Planned Warzone Changes

[Banderal]

The stealth classes (when in DPS spec) are best for the side nodes, not the main node, and in Odessen their ability to stealth is nearly useless.

 

I would like to point out that my stealth, while being nearly useless for node guarding in OPG (unlike every other guard map, where it's desired) - it's super AWESOME for taking nodes from the other side. I can no longer count the number of matches where I basically "won" it for us (or at least heavily contributed) by stealthing up to enemy held nodes where they have 1 or 2 (sometimes 3, one time 4!) defenders, and then I use my knockback with root, and a couple other quick CCs and flip the node to our color. I practically giggle now when I see they've activated a double power up on a node, and then they all run past me-in-stealth, leaving one poor defender there to hold it.

 

Also, combat stealth actually helps hold the node a bit longer. If I'm the only one there and I'm about to go down, I'll combat stealth and wait just long enough so that it has not quite flipped to them yet, and then come back out of it... thus keeping the node a bit longer.

[KendraP]

Contrary to some of the people posting here, 1 or 2 players stalling a superior number of players with superior dps / comp and actually playing the map is far more skilled than just spurting your dps advantage everywhere.

 

They bioware'd it.

 

Yup as a tank who works with one of the more notorious sages from SS - 2 on 8 stalling takes skill. If youre that good - kill before the rest of the team respawns. Or maybe you didn't deserve the win in the first place.

 

If dps wins matches is your thing, go find an arena.

[Lhancelot]

Arguing that being stalled by players correctly rotating because you have better dps is some of the stupidest stuff I've read on these forums. Why can't you appreciate our synergistic death swaps lol.

 

I got to be honest. some of the best most fun matches I have had were when one team was near capping but then the death zerg was able to stop the cap just in time... this pattern repeating till it ended.

 

It's kind of nerve-wracking, and exciting at the same time when mere seconds are what stops a cap from a team that happens to have superior dps.

 

It's a letdown too when you been stalling them, stopping the cap, then finally the death rotation isn't fast enough and they end up capping it. Anyway, I never had a problem with zerging ftw. I just view it as one more wrinkle in WZs that can make it fun.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Lhancelot

[snave]

I got to be honest. some of the best most fun matches I have had were when one team was near capping but then the death zerg was able to stop the cap just in time... this pattern repeating till it ended.

 

It's kind of nerve-wracking, and exciting at the same time when mere seconds are what stops a cap from a team that happens to have superior dps.

 

It's a letdown too when you been stalling them, stopping the cap, then finally the death rotation isn't fast enough and they end up capping it. Anyway, I never had a problem with zerging ftw. I just view it as one more wrinkle in WZs that can make it fun.

 

Hate to break this to you but according to this thread you're wrong and that is skillless play. Bow down before your zerging dps premade overlords child.

[KendraP]

Hate to break this to you but according to this thread you're wrong and that is skillless play. Bow down before your zerging dps premade overlords child.

 

LOL number farmers deserve to win... sure... if they can kill fast enough to cap

 

The other team claimed they number farmed us this match, where my tank took almost 3 mill damage and got killed 5 times. We won because they couldnt number farm fast enough to cap. Then said "LOL farmed". Sure guys nice farming the one dude keeping you from a cap.

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/IgM2p11

[PennyAnn]

No, it happens in every node map. People flinging their body on a node to stop it from being capped then dying instantly but stalling enough for the next person to leap in and do the same. The only reason you can’t cap it is because of synced respawns. That is what is called “tactical dying”, where you are slaughtering the other team and just because of respawns you can never cap. Being “objectively rewarded” for being slaughtered should never be a good tactical objective in any pvp map. Tactical dying has 0 skill involved. If the game just make kills part of the objective in node maps like civil war, 10 min long stalemates could actually end faster. Warzones needs to punish players for poor plays, that’s why taking away points on all node maps for deaths is a great idea.

 

This would just encourage kill farming and number fluffing and totally ignoring objectives, which already happens way too much. No unranked warzone should be won by just kill farming. That's what ranked is for. I agree that the "suicide bomber" tactic to stall or make capping impossible is an issue, but making number farming rewarded in unranked will just make it even MORE unenjoyable for those of us who play the objectives (typically to no avail because we're on a team of number farmers).

 

.

