Suggestions for Changes to Solo Ranked

[Lundorff]

I like playing competitive PVP. I like the concept of competing with and against like-minded players in a game of skill, but ranked has unfortunately descended into a cesspool of cheats, exploits, trolls and mat farmers, and the current format needs to change. As such I would like for us to have a constructive debate on how to make ranked enjoyable. The following are my own suggestions, and they are just that - suggestions. I welcome any and all counter-points.

 

Queue declining:

It should not be possible to decline a match invitation without losing ELO/Points. This has created a lot of problems with Queue Declining (QD) and given raise to a plethora of unbalanced matches.

 

Unbalanced start:

A match should not start with unbalanced team compositions that stems from QD. By this I am referring to 4 vs. 3 matches or when one side has a healer / tank and the other side does not. It is fundamentally unfair for the rest of the team, and the match should simply be annulled with no loss of ELO/Points for either side.

 

Cross faction:

Cross faction has to be implemented. I would like to believe that PVP players are a bit more cynical and indifferent when it comes to Star Wars lore, and that cross faction queues would be welcome by all except Queue Syncers (QS). It would revitalize republic side gaming, and simply make everything a lot more fun.

 

The rating system:

Consider a complete overhaul of the rating system. Let me preface by saying that ELO is a brilliant system, and if done correctly it can create some very balanced matches. But for ELO to work we need a lot more players, and while cross faction would help, it's not nearly enough. If my understanding is correct, the game pitches 1,3,5,7 against 2,4,6,8 and while that is fine in theory, in practice it is a disaster. With 10000 players it would be perfect, as all 8 players would be within 1-10 points of each other, and everybody could have a decent and fair fight. But with so few players, we end up with extremely lopsided matches, and it quickly becomes a shouting match of whom to blame. Example: if a high rated DPS is doing 700k damage, but he is grouped with an insta-kill 20k damage + globalled, then no one is having fun. The insta-kill will get blamed and either leave of begin trolling ranked and the high rated player will lose ELO/Points and be annoyed and spiteful. I do not know how to fix this, and still maintain a competitive ladder system.

 

I would suggest changing to a point based system that rewards wining and doesn't punish losing as harshly. A lost match should only result in 1-5 points being lost (we need loss to prevent AFK cheating), but the more matches you win in a row the greater your Point Rate would be. Example: You win 1 match and get 3 points, you win the next match and get 6 points, and the next and get 9 points all the way to max Point Rate of 15 points. Your Point Rate would be taking back to 3 when you lose. It would reward good players and make them climb faster, it would create a sense of progress for medium players and bad players would not be blamed as much when a game is lost, as no one is losing more than a few points. Yes it would be more about who plays the most, but the current system isn't working either.

 

PVP gear:

Bring back PVP gear from comms and make it a ranked requirement. Give us 2 sets of PVP gear as we used to and allow people to min/max with a mods vendor. The current valor requirement does not prevent trolls and mat farmers from entering ranked, but a gear requirement might make it a bit more difficult. It would also make it much easier to try new characters. Furthermore, by using PVP gear they could also create PVP specific stats/abilities/passsive to better separate it from PVE.

 

Leavers:

Punish leavers harsher. If you leave at any point you lose XX points. This however should not annul the match (to prevent abuse).

 

Vote kick: (Semi-abandoned idea)

Allow 3 people to vote kick a person at any point, even during combat or pre-match. This is only to deter trolls and the guy getting kicked should only lose 1-5 points to prevent abuse. A kicked person should be barred from reentering ranked for ½-1 hour (this _could_ get abused I know). This however should not annul the match (again to prevent abuse). Most seems to dislike this idea, so I will annul it for now. I still wish we could do something about trolls. This forum needs a strikethrough....

 

Acid play:

While legal, I would prefer if acid games were no longer possible. It drags out the fights, and it has little to do with actual PVP.

 

Edited to include:

- PVP gear with specific stats.

- Acid play.

- Most dislike vote kicking

Edited May 17, 2018 by Lundorff

[Alec_Fortescue]

No man, Queue Dodging is something completely different. Please edit that, that term has already been established years ago. Queue Dodging is monitoring bads/goods through friend list and then queuing or leaving queue depending on the situation but it does not involve declines or abuse. I kind of a meta game. Edited May 16, 2018 by Alec_Fortescue

[Lundorff]

No man, Queue Dodging is something completely different. Please edit that, that term has already been established years ago. Queue Dodging is monitoring bads/goods through friend list and then queuing or leaving queue depending on the situation but it does not involve declines or abuse. I kind of a meta game.

