Icykill_ Posted October 12, 2016 Share Posted October 12, 2016 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. Yep, they are milking it for all it's worth. If people just realised this and stopped paying to transfer and rolled another toon (not ideal) on the server they want to play on, then Bio would be forced to merge. It's pure economics, if nobody is paying to transfer and nobody is playing on dead servers, then they are wasting money keeping them running. I guess we'll see merges once the cost of keeping the dead servers running out weighs the money they maybe making from transfers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alec_Fortescue Posted October 12, 2016 Share Posted October 12, 2016 (edited) Friend pointed me the this thread. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are true friend and a kind person to think of me. Charles parading around in Jedi robes felt like a slap to the face. :/ PM me for rewards, please. Edited October 12, 2016 by Alec_Fortescue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snave Posted October 12, 2016 Share Posted October 12, 2016 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. I mean, there's no real harm to implementing a solo / pug 8 man ranked system but I really don't think it would work or be worth doing. 8 man didn't really have great numbers, there were people playing it but towards the end we hardly had any teams in the queue but like I said earlier there were a lot of reasons around this. The point I was trying to make is the removal of 8 man has always been justified with "a lack of numbers" and if that is true then we should also see a removal of 4 man seeing as the numbers are FAR worse for that game mode despite the lower barrier to entry and the lower number of players to get it to pop. They've been pretty open about removing 8's to try and force 4's participation, they said it at the time and have said it during my interviews with Musco. We all need to accept that BW's prime metric is speed of pop, not quality, not balance, not fun - speed. This is also why solo ranked exists, so they can lump all the solo players in to the ranked statistics and then portray that as a success in participation. Solo 8's is effectively the same thing as regs, I guess you could make a system where regs was only available as solo queue to force premades in to a ranked type game mode but that would all negatively effect the speed of pops so they'd never do it. Think about it, currently PvPers can queue for regs, SR or TR. If you added in another option you are effectively removing players from one of the other PvP modes to fill up the new one which waters down the amount of available players for that mode making pop times slower or even possibly killing the game mode entirely. Might be more fun for the players but that isn't their primary metric, they don't have a fun metric to analyse otherwise Odessen would never have been invented. I only really enjoy warzones so any kind of enhanced system would be good for me personally but I just don't think there's enough PvPers left in the game for it to really matter what they do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emperor-Norton Posted October 12, 2016 Share Posted October 12, 2016 (edited) 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. I wouldn't put that much weight on who said they had interest, but on who actually went and played. Lots of people didn't go to the PvP servers, some went back, and others fell apart. It is more telling to see who continued to play after they got there and saw how they measured up vs the competition. On that note, what did you want Bioware to do in 2.4? Not release Arenas? Which was what everyone was expecting in the 'pvp patch' everyone was waiting for. Did you want them to release both, try and balance Warzone vs Arena awards, and watch the already fragile population get splintered between them both, bringing things closer to the old system of 1-2 teams become dominant and then farm everyone else? Sure hindsight is 20/20 and knowing the population keeping both would be better; but they took the option that, in theory, would be the best one for actually growing the PvP scene. Compared to keeping the same old RWZ system that was okay but was never going anywhere. Either way that was 3 years ago and all we can deal with is the now. Your point of 'there isn't a population for 8 man Warzones' is moot since there isn't a population for 4 man Arenas. Not even in Solo Ranked anymore (which was a horrible format anyway to determine skill at the game). The ranked 'community' has degenerated in the same way the NiM PvE community degenerated after Spring 2015, when Bioware announced they are never making a NiM Operation again, which was because the top 5 or so PvE guilds quit and they were the intended audience for NiM (fyi making NiM is pretty easy, they just slap on Mechanics taken away in beta versions due to being too hard). They should just do with ranked what they did with Ops later on in 4.0 and restore content to allow people to experience it as it was. Don't pretend SWTOR arenas are going anywhere worth investing as a serious format. 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. 