Can We PLEASE add a group unranked Que.

[Amunra-amunray]

I would rather have a slight reduction in Q Pop times so as to not be bullied by elite players. Just like ranked you should had a group unranked. Therefore if you q for the Warzone and your in a group you only play against teams with groups. However, if a person is in a group you could still allow them to q as solo but other players will not have the invitation to that warzone.

 

I just think that warzones and conquest should be fun for all. Not BullyWars: Star Wars

[LordSitho]

This is not an issue. Even if they did this even more players would leave. Get good and find players to group with, after all this is a MMO. Edited December 29, 2018 by LordSitho

[RACATW]

If you're attempting to get better at arenas, queue unranked midbies bracket.

 

If you're just trying to play with a group then queue into 70s.

 

 

There's also group challenge (which I know almost nothing about since it doesnt interest me), you should be able to challenge random guilds and have some luck arranging a pvp match or two for certain days.

Edited December 29, 2018 by RACATW

[Amunra-amunray]

No... its simple elites should be playing elites not farming unranked warzones. If they want to be elite all by themselves in a solo Q 8 man unranked warzone they can....but it would be just that... the one person only randomly added to others that are solo as well if they happen to randomly be on the same team then very well. but If they want to be with their friends in a group and fight as a team and play in a warzone it should only be against other GROUPED Warzone advocates in Q

 

Meaning Group v Group on All Warzones

And if not in Group then Solo v Solo meaning you cannot hand pick your team against those that would not have the same opportunity. Those without a group pay the same subscription as those with one. Each should be allowed to have their fun, not be murdered constantly with obscenely high defeats counterbalanced due to team versus those without teams. etc

[Amunra-amunray]

This is not an issue. Even if they did this even more players would leave. Get good and find players to group with, after all this is a MMO.

 

I dont want to get good... I just want to have fun... and lopsided heavy handed elitists should beat each others heads in...

 

No what am I saying every gamer wants the Golden Gun as it were....

 

If I group up then I understand I will be going against another group and so on... What can none of these so called amazing pvpers not hack it when their opponents actually make them sweat. If I want to fight elite pvpers I would Q Ranked or Granked. No one likes a bully!

 

Now GSF is allowing spwn camping how is that balanced how is that fun for all subscribers. A few high powered ships doing 50 to 3 because you cannot get your barrings and see them as you spwn in...

 

SWTOR was great to add Guild PVP events and personally SH PVP challenges that was great. But for the casuals... that are not interested in intensive game play just fun they should be afforded the same opportunities as subscribers.

 

And just like invasion force crafting made Conquest Heavy Handed for larger guilds vs Smaller the same concept should be considered here. Larger guilds afford more people on at more times etc.

Edited December 30, 2018 by Amunra-amunray

[Stellarcrusade]

OP has a good point, unranked should be pugs vs pugs or groups vs groups. The reason you get such negative responses to your idea is that most groups in unranked actually suck at pvp and if they were forced to go against other groups it would expose them. The whole problem is, any somewhat organized group of half-wits has a super unfair advantage against a pug team, which is the main problem with pvp in most mmo's. We are expected to play a 10-20 stupid unfair unbalanced wars to get to a fair or close one. So expect to waste a week of queueing pug to get 1 good war.

[DavidAtkinson]

OP has a good point, unranked should be pugs vs pugs or groups vs groups. The reason you get such negative responses to your idea is that most groups in unranked actually suck at pvp and if they were forced to go against other groups it would expose them. The whole problem is, any somewhat organized group of half-wits has a super unfair advantage against a pug team, which is the main problem with pvp in most mmo's. We are expected to play a 10-20 stupid unfair unbalanced wars to get to a fair or close one. So expect to waste a week of queueing pug to get 1 good war.

 

There is no solution for that... only to get better, which the OP refuses...

Edited December 30, 2018 by DavidAtkinson

[MackPol]

toxic ppl are toxic ppl, doesnt matter if they are in group or not...

Its a reasonable assumption that you could have more toxic ppl in solo que only because ppl will go to any ways to avoid being responsible for anything, therefore looking for others to blame. Everyone would be on their own, blaming everybody else but themselves.

 

Most of the time in regs its the worst players that are acting like idiots anyway.

