My thoughts about the new PVP changes

[Prapcaster]

16 minutes ago, illgot said:

Season 14 started last December and continued into 2022. There were specific rewards for that season and the devs tracked progress. The rewards for that season weren't amazing but it took dev time to create and organize. Tracking the different classes maybe a massive amount of work with the new class system we received in 7.0. That means more dev time than usual.

Plus how much of "class balancing" was done at the behest of ranked PvP results?

Ranked PvP requires a subscription to play and GSF is unlimited for FTP, but how many players are going to cancel their subscriptions once ranked PvP vanishes?

Meanwhile all the FTP players, preferred players, subscribers who play GSF are buying cosmetics and ships for GSF which requires zero dev time and has gotten zero dev time in the last 5 years.

 

You make a couple of good points but I do think you overestimate the size of the gsf community. Back when it was the best source of 326 gear at the 7.0 launch the queues were about 10 minutes per pop and 4's would be less then 2 minutes during prime hours. And even a month ago the rank pops would be going for about 6-8 hours every night with rotating people. If you queue for gsf super late you're just gonna be staring at your screen for 30 minutes. I have no idea about the past few weeks tho I haven't been around.

[illgot]

1 hour ago, Prapcaster said:

You make a couple of good points but I do think you overestimate the size of the gsf community. Back when it was the best source of 326 gear at the 7.0 launch the queues were about 10 minutes per pop and 4's would be less then 2 minutes during prime hours. And even a month ago the rank pops would be going for about 6-8 hours every night with rotating people. If you queue for gsf super late you're just gonna be staring at your screen for 30 minutes. I have no idea about the past few weeks tho I haven't been around.

I play GSF on every server. The population is smaller than unranked PvP but is much more active than I have seen ranked PvP in years.

And as I have said before, GSF is an isolated part of SWTOR that requires zero dev time and is a constant stream of revenue for Bioware. Even if the devs did devote time to try and balance out GSF or add in new ships, it would have zero affect on the rest of the game.

Think about it, you say you see a constant rotation of people in ranked PvP. In GSF we still have games with 24 people at once. When was the last time you had 24 people, if not more because GSF has multiple games running at once, queued up for ranked PvP?

Edited November 14, 2022 by illgot

[Mycroft-Tarkin]

6 hours ago, illgot said:

Ranked PvP requires a subscription to play and GSF is unlimited for FTP, but how many players are going to cancel their subscriptions once ranked PvP vanishes?

...all of them? There is zero reason for someone who does only pvp, to subscribe to this game anymore. 

 

6 hours ago, illgot said:

Meanwhile all the FTP players, preferred players, subscribers who play GSF are buying cosmetics and ships for GSF 

That's a funny claim but you seem to be intent on remaining dishonest just to make an argument of some sort so it's pointless to continue this

[illgot]

1 hour ago, Mycroft-Tarkin said:

...all of them? There is zero reason for someone who does only pvp, to subscribe to this game anymore. 

 

That's a funny claim but you seem to be intent on remaining dishonest just to make an argument of some sort so it's pointless to continue this

oh yes, I see my mistake, I wrote "all the FTP players, preferred players, subscribers who play GSF are buying cosmetics and ships..." What I meant to state was all tiers of players are spending money on GSF since FTP, Preferred, and Subscribe gain unlimited access to GSF unlike ranked PvP which is only available to subscribers.

I should have written that more clearly so people didn't assume I meant every player that has ever played GSF spends CC unlocking customizations and ships.

Edited November 14, 2022 by illgot

[alasamaya]

I see many comments saying "they are just merging both modes" or that "is good that they remove ranked" "good overall change". Let me get this straight. Community ask more endgame content. We all have been complaining that once we reach max level, we are forced, with this new galactic season system -or before, renown system- to do the same old content over and over and over again to be "rewarded" for doing it. And now, people are somehow "happy " for a part of the endgame content to be removed???! Wow...If you think this is a merge, you are 100% mistaken. Its a removal of a system that allowed you to queue against other people with your same team composition -solo ranked- or using premade, same as you -team ranked-. That content, somehow balanced teams fighting each other, IS NOT PART of regular warzones. This is a removal of endgame content, and even if you liked ranked or not, is a removal from content from the game, and you are happy? Sometimes I really dont understand people.