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. So which one is it? Or is it Bioware's fault some players were better and the others couldn't or wouldn't improve. The only way Ranked may have been successful was having cross server queues back in 2012/2013. That however is in the past and the best use of Ranked now is to have fun playing some semi-serious SWTOR PvP, not to climb a ladder and prove your talent against the rest of the game's population. High end play in SWTOR is a curiosity, not the destination for players anymore. As such, it would be nice to have back that nice curiosity of 8 man ranked warzones, like we have the curiosity of EV, KP, EC, TfB, S&V at their designed difficulty. Edited October 13, 2016 by Emperor-Norton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlavivsAetivs Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 (edited) [slightly off-topic:] Who owns the rights for traditional jedi robes? I would really like to know. A Clockwork Orange. I know it's not ground PvP, but did anyone ask about GSF at the Cantina event? ~ Eudoxia Edited October 13, 2016 by FlavivsAetivs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinQCowart Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 (edited) Cross-server is not just about "fast pops" its about having a pvp community that isnt fragmented in 23 different servers separated by a transfer paywall. This is especially important for ranked as rating is no accurate measure of skill when the playerbase is fragmented, and the elo system cant do matchmaking without a larger sample to sort out veterans from newcomers. Why do we even need to bring these issues up? why isnt Bioware ahead of ranting nerds on a forum. Polish your product add regular content and take my money! FFS! Edited October 13, 2016 by KevinQCowart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icykill_ Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 I mean, there's no real harm to implementing a solo / pug 8 man ranked system but I really don't think it would work or be worth doing. 8 man didn't really have great numbers, there were people playing it but towards the end we hardly had any teams in the queue but like I said earlier there were a lot of reasons around this. The point I was trying to make is the removal of 8 man has always been justified with "a lack of numbers" and if that is true then we should also see a removal of 4 man seeing as the numbers are FAR worse for that game mode despite the lower barrier to entry and the lower number of players to get it to pop. They've been pretty open about removing 8's to try and force 4's participation, they said it at the time and have said it during my interviews with Musco. We all need to accept that BW's prime metric is speed of pop, not quality, not balance, not fun - speed. This is also why solo ranked exists, so they can lump all the solo players in to the ranked statistics and then portray that as a success in participation. Solo 8's is effectively the same thing as regs, I guess you could make a system where regs was only available as solo queue to force premades in to a ranked type game mode but that would all negatively effect the speed of pops so they'd never do it. Think about it, currently PvPers can queue for regs, SR or TR. If you added in another option you are effectively removing players from one of the other PvP modes to fill up the new one which waters down the amount of available players for that mode making pop times slower or even possibly killing the game mode entirely. Might be more fun for the players but that isn't their primary metric, they don't have a fun metric to analyse otherwise Odessen would never have been invented. I only really enjoy warzones so any kind of enhanced system would be good for me personally but I just don't think there's enough PvPers left in the game for it to really matter what they do. Sadly, you are correct as usual on your analysis. If only they'd implemented something better when we still had relatively health pvp populations Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savej Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 A Clockwork Orange. I know it's not ground PvP, but did anyone ask about GSF at the Cantina event? ~ Eudoxia GSF is on the list of things that will be discussed in the Jan stream according to EM's recent post on future development. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snave Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 I wouldn't put that much weight on who said they had interest, but on who actually went and played. Lots of people didn't go to the PvP servers, some went back, and others fell apart. It is more telling to see who continued to play after they got there and saw how they measured up vs the competition. On that note, what did you want Bioware to do in 2.4? Not release Arenas? Which was what everyone was expecting in the 'pvp patch' everyone was waiting for. Did you want them to release both, try and balance Warzone vs Arena awards, and watch the already fragile population get splintered between them both, bringing things closer to the old system of 1-2 teams become dominant and then farm everyone else? Sure hindsight is 20/20 and knowing the population keeping both would be better; but they took the option that, in theory, would be the best one for actually growing the PvP scene. Compared to keeping the same old RWZ system that was okay but was never going anywhere. Either way that was 3 years ago and all we can deal with is the now. "Everyone" was not eagerly awaiting areans. If that was the case people would have been happy about it rather than having the majority quit the game completely. What I wanted from 2.4 is what BW promised us - a PvP patch that would finally address the issues, a patch they had promised would make all the waiting and transferring worthwhile. We didn't get that and for a for a reminder here's the image that went along with the original announcement The rest of your points on this really don't lead anywhere. They made a terrible decision that decimated the vast majority of the PvP guilds on every server, something which the game has never recovered from. Had they made a post saying "thinking about removing 8 man for arena, thoughts?" then this pretty obvious backlash would have been clarified for them but that would have required some engagement with the PvP community. Yes we're in a terrible position at the moment, the reason for it is terrible decision making from BW. No we can't really do much about it, which is pretty much what I said in my post. Your point of 'there isn't a population for 8 man Warzones' is moot since there isn't a population for 4 man Arenas. Not even in Solo Ranked anymore (which was a horrible format anyway to determine skill at the game). The ranked 