[TrixxieTriss]

OP has a good point, unranked should be pugs vs pugs or groups vs groups. The reason you get such negative responses to your idea is that most groups in unranked actually suck at pvp and if they were forced to go against other groups it would expose them. The whole problem is, any somewhat organized group of half-wits has a super unfair advantage against a pug team, which is the main problem with pvp in most mmo's. We are expected to play a 10-20 stupid unfair unbalanced wars to get to a fair or close one. So expect to waste a week of queueing pug to get 1 good war.

 

That’s a good point. I think this is something that most MMOs have failed to understand because they are so focused on “friends” playing with friends in a group thing. Then everyone gets so use to having pug vs team pvp and if you mention splitting them into seperate groups you have the same old argument of “git gud” or find some friends to play with.

Where if the MMO developers had put a system in place to start with that followed the group vs group and pug vs pug design there would never be this problem to start with.

Less and less people are playing MMOs and more and more people are playing other games where they pug vs pug. Yes there are still Group formats in a lot of those game, but they are usually reservered for a “ranked” type of environment.

At this point in this particular game there is no room to split the community into defined queues. There just aren’t enough of us left for that to work. What they need to do is fix the current match making system to delay some matches slightly to actually put the premades in the queue / matches against each other instead of just first come, first served.

That is the problem with this matchmaking and has been since they tried to introduce it. The whole thing is borked up and doesn’t work. If they fixed it so it worked then we might find matches a bit more even.

Edited December 31, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[ecstazypop]

toxic ppl are toxic ppl, doesnt matter if they are in group or not...

Its a reasonable assumption that you could have more toxic ppl in solo que only because ppl will go to any ways to avoid being responsible for anything, therefore looking for others to blame. Everyone would be on their own, blaming everybody else but themselves.

 

Most of the time in regs its the worst players that are acting like idiots anyway.

 

I don't disagree with u, but can I say why I was toxic in the past?

On the red eclipse, I acted as toxic a long time, and that was because, I couldn't compete against 4 man premade full of elitists or teamranked players. And I wrote in chat bad words like a kid, but after that, was a complete nightmare for me, people around did premade to hunt me down 4v1, 20 deaths all games.

How should I feel when all wz Im 1v4 and I solo queue? How should I feel when players ignore even objectives or other players to wait for me to quit respawn area and kill me again ?

I bump into toxic players like me, and many of them were solo queuers better than average, but weren't a threat to me. And some people say that sith with "get gud, bro" when I play sorc dps, pt, and all the weak specs, when they play only with premade or op classes like operative, sin, skank etc

A guy around here was in that group of elitists that been bullying me.

Btw, how can someone say "get gud" when game has a ton of bugs in pvp, not even saying stun reduce defense to 0? Rip evasion saberward deflection etc

Toxic players can be a nuisance but are they compared to 4 man group bully?

Edited January 2, 2019 by ecstazypop

[AlrikFassbauer]

There is no solution for that... only to get better, which the OP refuses...

 

I just found this thread : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=958443

[DavidAtkinson]

I don't disagree with u, but can I say why I was toxic in the past?

On the red eclipse, I acted as toxic a long time, and that was because, I couldn't compete against 4 man premade full of elitists or teamranked players. And I wrote in chat bad words like a kid, but after that, was a complete nightmare for me, people around did premade to hunt me down 4v1, 20 deaths all games.

How should I feel when all wz Im 1v4 and I solo queue? How should I feel when players ignore even objectives or other players to wait for me to quit respawn area and kill me again ?

I bump into toxic players like me, and many of them were solo queuers better than average, but weren't a threat to me. And some people say that sith with "get gud, bro" when I play sorc dps, pt, and all the weak specs, when they play only with premade or op classes like operstive, sin, skank etc

A guy around here was in that group of of elitists that been bullying me.

Btw, how can someone say "get gud" when game has a ton of bugs in pvp, not even saying stun reduce defense to 0? Rip evasion saberward deflection etc

Toxic players can be a nuisance but are they compared to 4 man group bully?

 

I dont think you should be making any comments here about premades since you are queing with premade all day on darth malgus right now.

 

It's a very sad way to PVP as you basically have all your wins easy on a plate. But we are all different.. some enjoy a challange, while others prefer the easy way.

[ecstazypop]

I dont think you should be making any comments here about premades since you are queing with premade all day on darth malgus right now.

 

It's a very sad way to PVP as you basically have all your wins easy on a plate. But we are all different.. some enjoy a challange, while others prefer the easy way.

 

Are u serious?

In all day I rarely find some people to queue with and 90% of my life I solo queue. W T F ?