[snave]

LOL number farmers deserve to win... sure... if they can kill fast enough to cap

 

The other team claimed they number farmed us this match, where my tank took almost 3 mill damage and got killed 5 times. We won because they couldnt number farm fast enough to cap. Then said "LOL farmed". Sure guys nice farming the one dude keeping you from a cap.

https://m.imgur.com/gallery/IgM2p11

 

I'm sorry, clearly you didn't read the posts they made. The organised rotation and stalling of multiple superior dps is brain dead and shouldn't be rewarded. Jeez mate get with the times, if you're not spurting dps ****.

 

Dunking on a weaker team > that team kiting you around long enough to win, omg mate how simple should I explain this lol

[Rafiknoll]

I would like to point out that my stealth, while being nearly useless for node guarding in OPG (unlike every other guard map, where it's desired) - it's super AWESOME for taking nodes from the other side. I can no longer count the number of matches where I basically "won" it for us (or at least heavily contributed) by stealthing up to enemy held nodes where they have 1 or 2 (sometimes 3, one time 4!) defenders, and then I use my knockback with root, and a couple other quick CCs and flip the node to our color. I practically giggle now when I see they've activated a double power up on a node, and then they all run past me-in-stealth, leaving one poor defender there to hold it.

 

Also, combat stealth actually helps hold the node a bit longer. If I'm the only one there and I'm about to go down, I'll combat stealth and wait just long enough so that it has not quite flipped to them yet, and then come back out of it... thus keeping the node a bit longer.

 

Of course, stealth is never entirely useless, but the things other classes have instead of stealth are better in such circumstances. The simples example is that if a merc stands in 25m away from you as you guard an odessen node and shoots you, as a stealth class you can just stand there (and heal yourself if you are an operative), and the short time you gain for stealthing and reemerging in a node is not greater than the time a mara gain for using RA, or the time a jugg gains for reflecting or using ED. As fore the capping tactic, it is somewhat dependant on the stupidity of the guard. Never stand in a spot it is easy to push you out. The easiest thing to do is spam AoEs in one "safe side" and be too far to be knocked out from the "unsafe side", or hug the objects around you if it is lab or hangar. Admittedly there isn't much you can do versus sin tank pull+spike+electrocute but that is not a stealth issue.

 

I never denied stealth is always effective and especially versus the average-or-below players, but it isn't fundementally better enough to be considered another spec which deserves less DPS efficiency (even when ignoring the very unignorable reason to never nerf them: PVE)

[Banderal]

[snip]

I never denied stealth is always effective and especially versus the average-or-below players, but it isn't fundementally better enough to be considered another spec which deserves less DPS efficiency (even when ignoring the very unignorable reason to never nerf them: PVE)

 

I was absolutely not disagreeing with that last point. I was just slightly disagreeing that stealth isn't very useful in OPG. Even there, while I agree with your "theory crafting", that it *shouldn't* be that useful, because it can be countered... in my experience, in practice it works a LOT.

[Elusive_Thing]

No, it happens in every node map. People flinging their body on a node to stop it from being capped then dying instantly but stalling enough for the next person to leap in and do the same. The only reason you can’t cap it is because of synced respawns. That is what is called “tactical dying”, where you are slaughtering the other team and just because of respawns you can never cap. Being “objectively rewarded” for being slaughtered should never be a good tactical objective in any pvp map. Tactical dying has 0 skill involved. If the game just make kills part of the objective in node maps like civil war, 10 min long stalemates could actually end faster. Warzones needs to punish players for poor plays, that’s why taking away points on all node maps for deaths is a great idea.

If it has no skill involved, counterplay it. CC the next guy coming in or something. Bottom line, the Yavin change is idiotic.

[PennyAnn]

I have to disagree. Objective players currently hate kill farmers because they fail to distinguish playing to win and playing to farm. I don't think the devs should start to blur this line any further in all maps. I laugh the hardest when my team with nearly 0 kills wins 6-0 in huttball because the idiots on the other side could kill everyone except for me and one more guy as we tanking our way to the line with a deception sin and a veng jugg, and my teammates usually laugh with us. I also laugh when their team generally win the mid massacare but I sap-cap or solo-kill the side and win the match. If they add value to kills in all warzones, then good enough teams with FOTM builds will just ignore objectives and farm kills, because it would progress the objective even faster than the objective. That would essentially remake all maps into OWPVP arenas for 8v8. Really no, thank you. I just hope the yaviin turrets still hit fast enough so that they are still more worth it. Seems probable...

