NY Cantina Event; my conversation with Eric Musco

[Primarch_PWnD]

Hey guys, I was going to post this sooner, but got a little busy.

 

Eric was also a lot of fun to talk with as well. He was incredibly friendly and willing to talk about anything and everything I brought up.

 

For some reason, no one asked about the "better than cross-server", so towards the end of the night I mentioned it. He said that the bottom line when people ask for "cross server" is that they want to click the "queue" button and have it pop as quickly as possible. He explained that the whole "better than cross-server" was never just 1 "thing"; it was more like a package of "things" that were intended to be rolled out together, but are now being integrated into the game piecemeal as they are finished. He said that some of things included in that package have already been released, and they are still working on the others. He didn't get into specifics.

 

I wanted to ask more about server merges and what-not, but the conversation went elsewhere.

 

On the topic of 8v8 ranked, he said that when they look at the number of people who actually participated in it when it was available, the number is depressingly low. As in, there were more people at the Cantina event than there were people who actually played an 8v8 ranked match. Bringing back 8v8 isn't really in the cards at the moment.

 

Someone asked him about an open pvp format like the old Ilum. Eric said that when people went to Ilum to pvp back at launch, they were playing a slide-show; it wasn't fun. Without saying it, he gave me the impression that they don't have confidence that the game could handle it at this point either.

 

When asked about improving pvp, he gave a very similar answer to Ben, "We want to work on getting more people to participate in, and to have fun participating in pvp, and simply adding more warzones isn't necessarily the best way to do that." The striking similarity of his answer to Ben's answer, almost word-for-word, led me to believe that this is something that has been brought up in their meetings already. He didn't mention any specifics.

 

I also asked Eric about this season's pvp rewards. I framed my question differently for him than I did for Ben. I mentioned to him that since the last season ended, 1 year ago, there have been 12 cartel packs with 50 (FIFTY) armor sets, 12 weapon sets, and the extra weapon set which went into the Eternal Championship. Looking at all that from a pvper's point of view is really depressing, especially since this season is over 3-times longer than any other season and all there are for rewards is a color crystal that's been in the cartel market for 3-years now, and a bunch of titles.

 

Eric was incredibly sympathetic to this subject. He knows the rewards this season are disappointing. He understands why. He wishes it was better this season. But he can't do anything about it. I asked him to print out the official BW post "What do you want for ranked rewards" and pass it out to the team, because none of the posts say "less weapons/armor, and more titles". He knows. I couldn't keep harping on it with him since he appeared to be in complete agreement with me.

 

I did ask about the EC weapons. I pointed out that they are reskins of the current pvp tier weapons with an effect on them, and asked if those were meant as ranked rewards. He said that when they make weapons/armor/rewards they don't make particular items for particular things. When it comes to implementing rewards, reputation vendor items, etc, they take everything they have available, and divide it up.

 

I left it unsaid that it looked like they forgot about ranked and added the cartel market crystal as an "oops, we already used everything and have nothing else left".

 

I meant to ask if they could just roll forward last season's weapon box, and kicked myself when I got home for not remembering to ask.

 

He confirmed that there is, in fact, a "PvP Team", but that the teams overlap, so the members of "PvP Team" have responsibilities to other teams as well.

 

I told him that my perception, as a pvper, was that over the past year we didn't get any support from Bioware to help pvp. Between the year-long season, no balance changes, lack of rewards, and no official posts in this forum, it's become harder and harder to draw new people to pvp in general, and especially to ranked pvp. I told him that I play on Pot5, and that we had a great little ranked community on the server when the season started (which has since died), but that most nights we'd only have a handful of people logged in and queueing, but not enough to get a pop. This meant standing on the fleet and shouting for people to queue for an hour or two just to get a few matches in that night. I told him that we really needed more support from BW to help us keep the community going, and to help the community grow.

 

He was very sympathetic, and understood why I felt the lack of support. I got the impression that he really wants to do more to support us, but that he's not in a position that allows him to do anything but listen to us complain about it, and pass it along.

 

They are making a lot of changes to the classes coming up in the expansion, and he knows the meta will be vastly different than it is now, but we'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out when it goes live. He's "excited" for the changes.

 

Without saying it, he gave me the impression that one of the main reasons that they are not doing monthly chapters anymore is that it didn't leave them with any time or manpower to address any other portions of the game, and that this new format will let them focus on improving the current game moving forward.