Edited December 31, 2018 by ecstazypop

[abhaxus]

OP has a good point, unranked should be pugs vs pugs or groups vs groups. The reason you get such negative responses to your idea is that most groups in unranked actually suck at pvp and if they were forced to go against other groups it would expose them. The whole problem is, any somewhat organized group of half-wits has a super unfair advantage against a pug team, which is the main problem with pvp in most mmo's. We are expected to play a 10-20 stupid unfair unbalanced wars to get to a fair or close one. So expect to waste a week of queueing pug to get 1 good war.

 

No one is complaining about groups of bad players together. They are complaining about groups of better players. I struggle to remember the names of the guilds but there used to be some really terrible groups on pot5 where getting one of those "premades" on your team was always a loss.

[macmachado]

some ppl have to premade, they dont have other way. lack of some natural power, challenge. They fear lost, they dont see the hardness as fun.

for me more premade, better. They lose, greater my victory

Edited January 1, 2019 by macmachado

[Mannok]

NB! Before I make a point I just want to add, that I think we all agree that the low population of current SWTOR is a barrier to many improvements. Anyway.. .

 

 

To me the problem is very straight forward and some has been made clear in this thread, as well as similar threads.

 

Imagine.

Take 10 seconds and Imagine the outrage in Ranked and Team Ranked in SWTOR, if there was 1 que and that ranking made very little difference to teams due to "Que Timer" > "Balance". This would lead to 4/5 games to be a complete /facestomp if not 9/10.

 

And secondly imagine any current competitive MOBA or ARENA like MMO/Shooter, without a ranking system to que people of comparable skill against eachother. Maybe 5% would play these games for more than a few weeks without ranking and without PUG vs. PUG or Group vs. Group.

 

A Dinosaur.

For this reason SWTOR PvP can be seen as a Dinosaur, just like WoW with no ranking in Battlegrounds (Some players have 85% winrate in WoW battlegrounds as solo que). SWTOR's actual Game Play is amazing, the animations very Star War'ish, enjoyable Classes and Specs. But that doesn't matter because the basics are completely off. To many Hard Stuns (4 sec Hardstuns should not be in the game and 4 sec Hardstun should be a whitebar), to much difference in Skill Level, Team Composition and too much Premade vs. PUG.

 

 

SWTOR PvP - Is basicly 1 Mega variable multiplied by a Mega variable multiplied by another Mega variable.

 

 

My personal opinion and conclusion.

There has not been a single game ever developed, in which the above mentioned imbalances has been present, that have had good PvP. It is bad design and therefore the above mentioned are no longer present in any current game - like MOBAs or ARENA shooters. These games have no other mode than PvP and can serve as a "Canary in a coal Mine" in a reversed sense. If these games removed their internal ranking systems, they would implode in less than a month.

 

And therefore.

Any "Git GUD" or" make friends this is a MMO" argument is completely ludicrous in SWTOR's current Regz focused PvP. If anyones gets good and make friends and play with them in Regz, they wil eventually just destroy all other players.. it is a not-thought-through and nonesense argument if anyone makes it. SWTOR matchmaking is a Dinosaur even after the recent changes. It is NOT a individual player problem. Any respectable FPS have had systems to prevent similar bad matchmaking even 20'ish years ago . Therefore current PvP Matchmaking in SWTOR REGz is the best it has ever been, but also out of touch with the reality of Modern Gaming.

 

GAME Devs should split que immediately (let the best 5 or 10% Solo players que with the Groups) in peak hours (17-23) and try it for 2 weeks or a month. Put in a 15 minute "You recently left a Warzone and is considered a Traitor" to punish leavers in Warzones. Should give 50% of all medals for playing Objs and completely remove STATs for overall DMG. Instant kick a player on a team, that have one more Support Classes/Specs (with a MSG: "You have been removed from the Warzone due to unbalanced amounts of Support"). Finally give +50% reward for winning a Warzone and remove /say and emotes from PvP.

 

Job Done .

Edited January 3, 2019 by Mannok

[Rion_Starkiller]

Has anyone played around with the new Challenge system yet? I don't suppose it counts toward pvp dailies...? Edited January 2, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

[TrixxieTriss]

I just found this thread : http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=958443

 

Anyone else get a message that you need to be a subscriber to look at this link?

[TrixxieTriss]

NB! Before I make a point I just want to add, that I think we all agree that the low population of current SWTOR is a barrier to many improvements. Anyway.. .

