Constructive Criticism: The Most Important Change We Need In 7.2

[davensuitelife]

I'd like to see the removal of behind the scenes matchmaking the population is just not big enough to have that. Playing the same people all night is boring and dumb many matches are decided before they even start.

[septru]

Performance optimization. We all know the game isn't smooth to play. With random frame drops, lag, desync. Regardless of computer specs.

 

So a while back when they first announced "ability purge" a couple of us were really really excited. There are a lot of high movement abilities that cause extreme fps drop, dsync, and other graphical issues. We were hoping that some of these abilities would be purged. They include:

• 80% predation
  
• 75% hydrolics
  
• 50 and 75% countermeasures and entrench
  
• the several utilities/legendaries that reduce the cooldown of force speed,
  
• phantomstride
  
• holotraverse
  
• rocketout
  
• nimble master
  

 

Every single one of these abilities increases the movement speed of each class significantly. Quick changes to movement speed on the z axis is one of the direct causes of dsync. And they also cause a bunch of graphical lag. If BioWare removed or nerfed these abilities from their game, their game performance in pvp would increase significantly.

 

But that's not all. Notice how each class has their own speed boost. This has created a speed increase arms race. Each class needs its on movement speed increase to beat the other classes movement speed increase. If the other player is moving at +50%, I need to move at + 70%. It's absurd.

 

You're 4th point was about creating more class diversity and class identity. Every class feels like its playing the same and missing out on some key identity. This would be the starting place. Not all classes need to have speed increases. If BioWare removed or nerfed these abilities from their game, their class diversity in pvp would increase significantly.

Edited August 20, 2022 by septru

[TmoneyTime]

• 80% predation
  
• 75% hydrolics
  
• 50 and 75% countermeasures and entrench
  
• the several utilities/legendaries that reduce the cooldown of force speed,
  
• phantomstride
  
• holotraverse
  
• rocketout
  
• nimble master
  

 

 

That sums up the games development. Instead of making a core experience that is good. We have had abilities added that no one asked for. Then abilities removed. It's almost as if change for the sake of change. We had a very good core experience around the 2.0-3.0 era. It just needed refinement, some balance changes. Classes felt diverse even specs felt diverse.

 

It's a trap in mmo development that continues to happen. Adding power/gear is not content/good for the game. I think the entire pvp community would agree that if we still had everyone at level 50. With tons of maps, no deysnch issues, semi balanced classes, seasonal rewards (actual seasons with definitive start and end dates for both arenas and 8s), Some type of pvp guild system. The game would be far better off from a PVP perspective. I mean you could do that with PVE as well. A leaderboard for fastest raid clears etc with rewards for the top guilds.

 

If an mmo wants to truly become S tier it has to get rid of the power creep mentality and make a solid foundation. With actual content. Not power creep because bigger number omg, New gear omg.

Edited August 20, 2022 by TmoneyTime

[Xaelinone]

The fact that no one in 3 pages has brought up the absolutely horrific slow and stun system is astounding to me. First off, slows need to contribute to the resolve bar, not a new one, not extra space on it, 3 slows/stuns and you are done for the timer.

 

Reduce the time to drop combat by at least 50% once you are no longer actively in combat. The time to drop combat while no actual combat is occurring in pvp is absurd.

 

I can see people already throwing a fit saying these only benefit shadow/assassin characters. Not in the slightest, the reducing the amount of slows in this game should be a no brainer for any class except the ranged who benefit from it the most. The dropping combat again benefits everyone by allowing them to actually use out of combat regen, out of combat move, pre combat prep rotations and not restrict these to just best run in and die to reset.

 

Right now the entire purpose of this pvp system is face roll the keyboard until you die then repeat. Remove the handicap of the slows and absurd combat timers, let players actually play and fight. If they can't play without those restraints on their opponents at this point then they need to keep practicing and learning more anyway.