 

Right you are, I have edited that part.

[omaan]

I like playing competitive PVP. I like the concept of competing with and against like-minded players in a game of skill, but ranked has unfortunately descended into a cesspool of cheats, exploits, trolls and mat farmers, and the current format needs to change. As such I would like for us to have a constructive debate on how to make ranked enjoyable. The following are my own suggestions, and they are just that - suggestions. I welcome any and all counter-points.

 

Queue declining:

It should not be possible to decline a match invitation without losing ELO/Points. This has created a lot of problems with Queue Declining (QD) and given raise to a plethora of unbalanced matches.

 

Unbalanced start:

A match should not start with unbalanced team compositions that stems from QD. By this I am referring to 4 vs. 3 matches or when one side has a healer / tank and the other side does not. It is fundamentally unfair for the rest of the team, and the match should simply be annulled with no loss of ELO/Points for either side.

 

Cross faction:

Cross faction has to be implemented. I would like to believe that PVP players are a bit more cynical and indifferent when it comes to Star Wars lore, and that cross faction queues would be welcome by all except Queue Syncers (QS). It would revitalize republic side gaming, and simply make everything a lot more fun.

 

The rating system:

Consider a complete overhaul of the rating system. Let me preface by saying that ELO is a brilliant system, and if done correctly it can create some very balanced matches. But for ELO to work we need a lot more players, and while cross faction would help, it's not nearly enough. If my understanding is correct, the game pitches 1,3,5,7 against 2,4,6,8 and while that is fine in theory, in practice it is a disaster. With 10000 players it would be perfect, as all 8 players would be within 1-10 points of each other, and everybody could have a decent and fair fight. But with so few players, we end up with extremely lopsided matches, and it quickly becomes a shouting match of whom to blame. Example: if a high rated DPS is doing 700k damage, but he is grouped with an insta-kill 20k damage + globalled, then no one is having fun. The insta-kill will get blamed and either leave of begin trolling ranked and the high rated player will lose ELO/Points and be annoyed and spiteful. I do not know how to fix this, and still maintain a competitive ladder system.

 

I would suggest changing to a point based system that rewards wining and doesn't punish losing as harshly. A lost match should only result in 1-5 points being lost (we need loss to prevent AFK cheating), but the more matches you win in a row the greater your Point Rate would be. Example: You win 1 match and get 3 points, you win the next match and get 6 points, and the next and get 9 points all the way to max Point Rate of 15 points. Your Point Rate would be taking back to 3 when you lose. It would reward good players and make them climb faster, it would create a sense of progress for medium players and bad players would not be blamed as much when a game is lost, as no one is losing more than a few points. Yes it would be more about who plays the most, but the current system isn't working either.

 

PVP gear:

Bring back PVP gear from comms and make it a ranked requirement. Give us 2 sets of PVP gear as we used to and allow people to min/max with a mods vendor. The current valor requirement does not prevent trolls and mat farmers from entering ranked, but a gear requirement might make it a bit more difficult. It would also make it much easier to try new characters.

 

Leavers:

Punish leavers harsher. If you leave at any point you lose XX points. This however should not annul the match (to prevent abuse).

 

Vote kick:

Allow 3 people to vote kick a person at any point, even during combat or pre-match. This is only to deter trolls and the guy getting kicked should only lose 1-5 points to prevent abuse. A kicked person should be barred from reentering ranked for ½-1 hour (this _could_ get abused I know). This however should not annul the match (again to prevent abuse).

 

Some ideas are good while some will cause many problems and cant be implemented.'Cross faction? Devs already said they are returning back to empire vs republic concept, and lore is important in pvp too not only in pve. Iam here to smash republic soldiers imstead of helping them to get elo and to be honest reps are bad in pvp so i have no wish to carry them.

 

Your rating system is bad because it will benefit those who are playing most instead of those who has real skill. I mean if you loose not much elo and wins give you more and more then those who will dodge skilled players (queue when they are offline) and spend more time playing will get tonnes of elo without real competition. With your system skilled players who arent playing much will always have less elo than those who play more but has less skill (and clever enough to dodge-queue).

 

About gear. Well this may work but only if pvp players would have a chance to get pvp gear fast ith their new chars and queue sr as fast as possible instead of farming it with a slow command system. I mean the pvp gear which allows to queue sr must be obtainable with comms which are legacy transferrable.

