Time to merge the US servers... again. Primetime window getting smaller and smaller.

[Kiesu]

If we time travel let’s get history right. Open world PvP died because the engine could not handle the traffic on illum, and would become a slideshow. BW removed the content because it was not sustainable.

 

Ranked 8v8 died because preseason lasted for 2 years, and was never supported. They also raised the level cap at the time, without balancing the game for 8v8. Most games were stalemates as players were now more mobile and tankier. Voidstsrs were never capped and novare coast would last every round.

 

The PvP community as a whole died around that time because we were told that cross server was not possible on the game engine. This made matchmaking impossible because it was limited to those playing on a single server (at the time there were like 20 servers). They tried changing ranked PvP to arenas but the community was basically gone at that point.

 

So if you are going to go down the history of PvP let’s get our facts straight,

Yeah. There was literally no difference between PVP and PVE servers after the first few years after game launched. Since the only difference was that you could do Open World PVP, and the "big end-game open world pvp zone" was Ilum, which died super fast due to the terribad engine not being able to handle massive scale combat. So the promise of Open World PVP was a complete design fail on BWs part.

Regular WZ had no difference between PVP and PVE servers so there really was no difference what server you were quing from.

[mhobin]

To say player toxicity is the main reason PvP failed in SWTOR is just wrong. But managing it now is the only way to save PvP.

 

PvP failed in this game during development when the engine was chosen. Six months after launch they had to shut down Illum open world because the engine could not handle the amount of players. It was a slideshow.

 

Structured PvP died when 8v8 ranked had a 2 year preseason, when they came to realize that cross server was not an option because of the engine. At the 1.2 guild summit they announced season 1 would start with cross server. They realized cross server would not be feasible so they had a never ending preseason. PvP died six months after the first server merge. I think that was around 2.0, but I’m not positive,

 

PvP is a niche game system in a niche MMO. I still love it, but you have to think of it in a more casual way at this point. Getting pissed and toxic at this point is stupid. PvP will never thrive in SWTOR. At this point you just want to keep the pops poppin. This means getting the casual player in queue.

[Kiesu]

No disagreement from me on this.

 

What about those that queue for PvP and DO NOT behave themselves..and in some cases go out of their way to make life miserable for their team mates as well as opponents???? These are the folks that fuel the ongoing meme about PvPers being toxic to an MMO in things like forum discussions, in game chat.. etc.

 

I don't hold PvPers who do behave themselves responsible for any of this.. unless they continue to queue and stand around silently and let a minority of toxic players effectively ruin a PvP match for the rest of the players. I do feel all players in the encounter have a responsibility to push back, and maybe even agree to boot this sort of PvPer. Since I don't random queue for PvP though.. I don't come across much toxicity in PvP to be honest.. but I do trust the feedback from other players who do experience it, and do suffer in game play enjoyment due to it.

BW has never done any "behavior regulation", so people get to act as they want since BW literally doesn't care. The bad behavior is not only tied to SW, Overwatch has been having massive issues with player toxicity because they were not regulating it at all, so naturally it became a common place to relieve quick frustration at the guy next to you. They tried to "moderate" it afterwards but still to this day they haven't managed to do a thing about it.

 

I play PVP most days I'm on and the maximum amount of toxicity I come across is when one team or another is literally so oblivious to what the WZ objective that they let the enemy cap it behind their backs without doing as much as writing two letters in chat to call for backup. Then people who know how the WZ worksks start facepalming and lecturing people on how you're supposed to play the map (even though the instructions are literally on the loading screen of said WZ...). Naturally not all lecturing is toxic but people who are not used to PVP or getting told what to do see a lot of rule recap as toxic complaining and criticism and get really upset over nothing.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Kiesu

[Yeldah_]

Merging the two North American servers is a bad idea. Such a measure would not help the game in the long run. It would only alienate certain demographics within the player base causing them to leave. Thus you would end up with fewer players than before the merge. This has been observed previously and will not change with your proposed merge. I agree that two servers sharing the same data centre is futile and useless. However merging would cause more problems than it would solve.

