PvP Statistics

[ronniehenlau]

So, I've tried asking the community team if its ok that I post this or not, but since all four of them have decided to remain quiet on the matter, I've decided to post this. Easier to ask forgiveness and all that.

 

Over the past week, I've made a lot of charts detailing statistics for ranked PVP in Star Wars: The Old Republic. I've done this by making a script that automatically iterates through the swtor leaderboards, and use this data as a basis for my charts. What this means is, that my data is completely accurate (and at times, more accurate than swtor.com - I remove all duplicates based on character, so people that occur 5 times on the leaderboards, occur once in my data), and my graphs are near-100% accurate.

 

The reason I made these charts was first and foremost because I was curious - how many people actually does ranked? How are the tiers balanced out? Class balance? etc. After I created all these statistics, and saw how freakin huge the dip was in ranked participation, I decided that sharing is caring, and have posted this on a couple other sites (reddit, redeclipse.eu). It was always my goal to post it here, on the official forums, but I didnt want to break the TOS and post this here, so I decided to contact Eric and his team, but I'm guessing they have a spam filter in their inboxes that just autodeletes a message if it has something pvp-related in it, since none of them have answered.

 

So, without any further wall of texting:

http://www.swtor-arenas.com

 

If you want any particular graphs etc drawn up, or you want any of the numbers, give me a poke either in the thread or send me a PM.

 

Disclaimer:

The data may be taken down if bioware deems this in breach of their TOS. I dont see how it is in breach of their TOS myself, but it is in a grey area. It can be considered mining by some people, but seeing as all the data is already open, I dont consider it mining. I've merely used public data to generate these statistics, and thus dont see this as a breach of TOS.

[sithBracer]

Congratulations, you know how to use Chart.js, just like any other junior developer at any company. I am however sure that BW has a lot more detailed information and professional analytics teams who are giving them much better and more detailed statistics than you could even imagine right now. They will be fine.

[Technohic]

Yeah, someone posted a link to your reddit thread yesterday and it got deleted. Not sure why as this is based on information that Bioware has made public via the leaderboards. You are just compiling it into a report as far as I am concerned.

 

 

What I would say is it might be better to compile at the very end of season 3. The other seasons I am guessing had heavier participation in the end as people tried to earn the rewards but we will see.

[ronniehenlau]

Congratulations, you know how to use Chart.js, just like any other junior developer at any company. I am however sure that BW has a lot more detailed information and professional analytics teams who are giving them much better and more detailed statistics than you could even imagine right now. They will be fine.

 

Lol, really? I gather stats that a ton of the pvp community have been asking for for quite some time, and you act like an ***? I've never claimed that I did something amazing (hell, in the Reddit thread I even said I used Chart.js, and linked to it), all this was for was to get some information out to the players, in a more readable manner than iterating through x pages to get the data - guess that was silly of me.

[ronniehenlau]

 

What I would say is it might be better to compile at the very end of season 3. The other seasons I am guessing had heavier participation in the end as people tried to earn the rewards but we will see.

 

I'm fetching the data on a daily basis, and just thought it was interesting seeing the participation this far as well. Altho I could probably place a caveat at the site about s3 not beeing final yet :-)

[Savej]

Nice work, useful site - I can't imagine why it might be a TOS issue. And it's def not something to take off reddit considering the other stuff that's on reddit about swtor (and 3.0 in particular). Edited November 5, 2014 by Savej

[DarthOvertone]

That's some good info OP. The drop-off is pretty astounding, even worse than I had imagined. Edited November 5, 2014 by DarthOvertone

[Dhubh]

Thanks for graphing all of this out. I am happy to see the addition of the classes by rating.

 

One more chart that I think would be interesting is tracking the stats for each of the last 4 weeks of the session vs the time before the rewards were posted. I am just wondering how big of an increase it is.

[Icykill_]

Congratulations, you know how to use Chart.js, just like any other junior developer at any company. I am however sure that BW has a lot more detailed information and professional analytics teams who are giving them much better and more detailed statistics than you could even imagine right now. They will be fine.

 

Sure they can... But do they... LoL... You are confusing what they can do and what they actually do

[sauerkraut]

Congratulations, you know how to use Chart.js, just like any other junior developer at any company. I am however sure that BW has a lot more detailed information and professional analytics teams who are giving them much better and more detailed statistics than you could even imagine right now. They will be fine.

 

ROFL!!!!!!!!!! Dude numbers are numbers, no matter how professional the analytic team.

[Belecfaron]

Would be great if role could be detailed, as if taken at straight class the numbers can be misleading.

[ronniehenlau]

Completely agree, but the data doesnt exist publicly. All I get out from the leaderboards is the class.

[Master-Nala]

This was very interesting OP. It does justify their basically abandoning ranked as a play style they care to support. Probably means 8v8 is never, ever coming back. Edited November 15, 2014 by Master-Nala

[Morrolan]

This was very interesting OP. It does justify their basically abandoning ranked as a play style they care to support. Probably means 8v8 is never, ever coming back.

 

Its kind of a vicious circle though, ranked is arguably falling off mostly because of BW's lack of attention to PvP.