 

Vote kick - ABSOLUTELY NO. Ranked community is toxic and full of qsyncers and bad players who know each other. They will kick those they dont like just to troll them. It will be abused hard. No thx lol.

 

I have nothing against current sr system except for: wintraders which are not being punished by devs (yeah iam telling about big nay and raging hurst (names are changed to avoid tos violation); acid games which are abused by stealthers which are using hunters boon buff and endurance stim buggs and tactics normal players have no idea how to fight because it wasnt supposed to be like this (yeah iam telling about sins squad on ss server).

[Lundorff]

Some ideas are good while some will cause many problems and cant be implemented.'Cross faction? Devs already said they are returning back to empire vs republic concept, and lore is important in pvp too not only in pve. Iam here to smash republic soldiers imstead of helping them to get elo and to be honest reps are bad in pvp so i have no wish to carry them.

 

I respect your opinion, but I think you are in the minority on this. For me it is a a small sacrifice to give up lore and "correctness" when it will help put a stop to queue syncs and make ranked viable on the republic side again.

 

Your rating system is bad because it will benefit those who are playing most instead of those who has real skill. I mean if you loose not much elo and wins give you more and more then those who will dodge skilled players (queue when they are offline) and spend more time playing will get tonnes of elo without real competition. With your system skilled players who arent playing much will always have less elo than those who play more but has less skill (and clever enough to dodge-queue).

 

Yes it will, but I still think it's a better concept than what we have. The current system invites too much cheating, as the penalties for losing are too severe. I am open for any systems; mine is just a suggestion.

 

About gear. Well this may work but only if pvp players would have a chance to get pvp gear fast ith their new chars and queue sr as fast as possible instead of farming it with a slow command system. I mean the pvp gear which allows to queue sr must be obtainable with comms which are legacy transferrable.

 

It would have to be just as fast as it was previously. It took 1-4 weeks to be BiS depending on how much you played. Furthermore, by using PVP gear they could also create PVP specific stats/abilities/passsive to better separate it from PVE.

 

Vote kick - ABSOLUTELY NO. Ranked community is toxic and full of qsyncers and bad players who know each other. They will kick those they dont like just to troll them. It will be abused hard. No thx lol.

 

Vote kicking is already in place, but it is very seldom used. My version would simply make it a bit easier to kick trolls, while not given any benefits to the rest of the team. But yes it is controversial, and would need to be implemented with great care.

 

acid games which are abused by stealthers which are using hunters boon buff and endurance stim buggs and tactics normal players have no idea how to fight because it wasnt supposed to be like this (yeah iam telling about sins squad on ss server).

 

While legal, I would prefer if acid games were no longer possible. It drags out the fights, and it has little to do with actual PVP.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Lundorff

[RafaelPeretz]

Or they can just read the match statistics (with a algo) and if the losing team has someone down way beyond the normal (meaning he is dragging the team down for being afk spamming normal attack, being a troll, or just not ready for ranked) the ELO wining and losing is void in that match, the wining team earn only more tokens. If the same account make a certain number of matches being void in a day, he get banned from the solo que for 24hours or lets say 10 regular games played to the end.

 

Also put back the ELO loss on que decline.

 

This will ensure that only balanced matches are counted for ELO win/loss.

[Janglor]

"Vote kick:

Allow 3 people to vote kick a person at any point, even during combat or pre-match. This is only to deter trolls and the guy getting kicked should only lose 1-5 points to prevent abuse. A kicked person should be barred from reentering ranked for ½-1 hour (this _could_ get abused I know). This however should not annul the match (again to prevent abuse)."

 

If you made this a feature, you'd just have the less geared/skilled players being chronically kicked from every team they got put on even if they arent trolling and just suck. While its extremely frustrating to have bad teammates in solos, it isnt a kick-able offense to be inexperienced.

[Talon_strikes]

Vote kicking is already being "abused" lol. If I get a crappy player on my team who will cost us the game and there's at least one other person I'm cool with or who'll at least respond to my request, I will tell them to wait till the guy dies and then we vote kick him. Edited May 17, 2018 by Talon_strikes

[frosttj]

Personally I think Solo ranked needs to go. Force people into teams in order to get rewards. Turn solo queue into a format to practice group ranked. Solo ranked has always been manipulated by queue syncing, queue dodging, trolling, and fosters a toxic environment. I don't get the appeal of seeing how well you can do with an overperforming pvp class against 4 random players with 3 other random players. Often times it usually comes down to 1 or 2 weak healers/tanks in the solo queue that decides the fate of the match.

