METRICS show ranked needs better class balance or changed to 8v8

[clearsighted]

4v4 isn't ideal, but 8v8 is worse. It's even easier to be carried to top ranking, when 8v8. At least in 4v4, everyone on the team needs at least a clue. What the game really needs it to enforce the trinity for arena ranked. That would put the kibosh on corruption sorcs right quick.

 

Although, shield tech tanks and sorc heals are still a bit OP, owing to their far FAR easier mechanics combined with higher effect. (Shield tech damage reduction is IDEAL for arena pvp).

Edited October 11, 2015 by clearsighted

[DariusCalera]

Aka corruption, but we all know its ridicolous atm. What u can't do is:

 

- Nerf madness, because is one of the worst spec dor pve atm

 

- Nerf barrier, by doing so, u just destriy the class

 

- Nerf lightning, becaause well, u know...

 

 

PPl very often forget sorc = fotm, is stupid, i play the lightning spec, and to me its a lot of things, but not fotm considering how laughable is atm.

 

Besides it seems to me pt are ridicolosly op the same, but nobody remeber it

 

Nerf their off heals, mobility, or both. Don't need either one for PvE.

[Master-Nala]

Nerf their off heals, mobility, or both. Don't need either one for PvE.

 

You're in luck, they are doing both!

[Master-Nala]

Note; especially the one about hurting a sorc/sages dog. that's just cruel. I don't think anyone would agree that's appropriate, no matter how ridiculously easy and overpowered sorcs are now! No one deserves to have their family pet hurt!

 

Meh, they are just akk dogs. KILL THEM WITH FIRE!! The Bounty Hunter do anyway.

[foxmob]

Arenas will never be balanced. Period, end of conversation. Team death match is just not compatible with a strict class/role system. It will never work; it's impossible. We start by marginalizing if not outright removing arenas.

 

I would start by removing solo ranked arenas. Group arenas approach some semblance of balance with the holy trinity. Instead, have solo ranked focus on objective gameplay; the higher group size tends to compensate for individual class imbalance and the varying objectives should help reign in OP classes. If stalemates become an issue (unlikely in solo matches but, well, devil's advocate) rework the maps with shorter capture timers and add them as special ranked variants. Long term you're going to want some sort of cross faction system to help combat queue syncing.

everything you say here has a grain of truth, it's also ridiculously wrong. solo ranked, grp ranked, and 4s in general can very easily be balanced. however, they probably will not ever be.

 

solo ranked could be very easily fixed (balance-wise) be enforcing trinity pops the same as group finder does for standard ops and fps (obviously not what it does with tacticals).

 

yes. it is difficult to balance for 4s AND 8s. and it's especially difficult to do so if you're not going to lock both formats into the trinity meta. (regs -- 4s or 8s -- don't adhere to this either, btw).

 

so as far as balance is concerned, the first thing BW should (but won't) do is enforce trinity system, which is the core principle of their balancing in both pve a pvp. when you think of it like that, I think you will come to see that the problem isn't arenas (which you might love or hate). nor is the problem sorcs or sins or PTs. the problem is that balance is impossible without consistent role matching that also matches the game's friggin meta.

[SlightlySychotic]

4v4 isn't ideal, but 8v8 is worse. It's even easier to be carried to top ranking, when 8v8. At least in 4v4, everyone on the team needs at least a clue. What the game really needs it to enforce the trinity for arena ranked. That would put the kibosh on corruption sorcs right quick.

 

Although, shield tech tanks and sorc heals are still a bit OP, owing to their far FAR easier mechanics combined with higher effect. (Shield tech damage reduction is IDEAL for arena pvp).

 

Yes, in objective games a mediocre player can get carried but the flip side side of that coin is that a good player can carry. In arenas your team is only ever as good as your worst player -- three good players and a bad player will almost always lose to one good player and three average ones. In objective matches a player can always make a good play and turn a game around.

 

Besides, since arenas can not be balanced, isn't it more upsetting that good players end up with crappy ratings because they chose an underpowered class?

[foxmob]

In arenas your team is only ever as good as your worst player

 

very true. only an issue in solo, tbh. but very true. and there are ways for ppl who aren't as good to be constructive in 8v8. who here wanted 8v8 ranked to go away though? nobody on this board. that's for sure. the ppl who like arenas were not clamoring for the elimination of 8s. the fact that they ever took them away is...yeah. no words for it.