 

 

To me the problem is very straight forward and some has been made clear in this thread, as well as similar threads.

 

Imagine.

Take 10 seconds and Imagine the outrage in Ranked and Team Ranked in SWTOR, if there was 1 que and that ranking made very little difference to teams due to "Que Timer" > "Balance". This would lead to 4/5 games to be a complete /facestomp if not 9/10.

 

And secondly imagine any current competitive MOBA or ARENA like MMO/Shooter, without a ranking system to que people of comparable skill against eachother. Maybe 5% would play these games for more than a few weeks without ranking and without PUG vs. PUG or Group vs. Group.

 

A Dinosaur.

For this reason SWTOR PvP can be seen as a Dinosaur, just like WoW with no ranking in Battlegrounds (Some players have 85% winrate in WoW battlegrounds as solo que). SWTOR's actual Game Play is amazing, the animations very Star War'ish, enjoyable Classes and Specs. But that doesn't matter because the basics are completely off. To many Hard Stuns (4 sec Hardstuns should not be in the game and 4 sec Hardstun should be a whitebar), to much difference in Skill Level, Team Composition and too much Premade vs. PUG.

 

 

SWTOR PvP - Is basicly 1 Mega variable multiplied by a Mega variable multiplied by another Mega variable.

 

 

My personal opinion and conclusion.

There has not been a single game ever developed, in which the above mentioned imbalances has been present, that have had good PvP. It is bad design and therefore the above mentioned are no longer present in any current game - like MOBAs or ARENA shooters. These games have no other mode than PvP and can serve as a "Canary in a coal Mine" in a reversed sense. If these games removed their internal ranking systems, they would implode in less than a month.

 

And therefore.

Any "Git GUD" or" make friends this is a MMO" argument is completely ludicrous in SWTOR's current Regz focused PvP. If anyones gets good and make friends and play with them in Regz, they wil eventually just destroy all other players.. it is a not-thought-through and nonesense argument if anyone makes it. SWTOR matchmaking is a Dinosaur even after the recent changes. It is NOT a individual player problem. Any respectable FPS have had systems to prevent similar bad matchmaking even 20'ish years ago . Therefore current PvP Matchmaking in SWTOR REGz is amateurish and out of touch with the reality of Modern Gaming.

 

GAME Devs should split que immediately (let the best 5 or 10% Solo players que with the Groups) in peak hours (17-23) and try it for 2 weeks or a month. Put in a 15 minute "You recently left a Warzone and is considered a Traitor" to punish leavers in Warzones. Should give 50% of all medals for playing Objs and completely remove STATs for overall DMG. Instant kick a player on a team, that have one more Support Classes/Specs (with a MSG: "You have been removed from the Warzone due to unbalanced amounts of Healers or Tanks"). Finally give +50% reward for winning a Warzone and remove /say and emotes from PvP.

 

Job Done .

 

Agreed 100% with your analysis and about 90% of your solutions. The only part I disagree with is the booting people out. If the queue system worked properly it would never put too many in the match to start with.

[TrixxieTriss]

Has anyone played around with the new Challenge system yet? I don't suppose it counts toward pvp dailies...?

 

No it doesn’t give you anything except a “chest” to pin your win on.... bragging rights.

[Stormcrest]

That’s a good point. I think this is something that most MMOs have failed to understand because they are so focused on “friends” playing with friends in a group thing. Then everyone gets so use to having pug vs team pvp and if you mention splitting them into seperate groups you have the same old argument of “git gud” or find some friends to play with.

Where if the MMO developers had put a system in place to start with that followed the group vs group and pug vs pug design there would never be this problem to start with.

Less and less people are playing MMOs and more and more people are playing other games where they pug vs pug. Yes there are still Group formats in a lot of those game, but they are usually reservered for a “ranked” type of environment.

At this point in this particular game there is no room to split the community into defined queues. There just aren’t enough of us left for that to work. What they need to do is fix the current match making system to delay some matches slightly to actually put the premades in the queue / matches against each other instead of just first come, first served.

That is the problem with this matchmaking and has been since they tried to introduce it. The whole thing is borked up and doesn’t work. If they fixed it so it worked then we might find matches a bit more even.

 

I'm going to respectfully disagree, I don't think that the problem is unsolvable. The dwindling number of MMO players is in part because of bad design and companies not giving a crap driving players away. With a change of attitude and re-designs players CAN be brought back to MMOs. What's more I've seen MMOs actually update their graphics/technology over the years to keep up with the times, even going as far back as the original "Everquest".