In my opinion a better course of action would be to re-instate the west coast data centre and have Bio-Ware re-open their west coast office.

[robertthebard]

It happened the way I described in my post prior to the one you quoted. I guess you missed it.

 

I quoted the post I intended to, and replied accordingly, choosing to snip 2/3 of it out doesn't validate anything you may have said earlier, it merely gives the perception that you don't want to respond to factual accounts of what happened, and, frankly, what happens industry wide, a lot. However, let's look at some anecdotal stories from other games, which will remain nameless, since they're competitors:

 

"Capped toons killing lowbies is PvP". That's always one of my favorites. I've seen it thrown around a lot. I wonder if we could dig through the history of this forum and find someone making that statement?

 

"Portal camping shouldn't be against the rules. So what if the other players aren't loaded in yet, we should be able to kill them no matter what", in a game where you use a portal, go into a loading screen, and when you finally get loaded, you're dead. This was, I should note, against the game's rules, but was also a common tactic of the "hardcore" PvPers.

 

A common tactic used by griefers here: Camping a node in stealth with PvP enabled, waiting for the unsuspecting PvE player to click the node. I guess there were bonus points if it was a quest node, since they seemed to get camped a lot in this matter. It even raised a lot of fuss during a Rakghoul event, if I remember correctly.

 

These are the kinds of things that happened to the PvP servers. There weren't a lot of design flaws, or decisions made at this point the game's life, this was well after launch, even after going F2P. There had even been a wave of merges prior to my joining the game initially, I believe. So don't lay the woes of the PvP servers on the feet of the devs, or the PvE players. They quite literally shot themselves in the foot, by simply being who and what they are.

[robertthebard]

The PvP community is looking the problem from another perspective. You seem to be writing from the point of view "why don't more SWTOR players play pvp?", while the pvp community comes from a different perspective: "why don't more pvp players play SWTOR?"

 

Your points are valid when we're wondering why solo players don't try pvp, but from what I've gathered, many pvp players don't pve, pvp, do story, craft, decorate and then pvp some more. Instead they pvp in SWTOR, pvp in ESO, pvp in WOW, pvp in...I have no idea, but you get the point. From the points of view of someone like that, toxicity has nothing to do with it. Every game has it, and the type of people who enjoy pvp have learned to live with it. Instead, they focus on the reasons why their friends stopped pvping in SWTOR and now pvp in another MMORPG.

 

And again, how is someone like me, who occasionally queues to pvp, supposed to work harder to stop the toxicity?

 

I can tell you why the people that came with me from Aion didn't stick around, since they were more interested in PvP than BW's story telling: They didn't like the carebear nature of the PvP. They weren't into the idea of "participation trophies" etc. Also, "most of the pvp is in WZs". These aren't my words, but something one of my mates said in Vent, when I asked about why they weren't popping in more often. I stayed for the stories, found a guild, and stayed with them for years. But the PvP wasn't good enough back then to hold truly hardcore PvPers, and when they had a chance to make it relevant, such as with Conquest, they totally dropped the ball.

 

Imagine, if you will, if guilds had to actually PvP against other guilds in order to control a sector, or a planet. All of a sudden, PvP would have meant something, and conquest would have had more relevance as well. As a further incentive to participate, imagine adding an instance to each controllable zone on a planet that you could only use if your guild, or alliance of guilds, controlled it. We could even take that out to faction, but for the sake of making PvP relevant, this will do. Aion had a system exactly like this for it's abyss fortresses, and other end game content as well, only it was faction based. It didn't matter what legion controlled a fortress, if it was your faction, you could use the instance in the fortress.

 

A very old Korean Grinder I used to play called Rappelz had a siege system that would have augmented the above quite well: Time attacks. This would open a special version of the dungeon, and an attacking guild would then run the instance to set a time. The guild with the fastest time at the end of the week won the right to siege against the owning guild, if there was one, and if there wasn't, they could attack the dungeon as normal, kill the switch, and take over ownership. Owned dungeons paid the guild in the in game currency, and lak, a secondary in game currency. The cash wasn't generated out of nowhere, exactly, either, it was a percentage of what was dropped in the dungeon over the week.