 

In GSF they have it right. You need 1000 points, each capped node gives you a point per sec and each kill gives a single point. You would need to kill people faster than they can spawn in order to beat one node scoring, so making them count can be fair because the only way it could turn the tide is in very close matches were both sides play the objective to the best of their abilities and just have a very small time gap between their captures. I could leave to see that in all maps if the scoring would be that insignificant to the objectives so that it can only serve as a tiebreaker when both sides play well and to win.

 

For example, if you changed huttball to require 600 pts and made each goal grant 100 points and each kill to grant 1, then kills would mostly serve as a new tiebreaker in case of equal number of goals by the end of the match, or give super-awesome groups an extra "goal". Still winner would be the one who can actually score the ball multiple times first, mostly.

 

But don't do any such thing to Novare, Novare's best feature is the ability to turn a 100-2 to 0-2, which means it isn't decided until it is over. Any alternative scoring would ruin that

 

+1

Very well stated!

[PennyAnn]

Instead of making kills count more in unranked, objective based PvP, the objectives should be made to be more effective in ending a match quickly... score more points, or in the case of Alderaan - BRAVO for making the turrets do more damage and advancing the match faster. As I see it, this is the only way to reverse the unranked-ruining trend of kill farming in non-ranked PvP, or at the very least, allow the team suffering it to be let off the hook faster.

 

I have played PvP regularly in this game for years, right up until the last few months. I quit playing because it is not fun to enter a PvP match and watch the rest of your team ignore objectives and run off farming kills. It happens way too often, and if someone can use that very behavior against kill farmers to win a match... sorry/not sorry: Good for them!

 

.

Edited May 31, 2018 by PennyAnn

[Skolops]

I really think that the Voidstar change would lead to more unfun experiences with the warzone. As it's been to this point, you get a few different kinds of matches on this map:

 

1) Both teams make some kind of gradual progress throughout the match but one makes it further than the other.

 

2) Both teams make little or no progress.

 

3) One team gets the first door down and then plows their way to the end in no more than the channel time of each subsequent door.

 

Now people like games of the first type, even though they often go the full duration. The change seems to be made with the idea that people dislike games of the second kind, but I think that this is not correct. The vast majority of the players I have known in this game - and that's a very high number over the years - like to have at least some of the deadlocked, even matches where it's ultimately one big fight and a both teams face a stiff challenge to try to get that one door down. It leads to a lot of the more exciting games. People may not like to have these games all the time, but when some are like type one and others are like this, it's generally a happy situation.

 

Even if one disagrees, though, we can agree that the one kind of game that NOBODY likes is the third type, and this is precisely the kind of game that this change will lead to more of. The losing teams don't like the change, obviously, and who hasn't wasted countless loading screens just to spawn in the final room of one of those runaway trains? On the other hand, even when on the winning side I think many or most players don't like this, because while it may be that people don't want to have a very long game, they also don't like a game that ends almost immediately.

 

Lowering the channel time leads to more of these kinds of games for the obvious reason that it makes these runaway trains easier to execute. If a team manages to break through one poorly reinforced side in the first room and on the other side there is a battle raging with CC and slows and immobilizes and so forth those 2 fewer seconds mean even more cases of nobody making it to stop the immediate cap.

 

What's worse, those stalemate games that are "unstalemated" by this change would have a very high incidence of turning into that third type of runaway train game, because those are the games with better healing and tanking and fewer deaths and so fewer people respawning across the bridge to stop the immediate cap, so the change would be turning the stalemate games that it's trying to do away with directly into the worst kind of game that nobody wants.

 

If a change really, truly is needed, consider just changing the timer on the first door but leaving the rest at 8, although I don't think that a change really is needed.

[kissingaiur]

If it has no skill involved, counterplay it. CC the next guy coming in or something. Bottom line, the Yavin change is idiotic.

 

you make it sound so easy when the reality is, 90% of the players on your team are bots unless your in a premade

 

yeah, ideally you could easily cap nodes with cc chains. how often do i actually get cc assistance from my team that is helpful when capping? almost never. this kind of thing requires players to actually use their brains instead they mindlessly click their abilities.

[KendraP]

you make it sound so easy when the reality is, 90% of the players on your team are bots unless your in a premade

 

yeah, ideally you could easily cap nodes with cc chains. how often do i actually get cc assistance from my team that is helpful when capping? almost never. this kind of thing requires players to actually use their brains instead they mindlessly click their abilities.

 

You mean the team that uses its brain power to win over number farmers has an advantage in team based objective play?

 

Oh the horror of it all!