'community' has degenerated in the same way the NiM PvE community degenerated after Spring 2015, when Bioware announced they are never making a NiM Operation again, which was because the top 5 or so PvE guilds quit and they were the intended audience for NiM (fyi making NiM is pretty easy, they just slap on Mechanics taken away in beta versions due to being too hard). They should just do with ranked what they did with Ops later on in 4.0 and restore content to allow people to experience it as it was. Don't pretend SWTOR arenas are going anywhere worth investing as a serious format. I'm not against them adding 8 man back in to the game. Personally I'd love to be able to queue up for that even if it wasn't on a regular basis and had to be managed by the community. My point is they wont add it back in because fun isn't a metric they measure, it's effort for them to do it and it will slow down the pop rate for other forms of PvP. I've literally tried to arrange kickball 8 man "ranked" pvp nights on pretty much every PTS that's been available, really I'd love to see it back in the game but objectively speaking I don't see why they'd bother with it. So which one is it? Or is it Bioware's fault some players were better and the others couldn't or wouldn't improve. The only way Ranked may have been successful was having cross server queues back in 2012/2013. That however is in the past and the best use of Ranked now is to have fun playing some semi-serious SWTOR PvP, not to climb a ladder and prove your talent against the rest of the game's population. High end play in SWTOR is a curiosity, not the destination for players anymore. As such, it would be nice to have back that nice curiosity of 8 man ranked warzones, like we have the curiosity of EV, KP, EC, TfB, S&V at their designed difficulty. Cross server has always been the answer but overall I think the main reasons for the drop in participation of 8 man after the initial rush to ToFN was due to them just letting the format stagnate for so long. Bubble pop and smash teams pretty much sucked the fun out of most games, to be honest there were a lot of balance issues but between those and a seemingly endless pre season peoples interest in it died out. When you add in 2 / 3 teams absolutely destroying the majority of other ones it's not hard to see why it stopped. Also just for reference, the match making in 8's was absolute garbage. On multiple occasions you'd have high ranked teams in the queue at the same time only to end up with them facing a team much lower rather than each other, it was just absolutely terrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
casirabit Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 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. . Most likely what they were doing is adding companions to the pvp and then the dark and light event where if you want the companion or to complete the even you have to do pvp which doesn't really work since there are people that hate pvp and will only go there and stand there and do nothing. I don't agree with that. Don't put things like that for pvp. All you are doing there is creating more trouble for honest pvp players that like to pvp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Savej Posted October 13, 2016 Share Posted October 13, 2016 2.4 (or whatever it was) was handled extremely badly. We were told to expect a big pvp update. We were told about arenas and other changes - not everyone liked the idea of arenas but they were happy for those that did. It wasn't until nearly the last minute that we found out r8 was going away. Up until then people were shuffling servers and organizing guilds and practicing/training for the update and their hopes were dashed in one fell swoop. Instead of a happy time it became one of BW's "taking away your toys" times (KOTFE almost turned into that with companions - BW loves taking things away). The main problem with 8s was not enough players but the other one was that BW said they didn't have enough resources to balance it - we were assured that 4s would get regular balance updates. I don't care about r8s, never did, but I am not sure why BW is so fixated on having small servers with no x-server. And treating the most dedicated and social pvpers and pvers like unwanted baggage is always a dumb move for an mmo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneHit Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 I love how they mentioned the pvp team is also part of another team. Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it. Is it the cartel market team? Aww. You devs kill me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tharandil Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Musco said that after releasing all of KOTET at once the devs are refovussing on group content and pvp. More information follows in January http://dulfy.net/2016/10/11/swtor-musco-responds-to-nycc-cantina/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icykill_ Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Musco said that after releasing all of KOTET at once the devs are refovussing on group content and pvp. More information follows in January http://dulfy.net/2016/10/11/swtor-musco-responds-to-nycc-cantina/ He alluded at pvp, but didn't confirm it because he can't. Basically he said we will be working on new group content for operations and for any other group content, come see us in January. As per usual it was a non committal statement and from past experience I would say that it will mean nothing new for pvp. But Bioware will try and appease the operations and pve community with new "bells and whistles" because they've been complaining the loudest in the general section of the forums, while we all argue among ourselves and rage at the Devs in the pvp section of the forums. We all know they don't pay any attention to this section. You can't really blame Eric either because he's hands are always tied with what and how he can say things. Basically he has to give responses