Any developer that is worried about their own game, would have listen to the issues of the gamemode that we have been telling them for years and somehow improve it. Any mediocre developer would have remove it, instead of fix it. Most of the issues I stated in my initial post, guess what, can happen in your regular arenas now. And if we have the same quality of devs, guess what? It wont be fixed either. Thats the main issue

Edited November 14, 2022 by alasamaya

[xxSHOONYxx]

While i sympathize about some people losing what they like, ranked in this game is a flawed designe.
There is just not enough people interested on it, whether by their own plareybase not being welcoming to new players (might be wrong but the pvp events made by players, at least the only one i saw maybe others were different and were open invite, requiered you to be known by the pvp community or be good/recomended by someone giving no option for new players, unlike pve events made by players that the invitation has no restruction to whom can and cannot join) or by bioware lack of investement on the mode or some other reason.
With the low population of the ranked community you can't get a truly ranked experience with actual mmr queue, past seasons can barely be known as competitive and more like friends playing together to get some cool flairs, or wintraiding or actually "buying" wins and titles like some stories i heard about people trying to pay others so they get high rank or rank 1(if true or not idk though)

[alasamaya]

24 minutes ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

While i sympathize about some people losing what they like, ranked in this game is a flawed designe.
There is just not enough people interested on it, whether by their own plareybase not being welcoming to new players (might be wrong but the pvp events made by players, at least the only one i saw maybe others were different and were open invite, requiered you to be known by the pvp community or be good/recomended by someone giving no option for new players, unlike pve events made by players that the invitation has no restruction to whom can and cannot join) or by bioware lack of investement on the mode or some other reason.
With the low population of the ranked community you can't get a truly ranked experience with actual mmr queue, past seasons can barely be known as competitive and more like friends playing together to get some cool flairs, or wintraiding or actually "buying" wins and titles like some stories i heard about people trying to pay others so they get high rank or rank 1(if true or not idk though)

Again, do you realize that most of the issues you point at can be only solved by the devs? First, for the new players to come do ranked, there was a big issue in ranked that new players didnt have any mode to practice before getting into ranked. There was no such thing of only queue for regs arenas, which could have been nice. Like Biggs said, they are implementing that solution now, but getting rid of ranked. For now, new players had to face top rated players, with years playing this game, so obviously it wasnt "new friendly". We pointed this for years, and yet nothing was done by their end.

And about wintrading, it was an issue. But again, videos were sent by us, without increases the views after being sent. I sent many videos that I have storaged still, they stopped caring after season 11. They are in youtube, sitting in one view -mine- after being sent. This issue was always in their end, and they did nothing. 

What would a propper developer do? Fix it, make a solution for it. Redesign it, somehow. But remove it? Thats a mediocre solution, lets be honest.

Also, with that removal, Im sure many big guilds will keep doing what they were already doing in team ranked: queue all together, take their gear off for a faster defeat or just /stuck. Do you think this is going to be healthy for the PVP community? Encourage people to afk and get rewarded by it? Or, oh I know, pay to get all the pvp rewards? Tell me you dont see some inconsistency on trying to make pvp more populated, but allowing you to pay to get all the rewards from it. That sound contradictory, dont you think?

[RikuvonDrake]

12 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

So does gods NiM - remove it too.

if less than a 100 ppl cleared a new nim op in 3-4 months like for ranked pvp and the lack of eligible characters for rewards, i am sure they would stop releasing them

[JediMasterAlex]

1 hour ago, RikuvonDrake said:

if less than a 100 ppl cleared a new nim op in 3-4 months like for ranked pvp and the lack of eligible characters for rewards, i am sure they would stop releasing them

More babble. There were more than enough eligible characters for solo ranked top 3 rewards. Team ranked has no bearing on any of these discussions. If they just removed team ranked, that would upset about a dozen people that genuinely enjoyed that mode. Solo ranked is a different story.

