Premades are hurting pvp participation

[Visue]

Premades should only queue against premades.

[Amunra-amunray]

Please stay on topic... the issue here is an engine designed to basically cater directly to groups over every other solo player which represents 90% of the player base if not more....

Meanwhile instead of pushing them into the queues they are designed and intended for and was created at the beginning of this game for pvp....

 

No Bioware is encouraging the notion of unfair unbalanced unequal and moreover cheating style of match making and grouping... and until a Queue is provided for them to duke it out it will never be fair, balanced and equal...

In a solo match the same randomness of good bad player will exist across the field, no stats, no wins, no nothing but first come first load ...

The excuse that it would kill pvp is INACCURATE!

[TrixxieTriss]

On 3/26/2023 at 12:12 PM, Visue said:

Premades should only queue against premades.

Or at least give solo players an agency to opt in or out of playing against or with Premades.

So when you queue as a solo player, you have the option to tick a box that says no to being put in matches with premades. If I have to wait a little longer in the queue while I wait for 2 full teams of solo players, then so be it. I don’t mind waiting. 
 

Edited May 20, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Shwarzchild]

I've been casually monitoring these types of threads to see what people are thinking/feeling.  I think the actual solution is something that's not being discussed, and maybe it isn't the most popular idea. But, when you think about it, or at least when I think about it, it may end up being much more workable.  It would also be a solution with two ideas wrapped in one. Curious to hear what people think about it:

Solution part 1:
Keep groups at no more than 4.

Solution part 2:
Make everything ranked. Warzones and Arenas.  By including everything my thought is that ELO has the sufficient size of population to work.  The rankings determine the bracket the player falls in.  That way lesser skilled players and groups go against lesser skilled players and groups.  More skilled players go against more "like"  competition in all game modes. If a player improves their ranking improves, and they can climb the ladder.  Matches potentially increase in enjoyment since the quality is better or more matched to skill.  You can increase your rank and climb to a new league, or you could decrease and fall to a lower. 

For rewards:
Each bracket increases the amount of pvp tokens received. In a sense I'm thinking of pvp tokens like tech fragments gained from operations. Story mode yields you some in a meaningful fashion; hardmode more; and nightmare more. The cap of 25 would need to increase significantly I would assume.

For groups:
The highest member's ranking determines the bracket the group gets placed into for matches.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Shwarzchild

[Ramalina]

1 hour ago, Shwarzchild said:

I've been casually monitoring these types of threads to see what people are thinking/feeling.  I think the actual solution is something that's not being discussed, and maybe it isn't the most popular idea. But, when you think about it, or at least when I think about it, it may end up being much more workable.  It would also be a solution with two ideas wrapped in one. Curious to hear what people think about it:

Solution part 1:
Keep groups at no more than 4.

Solution part 2:
Make everything ranked. Warzones and Arenas.  By including everything my thought is that ELO has the sufficient size of population to work.  The rankings determine the bracket the player falls in.  That way lesser skilled players and groups go against lesser skilled players and groups.  More skilled players go against more "like"  competition in all game modes. If a player improves their ranking improves, and they can climb the ladder.  Matches potentially increase in enjoyment since the quality is better or more matched to skill.  You can increase your rank and climb to a new league, or you could decrease and fall to a lower. 

For rewards:
Each bracket increases the amount of pvp tokens received. In a sense I'm thinking of pvp tokens like tech fragments gained from operations. Story mode yields you some in a meaningful fashion; hardmode more; and nightmare more. The cap of 25 would need to increase significantly I would assume.

For groups:
The highest member's ranking determines the bracket the group gets placed into for matches.

Questions, during peak times, on the most populous server, what is the typical wait time for a WZ or Arena match to start?   Based on this time to form, and average match length, how many PvP instances are concurrently running?   Given how many instances are running, and allowing that there may be 1 to 3 instances worth of players in the queue, what's the total size of player pool you'd be drawing from in this best case scenario?

 

I could see this working if the fraction of people who regularly PvP in SWTOR were greater, if the fraction that took PvP seriously were much greater, and if SWTOR's player base were 10 or more times greater than it currently is.   I'm not PvPing enough to really have a good pulse on the level of activity these days, but on the rare occasions I do if I dual queue GSF usually pops faster than WZs, and I can tell you for sure that GSF doesn't have the population to support a system such as you describe in a way that works.   At least for the Ranked/ELO portion.