like a politician. But I bet he'll cop all the rage come January when there won't be anything for pvp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magira Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 He was incredibly friendly and willing to talk about anything and everything I brought up. I would also be in a good mood in his place if I am asked instead of uncomfortable questions such as the after cross server, matchmaking and Premade vs Pugs after completely unimportant. Something you like to answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Primarch_PWnD Posted October 14, 2016 Author Share Posted October 14, 2016 (edited) I would also be in a good mood in his place if I am asked instead of uncomfortable questions such as the after cross server, matchmaking and Premade vs Pugs after completely unimportant. Something you like to answer. Well, I wasn't exactly lobbing soft-balls at him. I suppose I didn't post my questions word-for-word, but each question I asked him was backed up with WHY I was asking him that question. For example read the question about the ranked rewards, or why I explained that pvp wasn't getting any support from BW. It wasn't rainbows and unicorns. and you can't force someone to answer a question in any particular way. As far as matchmaking and pugs v premades, we have our answer already; they're not going to take away the ability for people to play warzones with their friends, and any changes to the current system to try to alleviate the pug v premade will result in astronomically longer queue times for everyone. It's not going to change. Also, something I think that gets lost in the forums here is that Eric Musco is the Community Manager, not a developer. He's not sitting and writing code, he's not making the decisions for how to implement systems, and he's not the one in charge of the direction things go. He's involved in their decision making as far as relaying the community's opinions on things, but that's as far as it goes. He's a great source of information, but that's it. If you read my other post with Ben Irving, you can see how different the conversations I had with them were. With Ben, we talked about how things could change. With Eric, it was more question and answer. When we lobby for a thing with Eric, it's in the hope that he goes to Ben and lobbies for that thing to him. Eric is simply the voice, and supposedly the advocate for the community in their meetings, and they can either choose to ignore him, or change things based on that. Look at the example of the ranked rewards: Ben thought titles were just fine, while Eric already knew they stink. Obviously a situation where they ignored him, if he said anything about it to them in the first place. And if he didn't mention this to anyone, he's either a bad community manager, or we overestimate what his duties entail. Edited October 14, 2016 by Primarch_PWnD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magira Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 (edited) For example read the question about the ranked rewards, No real PVPers are interested in Rewards. And certainly not for the "Rated", that consists largely of premade syncing and wintrading. Edited October 14, 2016 by Magira Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KevinQCowart Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 I appauled your effort but I think you are not talking about the crital issues. SWTOR PvP will never grow until they fix the engine performance and the bugs with abilities and enviroment make it hard to take the game seriously. Maybe after that x-server queues are needed to unify the population which could lead to a functional elo and matchmaking system. After that games modes need to be revised to match the classes changes. SWTOR is a house with decent furniture and landscaping but it has termites and lead pipes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acaelus-Thorne Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 I appauled your effort but I think you are not talking about the crital issues. SWTOR PvP will never grow until they fix the engine performance and the bugs with abilities and enviroment make it hard to take the game seriously. Maybe after that x-server queues are needed to unify the population which could lead to a functional elo and matchmaking system. After that games modes need to be revised to match the classes changes. SWTOR is a house with decent furniture and landscaping but it has termites and lead pipes. What game breaking engine bugs are there with PvP right now? I know of none. The only issue we had in season 7 was the new abilities insta killing during a leap or holo traverse on the new maps. That was it, which they corrected. Late, but corrected. Cross server queues I would agree with. But I don't know of any engine issues that prevent anyone from PvPing or enjoying SWTOR as a whole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jherad Posted October 16, 2016 Share Posted October 16, 2016 Ben thought titles were just fine, while Eric already knew they stink. Obviously a situation where they ignored him, if he said anything about it to them in the first place. And if he didn't mention this to anyone, he's either a bad community manager, or we overestimate what his duties entail. That sounds like a classic case of groupthink to me. In a hierarchical company where a 'leader' has a strong vision, people are often afraid to 'rock the boat' or disagree. 'Hey, I think players would love titles' becomes 'we all know that players love titles'. That is especially the case when any disagreement might be met by 'well, do you have a better idea that doesn't cost any more?' and even if you do, you're in danger of being tagged as the troublemaker that thinks he knows better than the boss. This game isn't going to be a passion for most, it's a job. I doubt Bioware is immune to office politics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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