[HaoZhao]

can we have some serious dialogue on making ranked 8v8 so ALL classes can participate equally?

 

We've had serious dialogue on this for years. No matter how many times this issue is explained to you and others, you guys just refuse to listen.

 

Arenas were introduced into the game because it was near impossible to get ranked to pop on most servers. Re-adding 8 vs. 8 ranked would just straight up kill ranked on most servers. For 8 vs. 8 to work, at the bare minimum, we would need cross-faction queues, which BioWare has said is not on the agenda. Ideally, we'd have cross-server queues and 8 vs. 8 ranked could pop all day long.

 

No matter how many times this is explained by the developers or others, you'll keep pretending that you didn't see this explanation for why 8 vs. 8 ranked can't succeed in the game. You, like many others, are suffering from a terminal case of server tunnel vision. You can't see anything except what's going on in your own server, and you don't even contemplate how your suggestion might affect the other servers. This and other kinds of message board tunnel vision is probably a big reason why BioWare doesn't take our suggestions very seriously.

[Pearlie]

Halve ranked again and make it dps-only 2s.

[DomiSotto]

This and other kinds of message board tunnel vision is probably a big reason why BioWare doesn't take our suggestions very seriously.

 

I think BioWARE did take it seriously, but disagreed. In their latest interview they said that introducing the cross-server queue addresses a symptom, rather than the root cause. The root cause being that no matter the format, the ranked games are simply not attractive to enough players to get the matchmaking working, and not meeting with success folks simply drop out.

 

I have a feeling that rerouting all serious attempts at gearing in the game to be dependent on the Conquest and group activities rewards (i.e. crafting ANY purple quality item requires Conquest or Ops drops) , and hence on participating in group activities, is a way BioWARE wants to increase the number of subs and maximizing the group content participation on one main character.

 

I don't know. I wish BioWARE sort of shared the vision of how a successful player in their opinion should play the game... but what I am seeing is a player that has a minimal amount of alts (as many as there are crafts), on a sub grinding conquest entries after completing the story-arc on that character.

Edited October 12, 2015 by DomiSotto

[DariusCalera]

Halve ranked again and make it dps-only 2s.

 

That would make the balance issues even worse.

[TUXs]

Seriously. All the crying by all the different classes, and check these numbers out. Pretty sure snipers need some serious improvements in ranked. Just sad.

 

Isn't ranked where "competitive" pvp is supposed to exist? Rewards are only granted by participating in ranked, yet as we ALL know specific classes utterly fail in 4v4 setups, particularly when queing solo.

 

Why is there no mention of a possible improvement to the weak classes in ranked? If it's too complicated to give better balance in ranked 4v4, can we have some serious dialogue on making ranked 8v8 so ALL classes can participate equally?

Do these numbers not prove the obvious disparity between sorcs and ALL other classes in ranked? The sorc class needs toned down it's pretty obvious it's over-performing in 4v4 ranked.

 

Discuss.

 

P.S. Thanks to Shenanigansx for posting the numbers originally in another thread.

Bioware doesn't care. That's the only logical conclusion you could make.

[SlightlySychotic]

We've had serious dialogue on this for years. No matter how many times this issue is explained to you and others, you guys just refuse to listen.

 

Arenas were introduced into the game because it was near impossible to get ranked to pop on most servers. Re-adding 8 vs. 8 ranked would just straight up kill ranked on most servers. For 8 vs. 8 to work, at the bare minimum, we would need cross-faction queues, which BioWare has said is not on the agenda. Ideally, we'd have cross-server queues and 8 vs. 8 ranked could pop all day long.

 

No matter how many times this is explained by the developers or others, you'll keep pretending that you didn't see this explanation for why 8 vs. 8 ranked can't succeed in the game. You, like many others, are suffering from a terminal case of server tunnel vision. You can't see anything except what's going on in your own server, and you don't even contemplate how your suggestion might affect the other servers. This and other kinds of message board tunnel vision is probably a big reason why BioWare doesn't take our suggestions very seriously.

 

Maybe, but that comes with a lot of asterisks.