 

For the 4 player cap, it would help a bit, but GSF has that in its matchmaker, and the matchmaker will routinely make matches where by talking to the people who are grouped it's possible to confirm that the algorithm is making 4 + 4  vs 8 solo matches, and doing it repeatedly, even while it's known that there are enough people to make mixed teams.   Even if your groups deliberately coordinate when they're queuing to try to get mixed teams for better balance, the matchmaker will still routinely screw it up.   Until the matchmaker is fixed enough to actually be any good, at all, at balancing teams, automatic matchmaking will be problematic.   If you want balanced teams you basically need to do custom matches where people are picking the teams. Which might be a decent option if it worked reliably for all maps and had any loot or mission/season/PvPtrack rewards associated with it.

 

Note: for balanced teams, you need to do player based selection whether it's group v group, mixed group and solo, or pure solo in the player pool.  Matchmaker is just flat out bad at balancing.

Edited May 20, 2023 by Ramalina

[AwesomeTacoCat]

23 hours ago, Shwarzchild said:

I've been casually monitoring these types of threads to see what people are thinking/feeling.  I think the actual solution is something that's not being discussed, and maybe it isn't the most popular idea. But, when you think about it, or at least when I think about it, it may end up being much more workable.  It would also be a solution with two ideas wrapped in one. Curious to hear what people think about it:

Solution part 1:
Keep groups at no more than 4.

Solution part 2:
Make everything ranked. Warzones and Arenas.  By including everything my thought is that ELO has the sufficient size of population to work.  The rankings determine the bracket the player falls in.  That way lesser skilled players and groups go against lesser skilled players and groups.  More skilled players go against more "like"  competition in all game modes. If a player improves their ranking improves, and they can climb the ladder.  Matches potentially increase in enjoyment since the quality is better or more matched to skill.  You can increase your rank and climb to a new league, or you could decrease and fall to a lower. 

For rewards:
Each bracket increases the amount of pvp tokens received. In a sense I'm thinking of pvp tokens like tech fragments gained from operations. Story mode yields you some in a meaningful fashion; hardmode more; and nightmare more. The cap of 25 would need to increase significantly I would assume.

For groups:
The highest member's ranking determines the bracket the group gets placed into for matches.

I think this would be a great idea if we had the population for it. But SS at least has nowhere near the pvp population to support this unless you’re going to completely get rid of the “matchmaking delta” concept Bioware uses which forces a pop after set amount of time no matter the ELO difference. 
 

And if you do that, you’re just literally never going to get pops at certain times. During off-peak hours, there might only be 10-12 people queing arenas - and one might be a premade. Now you either have to give them an unbalanced match after a certain amount of time or literally they never get a pop because the ELO gap is too big. I think Bioware seems to think that the latter is unacceptable. 
 

In a game like CS:GO you can do this sort of stuff because you can always find a similarly skilled composition (based on ELO) to basically any team because there are thousands and thousands of players. We just don’t have that luxury in SWTOR. 
 

My unpopular opinion remains that we should simply split groups up in matchmaking unless it’s possible to form a balanced match. So if the people in que are 4 new players in 320 gear at 1000 ELO and 4 veterans at 1800 ELO in a premade, just split the 4 man premade into two groups of two for that match, each getting two new players. Then if later on there are four solo players at 1800 ELO, you could keep the premade together and play them against the similarly skilled solo team. This way everyone gets to “play with their friends” if it’s possible to do so in a balanced way. 

[septru]

On 5/20/2023 at 7:43 AM, Shwarzchild said:

It would also be a solution with two ideas wrapped in one. Curious to hear what people think about it:

Solution part 1:
Keep groups at no more than 4.

Solution part 2:
Make everything ranked. Warzones and Arenas.  By including everything my thought is that ELO has the sufficient size of population to work.  The rankings determine the bracket the player falls in.  That way lesser skilled players and groups go against lesser skilled players and groups.  More skilled players go against more "like"  competition in all game modes. If a player improves their ranking improves, and they can climb the ladder.  Matches potentially increase in enjoyment since the quality is better or more matched to skill.  You can increase your rank and climb to a new league, or you could decrease and fall to a lower. 