 

If it wasn't obvious /sarcasm

[krosswong]

you make it sound so easy when the reality is, 90% of the players on your team are bots unless your in a premade

 

yeah, ideally you could easily cap nodes with cc chains. how often do i actually get cc assistance from my team that is helpful when capping? almost never. this kind of thing requires players to actually use their brains instead they mindlessly click their abilities.

 

Too bad that's not the type of thing you could find in a tooltip.

[PennyAnn]

Based on the current schedule, matchmaking changes and the above Warzone changes will happen at the same time.

 

Details on the matchmaking changes will come in a future post.

 

-eric

 

When you are working on setting up matchmaking, please consider the following:

 

"Premade" groups currently can ruin the balance of unranked warzones. In terms of skill you cannot and should not do anything about that. In terms of gear, the best you can do is make sure bolster is as fair as possible so that gear matters less than skill. But in terms of team balance, you can and should (really, must) be certain that your matchmaking system addresses this, and accounts for all manners of premade group makeups.

 

For example: A "premade" group of four joins a party and queues. This group consists of 2 tanks and 2 healers. This group should only get a queue pop if there are 4 dps available to queue with them, making them a balanced trinity style team. If that means they have to wait forever for a queue pop, then that should absolutely 100% be the consequence for queueing with an unbalanced team that does not respect the "trinity" role design of the game.

 

Same for a group of 4 DPS. They should only get a queue pop if there are 2 healers and at least one tank available to match with them to form a group.

 

Now I realize many will say: "There are so few people who play tanks that this is unfair." But the team with all tanks and healers vs. so many DPS has been a problem for too long, and perhaps this type of change will encourage more thought to a variety of roles that respect the "trinity" design of the game, and make matchmaking easier due to the fact that those who want to group up against this design know that they will suffer longer wait times due to that choice.

 

 

Edited to add: Fixing the imbalance in team composition and rewarding objective play more such that the "noob farming number jockies" go to ranked PvP for that (where they belong) would utterly transform this game's unranked PvP experience. It should be the two issues you aim to solve, in addition to bolstering the lowbie unranked PvP population to see most of the biggest issues with unranked PvP (outside of bugs and desynch) utterly solved making that portion of the game not only playable, but enjoyable again. It hasn't been either in too many ways for too long.

 

 

.

Edited May 31, 2018 by PennyAnn

[Savej]

I'm not sure what game some of you are playing but it royally sucks dying 10x+ vs a team that never loses a man. At the end of those I couldn't care less that there's a green button on my screen saying "I won" - that's pure "you got your tail royally kicked but here, have a cookie". It may be funny to some of you but not me; lots of people have warped senses of humor - many laugh when they lose, too... but that doesn't make them winners. If we were playing for actual stakes (not just a green button) that would be different I guess.

 

I agree with those saying death should mean more. Increase the death timers in VS - that will do more than the other suggested changes for making matches winnable. But if both sides have a couple tanks and a couple healers and they sortof know what they're doing I don't see those gates going down.

 

The biggest problem is that class combos are more important than player skill in this game. From what I've seen it takes a perfect set of players to win vs a mediocre set of players with a better trinity/class-combo setup. I don't know how to fix that.

[kukumburr]

I'm not sure what game some of you are playing but it royally sucks dying 10x+ vs a team that never loses a man. At the end of those I couldn't care less that there's a green button on my screen saying "I won" - that's pure "you got your tail royally kicked but here, have a cookie". It may be funny to some of you but not me; lots of people have warped senses of humor - many laugh when they lose, too... but that doesn't make them winners. If we were playing for actual stakes (not just a green button) that would be different I guess.

 

I agree with those saying death should mean more. Increase the death timers in VS - that will do more than the other suggested changes for making matches winnable. But if both sides have a couple tanks and a couple healers and they sortof know what they're doing I don't see those gates going down.

 

The biggest problem is that class combos are more important than player skill in this game. From what I've seen it takes a perfect set of players to win vs a mediocre set of players with a better trinity/class-combo setup. I don't know how to fix that.

 

If you want deaths to matter then you should be playing arenas. That's the entire point of them. The 8v8 warzones were designed for objective play. The team that's slaughtering the other team SHOULD - and often does - win. The only thing stopping them is if they don't pay proper attention to the objectives. It's not the team who's dying magically pulling out an undeserved win, it's the team that's in control throwing away the win because they got greedy and/or don't know how to CC. The win goes to the team that played the objectives better, whether that's through killing the other team to take control (and then maintaining control) or exploiting the other team's weaknesses in protecting their nodes.

 

Not to mention having deaths matter more just makes class balance and matchmaking issues glaringly more obvious.