[septru]

The fact that no one in 3 pages has brought up the absolutely horrific slow and stun system is astounding to me. First off, slows need to contribute to the resolve bar, not a new one, not extra space on it, 3 slows/stuns and you are done for the timer.

 

Ya for sure. If they ever nerf speed buffs, they need to nerf slows/roots. But that would be the second step. First nerf all the insane speed buffs, then nerf all the insane slows/roots.

[Monterone]

The fact that no one in 3 pages has brought up the absolutely horrific slow and stun system is astounding to me. First off, slows need to contribute to the resolve bar, not a new one, not extra space on it, 3 slows/stuns and you are done for the timer.

 

That would come out to approximately 50 resolve per second of slow.

 

So stun is 200 per second, mezz is 100 per second and slow would be 50 per second. 6 second slow would add 300 resolve. That would allow for 3 consecutive slows before white-barring.

 

I don't agree or disagree -- but I would like to test this out. I'd like to play like this for a couple of weeks.

[DougTheNoob]

Ya for sure. If they ever nerf speed buffs, they need to nerf slows/roots. But that would be the second step. First nerf all the insane speed buffs, then nerf all the insane slows/roots.

 

Couldnt agree more! Nerf slows and roots,making em trigger resolve bar; Nerf all speed boost and teleportation abilities,and just delete some; Fix the problem with Mara being better at stealthing out of combat than the actual stealth classes by removing that dumb tactical ; And solo ranked need a complete rework (Right now,if u play a sniper,jugg or pt,u just cant do much,while stealth classes can do everything). Just a suggestion,but maybe disable some abilities like phases and abilities to stealth out of combat while inside arenas.I know some ppl will say that it would kill stealth classes,and yes,its just a raw idea that needs to be polished,but the truth is that the way it is now,stealth have all the advantage while classes like the ones I quoted have none,and either have to kit all match and/or die in less than a min(sniper) or smash buttons and try to do as much dmg as they can b4 they die(juggs and pt). And map selection is a must indeed! I hate huttball and its frustrating when I get 5 huttballs in a row

Edited August 21, 2022 by DougTheNoob

[Tirithius]

use strongholds as pvp maps. let me place defenses and traps in my stronghold, let me place my team, and then let me put my stronghold in que so that a team can invade it

[Rion_Starkiller]

Revamp the skill rating system.

 

Make all pvp matches, including warzones "ranked." Make it so that a match loss does not cause a player to lose rating. Only wins cause a change in skill rating. High rated players vs low rated players cause very little gain (minimum 1 point) for the high rated players winning, while low rated players would gain a much larger margin. Then make wins/losses count the same toward daily/weekly mission completion.

The effect of this is psychological in that a loss is only time invested.

 

Add map voting system.

 

See my suggestion thread: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=994464

Edited August 21, 2022 by Rion_Starkiller

[Beyrahl]

If we really want to get into performance here's a list of things they should do and some things you can do to improve your performance (FPS) already.

 

1. Vulkan, the game can already be run through it if you can support it you can do this right now actually. Highly recommend it, they should too.
    
    
   
2. Reduce pop-ups. Since this game single core heavy and still 32bit, it cannot take proper advantage of what you have system-wise. Having more things to deal with or load graphically & conquest objective pop-ups are kind of intense. It causes lag spikes. This goes for achievements, dark versus light, and the main offender medalist for PvP. While most players won't have a good setup anyway this impacts them HEAVILY. Please give us reduced pop-up options! Or a way to disable it completely.
    
    
   
3. Buffs, debuffs, and ability animations. (For those truly interested, this is one of the oldest and longest threads of all swtor forums.) I won't go into what that thread talks about, but the tl;dr is that animations lag sometimes. More so if you're on a hard drive. This means you cannot use the next ability until the animation loads, it doesn't cancel at all it's just the way swtor works. This impacts how smooth swtor feels and always will. While it's not insanely common for everyone, it's very much so an issue for lower systems and high lag situations. Now getting into buffs and debuffs, we have a massive tray now for both. It's quite insane really, there are a lot of these that should of gotten pruned in 7.0. Less of these will allow for less stress on CPU meaning better performance. Even on m.2 drive sometimes my buff or debuff icons don't actually load quick enough to see its picture within 1-2s. That's really not good, in general. There are at least 500+ of these going on in an 8v8 and I am being generous as it's often more. Even cutting down a few will help a ton as it's per character.
    