For rewards:
Each bracket increases the amount of pvp tokens received. In a sense I'm thinking of pvp tokens like tech fragments gained from operations. Story mode yields you some in a meaningful fashion; hardmode more; and nightmare more. The cap of 25 would need to increase significantly I would assume.

 

When 7.2 was first announced, there were many of us from the ranked community that were advocating for exactly what you suggest. "Making everything ranked" and incentivizing more players to PvP (which is the one thing that the new PvP Seasons does well) was probably the best thing they could do to revitalize PvP. This change would create a population large enough make ELO based matchmaking work, make it significantly less easy to wintrade, and reduce toxicity. The only difference I would suggest is that a player's ELO would not be visible to them until they hit a certain threshold. That way casuals could PvP without the stress of seeing their ranking, but competitive PvPers could still engage in ranking based PvP. 

 

On 5/20/2023 at 8:42 AM, Ramalina said:

I could see this working if the fraction of people who regularly PvP in SWTOR were greater, if the fraction that took PvP seriously were much greater, and if SWTOR's player base were 10 or more times greater than it currently is.  

 

You're completely right. After BioWare removed ranked, almost 90% of the regular, longtime PvP community quit. For ranked players, it's the removal of their game mode. And for the rest its just the grind-based reward system that almost completely ignores skill. If they brought some form of skill-based rewards back, some of the longtime PvPers would come back. I don't even think they need to bring ranked back. Just some form of skill-based reward. I give one example in another thread. And if the regular PvP player base grows enough, then BioWare can take the do something like @Shwarzchild suggested. 

 

On 5/21/2023 at 7:17 AM, AwesomeTacoCat said:

But SS at least has nowhere near the pvp population to support this unless you’re going to completely get rid of the “matchmaking delta” concept Bioware uses which forces a pop after set amount of time no matter the ELO difference. 

 

The way it used to work when ranked existed is that there was a "matchmaking delta" that forced a pop after a set amount of time, however the ELO gain was negligible. For example, if I was 1700 player I would eventually get a pop in a 1200 rated lobby. But if I won, I would only increase my ELO by +6.

Edited May 22, 2023 by septru

[TrixxieTriss]

On 5/22/2023 at 12:17 AM, AwesomeTacoCat said:

I think this would be a great idea if we had the population for it. But SS at least has nowhere near the pvp population to support this unless you’re going to completely get rid of the “matchmaking delta” concept Bioware uses which forces a pop after set amount of time no matter the ELO difference. 
 

And if you do that, you’re just literally never going to get pops at certain times. During off-peak hours, there might only be 10-12 people queing arenas - and one might be a premade. Now you either have to give them an unbalanced match after a certain amount of time or literally they never get a pop because the ELO gap is too big. I think Bioware seems to think that the latter is unacceptable. 
 

In a game like CS:GO you can do this sort of stuff because you can always find a similarly skilled composition (based on ELO) to basically any team because there are thousands and thousands of players. We just don’t have that luxury in SWTOR. 
 

My unpopular opinion remains that we should simply split groups up in matchmaking unless it’s possible to form a balanced match. So if the people in que are 4 new players in 320 gear at 1000 ELO and 4 veterans at 1800 ELO in a premade, just split the 4 man premade into two groups of two for that match, each getting two new players. Then if later on there are four solo players at 1800 ELO, you could keep the premade together and play them against the similarly skilled solo team. This way everyone gets to “play with their friends” if it’s possible to do so in a balanced way. 

While that might work, what happens when you have premades of uneven sizes or composition 🤷🏻‍♀️.

The simplest & most affordable solution BioWare could employ is to make Arena a solo only queue & employ the same ELO system & algorithm that solo ranked had. 

Id suggest the same for WZ’s except all the people who need to play with friends would attack me 😉. So the compromise is to reduce premades back to a 4 man maximum. But while ever any size premades are in the queue, matchmaking can’t really work. 

[Samcuu]

28 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Id suggest the same for WZ’s except all the people who need to play with friends would attack me 😉. So the compromise is to reduce premades back to a 4 man maximum. But while ever any size premades are in the queue, matchmaking can’t really work. 

