Interview with Alex Modny and Eric Musco on Bad Feeling Podcast

[silvershadows]

Whatever happens with the AOE defense changes. Improving Tab Targeting would be great because its still frustratingly awful whichever option you have it on.

 

So many times in pvp there is a guy right in my face and spamming tab targets everyone except him and I'm shouting "Him!! hes right Fn there FFS!! He is right in Fn front of me!! Why wont it target him"

then if I change it to the other option its spamming tab shouting "No not him, no not him either, FFS target him!!"

 

You realize you can CLICK on people to target them, right? And since your mouse should always be on your screen and never used to click an ability, but only to pan your camera, why the hell wouldn't you just... click the guy in front of you?

[VdFExarKun]

Hello Jaiyne,

 

If you have less than 2018 Expertise when you attempt to queue you will not be allowed and a GUI message will appear. However, after you queue or when you get into the match you may change out your gear if you want. We have the problem of players entering the queue that aren't ready to compete stat wise so providing a check prevents them from getting into the queue and potentially having a negative impact on their team (and a 'free kill' for the opponents). We still want players to have the ability to customize and min/max their gear setup so we didn't want to take that away, just provide a check to make sure they are experienced in PvP beforehand. Hope that helps!

 

Btw the 2018 expertise thing to q for solo ranked. You said something that it would prevent trolls to q or whatever but the thing is, what if a troll decides to put on his 2018 expertise and q for solo ranked and after he joined he takes off his gear and plays naked or won't participate in the fight or just spam autoattack.

There will still be ways to troll in arena...

 

The ranked system in general needs to be redone.

Seperate the arena maps from the warzone maps when you que for NWZ, let ppl decide if they want to que for warzones or arena, the que for arena would replace the current solo ranked but without rating attached to it. Adjust the com, xp and credit reward for arenas since it wouldn't be fair to get the same amount of rewards for it like warzones.

Keep 4v4 ranked arena and implement another bracket to arena, a 2v2 ranked bracket and this way we wouldn't need a 2018 expertise restrictions for ranked. This solo ranked has to go... change it to a normal que for arena without any rating.

Top96 per server might be a good thing and a better incentive for ranked players and would make sense since there is no crossserver que.

Also you might want to losen up the warzone restrictions for f2p players - maybe.

Edited May 28, 2015 by VdFExarKun

[DomiSotto]

or at least for the preferred status players....

[felixpetter]

Good changes BW!

 

Now, what pvp REALLY needs: Increase server population and allow new people to form teams and get into arenas by:

- Practice Arenas (queue for "normal" arenas without rating)

- Class Balance: Nerf Hatred/Madness dot-spread & utilities. Also nerf PT Tank

- Crosserver/Megaservers

[gocard]

I'm skeptical on the AOE interrupt change, but everything else I love. Can't wait to see these in game. 3.3 can't come soon enough.

[Glower]

Trust me, it's a dumb idea because this is EXACTLY what players will do, zerg cap a node. Prepare for Cap Wars, where pvp has devolved into two sides spam capping nodes stacked on top of each other.

 

Male 4 + Male1/Femle1 body-type FTW:p

Edited May 29, 2015 by Glower

[SportFree]

3. According to Bioware, their metrics indicate that snipers are performing really well despite the community's perception.

.

lulz.

[Jinre_the_Jedi]

Guess I'll stop being lazy and post something.

 

I like all of these changes. As far as the AoE thing goes, it's probably best to try it on PTS first instead of jumping to conclusions. They said that if it isn't popular, they'll scrap it, so just wait for 3.3 PTS before making unfounded assumptions.