 

Just for Alec Fortescue I asked Ben Irving about Jedi Robes . It's completely absurd to me that THE most recognizable and maybe the most iconic outfit in all of Star Wars wasn't the first thing they designed for the game, let alone still not having one 5 years into the game's life. (Charles Boyd was actually dressed as a Jedi. When I brought this up to Ben, I literally pointed at Charles and said "that outfit" lol). He looked a little surprised that it's not something that's been done, and then said that they have a LOT of legal issues when it comes to that kind of stuff and the maybe that was the reason, but if he remembers to bring it up in a meeting, he will.

 

I know I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff that I talked about with him. I'm sure I'll remember some of it as soon as I hit the "submit" button here. If any of you want me to go into more details about any of this, just ask, I'm happy to let you know everything.

Edited October 10, 2016 by Primarch_PWnD

[Icykill_]

 

On the topic of 8v8 ranked, he said that when they look at the number of people who actually participated in it when it was available, the number is depressingly low. As in, there were more people at the Cantina event than there were people who actually played an 8v8 ranked match. Bringing back 8v8 isn't really in the cards at the moment.

 

.

 

It's a shame you didn't push him on 8v8 ranked solo queue and have they considered it. It's obvious they saw the issue with teams before they released arena and added a solo queue.

While I agree that their numbers may have reflected poor queues and response to ranked 8man, they never even tried solo ranked 8 man. This is something I've never seen publically put to Eric in person and I've never seen them respond to any threads pointing out the simple fact that the numbers are only based on teams, which obviously has a problem even in arena.

What I can't understand is why they even needed to remove 8 man ranked at all. It was already in the game, the maps and mechanics are no different to 8 regs. It would not have hurt to leave it in the game and I can't see why it would hurt to put it back in. All they need to do is add an extra queue for ranked 8s, they could even keep it the same as 8 regs and the same setup. Premades no bigger than 4 and solo players. Add a different ranked score board system for 8man and problem solved.

[Emperor-Norton]

On the topic of 8v8 ranked, he said that when they look at the number of people who actually participated in it when it was available, the number is depressingly low. As in, there were more people at the Cantina event than there were people who actually played an 8v8 ranked match. Bringing back 8v8 isn't really in the cards at the moment.

How many people were at the Cantina?

[Going]

Thanks for writing this for the community. Although not much news it's still nice to see them talk pvp with the community in some shape or form.

 

I'm glad they are holding firm on the 8v8 ranked. It's would divide the community even more and quite frankly resources could be spent elsewhere. 8s we're a great time, but what most don't understand is, this wasn't for typical regular players. You got farmed if you weren't good and there was no remorse(unless kickball)

Bens comment on ranked rewards, and not being able to deliver weapons with shorter season probably has a little to do writh the past year developer plan with releasing chapters per month. I'm glad Eric recognizes this as a wall that blocks other content from being fixed/upgraded. Simple as that I'm guessing they just didn't have the time to season 7 taken care of and could explain the long season junk rewards.

Let's just hope for server merges, I truly believe this should be the MAIN topic going into the 2017 year. Small servers and pvp in general need this, and same with pve.

 

Again thanks for posting this!

[AlrikFassbauer]

I just do not understand it..EA has bought a license for Star Wars but they didnt buy an outfit license?

 

Like..EA got a main game but didnt buy an outfit DLC from Disney? xD

 

Is it even real? xD

 

Do you remember that outcry against that Life Day [ aka Christmas ] - themed Tauntaun ? You most likely didn't. But it was huge.

Well, the Clone Wars MMO got it. We never, because of that outcry.

 

How many people were at the Cantina?

 

A sheer guess : Around 50 in the Games Com Cantina. Rather less.

Edited October 10, 2016 by AlrikFassbauer

[Jherad]

Sounds like a repeat of the infamous 'we have no plans' thread to be honest. But thanks for asking.

[kissingaiur]

It's a shame you didn't push him on 8v8 ranked solo queue and have they considered it. It's obvious they saw the issue with teams before they released arena and added a solo queue.

While I agree that their numbers may have reflected poor queues and response to ranked 8man, they never even tried solo ranked 8 man. This is something I've never seen publically put to Eric in person and I've never seen them respond to any threads pointing out the simple fact that the numbers are only based on teams, which obviously has a problem even in arena.

What I can't understand is why they even needed to remove 8 man ranked at all. It was already in the game, the maps and mechanics are no different to 8 regs. It would not have hurt to leave it in the game and I can't see why it would hurt to put it back in. All they need to do is add an extra queue for ranked 8s, they could even keep it the same as 8 regs and the same setup. Premades no bigger than 4 and solo players. Add a different ranked score board system for 8man and problem solved.