 

First, yes, there were never that many teams queuing 8v8s (excluding one or two servers, and I'm going to come back to that in a moment) but a good reason for that was that 8v8s never got a proper season with dedicated rewards. Yes, there was rated gear but it was just recolored versions of of pre-existing gear. There weren't even leaderboards so pride doesn't even play a factor. You can't really say nobody was interested in playing ranked 8v8 when there was never really any reason given to play 8v8s.

 

Second, there was still more interest in ranked 8v8 than there is in ranked 4v4s. One or two servers had as many as ten teams playing 8v8s during prime time. That number dropped to three or four teams. There just isn't any interest in arenas (probably because they're incredibly unpopular and absurdly broken). Hell, even BW has admitted that solo ranked is much more successful, and on that note:

 

Third, 8v8s never had a solo option. And, let me stress this, pretty much everyone who wants 8v8s back also wants solo versions of them. Don't say "But there aren't enough players for solo ranked" because see point two. There is a wealth of players who don't participate in ranked because either they don't like arenas or they don't feel their class is viable for them (or both). How many times have you seen Mercs and Snipers talking about how they won't queue because they don't stand a chance? If you added solo ranked objective matches I'd say you'd at least double the number of participants (and I consider that an extremely conservative estimate).

 

And just to tie things up: if they removed solo ranked arenas, if they removed the leaderboards, if the only rewards were recolors of already existing top tier gear, would anybody be queuing for ranked at all?

[Avicii]

Maybe, but that comes with a lot of asterisks.

 

First, yes, there were never that many teams queuing 8v8s (excluding one or two servers, and I'm going to come back to that in a moment) but a good reason for that was that 8v8s never got a proper season with dedicated rewards. Yes, there was rated gear but it was just recolored versions of of pre-existing gear. There weren't even leaderboards so pride doesn't even play a factor. You can't really say nobody was interested in playing ranked 8v8 when there was never really any reason given to play 8v8s.

 

Second, there was still more interest in ranked 8v8 than there is in ranked 4v4s. One or two servers had as many as ten teams playing 8v8s during prime time. That number dropped to three or four teams. There just isn't any interest in arenas (probably because they're incredibly unpopular and absurdly broken). Hell, even BW has admitted that solo ranked is much more successful, and on that note:

 

Third, 8v8s never had a solo option. And, let me stress this, pretty much everyone who wants 8v8s back also wants solo versions of them. Don't say "But there aren't enough players for solo ranked" because see point two. There is a wealth of players who don't participate in ranked because either they don't like arenas or they don't feel their class is viable for them (or both). How many times have you seen Mercs and Snipers talking about how they won't queue because they don't stand a chance? If you added solo ranked objective matches I'd say you'd at least double the number of participants (and I consider that an extremely conservative estimate).

 

And just to tie things up: if they removed solo ranked arenas, if they removed the leaderboards, if the only rewards were recolors of already existing top tier gear, would anybody be queuing for ranked at all?

 

Pretty much this. In March 2012, I believe after the Guild Summit, there was word there would be solo queue added for ranked 8v8. Then the debacle of 1.2 occurred which that led to **** storm and this never happening. They had intentions of doing this at one point and I believe it would be good option to bring into the game for the aforementioned reasons in this thread.

[sumquy]

MHow many times have you seen Mercs and Snipers talking about how they won't queue because they don't stand a chance? If you added solo ranked objective matches I'd say you'd at least double the number of participants (and I consider that an extremely conservative estimate).

 

THIS. one million times this. i am very good on my sniper and fairly good on my commando and would love to que for solo ranked matches, but there just isn't any point. everybody who ever played pvp has figured out by now that we can't do anything about being focused down first, and 4.0 does nothing to address it. on the contrary, most of the other classes are getting really cool movement buffs, so now we can't even run away. the truly pathetic part is how bw can look at op's numbers and not know it is a problem. did they seriously believe that it was because we didn't have ranked gear, or are they just refusing to fix it because it's too hard?

[Raazmir]

We've had serious dialogue on this for years. No matter how many times this issue is explained to you and others, you guys just refuse to listen.