Having a 4 man max would solve most of the problems imo. Right now you see a 6 man premade, back in the 3 only days you'd have 6 ppl wanting to pvp from ur guild so you'd split into groups of 3. Or if you had 5 you'd split to 3 and 2. So the players were actually already doing this. If their matchmaking system has improved you'd get those two groups on opposite teams. The reason it never worked well before was that its always been easy to queue sync and all get on the same team. Supposedly with the new matchmaking system that wouldnt happen or happen very rarely, for example if there were 3 premades in queue you'd have one group as the opposition. 

[SentinalMasterWW]

Let this be the 247th Post on this forums about premades. 

Look im going to get straight into the point, Premades need their Own Q Separate from solo players. 

Just had a match with some really experienced PVP'ers on my team and one even had a plat flair so they are generally pretty good at PVP. We all got stomped on by the other team 

How? 

The other team was apparently a notorious Premade that exclusively Q's in a premade to bully and harass other players, They were not even trying to win, they just locked in us our spawn, doing the favorite premade strat where you all focus on one person and CC lock them to death, rinse and repeat for each person. This wouldn't be so bad but this was vandin huttball, one of the worst maps to fight premades as they can lock you in spawn as the map funnels you into essentially a corridor. 

How can people defend this? And why does Bioware allow this? 

Having the entire team converge on one person over and over again is not fun, there is no skill to be had, and its not fun for the person getting focused. 

Premades breed toxicity, The one thing Bioware wanted to get rid of by removing ranked (As they claimed). 

Even being on a Premade team is not fun, Takes the Challenge and fun away when half or almost all your team is spawn trapping the other team. 

Let me debunk the common arguments for having Premades 

1. Premades are good for the game! 

- No they are not, There is little to no Data supporting this, on the other hand, play any match against them, Go on the forums/Sub reddit, and People will tell you they despise them. Most people leave mid match or right away as soon as they know the other team is a premade. The other thing Premades do is Kill the Q for PVP, because no one wants to be farmed over and over again, Its why usually when there is a ton of Premades in the Q, I just stop playing PVP for the day, No point in feeding their ego. 

2. Players should be able to play with their friends, its an MMO. 

-This I get, but what most people and I want is a separate Q, Throw them against another grouped player team. It seems only fair, Besides wouldn't a premade want to fight against someone of equal skill and is also grouped up. Whats that? It's unfair just because they grouped up that they have to have their own Q? Your telling me they can't just ROFL stomp the other team, and are on equal grounds. If Bioware were to actually split the Q, Team Warzones and Arenas would be dead, Why? Because they can't Stomp over the team easily and spawn camp, they'd be fighting on equal grounds, and thus they would all separate and Q Solo.   

I'm also going to add the following information as well. 

-The game does not have the PVP population to support Premades, The Pop especially for PVP has decreased over the years. Premades simply cannot work presently, and pitting premades against premades does not work, because its usually one big 8 man premade in the Q, and the game cannot balance against it.

I suggest everyone watch this gameplay vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz0H2l8i08c&t=473s) gameplay speaks for itself, but he basically debunks premades as a whole with the commentary. 

 

 

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Let this be the 247th Post on this forums about premades. 

Look im going to get straight into the point, Premades need their Own Q Separate from solo players. 

Just had a match with some really experienced PVP'ers on my team and one even had a plat flair so they are generally pretty good at PVP. We all got stomped on by the other team 

How? 

The other team was apparently a notorious Premade that exclusively Q's in a premade to bully and harass other players, They were not even trying to win, they just locked in us our spawn, doing the favorite premade strat where you all focus on one person and CC lock them to death, rinse and repeat for each person. This wouldn't be so bad but this was vandin huttball, one of the worst maps to fight premades as they can lock you in spawn as the map funnels you into essentially a corridor. 

How can people defend this? And why does Bioware allow this? 

Having the entire team converge on one person over and over again is not fun, there is no skill to be had, and its not fun for the person getting focused. 

Premades breed toxicity, The one thing Bioware wanted to get rid of by removing ranked (As they claimed). 