There were a total of 17,257 characters that played solo ranked last season. So unless you're claiming that each player had 172 alts, you're talking nonsense as usual.

[RikuvonDrake]

group content has no bearing on a discussion regarding content in an mmo? alright 🙂

Edited November 14, 2022 by RikuvonDrake
smiley added :)

[xxSHOONYxx]

5 hours ago, alasamaya said:

Again, do you realize that most of the issues you point at can be only solved by the devs? First, for the new players to come do ranked, there was a big issue in ranked that new players didnt have any mode to practice before getting into ranked. There was no such thing of only queue for regs arenas, which could have been nice. Like Biggs said, they are implementing that solution now, but getting rid of ranked. For now, new players had to face top rated players, with years playing this game, so obviously it wasnt "new friendly". We pointed this for years, and yet nothing was done by their end.

And about wintrading, it was an issue. But again, videos were sent by us, without increases the views after being sent. I sent many videos that I have storaged still, they stopped caring after season 11. They are in youtube, sitting in one view -mine- after being sent. This issue was always in their end, and they did nothing. 

What would a propper developer do? Fix it, make a solution for it. Redesign it, somehow. But remove it? Thats a mediocre solution, lets be honest.

Also, with that removal, Im sure many big guilds will keep doing what they were already doing in team ranked: queue all together, take their gear off for a faster defeat or just /stuck. Do you think this is going to be healthy for the PVP community? Encourage people to afk and get rewarded by it? Or, oh I know, pay to get all the pvp rewards? Tell me you dont see some inconsistency on trying to make pvp more populated, but allowing you to pay to get all the rewards from it. That sound contradictory, dont you think?

As someone that has only played very few ranked matchs when arsenal was the FOTM and sees it from the outside i think the issue is a combination of everything. Both devs and pvp playerbase could have done better. 

Many of the issues like win trading and not alienating new players could have been solved by an actual mmr queueing system, you wouldn't get someone jumping into ranked with a 1k mmr playing with someone on gold mmr, for win traiding you would actually need an account on that level to be able to throw and with higher population good luck finding a match that your "buddy" is, but the ranked population is way too low for that to work and any queue would take hours to pop if it would pop at all.
Bioware shot themselves on the foot allocating all of their resources on only story with the trash expansion that 4.0 was (to me, to others was probably good) instead of group content like pvp and pve. 

But even with the lack of resources the dev put into it the pvp playerbase was not the most welcoming for newcomers. I don't like ff14, but something is commendable when ff14 was, if you would call in the brink of death, when the game was trash and needed to be relaunched as realm reborn after a good investement from square enix, the playerbase was very welcoming to the new players and helped them because they wanted the game to grow and do good. Something i don't really see or rarely see in this game in any aspect of it, pvp/pve. 

Ranked could have been good or more appealing to more with something like the lol system had or has i havent played in years, with 3 different distinct ladders and a different balance than pve.
Group ranked where you and 3 other people create a static team and can only play with those other 3 and the team has the mmr and not you and the reward is the flair
Solo ranked where you queue and play vs other 4 random players and you get an account mmr and the reward is the flair
And duels, 1 vs 1 same class fights and rewards being the titles
But the population for a system like that to work was never there

Edited November 14, 2022 by xxSHOONYxx

[Samcuu]

Population is the biggest issue. If there was a good chunk of the population playing you wouldn't see these changes, maybe tweaks but not the elimination of ranked completely. This has been a long time coming because as the above poster stated the many expansions that have preceded this one have alienated the pvp community more and more each time. To the point where this is like a server merge because population has dwindled. They are just focused on getting ppl into pvp queues so there's content. I can't imagine there's a really large segment of the game population queueing ranked or else they wouldn't be doing this. 