 

Something, anything to make PvP relevant, would have been great. But we didn't get that, and as far as I can tell, we've never had it, so the hardcore PvPers don't stick around. They see what we've got, and they leave.

[Kiesu]

I quoted the post I intended to, and replied accordingly, choosing to snip 2/3 of it out doesn't validate anything you may have said earlier, it merely gives the perception that you don't want to respond to factual accounts of what happened, and, frankly, what happens industry wide, a lot. However, let's look at some anecdotal stories from other games, which will remain nameless, since they're competitors:

 

"Capped toons killing lowbies is PvP". That's always one of my favorites. I've seen it thrown around a lot. I wonder if we could dig through the history of this forum and find someone making that statement?

 

"Portal camping shouldn't be against the rules. So what if the other players aren't loaded in yet, we should be able to kill them no matter what", in a game where you use a portal, go into a loading screen, and when you finally get loaded, you're dead. This was, I should note, against the game's rules, but was also a common tactic of the "hardcore" PvPers.

 

A common tactic used by griefers here: Camping a node in stealth with PvP enabled, waiting for the unsuspecting PvE player to click the node. I guess there were bonus points if it was a quest node, since they seemed to get camped a lot in this matter. It even raised a lot of fuss during a Rakghoul event, if I remember correctly.

 

These are the kinds of things that happened to the PvP servers. There weren't a lot of design flaws, or decisions made at this point the game's life, this was well after launch, even after going F2P. There had even been a wave of merges prior to my joining the game initially, I believe. So don't lay the woes of the PvP servers on the feet of the devs, or the PvE players. They quite literally shot themselves in the foot, by simply being who and what they are.

I have a feeling its you who doesn't want to respond or read any replies here... Someone other than me already went into more detail on the previous page.

 

PVP servers literally have no other difference to PVE servers other than you could do world PVP. And BW promised us world PVP, but their endgame World PVP zone failed so miserably thanks to the terribad engine that that dream never got delivered. Otherwise World PVP was a niche activity which didn't reward you with anything, so not many people even did it after Ilum poopfest. It was a design failure on BWs part, nothing at all to do with players. Overwhelming majority of PVP players focused on instanced WZs after Ilum got killed off, and it literally makes no difference if you que to WZ on a PVP or PVE server, the matches are no different. So it really doesn't matter which server you qued from, larger one just had faster pops which is what everyone wanted to do after their promised content didn't get delivered.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Kiesu

[robertthebard]

I have a feeling its you who doesn't want to respond or read any replies here... Someone other than me already went into more detail on the previous page.

 

PVP servers literally have no other difference to PVE servers other than you could do world PVP. And BW promised us world PVP, but their endgame World PVP zone failed so miserably thanks to the terribad engine that that dream never got delivered. Otherwise World PVP was a niche activity which didn't reward you with anything, so not many people even did it after Ilum poopfest. It was a design failure on BWs part, nothing at all to do with players. Overwhelming majority of PVP players focused on instanced WZs after Ilum got killed off, and it literally makes no difference if you que to WZ on a PVP or PVE server, the matches are no different. So it really doesn't matter which server you qued from, larger one just had faster pops which is what everyone wanted to do after their promised content didn't get delivered.

 

You know, if I wasn't someone who's spent a few afternoons chasing those "hardcore PvPers" out of lowbie zones on planets like Tatooine, where we actually flipped a Pub base trying to get to a trooper that was griefing lowbies, I'd believe everything you said. However, that's not the case. We actually did take over a Pub base on Tat, albeit briefly, so we could kill a griefer, it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. You can lay the blame where ever you like, but you'll notice: I'm not snipping your posts trying to pretend you didn't say something that struck too close to home. The fact is, I have a lot of experience in PvP oriented games, and I know exactly what happens, and for the most part how it happens. This isn't a sudden, new development in games with PvP, it's something that is observable in any game like this, where the primary focus isn't PvP, and in some where it sort of is, such as Aion. I had a Legion of 200 players bail on me to RoM because of OW PvP, in Aion! That really blew my mind...