 

The developers decided to remove 8v8s because they ****ed up badly. Their first mistake is not noticing that PvP in SWTOR became a thing and it attracted a lot of players. Realizing this too late and without really effect they decided to do ranked warzones to make these individuals happy. They spent a extremely long time promising ranked while keeping it pushed back. This lost a large portion of their population. After they got around to finally releasing 8v8s their population was already on the decline. They probably knew they couldn't sustain a general pvp population to keep a healthy participation for 8v8 ranked. For god sakes, look at ranked now, participation has been steadily on the decline for years and rank barely pops. And these are 4s not 8s. There is literally only a handful of 4s teams across both NA/EU combined and solo rank is a unbalanced joke.

 

I know this is so harsh but the developers are too dumb to realize when they made a mistake and when to fix it. The issue with players not playing ranked isn't because they don't have gear or whatever, it's because it's extremely meta based, buggy with extremely poor balance. That is what makes players quit and that is what is killing the ranked scene. Every patch just brings new a new extremely unbalanced PvP meta and it just a never ending cycle that they refuse to acknowledge and correct.

 

I don't believe they will never bring back 8s because they are struggling to even keep a healthy population for 4s alive. Unless they purely focus on correcting bugs and class imbalances to give players an equal chance in ranked, there will never be 8s ever in the near future. It's such a shame because SWTOR PvP mechanically has so much potential and is extremely fun. I just wish they just put love into it.

Edited October 10, 2016 by kissingaiur

[-Bob-]

The developers decided to remove 8v8s because they ****ed up badly. Their first mistake is not noticing that PvP in SWTOR became a thing and it attracted a lot of players. Realizing this too late and without really effect they decided to do ranked warzones to make these individuals happy. They spent a extremely long time promising ranked while keeping it pushed back. This lost a large portion of their population. After they got around to finally releasing 8v8s their population was already on the decline. They probably knew they couldn't sustain a general pvp population to keep a healthy participation for 8v8 ranked. For god sakes, look at ranked now, participation has been steadily on the decline for years and rank barely pops. And these are 4s not 8s. There is literally only a handful of 4s teams across both NA/EU combined and solo rank is a unbalanced joke.

 

I know this is so harsh but the developers are too dumb to realize when they made a mistake and when to fix it. The issue with players not playing ranked isn't because they don't have gear or whatever, it's because it's extremely meta based, buggy with extremely poor balance. That is what makes players quit and that is what is killing the ranked scene. Every patch just brings new a new extremely unbalanced PvP meta and it just a never ending cycle that they refuse to acknowledge and correct.

 

I don't believe they will never bring back 8s because they are struggling to even keep a healthy population for 4s alive. Unless they purely focus on correcting bugs and class imbalances to give players an equal chance in ranked, there will never be 8s ever in the near future. It's such a shame because SWTOR PvP mechanically has so much potential and is extremely fun. I just wish they just put love into it.

 

I couldn't agree more with this post^^^

[Going]

The developers decided to remove 8v8s because they ****ed up badly. Their first mistake is not noticing that PvP in SWTOR became a thing and it attracted a lot of players. Realizing this too late and without really effect they decided to do ranked warzones to make these individuals happy. They spent a extremely long time promising ranked while keeping it pushed back. This lost a large portion of their population. After they got around to finally releasing 8v8s their population was already on the decline. They probably knew they couldn't sustain a general pvp population to keep a healthy participation for 8v8 ranked. For god sakes, look at ranked now, participation has been steadily on the decline for years and rank barely pops. And these are 4s not 8s. There is literally only a handful of 4s teams across both NA/EU combined and solo rank is a unbalanced joke.

 

I know this is so harsh but the developers are too dumb to realize when they made a mistake and when to fix it. The issue with players not playing ranked isn't because they don't have gear or whatever, it's because it's extremely meta based, buggy with extremely poor balance. That is what makes players quit and that is what is killing the ranked scene. Every patch just brings new a new extremely unbalanced PvP meta and it just a never ending cycle that they refuse to acknowledge and correct.

 

I don't believe they will never bring back 8s because they are struggling to even keep a healthy population for 4s alive. Unless they purely focus on correcting bugs and class imbalances to give players an equal chance in ranked, there will never be 8s ever in the near future. It's such a shame because SWTOR PvP mechanically has so much potential and is extremely fun. I just wish they just put love into it.