Even being on a Premade team is not fun, Takes the Challenge and fun away when half or almost all your team is spawn trapping the other team. 

Let me debunk the common arguments for having Premades 

1. Premades are good for the game! 

- No they are not, There is little to no Data supporting this, on the other hand, play any match against them, Go on the forums/Sub reddit, and People will tell you they despise them. Most people leave mid match or right away as soon as they know the other team is a premade. The other thing Premades do is Kill the Q for PVP, because no one wants to be farmed over and over again, Its why usually when there is a ton of Premades in the Q, I just stop playing PVP for the day, No point in feeding their ego. 

2. Players should be able to play with their friends, its an MMO. 

-This I get, but what most people and I want is a separate Q, Throw them against another grouped player team. It seems only fair, Besides wouldn't a premade want to fight against someone of equal skill and is also grouped up. Whats that? It's unfair just because they grouped up that they have to have their own Q? Your telling me they can't just ROFL stomp the other team, and are on equal grounds. If Bioware were to actually split the Q, Team Warzones and Arenas would be dead, Why? Because they can't Stomp over the team easily and spawn camp, they'd be fighting on equal grounds, and thus they would all separate and Q Solo.   

I'm also going to add the following information as well. 

-The game does not have the PVP population to support Premades, The Pop especially for PVP has decreased over the years. Premades simply cannot work presently, and pitting premades against premades does not work, because its usually one big 8 man premade in the Q, and the game cannot balance against it.

I suggest everyone watch this gameplay vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz0H2l8i08c&t=473s) gameplay speaks for itself, but he basically debunks premades as a whole with the commentary. 

 

 

What are you’re thoughts on a toggle system that allows people to choose?

[SentinalMasterWW]

2 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

What are you’re thoughts on a toggle system that allows people to choose?

I'd be fine with it actually, Some people may want to fight Premades for a challenge. I imagine though a lot of Solo pugs like me would Q solo, Which is fine by me. 

[Crystal_Mind]

At the risk of feeding a troll...

Hypothesis: Premades are killing the PvP Game Mode
Expected Observation: Slower queue pops, frequent observation of large, coordinated premades
Actual Observation (on SF): Queue time on a fresh toon is the same or faster than it was in 6.3. Warzone quality generally the same as its always been (poor). Maybe (1) large premade seen per week with minimal observed impact.
Conclusion: The hypothesis is not supported.

So what's actually going on here?

Observed Complaints:
1.) The other team is deathmatching instead of playing to win.
Not a new complaint and happens whether you have a premade or not. Should it happen? No. But it's not innately a premade issue.

2.) People on the other team keep focusing down and repeatedly killing a weaker player, preventing that player from engaging.
This is what PvP is. If I know someone on the other team is a quick kill, I'm going to remove them from the equation repeatedly because you don't have to be a good player to stop a cap, and the numbers advantage wins. I'm under no obligation to sabotage my team by allowing a weaker player to freecast. This doesn't require a premade, btw. Not even to "gang up on" someone. I'll often focus-target a stronger player on my team and acquire their targets throughout the match if we're fighting in the same area.

3.) The other team is spawn camping.
While not exactly sportsmanlike, this is PvP. If the other team can keep you out of the occasion, they should do so. Ideally they should have 1 person go run the ball or cap nodes or something if they're outclassing you by that much. As for Vandin--if you're being spawncamped there, something is wrong. You have a lot of opportunity to punt them all into the pit if your team can coordinate just a little bit. (To say nothing of the vents) But again, this isn't strictly a premade issue. I've seen PUG teams pull this off as well.

I did watch a couple minutes of the video you linked. I'm familiar with that particular deathball, and they're pretty easy to beat on a capture map if you just cap where they're not and leave a couple sturdy folks for them to parse on. They don't care about the nodes, so they're happy as long as you throw a couple of bodies at them. And while there was a premade in that Civil War match, I've seen that exact scenario play out between two PUG teams, right down to the chain-stun -> death, so the premades are just a scapegoat for the skill gap issue in this video.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Crystal_Mind

[afwhoefuwov]

Guess my status still allows posting so here goes: 3-4 man Premade is not bad. Most of the time, these guys just damage farm and let the other 4 play objectives.  You need to figure out how to divide your team to defend against their attacks while completing the objectives.  Not fun, but it's worth a challenge.  I saw these 60% of the time. 