[Kiesu]

You know, if I wasn't someone who's spent a few afternoons chasing those "hardcore PvPers" out of lowbie zones on planets like Tatooine, where we actually flipped a Pub base trying to get to a trooper that was griefing lowbies, I'd believe everything you said. However, that's not the case. We actually did take over a Pub base on Tat, albeit briefly, so we could kill a griefer, it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. You can lay the blame where ever you like, but you'll notice: I'm not snipping your posts trying to pretend you didn't say something that struck too close to home. The fact is, I have a lot of experience in PvP oriented games, and I know exactly what happens, and for the most part how it happens. This isn't a sudden, new development in games with PvP, it's something that is observable in any game like this, where the primary focus isn't PvP, and in some where it sort of is, such as Aion. I had a Legion of 200 players bail on me to RoM because of OW PvP, in Aion! That really blew my mind...

Nobody said you couldn't do it. I said it was a niche activity majority of pvpers were not interested in. Good job contributing to the "bad behavior" you yourself were complaining about though.

Edited September 7, 2018 by Kiesu

[robertthebard]

Nobody said you couldn't do it. I said it was a niche activity majority of pvpers were not interested in. Good job contributing to the "bad behavior" you yourself were complaining about though.

 

Yep, running griefers off so lowbies can level is "bad behavior". Next?

[Kiesu]

Yep, running griefers off so lowbies can level is "bad behavior". Next?

Taking over a base is just that, no matter how noble you try make it sound. They can just QT to another base or log another toon so you didn't really achieve anything I'm sorry to break this to you. I'm sure it was fun though, world PVP was fun. While it lasted...

[robertthebard]

Taking over a base is just that, no matter how noble you try make it sound. They can just QT to another base or log another toon so you didn't really achieve anything I'm sorry to break this to you. I'm sure it was fun though, world PVP was fun. While it lasted...

 

We killed the griefer in the process, and the base stayed flipped for like 4 minutes, on the outside. Good try though.

[TrixxieTriss]

The PvP community is looking the problem from another perspective. You seem to be writing from the point of view "why don't more SWTOR players play pvp?", while the pvp community comes from a different perspective: "why don't more pvp players play SWTOR?"

 

Your points are valid when we're wondering why solo players don't try pvp, but from what I've gathered, many pvp players don't pve, pvp, do story, craft, decorate and then pvp some more. Instead they pvp in SWTOR, pvp in ESO, pvp in WOW, pvp in...I have no idea, but you get the point. From the points of view of someone like that, toxicity has nothing to do with it. Every game has it, and the type of people who enjoy pvp have learned to live with it. Instead, they focus on the reasons why their friends stopped pvping in SWTOR and now pvp in another MMORPG.

 

And again, how is someone like me, who occasionally queues to pvp, supposed to work harder to stop the toxicity?

 

Well put. +1

Edited September 8, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

I play PVP most days I'm on and the maximum amount of toxicity I come across is when one team or another is literally so oblivious to what the WZ objective that they let the enemy cap it behind their backs without doing as much as writing two letters in chat to call for backup. Then people who know how the WZ worksks start facepalming and lecturing people on how you're supposed to play the map (even though the instructions are literally on the loading screen of said WZ...). Naturally not all lecturing is toxic but people who are not used to PVP or getting told what to do see a lot of rule recap as toxic complaining and criticism and get really upset over nothing.

 

I actually find it’s the non pvpers in these cases who are the toxic people. Not the pvpers trying to help them.

Actual pvpers would know what the objectives are and how to play. Those that don’t know aren’t the core pvp community. They are new people to pvp or people who don’t care to learn about pvp, so aren’t part of the actual pvp community. They are outsiders with their own agendas.

 

There are so many times I try to offer direction or help to my teams because it’s obvious they have no idea what they are doing, only to have some noobs (who aren’t pvpers) tell me to shut up or worse. These people aren’t pvpers, but they are loud and abusive.