 

I think calling them "too dumb" to fix it is incorrect. This team could do a lot of what is asked and more! Only thing is they have to get approval from the people who manage development and such, so its not that they were too dumb. They just were not allowed to further progress the pvp system in general based on finances and "metrics" supporting something that only has a 2% of the total player base is not really worth it in money aspects....... 2% i pulled out my butt, but the numbers were VERY small.

[EnzoForMe]

Very curious memory of how 8v8 ranked participation was.

 

The most vibrant time of ranked in this game, by far, was when server transfers were first introduced and 8v8 ranked was the pvp endgame. Everyone on the east coast (and some from the west) transferred to Pot5 and you could get instant pops against 10-15 different teams at any time of the afternoon, all into the night. It was pretty spectacular, and we didn't realize how good we had it at the time. Just from those teams alone is 80-100 people, and that was just Pot5- I'm sure the west coast had their own participation, and Europe theirs. There also used to be huge PTS 8v8 ranked fests with Europeans playing Americans, that was pretty awesome too.

 

Having said that, 8v8 ranked in 2016 would be an awful idea, I'm sad to say. The warzones were balanced at level 50, but as more and more mobility and survivability abilities were accumulated in an arms race between 50 and 65, the warzones became uncompatible with competitive play.

 

Even at level 55, warzones like ancient hypergates and civil war became absurd. AH games would last an eternity with either side able to cap or kill the other team, and civil war was all about who popped predation fast enough to get to their side node, there was no chance of capping the middle against equally skilled opponents. It would be even worse now. Novare coast was only doable because at the time there wasn't the bastion effect on seismic grenades, so your team would chain seismics to cap the middle node- not possible anymore. Voidstar was about who got more kills (kind of arena-like), rarely was a door capped.

 

OG Huttball MIGHT still stand up (it's by far Bioware's best warzone) but that's not enough of a reason to bring 8s back.

 

Further, 8v8 solo ranked has always been, and will always be, an awful idea. You'll have queue syncing and match throwing galore. Not to mention, winning would be purely an RNG game, skill would play a backseat role.

 

As far as rewards, I placed top 3 (in most cases number 1) in all seasons except the current due to inactivity so I've seen all the rewards. These were the best:

 

Pre-season 1- You had two different types of armor in pre-season 1 (firebrand and ranked before the latter could be crafted) and two titles- Deadly Contender and Warzone Annihlator. Getting the ranked armor full set took a 2400 rating, I knew of only two players that had the full set and it was a true pvp status symbol. We won't see something that steep again with everyone that complains about getting 1500. IIRC, this was before the cartel market, when unique rewards weren't requisitioned for more revenue-generating areas of the game (though at the time, pvp was pretty huge).

 

Season 1- Cool armor/weapons. Dynamic effects on armor is always a great thing, the titles were pretty meh though, and there was no top 3 title. The rancor mount was cool as well.

 

Season 2- Best top 3 titles, by far. I have all the top 3 titles but don't wear anything but All-Galaxy. Not only is it cool, it harkens back to a more competitive time in swtor pvp.

 

Season 3- Great armor/weapons, but poor titles.

 

Anything after season 3 has been fairly poor. I still enjoy group ranked, but I can't imagine only playing it for the rewards, they're just not good enough.

 

Armor/weapons are the best rewards, particularly if they have a high rating requirement for the full armor set. Titles alone are not sufficient compensation for ranked performance. The pervasive thinking of "not many people are competing- so we won't invest a lot" is downward spiral that kills off more and more participating each season. Coming back to the game recently, I was shocked that people had to form ops groups to get solo ranked popping. I played around 1k solo ranked games in season 2, never waited more than 15 mins (usually instant) until my rating got too high. Throwing out cheap rewards isn't going to help the situation. Color crystals have always seemed pointless to me- it's not like they're ever good colors.

 

Swtor pvp is pretty well designed, and could've been a real contender in the pvp marketplace had it gotten the proper attention it needed. I'm glad to hear Eric was receptive to your thoughts, and hopefully as community liaison he passes them along. I do agree with him that new warzones aren't everything, most people auto-leave Odessen. Huttball was the most original thing the pvp team came up with and they should stick to that (also solves the problem of relegating someone to boring guard-mode) but Quesh is not spectacular.

 

The fact that their pvp team "does other things" is kind of telling too IMO.

Edited October 11, 2016 by EnzoForMe

[Emperor-Norton]

A sheer guess : Around 50 in the Games Com Cantina. Rather less.

Well I can make a list of 100 people offhand that played over a period of 1 month on one server with SS and streams of them playing. So Bioware be lying. Not really a surprise though.