[sayNih]

I don't see why these changes indicate what you are saying, but regardless, this isn't a PVP only game and there is definitely no room to call stealth a separate role in endgame PVE, thus their ability to heal/damage/tank can't be less good than the ability of any other class, the end.

 

Not satisfied? Note that the stealth classes are among the least AoE oriented combatants. The stealth classes (when in DPS spec) are best for the side nodes, not the main node, and in Odessen their ability to stealth is nearly useless. If stealthers were to be nerfed by 40% (which is also a ridiculously extreme number), what would they do in Odessen, in arenas or in case there is already a guard on their node?? [Not to mention in all PVE content??]

Not every spec in the game needs to be NiM Ops viable. Some specs can be designed and balanced for PvP. I would appreciate it if they came up with a single-target ganker spec for PvP and got rid of the AoEs. They could take any stealth DPS spec, remove the stealth ability, and have a decent DPS raider.

I'm suggesting that stealth should be in the same damage target range as tanks, which were just nerfed.

A stealth could de-select Odessen, if they decide to implement that feature. Go for gas-cloud wins in arenas.

[Trlance]

I strongly recommend to give players who leave warzone in the middle in battle, unable to join again for next 10 minutes. This should teach ppl who leave pvp fight soon before it's started. Every time when i play pvp there is no day when players leave match because we start losing.

 

~ Tsukito , Alliance Commander

Edited May 31, 2018 by Trlance

[MackPol]

Luckily, most of the time we still need some dps/healing to win games but clever play can offset the difference.

You see, people often claim to be "objective player" just to justify that they arent yet very good at thier class, often at the same time not understanding a map or objective fully. Creates kinda comical situations sometimes. Then they dare to leave a match if nobody wants to follow their "tactics". Having one wz that punishes poor play could be an incentive to try get better at the class, at doing dmg or healing or focus targeting. Its important too and when games are close then it can prove a reason for winning.

Back when ranked existed every role was important in a match and synergy was great, it still happens tho far less since understanding of the game is lower.

 

Snave for example is known well on DM and his playstyle is beneficial for his team but its often copied by people who dont fully understand, then 3 of them go enemy node, get consitently wiped by 2 defenders, causing great grief to rest of us, then claim they are playing objectives ....

[Hellhog]

Eric & Keith,

 

Since we're on the idea of revamping Warzones, what about revamping the achievements that coincide?

 

Right now obtaining 10 solo kills, 20 killing blows, or 55 kills in a single match is nearly impossible to do requiring not only the right circumstances but some luck. Skill comes into play but no where near the luck of being the actual killing blow in a group, or having the team comp (and usually being on Voidstar) to actually reach 55 kills, or both the skill and luck to actually have 10 opportunities to get true solo kills. And then to do these all over 50 matches on each map... they are only ever boosted to actually obtain these days not really making them remotely achievements anymore.

 

From my personal experiences, I've never reached 10 solo kills but have obtained 5 a couple times. I've only ever obtained 20 killing blows on 3 of the maps for a total of 12 matches and one map I've never even reached 10. I've only obtained 55 player kills on 2 maps for a total of 8 matches and on two maps never even reached 40 kills. Over the course of easily over 2000 games, this just doesn't seem right.

 

How I think we should have them tiered:

Solo: 1, 2, 3 and 50x3

Killing Blow: 1, 3, 6 and 50x6

Kills: 10, 20, 30 and 50x30

 

I think that is a decent enough set of values to not make the achievements super easy but at the same time obtainable over time unlike their current state.

[benmas]

I strongly recommend to give players who leave warzone in the middle in battle, unable to join again for next 10 minutes. This should teach ppl who leave pvp fight soon before it's started. Every time when i play pvp there is no day when players leave match because we start losing.

 

~ Tsukito , Alliance Commander

 

I strongly disagree you will not "teach" them anything.

again i will give WoW as the example they have a lockout system

do people still leave matches all the time? of course they do!

people will leave, log out, play an alt for 10 minutes and BAM your back. all a lockout is is a waste if dev time.

 

/not signed

Edited May 31, 2018 by benmas

[Trlance]

No man. At last this will stop kids from doing this because they will not bother about relog to another character when they have lock in char with what they already leaved warzone. Weteran players maybe but at least this will strongly minimalize ruin fight before it even started. A lot of players leave warzone ONLY because we don't have healer on team. Pathetic.

 

~ Tsukito, Alliance Commander

Edited May 31, 2018 by Trlance