between them and rwzs. Also from these froums I get the impression that only TOFN guilds feel strongly about rwz removal, and Bioware never cared about EU as much as US so far.

[Sammennn]

No **** since you can only do operations once a week.

 

Implying all guilds who do nightmare mode every week clears it till the end.

 

Also ever heard of progression? When content comes out, you don't simply clear everything in one week bro.

 

Sorry but you're a joke to this community.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Sammennn

[Gren-Aluren]

Implying all guilds who does nightmare mode every week clears it till the end.

 

Also ever heard of progression? When content comes out, you don't simply clear everything in one week bro.

 

Sorry but you're a joke to this community.

 

You aren't making any sense. You said they have played more ranked teams then people have done NiM. Since a majorirty of people can only attempt Operations once or twice a week and that guild could have possibly played ranked many times a day per week, I don't see how you can even make the comparison.

 

Comparing the removal of 8v8 ranked to the removal of an operation is just plain illogical and stupid.

Edited August 18, 2013 by Gren-Aluren

[Daystarr]

No **** since you can only do operations once a week.

 

 

 

Yes. It would be different if 2 teams of 8 can challenge each other directly.

 

I don't think you're grasping the concept of our argument, but by using your logic then surely ranked warzones are better for the community as a whole for the pure and simple fact that there are no lockouts for ranked as opposed to its end game pve counterpart????? Derp, what a silly arguement.

 

The fact that ranked is by far more popular than NiM operations, require less work (less development and testing time) should be enough for the developers of the game to go "well it's less work, we get more subscribers in the long run and we keep the community happy by not removing featured content that's been in the game for over a year."

[Gren-Aluren]

I don't think you're grasping the concept of our argument, but by using your logic then surely ranked warzones are better for the community as a whole for the pure and simple fact that there are no lockouts for ranked as opposed to its end game pve counterpart????? Derp, what a silly arguement.

 

The fact that ranked is by far more popular than NiM operations, require less work (less development and testing time) should be enough for the developers of the game to go "well it's less work, we get more subscribers in the long run and we keep the community happy by not removing featured content that's been in the game for over a year."

 

No. They need you to queue for 4v4 or leave the game.

[Daystarr]

Your position is understandable But in reality its not the ranked you want, but the ability to face other pvp guild teams in 8v8 warzone maps. The ranked portion of ranked warzones is a flop with limited participation even on PvP servers anyway so it does not matter. This is exactly why most people do not care about this since rwzs was not something they could do anyway. Reality is that guilds doing rwzs regularly are hardcore and its not a bad thing just it is so niche. This is why there are so little viewers on rwz streams since most people do not watch what does not pertain to them. Its not your fault, rwzs were screwed since beginning by launching with no cross-server so the limited populations of separate servers could not sustain entry-level teams like pugs or casual guilds leaving only hardcore guilds doing rwz regularly.

 

For majority of playerbase the only pvp left then is normal warzones which are very bad experience and alienated a lot of people from pvp with no matchmaking and no role balancing leading to a lot of one-sided or boring games. A lot of people that still do them now quit at the first sign of losing or when their perceive their team to be bad. Since the cross-server seems to be off the table lower scale pvp is the only way to get matchmaking with limited server populations.

 

I personally I am sad that 8v8 queuing is going away. Did not had chance to do much ranked myself, it was exciting even in the old pyro PT FOTM days. Seems like Bioware reworked the queuing system and decided the drop support for ops queing for pvp. I don't remember but I think there is an option to queue as an ops group for operations so the capability still remains in the game in some way so not sure how hard it would be to leave this queing option from technical perspective but I think Bioware wants the rwz community to do the new arenas instead of splitting between them and rwzs. Also from these froums I get the impression that only TOFN guilds feel strongly about rwz removal, and Bioware never cared about EU as much as US so far.

 

Nice observation but do you know WHY it is only my server so far voicing their immediate concern now? It's because all the ranked pvp guilds from the other servers transferred to ToFN, WHICH WAS A CHARGEABLE SERVICE, to participate in a larger pvp community.

 

Luckily I wasn't one of the players who had to do this to be a part of a community which cares deeply about the state of the game but I feel sorry for those who spent their cold hard cash to have access to a ranked warzone community and only to have it removed less than 7 weeks after the initial transfer service went live.

[Sammennn]

You said they have played more ranked teams then people have done NiM. Since a majorirty of people can only attempt Operations once or twice a week and that guild could have possibly play ranked many times a day per week.

Comparing the removal of 8v8 ranked to the removal of an operation is just plain illogical and stupid.

 

I'm just gonna quote this guy for proving everyone's point.

 

Also he's refering to Hard Modes since 2.0, imagine the nightmare mode sheet. Yep very despicable.

 

Since 2.0 my Republic guild, Coral, on Tomb of Freedon Nadd, has faced 34 different guilds. That's just ONE Guild alone on ONE server. According to this thread only 20 guilds across a multitude of servers have attempted end game pve progression since 2.0 (linky spreadsheet).

 

So why remove a feature of the game that is used much more often by the community when it seems to be the biggest return in terms of subscribers?

 

A real PVE guild does operations 3 to 5 days a week. And I know this from PVEing in WoW for 8 years which is almost identical.

 

So much ignorance in your post

Edited August 18, 2013 by Sammennn

[Gren-Aluren]

I'm just gonna quote this guy for proving everyone's point.

 

Also he's refering to Hard Modes since 2.0, imagine the nightmare mode sheet. Yep very despicable.

 

 

 

A real PVE guild does operations 3 to 5 days a week. And I know this from PVEing in WoW for 8 years which is almost identical.

 

So much ignorance in your post

 

Oh you don't even have real statistics on how many people have done or attempted those operations? Not everyone goes and posts in the server forums.

[Sarano]

It's quite simple, removing rwzs after charging people for server transfers is just unacceptable, and a complete slap in the face to the people who transferred for the RWZs. And unless they get some sort of compensation in terms of either imo, a refund or keep the rwzs - I personally will most likely not stick around anymore. I am sick and tired of the poor treatment of the player base, especially the PvP one. We were promised RWZ's in what was it.. 1.2? A LOONG time ago, and yet they weren't released until a month+ afterwards, which imo is another point as to of why removing them is a COMPLETE and UTTER slap in the face. You give us something that is LATE and then decide to take it away after charging people to try and bring more life to this LATE implementation.

 

That's all I have to say, I think that the developers do their best to try and keep the game going but removing rwzs is a colossal mistake, and I've already had confirmed that atleast the 8 player base of 2 guilds will be quitting as 2.4 hits if RWZs are removed.

[Sammennn]

Oh you don't even have real statistics on how many people have done or attempted those operations? Not everyone goes and posts in the server forums.

 

And our PVP statistics started at June. Imagine how many more teams we could have added since the start of 2.0.

 

While that thread has been updated since 2.0.

 

Your arguement is still lacking.