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

Edit: The real reason 8s went away is that the best way to make 4s succeed was not divide the population between ranked warzones and ranked arenas. That being said Arenas failed and no one plays them. Solo ranked barely happens (only advantage Arenas had on Warzones tbh) and group ranked is always set up beforehand. In the same way that Operations were all brought up to max level for people to experience them as intended because no new Ops are ever getting made, they should bring back 8s as an option to queue because Arenas are going nowhere and the few people playing for fun/old times sake may as well have a new thing to do.

Edited October 11, 2016 by Emperor-Norton

[Icykill_]

The developers decided to remove 8v8s because they ****ed up badly. Their first mistake is not noticing that PvP in SWTOR became a thing and it attracted a lot of players. Realizing this too late and without really effect they decided to do ranked warzones to make these individuals happy. They spent a extremely long time promising ranked while keeping it pushed back. This lost a large portion of their population. After they got around to finally releasing 8v8s their population was already on the decline. They probably knew they couldn't sustain a general pvp population to keep a healthy participation for 8v8 ranked. For god sakes, look at ranked now, participation has been steadily on the decline for years and rank barely pops. And these are 4s not 8s. There is literally only a handful of 4s teams across both NA/EU combined and solo rank is a unbalanced joke.

 

I know this is so harsh but the developers are too dumb to realize when they made a mistake and when to fix it. The issue with players not playing ranked isn't because they don't have gear or whatever, it's because it's extremely meta based, buggy with extremely poor balance. That is what makes players quit and that is what is killing the ranked scene. Every patch just brings new a new extremely unbalanced PvP meta and it just a never ending cycle that they refuse to acknowledge and correct.

 

I don't believe they will never bring back 8s because they are struggling to even keep a healthy population for 4s alive. Unless they purely focus on correcting bugs and class imbalances to give players an equal chance in ranked, there will never be 8s ever in the near future. It's such a shame because SWTOR PvP mechanically has so much potential and is extremely fun. I just wish they just put love into it.

 

But there was no reason they couldn't do what they did for arena. Make a solo queue instead of teams. It could even be based on exactly the same queue system as regs and have solo people of premades up to 4 people.

So I'm not sure how this impacts on ranked in general. Myself and lots of others don't play ranked because we hate arena. I know lots of people who would come back to play this sort of ranked pvp.

It's not because they can't, it's because they can't be bothered. All of the small problems or issues that you mentioned, have easy work arounds that wouldn't impact significantly on arena ranked. If anything there would be more people playing some form of ranked in the game than there is now.

 

Why do I and many others want ranked 8s... because we like tough, competitive, objective based pvp...

What is probably the most aggravating for me are the "it's only regs, who cares" comments when you get elitist jerks in reg 8man pvp. They don't take it seriously and only care about farming numbers. Most aren't good objective pvpers, because if they were, they would know you can do both at the same time.

I can play ranked relatively ok, but I hate that format of pvp, so I am only left with regs. When the largest majority of pvpers in the game prefer play objective pvp, then they should also have a more competitive outlet too. Lots and lots of pvpers feel this way too. The ones that don't, play ranked arena and we know how many play that

But let's say it is "too hard" to implement a ranked "season/ranking" version of 8s .. at least give us an advanced queue option. This helps everyone involved, from newbie pvpers, lower skilled pvper, higher skilled pvpers and even ranked pvpers.

Newbies wouldnt have to try and compete against seasoned objective and "objective ranked capable" players. The more seasoned objective players have an outlet and the ranked arena guys don't have to queue for it or if they do, then they have no grounds to say "it's only regs, who cares"

You also mentioned meta and balance. We all know it's screwed up for Arena. They will never be able to balance more than 4-5 classes for arena, probably not even that many. Most balance in the game is based on all 8 classes. Even classes that may not be balanced as well as they could be are still viable in the 8man format of the game.

It's a win-win for all involved and may even inject some life back into pvp in this game. The lack of competive objective pvp is what has driven most of the seasoned pvpers I know away from the game. The hardcore ranked players and the very small amount of seasoned objective players are the only seasoned players left. Most of the others have gone in search of objective pvp. Lots of the objective players have gone to WoW and Overwatch (both blizzard games ). Lots of the WoW guys and some of the Overwatch guys would come back given the choice.

[snave]

Well I can make a list of 100 people offhand that played over a period of 1 month on one server with SS and streams of them playing. So Bioware be lying. Not really a surprise though.

 

Thanks for posting this.