    
   
4. 64 bit? Is it possible? Probably, but it's a lot of work a half-assed 64-bit client wouldn't be any better than what we have now.
    
    
   
5. Animation detail. This one could be a big one overall, being able to tune down some of the details to animations would allow for animations to load a lot more smoothly, for example, vengeful slam has a literal flash bang go off in its animation. Being able to tune some of these down would be great while leaving the main impactful need to see animations relatively alone. One like gravity vortex immunity, saber reflect, so on and so forth, really only tuning down the class filler animation that's not as important. While this is unlikely wanted in any story content, this would be widely accepted for any group content as performance > other people's flashy abilities. It's often distracting anyway this feature is common in other games.
    
    
   
6. Making the game update location more frequently in PvP, probably not happening but generally, this would fix a lot of issues in general. Game location over client location as this causes problems when people are lagging, if they're lagging punish them, not everyone else.
    
    
   
7. Predation does it need to be so fancy? No. There's no way that the trailing effect is optimized.
    
    
   
8. Polarity shift. More like turning the match into a slide show. This specifically with volt rush causes so much lag, more so than predation. Polarity seems fine on its own but in a combination of volt rush, it's really rough. You feel that impact as soon as someone pops either ability. Volt rush needs to be optimized, and chain lightning needs to lose its root as it causes way more desync than any other ability alone. Specifically being an AoE arching root, it snaps people backward into previous locations they were when it arches to them.
   

 

If any of these were done or partially done we'd likely see way better performance on average.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Beyrahl

[septru]

1. Buffs, debuffs, and ability animations.
    
   
2. Animation detail.
    
   

 

If any of these were done or partially done we'd likely see way better performance on average.

 

If they were serious about "graphical optimization" we would have already seen these changes.

 

These changes really are the least amount of effort needed, and would SIGNIFICANTLY improve the game. The difference in fps drop from predation to transcendence is crazy.

[assatrap]

Is there even an ETA for 7.2? I would assume it's at LEAST 3 months away?

 

3 possible periods based on previous release patterns. 1.Just before Christmas mid December (unrealistic low probability). 2.somewhere around late January to mid February (most realistic one) and if devs totally clueless and dont know how to approach this somewhere around April early May next year.

[cflems]

1. I swear these forums should have a 6 month posting limit, it's been same bums malding about the same sh*t for the past 5 years. "PvP is dead because ranked 8v8s failed" "Nobody likes arenas because I don't" "PvP community/PvP guilds are dead" "Regs are easier than arenas" "Ranked is a joke and/or run by the mafia" "Make rewards win-only/punish leavers with a lockout timer". (And the corresponding answers being, ranked 8v8s failed because not enough people wanted to do them; nobody likes arenas now because they only pop in unranked when there aren't enough players to fill, meaning it's all 3v4s or 2v4s or 1v3s and nobody enjoys that, also everyone who did like arenas but wasn't ranked ready got forced out because they were literally taken out of the unranked rotation; the game is 10 years old and this is only one facet of it that's subservient to literal erotic roleplay on fleet, of course it's dead, we just do the best we can with the population that we have. I promise your PvP guilds wouldn't have gotten anybody to hop on a dead star wars game that looks like it was made in 2005 that wasn't already going to play; no, reg arenas just have the worst matchmaking humanly possible and 90% of them don't have 8 players so obviously one side is going to find them easy. also if you can press any buttons at all of course you can farm a bunch of node clickers when they're forced to do the one thing they actively butcher the enjoyment of warzone PvP in order to avoid; if ranked is run by a mafia what was your excuse in season 12-13 when pretty much all the long-standing players got banned and you were still sh*t in it; and finally, we actually saw these changes implemented, and the drastic drop in PvP population is a perfect depiction of why spamming on the forums is not evidence of having good ideas.)