 

From where I'm sitting the big reason why PVP queues are not better segregated is simply because other MMOS that were big when SWTOR was being developed did not do so. I'm looking largely at "World Of Warcraft" which is infamous for both it's problems and blind arrogance in management.... both of which were duplicated and emulated by the so-called "WoW-clones" setting out to be "WoW-killers" which sadly SWTOR was among the number of. The fact that these problems were inherent from the beginning, and he designers did not change, does not mean the problems cannot be fixed now.

 

People who left MMORPGs *BECAUSE* of these kinds of problems can be brought back if things change, and that information is communicated. I've said for a very long time that a lot of MMORPGs in their "twilight" (or ones that see themselves that way) could get a breath of fresh air with a re-design, and an apology, providing both are communicated en-masse to former subscribers with the effort of getting people back.

 

It sounds weird but I *HAVE* seen MMOs bounce back from near death. One good example is actually "Star Trek Online" which was pretty much the ultimate cash-in MMO. We're talking really, really, low grade stuff. Rather than letting the game die out the developers found a new sponsor and went back to the drawing board, they re-did vast portions of the game, and spent a long time literally ripping out their own guts and replacing content that "wasn't up to their standards". I saw their game go from being almost totally abandoned, to a vast universe where you had ships again filling space like clouds of locusts. Of course they got greedy (partially the fault of their sponsors) and embraced the "FTP" bug big time which seriously downsized the game's player base and population. That said today it survives as a fairly successful FTP Lock/Loot Box driven game with subscription options. It even still gets periodic updates where they pay old trek actors to do voices for them and stuff. One of their last big "expansions" was basically a DS-9 reunion. The point here is that while following STO isn't what I recommend specifically, I do think MMOs can recover from a death state and bring back players with enough change and humility. By rights this game should have died a long time ago.

 

At any rate, games like "Overwatch" and "Fortnite" do matchmaking a lot better and tend to be a lot more casual friendly than most MMORPGs because of the way they segregate queues. This is part of what made them successful. That said "action" games are not to everyone's liking, a lot of people who would prefer MMORPG combat get involved in that because they have been driven away. If MMORPGs broke free of WoW's system and then decided to communicate this, especially if they timed this with some technological upgrades, and wide scale communications to bring people back to the game, I think they could seriously cut into the player base of those kinds of titles.

 

Of course the trick here is that not everyone comes for the PVP, I think they also need to embrace the attitude that content and character advancement needs to be there for all, and work towards supporting all play styles. One problem with emulating WoW is the whole "raiders and elite PVPers are king", and while they are indeed a big part of the core audience, they are NOT the only audience, and time needs to be put into providing parallel tracks of advancement for people who want to play differently. A casual soloist (or someone who say plays with a couple of other people) needs to be kept busy in a parallel endgame to someone who revels in organizing with 24 other stalwart souls and wrecking raid encounters. Difficulty needs to be up to the player pretty much... and while few have communicated this, I think some games have learned this a bit too late. It *IS* possible to make all kinds of players happy, it just takes work, and developers need to remember they are professionals not fanboys out to cater specifically to whatever style of game play they most appreciate.

 

I guess my overall point here is that while MMORPGs seem to be dying out, there is no reason this trend has to continue. Really it's like someone dying of thirst with a glass of water 2' away because they are unwilling to get the cup themselves and demand having a servant do it for them. The most aggravating thing is the sheer arrogance and refusal of these games to try and save themselves. I think even though it's a shadow of what it once was, everyone in this little corner of gaming still looks on WoW with awe and tries to emulate it's attitudes as much as anything. With "Battle For Azeroth" for example they apparently put the former lead raid designer in charge, a guy who is apparently not shy about who and what he favors and allegedly at Blizzcon pretty much said he'd rather see the game die than cater to "filthy casuals" or something along those lines. This happening right alongside a somewhat (in)famous informational podcast of sorts where one of the developers showed up wearing a "Horde" hat. A point that didn't go unnoticed when factional imbalance has long been an issue with the game, along with the not-so-subtle joke about all things favoring The Horde.

 

At any rate, it likely won't happen... but yeah, if EA/Bioware was to do another major expansion for SWTOR they could probably bring a lot of players back with the right adjustments... and in the context of this discussion, launching new PVP Warzones along with segregated queues and a large PVP-focused balance pass would be a good selling point and a great way to advertise "hey, come back to SWTOR for your PVP fix, we've learned our lessons...".