 

Edit: The real reason 8s went away is that the best way to make 4s succeed was not divide the population between ranked warzones and ranked arenas. That being said Arenas failed and no one plays them. Solo ranked barely happens (only advantage Arenas had on Warzones tbh) and group ranked is always set up beforehand. In the same way that Operations were all brought up to max level for people to experience them as intended because no new Ops are ever getting made, they should bring back 8s as an option to queue because Arenas are going nowhere and the few people playing for fun/old times sake may as well have a new thing to do.

 

I've said this on many occasions but I'm really pretty tired of the rewriting of the 8 man history.

 

8's was successful until 1-2 teams established dominance, then it became undesirable to play because 90% of games the other team was getting farmed. The failure is not from the lack of desire from players but from horrible match making and a lack of any cross server type mechanic.

 

8's was removed to force competitive PvPers in to a 4 man set up because after all if you have 10 x 8 man teams well then that's obviously 20 x 4 man teams. Except that isn't what happened. When they removed 8 man EVERY PvP guild on ToFN (where people had paid large amounts of money to transfer characters due to the much promised PvP patch) died within the month. I cannot think of a single guild that was even remotely near its former level of activity a month after they removed it. People were already annoyed by the hugely delayed first season and adding in this fabled PvP patch that had been hyped as the saviour of PvP was the straw that broke a lot of backs.

 

Naturally this left pretty much no one to do 4 man. BW covered this up by lumping together the participation numbers of SR and TR to show they were higher than the previous 8 man numbers. That's like me comparing participation of Tactical Flashpoints with NiM Operations and is a statistic designed to mislead the community.

 

In terms of the numbers playing 8 man, there was a PvP guild summit prior to the server transfers being offered and there were (iirc) 30-50 guilds there from all over Europe looking to move to ToFN. That's a minimum of 30 x 8 man teams and many guilds fielded more than one team, Reality Check had 5 teams active at one point in time. Compare that to the number of 4 man teams now.

 

The game is too far gone for 8 man to come back now, there simply isn't the population to support it.

 

TLDR - The desire to play team ranked has always been there from the players and community, it failed because BW made a series of just horrible mistakes and never tried to rectify them. They need to stop blaming the players for their mistakes.

[kissingaiur]

But there was no reason they couldn't do what they did for arena. Make a solo queue instead of teams. It could even be based on exactly the same queue system as regs and have solo people of premades up to 4 people.

So I'm not sure how this impacts on ranked in general. Myself and lots of others don't play ranked because we hate arena. I know lots of people who would come back to play this sort of ranked pvp.

It's not because they can't, it's because they can't be bothered. All of the small problems or issues that you mentioned, have easy work arounds that wouldn't impact significantly on arena ranked. If anything there would be more people playing some form of ranked in the game than there is now.

 

Why do I and many others want ranked 8s... because we like tough, competitive, objective based pvp...

What is probably the most aggravating for me are the "it's only regs, who cares" comments when you get elitist jerks in reg 8man pvp. They don't take it seriously and only care about farming numbers. Most aren't good objective pvpers, because if they were, they would know you can do both at the same time.

I can play ranked relatively ok, but I hate that format of pvp, so I am only left with regs. When the largest majority of pvpers in the game prefer play objective pvp, then they should also have a more competitive outlet too. Lots and lots of pvpers feel this way too. The ones that don't, play ranked arena and we know how many play that

But let's say it is "too hard" to implement a ranked "season/ranking" version of 8s .. at least give us an advanced queue option. This helps everyone involved, from newbie pvpers, lower skilled pvper, higher skilled pvpers and even ranked pvpers.

Newbies wouldnt have to try and compete against seasoned objective and "objective ranked capable" players. The more seasoned objective players have an outlet and the ranked arena guys don't have to queue for it or if they do, then they have no grounds to say "it's only regs, who cares"

You also mentioned meta and balance. We all know it's screwed up for Arena. They will never be able to balance more than 4-5 classes for arena, probably not even that many. Most balance in the game is based on all 8 classes. Even classes that may not be balanced as well as they could be are still viable in the 8man format of the game.

It's a win-win for all involved and may even inject some life back into pvp in this game. The lack of competive objective pvp is what has driven most of the seasoned pvpers I know away from the game. The hardcore ranked players and the very small amount of seasoned objective players are the only seasoned players left. Most of the others have gone in search of objective pvp. Lots of the objective players have gone to WoW and Overwatch (both blizzard games ). Lots of the WoW guys and some of the Overwatch guys would come back given the choice.

 

Trust me if Bioware could find a easy quick fix to ranked in this game they would have implemented it in a heart beat. In the end this game simply is too unbalanced/meta driven to support a healthy ranked population to have ranked 8v8s. That is just a fact.