Also top OP Kimy  I agree with everything except for the point about 4 v 4s being balanced. Tell a Guardian/Slinger this patch to queue 4s and see if they think it's balanced. PT was unplayable in solos a few seasons ago. For those who want to roll one of the 3 s tier classes every season for ranked I applaud you but the class balancing is a big reason for ppl avoiding ranked in many cases. 

Anyways with a bit of smarts from the devs these changes could be good as long as they institute an opt in leaderboard for the different modes of pvp that are going to be available. That might be enough to keep the ranked guys going in the 4 v 4 queues anyways. 

Pvp in this game is hurting, just like the game. This is the most traffic I've seen in the pvp section of the forums in years. That should say something about the health of the game and mode. 

Edited November 14, 2022 by Samcuu

[Mycroft-Tarkin]

  

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

Population is the biggest issue. If there was a good chunk of the population playing you wouldn't see these changes, maybe tweaks but not the elimination of ranked completely. This has been a long time coming because as the above poster stated the many expansions that have preceded this one have alienated the pvp community more and more each time. To the point where this is like a server merge because population has dwindled. They are just focused on getting ppl into pvp queues so there's content. I can't imagine there's a really large segment of the game population queueing ranked or else they wouldn't be doing this. 

That's an issue caused by Bioware though. Ranked used to pop all day some years ago. Even now on SS which is the smallest server, in s14 when some players created a discord for ranked pvp it had over 100 members. Not everyone played regularly but there were a lot of players who played now and then and/or were interested in playing. 

 

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

These changes could be good as long as they institute an opt in leaderboard for the different modes of pvp that are going to be available. That might be enough to keep the ranked guys going in the 4 v 4 queues anyways. 

 

It's not just the leaderboard, it's the overall competitiveness that is being removed. Games aren't fun if you're playing with people who are just there to do seasons, or conquest, or farming tech frags or whatever. There is no longer any incentive to actually play well or learn your class or anything. You can just AFK and eventually you'll win a match, just like most ppl do in GSF now.

In contrast, in solos most people were there to play to their best level, which made it a really fun and competitive mode. Regs is extremely boring in comparison and most people I know would rather not play at all than play regs.

[septru]

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

Population is the biggest issue. If there was a good chunk of the population playing you wouldn't see these changes, maybe tweaks but not the elimination of ranked completely. This has been a long time coming because as the above poster stated the many expansions that have preceded this one have alienated the pvp community more and more each time. To the point where this is like a server merge because population has dwindled. They are just focused on getting ppl into pvp queues so there's content. I can't imagine there's a really large segment of the game population queueing ranked or else they wouldn't be doing this. 

 

Which is why many ranked pvpers consider 7.2 a giant missed opportunity. BioWare is combining regs/ranked, which would create a large enough population to actually make a elo based matchmaking system function properly. And yet they are removing ranked from the game. 

[Samcuu]

 

 

33 minutes ago, Mycroft-Tarkin said:

That's an issue caused by Bioware though. Ranked used to pop all day some years ago. Even now on SS which is the smallest server, in s14 when some players created a discord for ranked pvp it had over 100 members. Not everyone played regularly but there were a lot of players who played now and then and/or were interested in playing. 

I hear u guys and I've said in the past they should have gone to 2 v 2 or 3 v 3 to help the numbers, also needed to do cross server queues. Gotta follow the money in this case tho. Pvp isn't a priority because the majority of players play swtor for story that's the reality.

The f2p unlimited wzs also leads me to believe that the loss in revenue from subs from ranked players is miniscule. Like, I know you guys are passionate about the game mode, I love swtor pvp as well and think it's the best pvp out there mmo wise. However saying there are like 300 or 400 players very dedicated to ranked is a drop in the bucket. Is this a bioware created issue, yes it is, but that's not gonna change the trajectory. 