 

When I say a PVP focused balance pass, I think they need to really look at the way PVP works in this game, and approach things almost from an E-sports-like perspective. Right now for example I think some of the "Tank" classes need to be revamped, with a critical eye on what exactly a defense-based fighter actually contributes. Like a lot of MMO combat the entire focus seems to be on DPS and healing. As someone who likes defensive characters (like the Shieldtech) I oftentimes feel almost entirely useless, my whole "contribution" which is to guard someone largely depends on people being smart enough to exploit this and/or heal me. This is compared to DPS guys and healers who can just run around button spamming and get some results. Simply setting myself up to get medals can be tricky since I can't just "hit button, earn medal" as a shieldtech the way I can when I say play as a Sage or Sorceror or something similar (who can score a 6k hit instantly, and then earn more medals for healing). Heck it can take 2-3 times for a character with all defensive stats to score a 6k hit with their primary "big hit".... I'm not going to break this down in details (I've been at this for years with various characters and can compare them, and even give comparisons based on previous "builds"). Let me just say SWTOR balance is awful... I mean even WoW isn't as bad in many respects. Odds are I've been PVPing longer than you have, and with more characters, in more games. I could "theoretically" fix a lot of the problems but the developers are the ones that need to get involved on that. To put it simply in SWTOR it's *less* broken than many games, but as someone who just did 40 PVP matches to unlock Darth Hexid (I've been gone for a while) entirely as a Shield Tech Bounty Hunter, I can say it's an exercise in relative misery. I believe the first step is for the devs to ensure defensive stats are just as useful as offensive/healing ones in PVP, and to also give the shield tech more reliable ways of doing damage that aren't dependent on support attributes (as if your a tank your stats SHOULD be defensive... not that it matters when you can still be hit like a truck by other players who can too easily breach those defenses). Simply put if I'm going to PVP for pleasure in the future it's going to be as one of the classes most other people play like oh... Sith Sorceror (which I do far better as, despite not liking as much, if nothing else I get medals faster and better payouts). Interestingly in 40 matches guess how many other shield techs I met? The answer '0'. I did see a couple of Power Techs, but they were offensive builds (of course).

 

Ah well, enough rambling. I doubt this will matter (or anyone will read it). The bottom line is that I think the game CAN be fixed... and in doing so players will come back, assuming EA/Bioware approaches it properly and humbly gets the word out. Sure... I imagine some people that want to hang out with pre-made groups and streamroll pugs won't be happy and might leave, but done correctly I think many of those people can either adapt by fighting other pre-made teams, or queuing solo themselves... or just move on for other games as I'm sure they will be replaced. If the tiny handful of people left there during the near death of STO were the only ones they listened to the game would never have gotten another chance.... albeit a chance which they arguably squandered with questionable choices from then on.

 

... and even if this sounds bad to some, I will say I do not intended any real disrespect. I just wanted to give an alternate opinion.

[Lhancelot]

The most aggravating thing is the sheer arrogance and refusal of these games to try and save themselves.

 

The problem is they seem to have their "metrics" which shows them what theoretically is the best game design and then just go head first into it. All feedback aside, all player input ignored or not even considered.

[Stormcrest]

The problem is they seem to have their "metrics" which shows them what theoretically is the best game design and then just go head first into it. All feedback aside, all player input ignored or not even considered.

 

I've heard this myself, but have long questioned it simply because the dominant "metrics" seem to be contrary to the reality anyone with eyes can see if they bother to be looking. What's more as the player pool reduces the metrics are going to heavily favor ONLY what the people currently playing the game are like, NOT what needs to be done to bring more people in an assure the largest, most productive, community. As you "analyze" a dying game all your going to do is watch the necrosis spread.

 

My basic argument is that MMO developers need to look at what other games are doing and what's working. For example when it comes to PVP it's no secret that the pool of MMORPG pvpers is dwindling. You look at the games they are going to, the way they do their matchmaking, and other assorted things and it should be obvious why they are leaving and the kinds of changes that can bring them back.