More than 4 is when we have problems: all 7 of them gang bang 1 guy if you even touches one of them.  Dont come at me with rubbish argument like "git gud".  How do you play when your first move was Force Charge and then dead after 2 seconds? Not even enough time to pop DCD.  I used to see group like these 10% of the time.   Recently, it is almost 40%.  It gets to the point that knowing just 2 or 3 players; I can already know the rest.  The sad thing some game modes allow them to just feast on their ego: Huttball (playing without scoring), and Voidstar (purposely ignore the door) 

[Tiffanitte]

@SentinalMasterWW - Well written. I watched the video too. I do that too, find people in the premades and add them to my friends list and wait for them to get into a WZ before I que. 

"The other team was apparently a notorious Premade that exclusively Q's in a premade to bully and harass other players," Exactly! 

 

[septru]

7 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Let this be the 247th Post on this forums about premades. 

5 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

What are you’re thoughts on a toggle system that allows people to choose?

So ig the plan just to create a new thread every time to avoid responding to valid counterarguments. Nice. This is starting to get into such a troll. 🤣

 

7 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

This wouldn't be so bad but this was vandin huttball, one of the worst maps to fight premades as they can lock you in spawn as the map funnels you into essentially a corridor. 

My friend. Vandin is literally the best map against a spawn camp. There are literally 2 extra side vents on the far sides that are completely protected and will immediately take you away from any spawn campers. 

Edited May 31, 2023 by septru

[krackcommando]

7 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

This wouldn't be so bad but this was vandin huttball, one of the worst maps to fight premades as they can lock you in spawn as the map funnels you into essentially a corridor. 

I haven't read your whole post, so apologies for not getting to your actual point, but I had to stop and comment here. I don't like the vandin map, but the designers created this map in a way that makes spawn camping impossible. I'm not sure what you're talking about here. there are fans on either side that port you to the middle of the map, or you can drop down in the EZ. it's literally impossible to spawn camp you unless you (impersonal) are literally a lemming dropping of the cliff instead of going to a fan which takes you to opposite sides of the map far away from the spawn.

[krackcommando]

4 hours ago, Crystal_Mind said:

I did watch a couple minutes of the video you linked. I'm familiar with that particular deathball, and they're pretty easy to beat on a capture map if you just cap where they're not and leave a couple sturdy folks for them to parse on. They don't care about the nodes, so they're happy as long as you throw a couple of bodies at them. And while there was a premade in that Civil War match, I've seen that exact scenario play out between two PUG teams, right down to the chain-stun -> death, so the premades are just a scapegoat for the skill gap issue in this video.

I agree with your assessment of the overall post, but I should mention that the reign in no biofail idea erp premades are not rare. they do play together quite a bit. I would say hysteria / rizz premades are very spaced out. that said, the problem is that they 100% don't care about winning. it's just to kill stuff and will actually play with their food (in vandin).

anyway, sorry, that wasn't even why I quoted you. I quoted you because you expressed an opinion that I see in ops chat a lot when playing against these groups: that they are easy to beat. you just give them a couple ppl to parse on and then cap behind their kill squads. yes. that is how you "beat them." but that's a hollow "win." it's not fun. it's not engaging. it really, quite frankly, sucks. I would rather lose a quick 3-cap and get on with my life than win a prolonged match in which my nose is rubbed in poop for 10 mins. the only ppl who actually "win" in these games are the ppl who don't care about winning in the first place.

this isn't actually a premade problem. I would guess that 70% of players in a HB match don't play to win. I would shrink that down to 40%-50% on every other map. but then you have to consider the number of bots who want to win but don't know how. so you have this guy stealthed in the EZ while the other team is running the ball from spawn to our EZ each time (thus turning the match into 7v8). or you have the jackass who says "we can't win without orbs" when, in fact, the only way to win is to play at the nodes and prevent a cap or two. there are the geniuses who 2m and 3m guard a node from start to finish of a map regardless of the score.  I would rather have incompetence over willful ignorance, but the end result is that, imo, WZs are absolutely worthless and unplayable. this has been the state of the game for years.