 

The 2018 requirement to join solo queue has been a long wanted change. For those of you asking how this works and are too lazy to listen to the podcast or read through this whole thread, they've stated that it's only 2018 to queue, after you join the match you can swap out gear, so you can still use old PvE armorings if it benefits your class. For those of you saying "I should be able to queue ranked with a PvE set that I know will bolster to 2018", just stop, you're wrong. Any PvE set that bolsters to 2018 will give you similiar endurance in the Warzone to PvP gear but will have less mainstat and secondary/tertiary stats then PvP gear. So stop trying to make excuses for queuing in PvE gear that bolsters well for ranked. They have stated that armor prices have been reduced, so there is literally no excuse to not get full PvP gear first. Which brings me to my next point;

 

Reduced cost on exhumed and Dark Reaver and ranked/unranked individual mods/enhancements is great to hear. Currently, a full set of basic exhumed costs 12.9k regular comms and a base set of Dark Reaver costs 29k Ranked Comms. After that, to min/max your exhumed will cost about 6k additional regular coms depending on what mods your base gear contains and to min/max Dark Reaver, it's gonna cost about 19.6k Ranked coms and 8.4k regular coms, the most expensive investment due to Ranked Enhancements costing about as much as a regular piece of ranked gear. Reducing the prices to the proposed 150 coms per mod/enhancement and 400 coms per Ranked Mod/Enhancement will lower the min/maxing cost of exhumed to only 3600 reg coms and Ranked gear to only 8400 reg coms, which is a HUGE reduction in time needed to min/max. It almost makes me regret spending 4 months min/maxing my ranked sets for all 3 shadow specs but hindsight is 20/20.

 

200k com cap and legacy based com xfer will be nice to have, based on how much I did ranked myself last season, I would have went over the 200k limit had I saved my coms, so this will be nice. It'll also be nice to get my other toons into ranked gear by playing only my main toon, which will help in having multiple toons available for group ranked.

 

Lastly, the proposed token system for rewards sounds interesting. I like how you currently have plans to make the top 96 just get all rewards, this will eliminate the need for tokens at all for those players, so perhaps give them something else to use their tokens on? I would be confused as to what to use my tokens on if I gained all previous tier rewards from being top 3 Shadow, but also having a large sum of tokens from playing so many games and hitting gold tier. Are we supposed to just wait til next season when the tokens turn into commendations? I suppose I could then use those comms to buy a ton of Medpacs....

 

Perhaps add schematics or something else to the Giradda vendor for those of us who will get all rewards and have no use for tokens? I would personally love to be able to purchase schematics to craft the Black-Silver crystals that would be BoE, that would be amazing for making money as there are many who will never get those crystals but want them, since they don't PvP.

[Draqsko]

Male 4 + Male1/Femle1 body-type FTW:p

 

I used to play a veno in PWI, I know all about trolling with extremely large pets and blocking your bank safe from being clicked on. Same principle applies here, tab targeting is crappy in this game, and with people stacked up you can't reliably click on someone capping.

[idnewton]

We will keep an eye on this though as we don't want to promote this behavior.

Good.

[teclado]

Btw, is anyone else surprised by the fact that only 2% of players pvping have a full dark reaver set?

...

I just figured more people would have a full set by now.

Personally, I have nine characters with full exhumed and some DR. I frequently rotate between those characters depending on my mood. I also have been off-and-on working on four others that I have at 55-59. I don't really do that much ranked. As such, I am not even close to a full set on any given character. My shadow is my best geared toon and he has DR implants and relics plus DR mainhand, rest exhumed.

[stephenalandavie]

Quick question with the reductions and the removal of rwz comms will the limit of normal comms be increased?? Also why not just let the pvp comms be Legacy wide?.

[idnewton]

So, 3.3 comes out.... when? June 7th? Edited May 29, 2015 by idnewton

[Savej]

Regarding metrics and class balance (I couldn't care less about voidstar doors and think that topic is derailing the comments about issues that do matter to me at least):

 

One of the first things talked about in the podcast was player metrics. They off-hand mentioned that players could only comment on what they see and what they see on the leaderboards is top 50 or top 100 or something similar. That may be true but I haven't seen posts like that on here lately. The last few posts that I did see along those lines included computations that factored in the total number of characters on the solo boards and the total number of characters played per class on those boards which did make them a bit more valid. But I will be the first to agree that just looking at top 50 or 100 or even 1000 and expecting class distributions to be even from the bottom to the top is very flawed.