[TrixxieTriss]

I like playing competitive PVP. I like the concept of competing with and against like-minded players in a game of skill, but ranked has unfortunately descended into a cesspool of cheats, exploits, trolls and mat farmers, and the current format needs to change. As such I would like for us to have a constructive debate on how to make ranked enjoyable. The following are my own suggestions, and they are just that - suggestions. I welcome any and all counter-points.

 

Queue declining:

It should not be possible to decline a match invitation without losing ELO/Points. This has created a lot of problems with Queue Declining (QD) and given raise to a plethora of unbalanced matches.

 

Unbalanced start:

A match should not start with unbalanced team compositions that stems from QD. By this I am referring to 4 vs. 3 matches or when one side has a healer / tank and the other side does not. It is fundamentally unfair for the rest of the team, and the match should simply be annulled with no loss of ELO/Points for either side.

 

Cross faction:

Cross faction has to be implemented. I would like to believe that PVP players are a bit more cynical and indifferent when it comes to Star Wars lore, and that cross faction queues would be welcome by all except Queue Syncers (QS). It would revitalize republic side gaming, and simply make everything a lot more fun.

 

The rating system:

Consider a complete overhaul of the rating system. Let me preface by saying that ELO is a brilliant system, and if done correctly it can create some very balanced matches. But for ELO to work we need a lot more players, and while cross faction would help, it's not nearly enough. If my understanding is correct, the game pitches 1,3,5,7 against 2,4,6,8 and while that is fine in theory, in practice it is a disaster. With 10000 players it would be perfect, as all 8 players would be within 1-10 points of each other, and everybody could have a decent and fair fight. But with so few players, we end up with extremely lopsided matches, and it quickly becomes a shouting match of whom to blame. Example: if a high rated DPS is doing 700k damage, but he is grouped with an insta-kill 20k damage + globalled, then no one is having fun. The insta-kill will get blamed and either leave of begin trolling ranked and the high rated player will lose ELO/Points and be annoyed and spiteful. I do not know how to fix this, and still maintain a competitive ladder system.

 

I would suggest changing to a point based system that rewards wining and doesn't punish losing as harshly. A lost match should only result in 1-5 points being lost (we need loss to prevent AFK cheating), but the more matches you win in a row the greater your Point Rate would be. Example: You win 1 match and get 3 points, you win the next match and get 6 points, and the next and get 9 points all the way to max Point Rate of 15 points. Your Point Rate would be taking back to 3 when you lose. It would reward good players and make them climb faster, it would create a sense of progress for medium players and bad players would not be blamed as much when a game is lost, as no one is losing more than a few points. Yes it would be more about who plays the most, but the current system isn't working either.

 

PVP gear:

Bring back PVP gear from comms and make it a ranked requirement. Give us 2 sets of PVP gear as we used to and allow people to min/max with a mods vendor. The current valor requirement does not prevent trolls and mat farmers from entering ranked, but a gear requirement might make it a bit more difficult. It would also make it much easier to try new characters. Furthermore, by using PVP gear they could also create PVP specific stats/abilities/passsive to better separate it from PVE.

 

Leavers:

Punish leavers harsher. If you leave at any point you lose XX points. This however should not annul the match (to prevent abuse).

 

Vote kick:

Allow 3 people to vote kick a person at any point, even during combat or pre-match. This is only to deter trolls and the guy getting kicked should only lose 1-5 points to prevent abuse. A kicked person should be barred from reentering ranked for ½-1 hour (this _could_ get abused I know). This however should not annul the match (again to prevent abuse).

 

Acid play:

While legal, I would prefer if acid games were no longer possible. It drags out the fights, and it has little to do with actual PVP.

 

Edited to include:

PVP gear with specific stats.

Acid play.

 

I agree in principle to most of that, with some caveats.

 

Punishing leavers should only happen in Ranked and not regs.

 

Vote to kick in Ranked would cause more trollish behaviour than actually booting solo trolls. I say no to that, but I do agree something should be done to curb the solo trolls.

 

A fix to acid play trolls would be to only allow stealths to stay in stealth for x amount of time before they are forced out of it. They can still play the acid tactics, but it’s much harder. Honestly, if they removed the permanent black out of stealths and put it back the way it was, this would be even less of a problem

Edited May 17, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Lundorff]

Punishing leavers should only happen in Ranked and not regs.

 

Absolutely. Everything is for solo ranked.