I came back to the game in the middle of 5.x. it was my first experience on SF (when I left I think I was on JC, JM, and Bastion/Harb?). anyway, I played solo rated when I came back. I did that for a season. I think it was s12? maybe s11? anyway...I left the game a month or two before 6.0 dropped. I then came back in the middle of 6.x, my first experience with tacticals. I hated it. I dipped my toe in rated, decided things had changed to the point where I really didn't want to bother relearning how every class worked (necessary to fight them), so I just q'd regs. I couldn't take it. first of all, arenas never popped. so regs was a de facto WZ queue. WZs were horrible. as bad then as they are now with regard to players ignoring the win/loss and others being ignorant about how to pvp (they were there for conquest weeks and, iirc, GS was a thing then).

my point is this: WZs in 6.x were hot garbage on SF. they were probably hot garbage in 5.x as well. the thing is, when I stopped playing rated, regs were all I had, and it drove me crazy how bad they were. WZs today are no different from WZs in 6.x when I left, and I left b/c there was no point to winning. either the players didn't care about winning or they were so incompetent (GS players who didn't know up from down) that dealing with them became a constant frustration. so I left. here I am back for 7.2, and literally nothing has changed about WZs. on the flip side, there's a separate arena queue, an for the most part, players do try. if I run into a match I don't want to play, I can stuck it and move on relatively quickly (unlike WZs that get dragged out as mentioned earlier in this and many other posts).

TL; DR: WZs are a mess. they have been a mess for many many years at this point (at least half the life span of this game). the problem with them is too few ppl even care about winning or are so hopelessly bad (don't understand the meta of the maps) that trying to play with them is an exercise in masochism. I think the only thing that can actually change this situation is to make winning really matter to players. handing out grind-only rewards definitely isn't "the way." popular consensus is that removal of rated WZs created this situation. maybe. iunno. but clearly the incentive to win is far weaker than the incentive to just pop heads for the majority of players in this game who have any clue about how their spec should be played. and there are scant few guides or streams ppl can watch to A.) learn how to pvp on their specs, and B.) learn the meta of the various maps. spoiler alert: you learn the meta by watching really good player play the map (psst: watching rated matches!).

[Crystal_Mind]

Interesting note you make about the prevalence of certain premades in warzones. Maybe it's what time I queue, or what toons I queue on, but I really don't see these guys that often. The most premades I've seen in weeks was on Monday, and only one of them was notable (a coordinated 6-man playing Queshball).

4 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

I quoted you because you expressed an opinion that I see in ops chat a lot when playing against these groups: that they are easy to beat. you just give them a couple ppl to parse on and then cap behind their kill squads. yes. that is how you "beat them." but that's a hollow "win." it's not fun. it's not engaging. it really, quite frankly, sucks. I would rather lose a quick 3-cap and get on with my life than win a prolonged match in which my nose is rubbed in poop for 10 mins. the only ppl who actually "win" in these games are the ppl who don't care about winning in the first place.

You know what? I've heard other people express that opinion, and it's fair enough. I don't exactly share it, but I agree that games are more enjoyable when both teams are playing the same game. The deathballs don't bother me on a personal level, though. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I don't really get invested in winning or losing. I'll do my best to win, but if I lose a warzone it's kind of whatever. The best times I've had this season are when I see someone I know on the other team and we engage in gleeful mutual murder attempts, then hop into chat later to laugh about it.

[Samcuu]

14 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

suggest everyone watch this gameplay vid (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz0H2l8i08c&t=473s) gameplay speaks for itself, but he basically debunks premades as a whole with the commentary

This dood is talking out of two sides of his mouth. I've seen a different video where he does a bunch of damage on his Mara, as like a tutorial. And guess what, he happened to be on the side of a premade in that video, but didn't make any mention of it then 😂😂 his qq'ing about getting focused by a better team while he's trying to kill their healer doesn't move me at all, the premade is playing pvp the way its supposed to be played. 