[RodneyMcNeely]

You did a good job!

[Wainamoinen]

Time to make a class tier list!

 

God Tier:

Sorc/Sage

Assassin/Shadow

Juggernaut/Guardian

 

Mid Tier:

Powertech/Vanguard

Operative/Scoundrel

Marauder/Sentinal

 

**** Tier:

Mercenary/Commando

Sniper/Gunslinger

Not really. Read the actual stats posted. That's the point, you don't have to guess.

 

If you're talking current ratings in Season 3 Group, it would be more like:

 

Kings

Juggernaut/Guardian

Marauder/Sentinel

 

Nobles

Assassin/Shadow

Sniper/Gunslinger

Operative/Scoundrel

 

Peasants

Sorc/Sage

Powertech/Vanguard

 

Slaves

Mercenary/Commando

 

Though most aren't miles apart, only the Merc/Commando being well off the pace, on average.

 

Looks a bit different for Solo.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Wainamoinen

[Wainamoinen]

I did read the actual stats posted. Hard to see what stats you're reading. I used the solo ranked stats because in group ranked you can make up for a bad class with good teamwork. Solo ranked performance is almost purely class based.

 

As I stated, I was looking at the Group Ranked stats. Because there's no point trying to balance on solo ranked - the only way you could do it is to make the classes identical. Grouped is how you should try to balance because a) it's a superior standard - in Solo anyone can go in naked without an AC, no-one's going to tolerate that on their Grouped team; b) you have four people on each side, so you should balance for how they ideally function together. The four-man team allows different classes to fulfill different roles. In Solo it's just a measure of which class performs best individually in a vacuum, as you can't count on having a decent composition, coordination,or teammates with the slightest clue.

 

In any case, you clearly haven't looked at the Solo stats to come up with your list. Or you'd have given something more like:

 

Top

Powertech/Vanguard

 

Middle

Sorc/Sage

Operative/Scoundrel

Juggernaut/Guardian

 

Lower

Assassin/Shadow

Marauder/Sentinel

Mercenary/Commando

Sniper/Gunslinger

 

In that order for Season 3 (different other seasons). Go and look if you want confirmation. The stats from the initial link again:

SWTOR warzone stats

 

 

For instance, the average Assassin/Shadow is below the average of players when you look at every player of all classes in solo ranked. The best may be scary, but they're not top-performing as a class. And PT/Vans are clearly ahead on their own in Solo, every season, no contest.

 

Like I said, that's the point of looing at the actual stats. You learn what the real situation is without being swayed by personal experience or prejudice. Just admit you tapped out whatever you felt like and move on.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Wainamoinen

[Wainamoinen]

This was very interesting OP. It does justify their basically abandoning ranked as a play style they care to support. Probably means 8v8 is never, ever coming back.

 

As said above, I don't think you can separate cause and effect here. PvP in SWTOR has had lots of fans. Some points to start the conversation from:

 

There is clearly an audience for online PvP, think of all the moneyspinning games that have it.

Star Wars is a pretty popular intellectual property.

 

Given these, it should clearly be possible to get people to pay money to stick lightsabres into each other.

 

Having been in this game since launch, and PvPing since about a month or two from launch, I tend to go with the view that Bioware have made a number of poor decisions that have negatively affected PvP in the game. And thus low participation numbers is an effect of Bioware (in)action rather than the other way around.

 

The basic PvP game and mechanics in SWTOR are better than WoW (nearest comparison), I can't speak for GW2. I still hope Bioware can make a great success of it, but it will take radical and inspired action given the point they've got themeselves to. It's definitely in their intersts to try though, as they could make a mint if they make it work.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Wainamoinen

[Wainamoinen]

Wrong. Averages don't mean jack when trying to ascertain the potential of a class.

The average doesn't mean "jack", it shows how the class does across thousands of players in tens of thousands of battles. It isn't everything - and that's why there are plots showing you where the 90% rating boundaries for each class are. As each box is the middle 90%, the top of each box shows where the boundary before the top 5% is, which I'd say is a decent start if you want to judge class potential. The best players are top because they're the best players, not because of their class, so it's pointless trying to balance off the absolute best in each class.

 

BTW, I don't know where you pulled that link from because it isn't in the OP.

It's from the OP. If you click link up in the original post, then the link labelled "Statistics by an actual statistician", there it is. Which means it's drawn from the leaderboard data published by Bioware on this very site.

 

Admittedly, you may not have realised the second was a link. But that doesn't excuse posting your personal prejudices as if they were fact in a thread about the real figures, as though your madey-uppy stuff was confirmed by them. Guess what: it isn't, and you really should have checked.

 

Honestly, it really is frustrating. There's actual, hard data there for people to check up on - and yet you still get ignorant "LoL taht class suxxors" posts in the very thread. Humans.

Edited November 16, 2014 by Wainamoinen

[Morrolan]

 

The basic PvP game and mechanics in SWTOR are better than WoW (nearest comparison), I can't speak for GW2.

 

IMHO they're better than GW2 and Wildstar, 2 recent competitors.