 

Of course they also need to look at things like player retention, not just initial sales. I find it interesting to note that the new SWTOR expansion is supposed to be "Republic Vs. Empire" focused when at the same time. I can only assume this is because of how "Battle For Azeroth" was lionized early on, and saw such strong sales. Anyone who bothered to look at the actual results however would realize that it was kind of a train slow motion train wreck in the making. Their central gimmick was to use phasing to create an environment where people could flag for PVP have everyone voluntarily wander around in a state of warfare. They decided to incentivize people to "flag" by adding an exps bonus to those that chose to do so. Of course the reality was that people tried it for about 15 minutes, realized that the factional imbalance was too great, PVP was still an unbalanced mess, and nobody wanted to flag. Pretty much from day #1 the statement was "If I play Alliance, *** do I want to flag and get roflstomped by groups of organized horde players?". Laugh if you want but this has been a problem with WoW since Day #1 as well, PVP has almost always been a Horde dominated parody of the kind of warfare you should be seeing... and don't even get me started on WoW class balance (and I'll be blunt, I was doing PVP heavily since "Vanilla" even did the original grind all the way to lieutenant commandr, and fought on the wing of several Alliance Grand Marshals in my heyday).

 

At any rate while people are pretty much laughing hysterically at the PVP component of "the great war" the same expansion's genius choice of overall director saw a major crackdown on anyone who didn't want to engage in "elite" play. You can't even finish the basic storylines without playing on "Mythic" level (which is required for some dungeons), to play on Mythic level of course one must embrace the full elitist toxicity of the WoW community. Can't do "looking for group" here kids, you must actually deal with other people... and I assume in doing so you realize you aren't considered a "person" unless your gear score is at a certain currently plateau. Of course if you don't already know all these fights your also doomed (I mean obviously you should have had top level gear and run all of this during the first month to learn it... it's nobody else's job to deal with your newbie crap, suffer, nobody else is going to slow their speed-farming for you so you can just see the storyline). Allegedly according to the guy running the show now (former lead raid designer) this is all according to plan. Now before you misunderstand, I'm fully capable of playing at this level (I was actually in contention for 1st Illidan raid kill back in the days of Burning Crusade), I just prefer not to anymore, and I don't want to deal with this kind of elitist crap. I used to have that attitude myself... many years ago, I understand it, I just don't care for it anymore. As a result I left WoW after I did a bit of BfA, of course they already got my money for the expansion. Looking at the forums you'll see plenty of people saying what I'm saying, and of course getting beaten down by the elitist Blizzard-bois. "Git Good Son" which is funny when you realize you were "good" before they probably knew how to install the game (yes, WoW is old enough where this is possible). "No Tolerance for this anymore" isn't the same as "sucking"... but that's a whole different discussion.

 

At any rate, I guess the point of my second rant is that it seems to me that SWTOR is playing "follow the leader" as Blizzard jumps off a cliff. What it doesn't realize is WoW is still big enough, and has enough elitists, where it is basically wearing a parachute while SWTOR is on it's way to landing on "jagged rock junction". WoW is going to maintain decent subscription numbers for a while (before the next expansion) as is their cycle.... other MMORPGs shoot themselves in the head trying to play the game the way WoW does.

 

One thing to consider also is that nothing any MMO does is going to amount to crap unless it communicates. The occasional "play for free now" pop up on a weird web page doesn't amount to a pile of garbage. Even Mobile games (some quite old... and yes some are also stealing potential MMORPG players) realize that they need to advertise to play with the big boys. You can see "freemium" games like bloody "Forge Of Empires" spamming TV with ad spots. Even if something like that is too ambitious, I don't think I've so much as seen EA/Bioware advertise in a comic book (and gee, maybe say advertising in Star Wars themed comic books might attract some players). I don't think I've seen or even heard about any kind of organized convention attendances despite the MMO still being in business for that matter. Weirdly one thing Star Trek Online does is hit "Trekkie" type cons...

 

Beyond all that, how often do they mass-mail subscribers and former subscribers? Saying "hey we've fixed things, please come back" hat in hand, can actually work, especially if it's true (or an effort is being made).

 

Want to know something weird? I like this game enough where I kept my subscription running to support it even while I wasn't playing (for quite a while in fact). One thing that sort of irritates me, is that they did this whole "Darkness Vs. Light" event or something like that where you could unlock that "Master Ranos" character. The really messed up thing is that it's something I would have liked to have done, but even as a subscriber I get like ZERO news from this game (and yes kids I opted in) which means they aren't communicating. They could have brought me back sooner... other people who are mostly simply raging about missing the companion seem to have similar attitudes saying "why didn't someone tell us about this?". Well yes... that is a good question... why the heck would you run an event to get people playing and then *NOT* make sure everyone knows about it? Understand now why I'm a bit harsh here. I mean forget what perks I missed... where was the communication? As it was I didn't even know about "Darth Hexid" (who I did 40 Warzones to unlock) until someone recently told me about her since this information is now buried under achievements. If someone had bothered to announce THAT event, maybe that would have gotten me more active as well...