There are certain truths in this game atm that you need to take account for. Mara is a glass Canon yes u can do a lot of dmg but it's really a support class in the sense it relies on heals and tank otherwise the dcds just aren't that good right now for warzones. If he had tank and heals they'd be pushing that other premade, it's what he should be shooting for instead of just crying about premades imo  

14 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

The other team was apparently a notorious Premade that exclusively Q's in a premade to bully and harass other players, They were not even trying to win, they just locked in us our spawn, doing the favorite premade strat where you all focus on one person and CC lock them to death, rinse and repeat for each person. This wouldn't be so bad but this was vandin huttball, one of the worst maps to fight premades as they can lock you in spawn as the map funnels you into essentially a corridor

As others have said I run across this premade rarely because they queue at different times than I do. A group of friends I know go heads up with them and dunk on them on a regular basis... cuz they simply arent some unbeatable force. You need some friends, and when it comes to big premades the comps matter. This particular premade play an OP comp and class stack, but that doesn't mean there arent ways to counteract that. Was solo on a sorc and yes their premade does hurt, however I cornered one of their sorcs and solo'd him while I'm playing elemental convection and he was madness. Needless to say that shouldnt happen lol. Also see the other comments go to the far right in the Vandin hutt ball map, and there's a blocked path where u can get a fan to the center of the map and avoid the spawn camping if needed. 

Regardless, the distinction needs to be made between a full 8 man premade and a 4 man group. Nobody disagrees that group size should be scaled back down to 4. Let's say you have a tank heals and 6 semi capable dps players pumping out like 8 - 10k dps. Thats 55 to 60 dps on one person if they are calling out targets in voice comms. Nobody is arguing that should happen its overkill. We are simply in favor of 4 man groups being a thing for the reasons previously mentioned ad nauseum in every other thread. 

[krackcommando]

6 hours ago, Crystal_Mind said:

You know what? I've heard other people express that opinion, and it's fair enough. I don't exactly share it, but I agree that games are more enjoyable when both teams are playing the same game. The deathballs don't bother me on a personal level, though. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I don't really get invested in winning or losing. I'll do my best to win, but if I lose a warzone it's kind of whatever. The best times I've had this season are when I see someone I know on the other team and we engage in gleeful mutual murder attempts, then hop into chat later to laugh about it.

honestly, it wouldn't bother me one bit if I could just leave. I used to just leave if I was on a team that was ignoring objectives or kill farming my team. I realize I cannot control other ppl's behavior. but to take away my only recourse (leaving) by slapping that asinine deserter debuff on players. i turn into an impotent pile of rage flesh sitting at my computer. 😄

[Amunra-amunray]

On 3/25/2023 at 9:12 PM, Visue said:

Premades should only queue against premades.

so let it be written so let it be DONE!

[ferreyrolajedi]

Games a disgrace. Im glad i stop paying for this crap. Premades after premades or no pops couse u kill the game. 

Its so frustating. 

[Beyrahl]

A solo queue would be nice. But it doesn't change the fact there's drastic variance in player ability. So you will still have quite a few good players running around still likely bullying the whole lobby. 

Actual matchmaking taking into account average dmg/healing and limiting tanks a lot harder as a tank doesn't make up for no heals would really help players not only learn but enjoy it more. 

There really shouldn't be new/inexperienced players doing sub 2.5m-5m (depending on specs its much easier to do it on some) going against someone with an average of 5m+ sure it'd happen if matchmaking was changed but it'd be way less frequent. 
People who tend to lean towards combat play will be in similar matches while players who don't know how to play yet; or are purely objective-focused will be often in their own matches with like-minded players.

It's also very easy for it to sort you with average damage or healing soon as you do better than you're prepared for it'll go back down quickly. If someone is trying to keep it low they'll immediately spike back where they belong. 

The way it currently works is completely useless, win rate doesn't actually matter because one single player could cause the win and you could have had zero impact on it. It's quite a silly metric to be considered so I don't think it's all that's being taken into account.  Whatever other factors are it should really get changed fundamentally because it just isn't working. 

[Zunayson]

Matchmaking based on dmg/healing would probably work in arenas. It wouldn't work in all WZs, for me at least, because while I generally parse in capture matches, I have low numbers in huttball. If your matchmaker doesn't realize that then I would confuse it.

It's all moot though because this game's population barely supports the current pvp queues. Any matchmaking i fear wouldn't really go well.