 

2. Prum...is your only gripe with 7.0 balance really the removal of offguard? Not bothered by the all-stealth queues where any class without a vanish literally cannot play? No issue with madness sorcs running around spamming 12000000 roots and slows that reapply themselves and healing for over 100k every 13 seconds? Don't see what could be wrong with AP PTs having spammable 100-0 burst and an off-GCD hardstun with a 15 second cooldown? That stuff not ringing any bells? I feel like removing offguard is the only thing they did right. That mechanic was neither fun for the person doing it nor the person on the other end of it, it was just an ELO crutch.

 

3. I agree that how strong tank tunneling is is an issue but like.. do we really need new tank stats for that? Do we really think that's in the PvP budget? You could literally just remove the 20% healing debuff from being in a warzone (which is different from, and stacks with, the trauma one players can apply) and all of a sudden healers can keep their tanks alive. Voila. It's not like DPS cast healing themselves for 4.8% per cast instead of 4% would be game breaking.

 

4. Slow and root spam is definitely an issue. It's a catch-22 where every class has too many special speed boosts, but you also literally can never move unless you are actively using your special speed boost. So I think both of those should go. I don't think it's right to say the root spam disproportionately advantages ranged though. Sorcs get destroyed by spammable leap roots and any kind of slows (though they certainly have plenty to spam back), mercs literally have no roots AND no root break anymore because speccing into the ones they had is suicide, and snipers have such bad defensives they can't even play... roots are the only way they stand a chance to live longer than the 2 gcds they spend rolling.

 

5. I don't care what the combat timer is, just standardize it. Right now it's like half the time the mara you're chasing breaks combat before he even comes out of camo, and the other half you're sitting stuck in combat for literally 3 minutes with nobody hitting you. Just make it a uniform time please.

 

6. Making losses not count for anything has serious adverse effects on ranked PvP. Namely, it doesn't reward playing better, only playing more often. And if there is no incentive to improve, it goes the way of regs where it is full of extremely unskilled players to the point where it's very difficult to enjoy or find competitive matches. BUT, given how much nonsense goes on due to low pop, I think there are some things you can do to the ELO system to cause it not to be quite so frustrating for everyone involved, such as: not adding or subtracting ELO in games where the participants aren't who was originally intended based on the ELO matching (such as backfills, role mismatches, 3v4s, etc.), placing limits on the number of a class or spec that can end up in the same match (if there's 2 games going split them into each game, kind of thing), and changing placements such that players without a rating are considered "new" (around 900) instead of "average" (1200, where they currently are) (this would mean 0-0 placements are 900, but 5-5 are 1200, etc. I did the math out in a discord once, I promise it can be done.) Particularly this last one would help prevent new players from being overrated initially and consequently placed in matches far above their skill level where they have a poor experience that sours them on the mode in general. But, what do I know, I'm not a doctor.

[ZUHFB]

3. I agree that how strong tank tunneling is is an issue but like.. do we really need new tank stats for that? Do we really think that's in the PvP budget? You could literally just remove the 20% healing debuff from being in a warzone (which is different from, and stacks with, the trauma one players can apply) and all of a sudden healers can keep their tanks alive. Voila. It's not like DPS cast healing themselves for 4.8% per cast instead of 4% would be game breaking.

 

How is tank tunneling an issue? If it's the best strat it's the best strat? A good tank can live quite some time, and a bad tank would also be bad on DPS and die just as quickly. If you don't like to be tanktunneled maybe play DPS? If you don't like tank games being both teams tunneling the enemys tank and you losing because you get the worse tank, then tank yourself. If you don't want to tank yourself relog on a low rated toon, don't have low rated toons? Stop queueing.