 

However, as one of the people that posts stats here on this board possibly most often lately, I look at average rating per AC. When you do that, whether you include every single character on the leaderboards or you only look at those that have put enough effort into winning 10+ games or 20+ games or what-have-you (such filters weed out trolls and total newbs and faction imbalances from the numbers - definitely not focusing on "only the best or most successful" as the top 50/100 #s do), there are very definite trends and discrepancies. While there's certainly more I would like to have access to for my queries and the excel sheets I've produced are far from comprehensive or absolute or unimpeachable, I think there's plenty from the solo q leaderboards that should be explained in some kind of detail if you or someone else is going to say everything's currently particularly close to being hunky-dory in terms of AC balance. While snipers aren't doing as badly as some might think and assassins aren't doing as well, some ACs are definitely dominating and some ACs are definitely getting dominated.

[Zoom_VI]

Btw, is anyone else surprised by the fact that only 2% of players pvping have a full dark reaver set?

 

It costs 29k ranked comms for full dark reaver. 2% is honestly way more than I expected. I would have assumed maybe 0.5% or so.

[DarthZaul]

Btw, is anyone else surprised by the fact that only 2% of players pvping have a full dark reaver set?

 

I'm assuming their metrics are correct though (like if for some reason their metrics are broken for players that min max, and somehow a full Reaver min maxed player isn't counting in said metrics).

 

I just figured more people would have a full set by now.

 

.

 

I never get ranked gear in any tier because the stat increase is so minuscule there's just no point. Why grind 1000s of ranked comms just to get +3 power and then still get a crap enhancement and have to grind more ranked comms for an optimized one when you can buy another entire set of exumed to legacy mail to another char, or spend all your comms on decos to sell for loads of credits. (or use them if that's your thing)

 

After these changes though I will probably get at least 2 chars full dark reaver.

Edited May 29, 2015 by DarthZaul

[stridemachine]

Trust me, it's a dumb idea because this is EXACTLY what players will do, zerg cap a node. Prepare for Cap Wars, where pvp has devolved into two sides spam capping nodes stacked on top of each other.

 

I agree. My proposed solution is to increase node capture/plant timer by 50-100%

[-Bob-]

These seem to be some positive changes but for me personally, it may be too little too late.

I was going to unsub some months ago but the game was still holding my interest due to some old friends logging back in, but as of late.....PVP just bores the hell out of me. I'll do 1-2 regs before i lose interest and go mat farming for 20 minutes then log out.

I'm just not diggin it anymore.

[Kakisback]

Maybe it's 2% have every single mod and enhancement as 174s. It should take you longer to accomplish this than to merely buy all the 174 armor shells, since in order to avoid getting too much crit or alac people often will use a 168 power/surge enh instead of a 174 crit/alac one, and stuff like that (until they can afford to buy the enh they want). I have all 174s, save one or two enhs, on several of my toons. Edited May 29, 2015 by Kakisback

[foxmob]

I apologize, let me clear this up as I made a mistake about the costs in my original post.

 

Currently the Item Rating 168 Mods cost 400 Warzone Comms and the Item Rating 174 Mods cost 800 Ranked and 400 Warzone. In 3.3 the 168 Mods will cost 150 Warzone Comms each. 174 Mods will cost 400 Warzone Comms each.

 

ok. I think I can infer the basic gist, but to be clear, the price of mods was never a problem. the price of enhancements was downright ludicrous. the figures I laid out were for enhancements. I'm assuming it's more good news though and they're less than 1000 reg WZ comms? lol

[DomiSotto]

Personally, I have nine characters with full exhumed and some DR. I frequently rotate between those characters depending on my mood. I also have been off-and-on working on four others that I have at 55-59. I don't really do that much ranked. As such, I am not even close to a full set on any given character. My shadow is my best geared toon and he has DR implants and relics plus DR mainhand, rest exhumed.