 

Oh and on a similar note, I'm not a "super whale" but I do support games when I'm active. Unlike some people I don't care about a fairly reasonable cash shop. Want to sell me things, create content that makes me want to keep playing...and by that I *don't* mean sell me ways to make your content less painful to grind.

 

On the issue of cash shops, I will also say "gacha" boxes work well for asian MMOs but the results for western MMOs are mixed. I see them as sort of a cancer. To be honest I am extremely unlikely to "gamble" for a cosmetic item in any MMO. I realize some people get addicted to them, but really I think western developers will rapidly learn that if they just sell the items they create for a reasonable rate (a couple of bucks) they can get volume sales. Sure they won't get "gambling addict" type money like they do from some people *BUT* they will also get more good will from the community since the gambling aspects tend to annoy people (there are lots of people who talk about quitting specifically because of this garbage). Good will is especially important if you are running a game that also has a *subscription* option.

 

Ahh well, no point in even writing stuff of this length as a response (which turned into a general rant). I doubt anyone really cares.

[Amaste]

I would rather have a slight reduction in Q Pop times so as to not be bullied by elite players. Just like ranked you should had a group unranked. Therefore if you q for the Warzone and your in a group you only play against teams with groups. However, if a person is in a group you could still allow them to q as solo but other players will not have the invitation to that warzone.

 

I just think that warzones and conquest should be fun for all. Not BullyWars: Star Wars

 

Forgetting the fact that someone at Bioware would have to care enough to put time into implementing that, I'd have serious concern the server populations wouldn't support that outside of peak hours. Even if they did, it wouldn't solve your problem, as you're going to still get 'elite' players in the solo queues that will be on the same team. Your real problem would come from actual elite players though; there's not as many as there used to be, but there's still enough true world beaters running around that would be more than capable of ruining your day all by themselves in a pug group should they desire to.

 

The point is moot though. They'll never split the queues, because unranked doesn't matter to BW; their only goal with it is to increase queue pops to get as many people into an activity/content as they can. The ranked queues don't have objective based maps which is a turn off to some, and is full of some truly insanely skilled players you'll never see outside of granked which discourages others. That and the same reasons that draw solo players to regs for fun will inevitably draw groups of friends/acquaintances, some better than others. There's nothing that will realistically fix the issue at this point with the population and setup imo. It's more likely to increase queue times to the point it kills group queues at certain points of the day, and then they'll just queue sync solos for some fun, dropping groups til the majority are on the same team and then it's the same thing as before, only worse.

 

Personally if anything I'd like to get a practice arena queue where new groups could practice for granked, but god knows granked sharks would sit in it all day er' day too. so /shrug. It doesn't matter. .-. /nihilistic

[Amunra-amunray]

some ppl have to premade, they dont have other way. lack of some natural power, challenge. They fear lost, they dont see the hardness as fun.

for me more premade, better. They lose, greater my victory

 

FEAR has nothing to do with it... it has everything to do with BALANCE.

 

And the devs don't balance they continue to make the Kindergarten Classes more powerful and breaking others...

 

Why else do you see a influx of a specific class after every rebalancing. They do not test enough against the players to assure the damage and mit balance is accurately and equal for all players.

 

Not just the few...

 

8 MAN GROUP RANKED should be added to the Qs and unranked should not allow GROUPS and it will rectify the situation and I am sure the pops will increase cause players that are not the select elite few who want to control the game do not Q as its heavy handed to players who consistently try to find ways to cheat the bolsters system and will not Q ranked with these elite teams they farm people training in Unranked WZs the many who think they are good and do these types of biofail exploits run rampant only in pvp.

 

The only constant in life is change... AND UNRANKED PVP needs to remove all group options from the Q only if you add 8 MAN RANKED WZs My feeling is the Qs will increase not decrease. As those tired of being farmed by Bolster hackers will start queing for warzones again and true balance in unranked can occur

 

As ranked you have the option to choose solo and deal with elite players. Unranked forces you to play them and I pay a subscription just like those players and I should be able to have an equal amount of fun as in Season One where PVP was the best this game has ever seen and we will never get back to that