 

Tell me, if Bioware developers can't even grasp balance in a 1 healer, 1 tank, 2 dps scenario how on earth to you think it would be balanced in 8v8 scenario? How is it that just because you have 8 people on your team the imbalances in the classes or specs are magically disappear? I am trying to gasp the idea here. The balances would be felt just as much or even more so if you had more less meta dps/heals on your team. It would be a nightmare.

 

I have thousands of reg experience under my belt, hundreds of hours of solo ranked and group ranked. I personally don't mind them having 4s death match as end game PvP. In the end killing players and being the best mechanically is where the skill factor lays. I don't see how capping a node has an equal skill factor involved; its simply just an accuse for casuals who don't want to kill players to feel like they are doing something important. Ranked is endgame PvP remember, it's not suppose to be for casuals. In the old 8v8s, games didn't come down to who could cap a node better, the skill factor came down to players having full understanding in the classes. Having the best healer(s) and tanks and dps on your team who knew how to do their job. That's PvP at its finest.

 

On the discussion on having 8v8 solo ranked (i discussed this in length with Krea). I personally like the idea but I again can foresee a lot of issues with it. The issues include: Meta imbalances, rating imbalances, population imbalances and how much players really "enjoy" solo ranked (does anyone really deep down like it? Serious question). In my personal opinion there is just too many factors to account for in regs to make them ranked. If the devs can't solve these issues in a small controlled environment I don't honestly foresee them doing any better in a larger pool.

[Tsetso]

Trust me if Bioware could find a easy quick fix to ranked in this game they would have implemented it in a heart beat. In the end this game simply is too unbalanced/meta driven to support a healthy ranked population to have ranked 8v8s. That is just a fact.

 

Tell me, if Bioware developers can't even grasp balance in a 1 healer, 1 tank, 2 dps scenario how on earth to you think it would be balanced in 8v8 scenario? How is it that just because you have 8 people on your team the imbalances in the classes or specs are magically disappear? I am trying to gasp the idea here. The balances would be felt just as much or even more so if you had more less meta dps/heals on your team. It would be a nightmare.

 

I have thousands of reg experience under my belt, hundreds of hours of solo ranked and group ranked. I personally don't mind them having 4s death match as end game PvP. In the end killing players and being the best mechanically is where the skill factor lays. I don't see how capping a node has an equal skill factor involved; its simply just an accuse for casuals who don't want to kill players to feel like they are doing something important. Ranked is endgame PvP remember, it's not suppose to be for casuals. In the old 8v8s, games didn't come down to who could cap a node better, the skill factor came down to players having full understanding in the classes. Having the best healer(s) and tanks and dps on your team who knew how to do their job. That's PvP at its finest.

 

On the discussion on having 8v8 solo ranked (i discussed this in length with Krea). I personally like the idea but I again can foresee a lot of issues with it. The issues include: Meta imbalances, rating imbalances, population imbalances and how much players really "enjoy" solo ranked (does anyone really deep down like it? Serious question). In my personal opinion there is just too many factors to account for in regs to make them ranked. If the devs can't solve these issues in a small controlled environment I don't honestly foresee them doing any better in a larger pool.

 

It's not that they can't implement proper matchmaking - they don't want to. I think i read or watched some interview(maybe Snave's with Musco) where it became clear that their goal number one is fast pops.

[kissingaiur]

It's not that they can't implement proper matchmaking - they don't want to. I think i read or watched some interview(maybe Snave's with Musco) where it became clear that their goal number one is fast pops.

 

All goes back to the issue of population. Population is also a huge factor why ranked is broken. You can designed a ranking system that is balanced if you have some players queuing who are 2K rated and some who are 1300 ranked. It makes for extremely unbalanced matches.

[Tsetso]

All goes back to the issue of population. Population is also a huge factor why ranked is broken. You can designed a ranking system that is balanced if you have some players queuing who are 2K rated and some who are 1300 ranked. It makes for extremely unbalanced matches.

 

Yes, which brings back the topic of X-Server.

[kissingaiur]

Yes, which brings back the topic of X-Server.

 

If they just merged servers it would fix some of their population the issues. I don't understand why they are letting them sit dying like this for so long. "Better then cross server" should just be a freakin' server merge.

Edited October 11, 2016 by kissingaiur

[Tsetso]

If they just merged servers it would fix some of their population the issues. I don't understand why they are letting them sit dying like this for so long. "Better then cross server" should just be a freakin' server merge.

 

Yes, they should, but it seems they prefer to make people pay 1k cc/character to transfer instead.