 

Arenas were introduced into the game because it was near impossible to get ranked to pop on most servers. Re-adding 8 vs. 8 ranked would just straight up kill ranked on most servers. For 8 vs. 8 to work, at the bare minimum, we would need cross-faction queues, which BioWare has said is not on the agenda. Ideally, we'd have cross-server queues and 8 vs. 8 ranked could pop all day long.

 

No matter how many times this is explained by the developers or others, you'll keep pretending that you didn't see this explanation for why 8 vs. 8 ranked can't succeed in the game. You, like many others, are suffering from a terminal case of server tunnel vision. You can't see anything except what's going on in your own server, and you don't even contemplate how your suggestion might affect the other servers. This and other kinds of message board tunnel vision is probably a big reason why BioWare doesn't take our suggestions very seriously.

 

I keep hearing this over and over again, and it continually fails to take into account 8v8 ranked never escaped the pre-season! take away rewards and rating accumulation and fancy titles and see how well 4v4 does.

[DarthOvertone]

BW quit giving even one **** about PvP well over a year ago. They simply don't care.

 

Honestly, if people want balance in Yolo, they should all just roll a Sorc/Sage. BW made leveling stupid easy with 12XP, PvP gear cheap and easy to acquire, and in the new expansion, are giving peeps a free level 60. If you haven't already, reroll and play Sorc/Sage. You want balance? There it is - everyone playing Sorc/Sage. It's that simple.

 

Expecting otherwise is just an exercise in futility.

[Liquor]

Keep ranked as arenas

 

Remove arenas from regs

 

 

You can nerf sorc to the ground and more would play it than sniper. Players go with whatever does the most with the least amount of effort. It's simple to play sorc and a bit more challenging to play sniper well. They need to remove off heals on all heal classes. If you want heals, roll heal spec. That would tone things down a bit. Sniper is devastating in the right hands. So is jugg. But knowing your role and abilities of others then use them to your teams advantage is lost on the casual gamer. No amount of simplification will even that out.

 

Players know the DPS and hassle a good sniper can bring to a match, thus they are one of the first focused down early in a match.

 

I rolled concealment for a very long time and walked away from it when acidblade turned into a passive and hiddenstrike was removed. The class didn't feel right IMO. Thus I'm an op healer now and was bored with ops and eventually was bored with WZ healing. I end up node stealing more than healing. There's just too many sorc healers and off healers. I am better at stealing nodes and helping the team than soaking up focus DPS in a crowd of sorcs and padding heal stats.

 

Maybe I'll go be a turret and get my sniper going again in 4.0

Edited October 12, 2015 by Liquor

[EnzoForMe]

Yes buff snipers, the metrics don't lie! Edited October 12, 2015 by EnzoForMe

[Technohic]

Maybe, but that comes with a lot of asterisks.

 

First, yes, there were never that many teams queuing 8v8s (excluding one or two servers, and I'm going to come back to that in a moment) but a good reason for that was that 8v8s never got a proper season with dedicated rewards. Yes, there was rated gear but it was just recolored versions of of pre-existing gear. There weren't even leaderboards so pride doesn't even play a factor. You can't really say nobody was interested in playing ranked 8v8 when there was never really any reason given to play 8v8s.

 

Second, there was still more interest in ranked 8v8 than there is in ranked 4v4s. One or two servers had as many as ten teams playing 8v8s during prime time. That number dropped to three or four teams. There just isn't any interest in arenas (probably because they're incredibly unpopular and absurdly broken). Hell, even BW has admitted that solo ranked is much more successful, and on that note:

 

Third, 8v8s never had a solo option. And, let me stress this, pretty much everyone who wants 8v8s back also wants solo versions of them. Don't say "But there aren't enough players for solo ranked" because see point two. There is a wealth of players who don't participate in ranked because either they don't like arenas or they don't feel their class is viable for them (or both). How many times have you seen Mercs and Snipers talking about how they won't queue because they don't stand a chance? If you added solo ranked objective matches I'd say you'd at least double the number of participants (and I consider that an extremely conservative estimate).

 

And just to tie things up: if they removed solo ranked arenas, if they removed the leaderboards, if the only rewards were recolors of already existing top tier gear, would anybody be queuing for ranked at all?