 

The experienced pvpers in the community are getting scarce because of a tonne of problems Bioware foster in pvp, that and luring people into pvp to farm mats or UCs or getting them to learn pvp in end game instead of lowbies and Mids. You don’t learn to pvp in end game content or you shouldn’t. The same as you don’t learn to do ops in HM or MM.

 

A lot of those remaining experienced players like myself, do try to help teach of give direction to their teams. But it’s the non pvp noobs who are becoming the majority of the players and they “know just enough” to think they “know everything”. They don’t know enough to realise they know hardly anything, which you discover the better you get.

It’s because these people now out number experienced players, that we have noobs teaching new players who end up being noobs themselves. Some of them become loud mouths as well and shout down experienced players trying to guide the teams or teach.

 

This problem has actually become more distinct for some of us who have played along time because of this poorly designed match making implemented with 5.9.2.

From what myself and a lot of long term players have been able to gather, the main “hidden” match making parameter is based on wins across your whole legacy or account. If you are someone like me who has been pvping for 6 years

straight, you will have a lot of wins.

 

Ok, that seems fair, put an experienced player with less experienced to balance the teams. But the problem with that is amount of time played, doesn’t equal skill, doesn’t take into account if you are good on that class or if you have excessive lag now (since the move) or you have good gear or not. There are plenty of good players who only started to pvp this year or last year who have less than a 10th as many matches played as I do. But the system sees them as average and puts them all on one team vs me and a bunch of actually low skilled players who won’t listen. It’s extremely frustrating and I’m actually close to leaving the game as many of the remaining pvpers have started to do.

 

I’ve not fully explained the whole match making issue here. It’s just a brief outline of it and how myself and others being lumped with a bunch of noobs every match to try and carry them. This is really highlighting who the bad players are and the toxic ones are usually the bad noobs who aren’t real pvpers. Most are know it all pvers who mark the wrong players, leave nodes unguarded, break cc’s, death match in the middle of know where and they tell you to stop telling them how to play.

 

None of that wouldn’t happen in ops or flash points because if they were idiots and kept wiping the team and not listening, the ops guys would just boot them from the group and put them on ignore so they wouldn’t have to play with them again.

 

It’s my opinion, that most of the toxicity we see in pvp is from non pvpers. Noobs breed noobs.

Bioware own a portion of responsibility for the situation because of their policies to get people to learn to pvp at end game instead of in lowbies, to only play pvp to get mats, to only play pvp to gear for pve and to only pvp to get rewards locked behind a pvp gate. Ie companions or mounts or what ever.

People who don’t want to pvp in the first place will never take it seriously or want to learn. They ruin it for pvpers and make them leave the game. This dumbs down pvp and the skill in it, which causes tension between the pvpers and the non pvpers there for other reasons.

 

All of those things are directly caused by Bioware and all could have been avoided or controlled if Bioware cared more about quality over indiscriminate fast pops above all else.

Yes it’s good to have incentives to get new blood into pvp, but it shouldn’t be an arm twist or a stick to make them do it just so they can get something and then leave again. An incentive should be something that gets them to play and learn and stay because they enjoy the content. The incentive should encourage them to win and care about winning.

[TrixxieTriss]

Taking over a base is just that, no matter how noble you try make it sound. They can just QT to another base or log another toon so you didn't really achieve anything I'm sorry to break this to you. I'm sure it was fun though, world PVP was fun. While it lasted...

 

Agreed, that behaviour is trollish and the other poster is just as guilty as those he’s complaining about.

[TrixxieTriss]

We killed the griefer in the process, and the base stayed flipped for like 4 minutes, on the outside. Good try though.

 

And what about those people who were indiscriminately caught up in that? From their perspective you weren’t any different to those you claim were doing the greifing.

You can’t claim the high ground when you contribute to the problems.

[robertthebard]

And what about those people who were indiscriminately caught up in that? From their perspective you weren’t any different to those you claim were doing the greifing.

You can’t claim the high ground when you contribute to the problems.