 

Tank tunneling in Tank+DPS games is completely valid, should it work? No. But it does. Can't blame people for playing a winning strat. I do agree though that tanks add nothing in value to ranked and tank specs should not be able to queue it in the first place

[septru]

How is tank tunneling an issue?

.

.

.

Tank tunneling in Tank+DPS games is completely valid, should it work? No.

 

Kinda answered your own question there.

[CretinUseelad]

If you playing Jugg DPS in green 320 gear with a Krall's accord tactical; make it so that you cannot queue for ranked

[TmoneyTime]

If you playing Jugg DPS in green 320 gear with a Krall's accord tactical; make it so that you cannot queue for ranked

 

That's actually the opposite of what you want. This is a dead horse but lets continue the beating.

 

For Ranked to ever truly work; There needs to be a population that can support multiple matchmaking tiers. From fresh players that have played two hours and are level 80; To players that have played 10 years and min/max everything.

 

That is the only way Ranked PVP will ever work. The gatekeeping mentality needs to go. Population will sort out 90% of the issues with PVP. Assuming Biodady has a matchmaking system in place.

 

To get the population real rewards need to be offered, but not just towards the upper tiers. The Rewards need to be something that a large group of people would want. The easy way out would be cartel coin rewards. 10 coins per match win up to a maximum of 1,000. That's just a quick example but use whatever reward the players want.

[picklesrskankin]

Thanks for the ones who had ideas for changes! Some of those sound really good! I would definitely love another map or two! Maybe some kind of battle arena for 8v8. Where people can just spawn back in after a time and not real objectives other then killing the other team. Almost just a square arena with no huge obstacles, maybe stuff you can click and bring down traps or speed ups, etc.

 

Think like an upgraded wrestling ring and the spawns can be up above where you can just drop in. You can click nodes or buttons that can drop obstacles/traps/buffs into the ring. Something like that could get more people good at pvp focused content and also keep other players happy with a dps race. People love voidstar because you can get great numbers from that map.

 

A bounty system would be pretty cool too. You could put a target on one player and the team either has to defend that player or kill him in an allotted amount time. Add that to an 8v8 arena-styled map and it could be a lot of fun!

 

These are just ideas, and not things to debunk or put curses on other people because you’re angry for whatever reason. Check out the actual posts that are giving ideas out too. Of course you have to weed through the usual, but they are there!

Edited August 27, 2022 by picklesrskankin

[CretinUseelad]

That's actually the opposite of what you want. This is a dead horse but lets continue the beating.

 

For Ranked to ever truly work; There needs to be a population that can support multiple matchmaking tiers. From fresh players that have played two hours and are level 80; To players that have played 10 years and min/max everything.

 

That is the only way Ranked PVP will ever work. The gatekeeping mentality needs to go. Population will sort out 90% of the issues with PVP. Assuming Biodady has a matchmaking system in place.

 

To get the population real rewards need to be offered, but not just towards the upper tiers. The Rewards need to be something that a large group of people would want. The easy way out would be cartel coin rewards. 10 coins per match win up to a maximum of 1,000. That's just a quick example but use whatever reward the players want.

 

Uhm no? Since its ranked? And gearing in this game takes ZERO skill? Make a noob bracket or whatever just stop letting lazy PVERS pop in at random to ruin a game then never queue again. Require lazy people to at least accomplish the bare minimum and have gear and a proper tactical.

[TmoneyTime]

Uhm no? Since its ranked? And gearing in this game takes ZERO skill? Make a noob bracket or whatever just stop letting lazy PVERS pop in at random to ruin a game then never queue again. Require lazy people to at least accomplish the bare minimum and have gear and a proper tactical.

 

So your happy playing the same 8 people over and over.

Your not thinking logically. Your points are all emotional ones.

[sithBracer]

That's actually the opposite of what you want. This is a dead horse but lets continue the beating.

 

For Ranked to ever truly work; There needs to be a population that can support multiple matchmaking tiers. From fresh players that have played two hours and are level 80; To players that have played 10 years and min/max everything.