 

Heh. I have been busy with a new job and have barely played at all and never do ranked 4s on my slinger. If 4s were gone and a YOLO 8 with matchmaking was put in place, I'd make time and it would be my favorite mode of play. Rank be damned.

[DarthRaika]

Sorc healer and ptech tank are OP but the dps specs are really a L2P issue.

 

Sorc dps is only OP in arenas because so many people split dps. It is the same reason ptech dps is OP. If you play a 4 dps match with decent (not even good) burst dps that can focus fire then a dps ptech or a dps sorc is not a challenge. When I'm on my sin/scoundrel/shadow/mara and my team focuses then these classes are easy to drop quickly. However, if my team splits dps then the dps ptech really wreaks havoc or the sorc does some nice offhealing with dot spread ticking.

 

When I'm on my sorc/sage and the other team focuses well then offhealing is usually not very helpful and I should normally focus on dps. However, if the other team does not focus fire then I can rack up dmg and keep my team alive. I've had so many times where i barely kite and 2-4 dps drop off of me and all attack different targets. Then they QQ about how sorc/sage is OP. It is laughable.

 

To give you an example. About a month ago my mara and 2 other decent maras got into a 4 dps match. The other team had the 2 of the highest rated dps sorcs. First round we focus fired and it went bubble > bubble > dead > dead and easy win. 2nd round we screwed up and split dps and lost. 3rd round we made sure we focus fired and again was an EXTREMELY EASY win.

 

Not focus firing against teams with dps sorcs, mercs, ptechs, snipers is a L2P issue. It is the same as if the dps sorcs were to facetank and try to click their bubble.

Edited October 12, 2015 by DarthRaika

[foxmob]

Heh. I have been busy with a new job and have barely played at all and never do ranked 4s on my slinger. If 4s were gone and a YOLO 8 with matchmaking was put in place, I'd make time and it would be my favorite mode of play. Rank be damned.

 

yolo 8 would be funny to see given how incompetent BW's matchmaking is. as if simply "role matching" is enough. AC and discipline matter too, often more than rating.

[Technohic]

yolo 8 would be funny to see given how incompetent BW's matchmaking is. as if simply "role matching" is enough. AC and discipline matter too, often more than rating.

 

Certainly not perfect but better than nothing. As an example, see reg arenas vs ranked.

[t-darko]

Seriously. All the crying by all the different classes, and check these numbers out. Pretty sure snipers need some serious improvements in ranked. Just sad.

 

Isn't ranked where "competitive" pvp is supposed to exist? Rewards are only granted by participating in ranked, yet as we ALL know specific classes utterly fail in 4v4 setups, particularly when queing solo.

 

Why is there no mention of a possible improvement to the weak classes in ranked? If it's too complicated to give better balance in ranked 4v4, can we have some serious dialogue on making ranked 8v8 so ALL classes can participate equally?

Do these numbers not prove the obvious disparity between sorcs and ALL other classes in ranked? The sorc class needs toned down it's pretty obvious it's over-performing in 4v4 ranked.

 

Discuss.

 

P.S. Thanks to Shenanigansx for posting the numbers originally in another thread.

 

Feel I need to start of with that I don't want to pick a fight - but -

 

You got;

 

1 short

1 tall

1 average fit joe

1 average fat joe

 

And you're telling me they all should be able to run 100 m in 12 dec flat? With equal amount of effort?

 

8 vs 8 Ranked / that's signed

Edited October 13, 2015 by t-darko

[foxmob]

Certainly not perfect but better than nothing. As an example, see reg arenas vs ranked.

 

the frustration level would be through the roof. if you think getting 4 similarly skilled players vs. 4 others was tough, imagine the rage going around when they try to make teams of 8 from a solo pool.

 

don't get me wrong. I think it would be fun for a bit. but at the end of the day, deathmatch vs. objective pvp is not the problem. 4s does expose ACs more, and it also exposes player skill more. what I think would happen, though, is no team will be stocked with similarly skilled ppl and the better ones will be utterly infuriated by the lesser ones. they'd rage for a few weeks and then the queue would dry up except for appointment-based WZs....which is exactly what ranked is like in 4s and exactly what it was like during preseason 8s with the rare exception of the first few weeks it was instituted and the first few weeks when everybody and their brother transferred to Pot% (which, btw, killed any hope for ranked on every other server).