 

Except that:

 

A. We didn't camp their zone all afternoon trying to make sure they couldn't play.

 

B. The griefer didn't come back.

 

C. Nobody showed up at the base the entire time we were there, so no collateral damage. We killed your friend, the PvPer that isn't part of the problem with OW PvP, and we moved on.

 

I get it, I do: "But killing lowbies on a capped toon is PvP". Well, so is getting killed for killing lowbies. Sorry if that offends your sensibilities, wait, no I'm not. I find it hilarious that you'll come here and try to rationalize it around to "but anyone that does what it takes to kill a griefer is as bad, or worse than the griefer". Anyone that may well have tried to fly out to that base on Tat was inconvenienced for around 4 minutes, as opposed to the players on our faction that were griefed for several hours before we got involved. Maybe you're mad because it was someone you knew, and they ragequit? Maybe it was you?

 

Regardless, let's not try to BS each other into believing that the PvP community is all about butterflies and rainbows, and, let's remember that I've read your posts on the forums, and have seen first hand how you try to "help" others understand PvP. You know, like your thread where you have proof that huttballl isn't working as intended, except that you never provided said proof, and instead got all "helpful" telling people to get out of your thread? Remember that? I can totally see how someone might get defensive about your kind of "help". I've seen it in this thread too. So you'll excuse me if I take anything you say about "politely trying to guide a group in how it's done" with a grain of salt. As much as you rage here, I don't see you doing anything else in game, you have the same level on anonymity there as here.

[IoNonSoEVero]

The PvP community is looking the problem from another perspective. You seem to be writing from the point of view "why don't more SWTOR players play pvp?", while the pvp community comes from a different perspective: "why don't more pvp players play SWTOR?"

 

Your points are valid when we're wondering why solo players don't try pvp, but from what I've gathered, many pvp players don't pve, pvp, do story, craft, decorate and then pvp some more. Instead they pvp in SWTOR, pvp in ESO, pvp in WOW, pvp in...I have no idea, but you get the point. From the points of view of someone like that, toxicity has nothing to do with it. Every game has it, and the type of people who enjoy pvp have learned to live with it. Instead, they focus on the reasons why their friends stopped pvping in SWTOR and now pvp in another MMORPG.

 

And again, how is someone like me, who occasionally queues to pvp, supposed to work harder to stop the toxicity?

 

That's a fair point. Looking at it from a non-PvP perspective it's one reason I object when people post about "why don't more lowbies play PvP," try to cajole others about using the PvP instances and want incentives above and beyond what other areas of the game get (I don't get UCs for doing my planetary quests as a level 20; I don't see why they should offer them in level 20 PvP either. You either play because you want to, or not).

 

As to how the PvP community can do more to stop the toxicity, IMHO that would be a) acknowledging it exists, b) doing more to speak up and report it when it happens. Yes, it's adding more chatter to the din, but IMHO when in group and online situations, when people step up and say "knock it off," report abusive behavior and kick players who are being jerks to others, it does make a difference.

[casirabit]

CaptRogue;9645487]

Oh don't even. lol SF is dominated by RP. Even if you don't engage in it, it's all OVER.

If you want RP you go to SF. Almost every guild recruitment has RP offered. I even was a member of one who wasn't RP but did an interview with you once you joined.

Not knocking it either but don't spread lies that it's not dominated by it.

 

This.

[Kiesu]

Except that:

 

A. We didn't camp their zone all afternoon trying to make sure they couldn't play.

 

B. The griefer didn't come back.

 

C. Nobody showed up at the base the entire time we were there, so no collateral damage. We killed your friend, the PvPer that isn't part of the problem with OW PvP, and we moved on.

I'm sure you know fully well you had no impact on this persons griefing rituals because you took over one of his faction bases for 4 minutes. You took over the base because you wanted to, not out of necessity. Or if you really think you put a dent on his habits well.. I hope you don't anymore heh. The same people keep coming back no matter how many camps you take over.