 

That is the only way Ranked PVP will ever work. The gatekeeping mentality needs to go. Population will sort out 90% of the issues with PVP. Assuming Biodady has a matchmaking system in place.

 

To get the population real rewards need to be offered, but not just towards the upper tiers. The Rewards need to be something that a large group of people would want. The easy way out would be cartel coin rewards. 10 coins per match win up to a maximum of 1,000. That's just a quick example but use whatever reward the players want.

 

The population problem is a problem with the game in general. The population is small, it will not grow unless disney is able to create a wonderful movie that draws in hundreds of thousands of new people. BW destroyed the population in 5.X and it is never coming back barring disney making a new SW hit movie. Accept it, move on.

 

As for "real rewards for everyone", that is exactly what BW is doing now. By getting ranked tokens you can buy anything from the ranked vendors from furious weapons/armor to really nice mounts. Even though it is pre-season and rewards are available, people are not playing.

 

Ranked PvP is dead because the game is dead, offering extra rewards for just playing will result in the same problems when they added augment mats in 5.X to try to bring life into it. It will only invite farmers who don't care about the game mode who want to make money on GTN and make inflation even worse.

 

There was a point in time where ranked PvP and this game in general could be saved and could be made to thrive. We are way beyond that point. Just enjoy the game for what it is, while you still can. BW is doing what it should be doing to continue this game for a little longer, focusing on the RPers and the cartel market.

[TmoneyTime]

The population problem is a problem with the game in general. The population is small, it will not grow unless disney is able to create a wonderful movie that draws in hundreds of thousands of new people. BW destroyed the population in 5.X and it is never coming back barring disney making a new SW hit movie. Accept it, move

 

Doesn't really have anything to do with Disney. It's half EA half Biodady's fault. EA for not supplying enough resources to have the talent and man power to make content/changes to the game.

 

Biodady's fault for not showing EA that they should invest resources into the project.

 

The problem is that the game has produced sub-par results for a long time now. If your in EA's shoes why would you pump resources into something that doesn't produce profit. They could use that investment better on some other project where the returns would be greater.

 

Biodady's track record for this project shows that with minimum investment the same profit is made, as would a large investment. Bioware needs to prove they are worth the investment. Frankly I don't think they can right now.

Edited August 30, 2022 by TmoneyTime

[sithBracer]

Doesn't really have anything to do with Disney. It's half EA half Biodady's fault. EA for not supplying enough resources to have the talent and man power to make content/changes to the game.

 

Biodady's fault for not showing EA that they should invest resources into the project.

 

The problem is that the game has produced sub-par results for a long time now. If your in EA's shoes why would you pump resources into something that doesn't produce profit. They could use that investment better on some other project where the returns would be greater.

 

Biodady's track record for this project shows that with minimum investment the same profit is made, as would a large investment. Bioware needs to prove they are worth the investment. Frankly I don't think they can right now.

 

Yeah I pretty much said that when I wrote "There was a point in time where ranked PvP and this game in general could be saved and could be made to thrive. We are way beyond that point. Just enjoy the game for what it is, while you still can.".

 

I never said this was disney's fault. I said that disney making a hit star wars movie is the only thing that will bring in a population at this point. The loss of people was 100% bioware's fault, mostly their actions at the beginning and during 5.X.

[septru]

Guys, everyone knows BioWare has limited resources. You don't need to beat the dead horse. Instead how about suggesting small changes that could make a big impact for pvp?

[CretinUseelad]

Need to keep this thread at the top since its the only one with actual pvp suggestions and it has been drowned out quickly by all the random nothing posts. Please revert back to ranked missions still count for loses. The people queueing for their black silver crystal or whatever they hope to get makes finishing weeklies on multiple characters take longer then it should. Not sure why they made this change in the first place as it doesn't really benefit anyone. Make it count and the non pvpers get their weeklies done faster and leave the queue.