 

I was grinding and grinding on 2 mirror toons, and I am still short of boots, and 2 implants on one of the toons. It's the MH/OH that really makes things horridly slow. With 12xXP going on, and all the new planets, it's really hard to just play for comms. Now, with the promise of 3.3... I can't see myself playing much till then, I'd rather prep more toons on 12xXP to figure out which ones I want to gear and catch up on PvE side.

[leonlotus]

I think PvP content is being compressed even more.

 

People will get now Reaver set, the last one, with no sweat. And no sweat, means less pride and more of an empty feeling. And this one does not help the actual situation. PvErs have lots of options, and their ultimate set will be still hard to complete, requiring months to get 1-2 pieces if youre not a fan of Operations. So i see that this facility to get full Reaver as a demerit. A proof of no equality betwen the 2 communities (PvErs and PvPers).

 

Is it true that it will be a call for PvP? So it will be worth? Probably, it will cause moderate impact on premades VS solos queuing in Regs, but i doubt it will make something more than that, like reviving Open PvP, which is dead, for example. And nothing of this "compression" was necesary to make it shine, in the old days.

 

Anyways, if they wish to make Regs more reasonable for Solos, and stimulate PvP in general, they could bring back BALANCE. Now they are just making a curves, in consecutive patches that are still leaving Overpowered multipliers because of a totally PvE oriented thinking.

 

They must understand that if they want to please PvPers, the only way is to pay attention to them. Real attention, with real content and exploration.

Edited May 29, 2015 by leonlotus

[Monterone]

I agree. My proposed solution is to increase node capture/plant timer by 50-100%

 

That's the opposite of what they're trying to achieve, though. BW is stating that capping nodes takes too long, which creates stalemates. Their proposed solution is to disallow aoes from interrupting, and I think that is a terrible idea, but we'll have plenty of time to discuss that when the time comes.

 

In other words, a similar solution would be to HALVE the cap time in order to make caps easier and prevent stalemates. Increasing the timer would go the other way and create more stalemates.

 

And halving the timer would also be a bad thing. We need to think of something better, but quite honestly I never considered this an issue and I never even thought of something else -- it works fine for me as it is, whether I'm stealing a node or defending it, feels just right.

[fujeotwo]

Snipers are fine. Their damage makes up for their lack of survivability. The problem is the team is so damn concerned about burning the weakest player on the other team that they don't even bother to protect their biggest source of damage.

[stridemachine]

That's the opposite of what they're trying to achieve, though. BW is stating that capping nodes takes too long, which creates stalemates. Their proposed solution is to disallow aoes from interrupting, and I think that is a terrible idea, but we'll have plenty of time to discuss that when the time comes.

 

In other words, a similar solution would be to HALVE the cap time in order to make caps easier and prevent stalemates. Increasing the timer would go the other way and create more stalemates.

 

And halving the timer would also be a bad thing. We need to think of something better, but quite honestly I never considered this an issue and I never even thought of something else -- it works fine for me as it is, whether I'm stealing a node or defending it, feels just right.

 

No, I believe they're saying AOE attacks make capping too difficult, hence AOE damaging attacks no longer stop caps. The bad side of this is spam cappers. Clumps of people crowding a node makes defense difficult and actual PVPing minimal. Worst case scenario I'm picturing is each team rushing to the node and spam capping during the entire warzone.

 

However,If capping the node takes longer, I believe less people are likely to spam nodes because

a) they're out of the fight (ie not contributing) for a decent chunch of time

and

b) easy(-er) targets.

 

Keeping the cap time as it is on live will mean dogpiles of hard to target enemies stacking on top of each other spamming the node, which is pretty freaking boring and lame if you ask me.