 

Instead of making up heroic deeds of your noble actions against the toxic pvp tyranny, how about coming up with solutions how to deal with these terrible people who ruin everyone's fun. Your personal dealings in game 5 years ago really bear no weight here. What matters is the current time.

 

As to how the PvP community can do more to stop the toxicity, IMHO that would be a) acknowledging it exists, b) doing more to speak up and report it when it happens. Yes, it's adding more chatter to the din, but IMHO when in group and online situations, when people step up and say "knock it off," report abusive behavior and kick players who are being jerks to others, it does make a difference.

Acknowledging the issue does nothing. Taking action does. But BW has not provided us with any tools to self-moderate toxic behavior so there really isn't much players themselves can do. It's on BW to solve, not the other players who happen to be witnessing it.

See, you cannot kick anyone out of a pvp WZ like yo can from an operation group. If that bad behavior player joined a raid and all they did was scream profanity they'd be kicked out faster than you could type in a response, hence ops and fp groups are LOADS more civil, because they know other players aint gonna take their crap if they start acting up. On WZ you cant do that. You're stuck with th person for the whole duration no matter what. BW really doesn't care about behavior there.

I think, I think the only player driven moderation is if like 12+ people report one person for spam on the same day, then the system will auto-mute them for X amount of time. But that happens so rarely I don't even know if my facts are entirely correct about it.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Kiesu

[Seireeni]

That's a fair point. Looking at it from a non-PvP perspective it's one reason I object when people post about "why don't more lowbies play PvP," try to cajole others about using the PvP instances and want incentives above and beyond what other areas of the game get (I don't get UCs for doing my planetary quests as a level 20; I don't see why they should offer them in level 20 PvP either. You either play because you want to, or not).

 

As to how the PvP community can do more to stop the toxicity, IMHO that would be a) acknowledging it exists, b) doing more to speak up and report it when it happens. Yes, it's adding more chatter to the din, but IMHO when in group and online situations, when people step up and say "knock it off," report abusive behavior and kick players who are being jerks to others, it does make a difference.

 

The reason pvp players would like to get UCs from lowbie/midbie is simply because that's how pvp gearing used to work. You'd get pvp comms for lowbie/midbie and you could use them to buy leveling gear, or save it and use it for endgame gear. This is, again, not to force people who don't want to pvp to join warzones (believe me, if pvp players hate something, it's people who queue for warzones but don't care enough about them to do their best), but to give pvp players a reason to do lowbies/midbies when they're leveling a new alt.

 

Many veteran pvp players don't enjoy those brackets very much since 1. they're forced to play with less abilities when they'd already know how to use all of them 2. their teammates usually don't know what they're doing (since many people are new to pvp, and it's fine, that's imo the best place to learn) and 3. It's a slower way to level than flashpoints. Now that lowbies and midbies don't give you an advantage to endgame gearing, many pvp players choose to level through flashpoints instead, and lowbie/midbie brackets suffer. If you have another suggestion to how Bioware could change the system so that either more non-pvpers would queue to lowbie/midbie or so that pvp players would once again level in there, I'm sure the pvp community would love to hear it.

 

As for the toxicity, I haven't seen a single pvp player claim there aren't people who play pvp who sometimes act in a toxic way. So, they know it exists. "Speaking up", as you say, leads to two people arguing in the chat instead of one, the toxic one probably enjoys the argument, and their teammates need to place both of them in ignore if they wish to have a chat they can actually use to communicate inc calls and so on. Reporting it is useless as long as Bioware doesn't do anything about it, and it's literally impossible to kick someone from a pvp match unless that person is afk.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Seireeni

[robertthebard]

I'm sure you know fully well you had no impact on this persons griefing rituals because you took over one of his faction bases for 4 minutes. You took over the base because you wanted to, not out of necessity. Or if you really think you put a dent on his habits well.. I hope you don't anymore heh. The same people keep coming back no matter how many camps you take over.

 

Instead of making up heroic deeds of your noble actions against the toxic pvp tyranny, how about coming up with solutions how to deal with these terrible people who ruin everyone's fun. Your personal dealings in game 5 years ago really bear no weight here. What matters is the current time.