[kissingaiur]

Yes, they should, but it seems they prefer to make people pay 1k cc/character to transfer instead.

 

Oh I didn't think about how a server merge would effect transfers lmao. This is probably the reason why we don't have a server merge yet because they are busy racking up the money from people leaving dead servers.

[JattaGin]

[slightly off-topic:] Who owns the rights for traditional jedi robes? I would really like to know.

[Tsetso]

[slightly off-topic:] Who owns the rights for traditional jedi robes? I would really like to know.

 

You mean farmers' robes?

[Jherad]

If they just merged servers it would fix some of their population the issues. I don't understand why they are letting them sit dying like this for so long. "Better then cross server" should just be a freakin' server merge.

 

There's a narrative that the game is growing that they need to preserve. Server merges are a huge psychological hit. So we end up with servers like Jung Ma, with 50 players on each faction 1-65 in peak hours.

[Icykill_]

I've said this on many occasions but I'm really pretty tired of the rewriting of the 8 man history.

 

8's was successful until 1-2 teams established dominance, then it became undesirable to play because 90% of games the other team was getting farmed. The failure is not from the lack of desire from players but from horrible match making and a lack of any cross server type mechanic.

 

8's was removed to force competitive PvPers in to a 4 man set up because after all if you have 10 x 8 man teams well then that's obviously 20 x 4 man teams. Except that isn't what happened. When they removed 8 man EVERY PvP guild on ToFN (where people had paid large amounts of money to transfer characters due to the much promised PvP patch) died within the month. I cannot think of a single guild that was even remotely near its former level of activity a month after they removed it. People were already annoyed by the hugely delayed first season and adding in this fabled PvP patch that had been hyped as the saviour of PvP was the straw that broke a lot of backs.

 

Naturally this left pretty much no one to do 4 man. BW covered this up by lumping together the participation numbers of SR and TR to show they were higher than the previous 8 man numbers. That's like me comparing participation of Tactical Flashpoints with NiM Operations and is a statistic designed to mislead the community.

 

In terms of the numbers playing 8 man, there was a PvP guild summit prior to the server transfers being offered and there were (iirc) 30-50 guilds there from all over Europe looking to move to ToFN. That's a minimum of 30 x 8 man teams and many guilds fielded more than one team, Reality Check had 5 teams active at one point in time. Compare that to the number of 4 man teams now.

 

The game is too far gone for 8 man to come back now, there simply isn't the population to support it.

 

TLDR - The desire to play team ranked has always been there from the players and community, it failed because BW made a series of just horrible mistakes and never tried to rectify them. They need to stop blaming the players for their mistakes.

 

Would you agree they should have at least tried the solo or pug ranked 8 man idea I put forward. Eric's excuse has always been that ranked 8 man teams didn't have the numbers 😐, which from what you've said is not really correct.

If that was their "offical" reason for removing it, wouldn't it appear that they introduced arena solo queue because "they" identified team ranked as being less popular. I'm not saying that's why they introduced a solo queue for it, but that's how it appears from my perspective. So if that was the case, they should of at least added a solo queue option to 8 man to address that participation issue. I actually believe the only reason they removed 8 man, was to make people play arena.

Even now I think adding a solo 8 man ranked queue would breath some life back into pvp. But that's just my opinion and I'm interested in what you think of the idea of allowing a pug ranked 8 man queue with the same set up as pug regs. People could queue solo or up to a 4 man premades.

[Icykill_]

If they just merged servers it would fix some of their population the issues. I don't understand why they are letting them sit dying like this for so long. "Better then cross server" should just be a freakin' server merge.

 

As long as they didn't merge them all into one based in one location that disadvantages peoples ping more than now.

Ie, as an APAC player, I already play ranked with 180-300ms lag on Harbinger (west coast) since they closed our APAC servers. If I play on an east coast server it is between 300ms (best case) and 600ms. So if they merged all servers into one and it was located anywhere else but the west coast, myself and others just wouldn't be able to pvp. I would definitely leave the game and I'm sure a lot of the APAC players would too.

But if you are on the east coast or Europe and got forced to merge with a west coast server, the same would be true with increased lag. While it would not be as bad as it would be for APAC players, European players would take the brunt of that and would cause lots to stop playing.

The game really can't afford more people to leave. So the only option, all though not a fix, is to have 1 server per region. I'm all for merging all of west coast into one, all east coast into one and all Europe into one or two. Unless they can miraculously work out how to do x-server queues, which we know they won't, I see the 1 server per region being the only option.