 

 

Acknowledging the issue does nothing. Taking action does. But BW has not provided us with any tools to self-moderate toxic behavior so there really isn't much players themselves can do. It's on BW to solve, not the other players who happen to be witnessing it.

See, you cannot kick anyone out of a pvp WZ like yo can from an operation group. If that bad behavior player joined a raid and all they did was scream profanity they'd be kicked out faster than you could type in a response, hence ops and fp groups are LOADS more civil, because they know other players aint gonna take their crap if they start acting up. On WZ you cant do that. You're stuck with th person for the whole duration no matter what. BW really doesn't care about behavior there.

I think, I think the only player driven moderation is if like 12+ people report one person for spam on the same day, then the system will auto-mute them for X amount of time. But that happens so rarely I don't even know if my facts are entirely correct about it.

 

We took over the base because he tried to hide amongst the guards, and since, as you point out, BW isn't really in to moderating PvP, which is, btw, something that happens industry wide a whole lot, players dealing with this is the expected method of handling it. I did the same stuff in Aion, sometimes leaving off leveling toons I needed to level for Legion stuff, to chase rifters back to their own faction's part of the planet, or I got chased back to my part of the planet, if I rifted over to their zone.

 

The only thing they can do is issue vacations, or outright bans, and frankly, I don't think they want to. They need, for some reason, to have PvP appear relevant, perhaps to justify spending money on it, and so, they have to keep whatever people playing it they can. If they're of the toxic variety, well, I guess they figure that's the price they have to pay, and again, this isn't limited to BW, or swtor, but happens a lot industry wide.

[robertthebard]

The reason pvp players would like to get UCs from lowbie/midbie is simply because that's how pvp gearing used to work. You'd get pvp comms for lowbie/midbie and you could use them to buy leveling gear, or save it and use it for endgame gear. This is, again, not to force people who don't want to pvp to join warzones (believe me, if pvp players hate something, it's people who queue for warzones but don't care enough about them to do their best), but to give pvp players a reason to do lowbies/midbies when they're leveling a new alt.

 

Many veteran pvp players don't enjoy those brackets very much since 1. they're forced to play with less abilities when they'd already know how to use all of them 2. their teammates usually don't know what they're doing (since many people are new to pvp, and it's fine, that's imo the best place to learn) and 3. It's a slower way to level than flashpoints. Now that lowbies and midbies don't give you an advantage to endgame gearing, many pvp players choose to level through flashpoints instead, and lowbie/midbie brackets suffer. If you have another suggestion to how Bioware could change the system so that either more non-pvpers would queue to lowbie/midbie or so that pvp players would once again level in there, I'm sure the pvp community would love to hear it.

 

As for the toxicity, I haven't seen a single pvp player claim there aren't people who play pvp who sometimes act in a toxic way. So, they know it exists. "Speaking up", as you say, leads to two people arguing in the chat instead of one, the toxic one probably enjoys the argument, and their teammates need to place both of them in ignore if they wish to have a chat they can actually use to communicate inc calls and so on. Reporting it is useless as long as Bioware doesn't do anything about it, and it's literally impossible to kick someone from a pvp match unless that person is afk.

 

We also used to get planetary comms for gearing up, while that was going on. That's out the window now, so why should PvP get special treatment?

[Seireeni]

We also used to get planetary comms for gearing up, while that was going on. That's out the window now, so why should PvP get special treatment?

 

Planetary comms were different, as they only bought leveling gear -- now you get the gear directly from heroics. ^^ But I explained why pvp players feel some sort of reward needs to be given for lowbie/midbie. If you feel some other reward is better, feel free to share your ideas. If you don't care that there isn't many matches going on in lowbie/midbie, then you certainly have the right to feel that way, but people who do either enjoy those game modes or feel they have a place in the game (=a place for new people to learn pvp before endgame) feel very differently.

[Verain]

I haven't read the thread, but I don't think the existence of a popular WoW expansion necessitates all competitors immediately merge servers. BfA's massive devouring of playerbases is mostly transient.