33 minutes ago, Mycroft-Tarkin said:

It's not just the leaderboard, it's the overall competitiveness that is being removed. Games aren't fun if you're playing with people who are just there to do seasons, or conquest, or farming tech frags or whatever. There is no longer any incentive to actually play well or learn your class or anything. You can just AFK and eventually you'll win a match, just like most ppl do in GSF now.

Competitveness could still be salvaged. If you have more ppl in queue a legit matchmaking system could work. So you've got your super dedicated ranked players from your discord server. They'd win their matches against the bads just queuing for rewards and climb the rankings and be in a bracket of their own where you guys still all get to queue against one another. The bads or ppl just there for rewards would be in their own bronze bracket and you'd never see them after a few weeks of matches. Again tho thats completely reliant upon getting more ppl into queues which should happen in 7.2 now with the changes. 

 

30 minutes ago, septru said:

Which is why many ranked pvpers consider 7.2 a giant missed opportunity. BioWare is combining regs/ranked, which would create a large enough population to actually make a elo based matchmaking system function properly. And yet they are removing ranked from the game. 

Bioware has been slow about making changes. However they do listen, they've done things to rectify many of the things players didn't like about 7.0. They added customizable gear vendors, tweaked rewards ect. I think if we keep proposing a leaderboard for warzones with better rewards for the competitive players, they will eventually listen. First order of business is making the queues healthy again, do u agree with that?

Did you think the queues were healthy the last few seasons of ranked pvp honestly? 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Samcuu

[septru]

29 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

Did you think the queues were healthy the last few seasons of ranked pvp honestly? 

I'm going to answer this 100% honestly. Yes. 

 

The beginning of season 12 and 14 (I didn't play 13) were extremely populated. You'd be surprised. Sometimes there were more than 4 different solo ranked games going at the same time. After around the 3 month mark of each, the populations started declining significantly, until the middle of the seasons were practically dead. 

[Samcuu]

26 minutes ago, septru said:

I'm going to answer this 100% honestly. Yes. 

 

The beginning of season 12 and 14 (I didn't play 13) were extremely populated. You'd be surprised. Sometimes there were more than 4 different solo ranked games going at the same time. After around the 3 month mark of each, the populations started declining significantly, until the middle of the seasons were practically dead. 

Hmm 32 ppl in queue for ranked isn't a lot of ppl. That's like half of one instance of ppl doing story on DK. 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Samcuu

[illgot]

36 minutes ago, septru said:

I'm going to answer this 100% honestly. Yes. 

 

The beginning of season 12 and 14 (I didn't play 13) were extremely populated. You'd be surprised. Sometimes there were more than 4 different solo ranked games going at the same time. After around the 3 month mark of each, the populations started declining significantly, until the middle of the seasons were practically dead. 

32 people playing at once during peak is not a lot of people when a server has thousands playing at once. Gsf often has multiple games going at once and some of the modes have 24 people on one map.

Ranked has suffered from low interest for years 

[Nee-Elder]

13 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

Hmm 32 ppl in queue for ranked isn't a lot of ppl. That's like half of one instance of ppl doing story on DK. 

And not even  half of  one  cantina-bar  full of ERP's on Fleet

 (sorry , /ducks out of thread  and goes back to queue'ing  regs for lol's )

[Samcuu]

16 minutes ago, Nee-Elder said:

And not even  half of  one  cantina-bar  full of ERP's on Fleet

 (sorry , /ducks out of thread  and goes back to queue'ing  regs for lol's )

Lol exactly 😂😂 I don't like that they are taking things out of game that ppl enjoy. My only point has been the reality is the pvp community is not strong and its a small part of the entire population of the game right now (granted that's Biowares fault not the players). These changes are going to happen because of that. That post kinda shows how even within the community the seasons start out strong and fizzle out relatively quickly. So in that aspect I'd expect ppl to see that some sort of change was needed. I get that you guys were comfortable playing amongst yourselves in a low population, but wouldn't it be better if somehow more ppl became interested in playing? 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Samcuu

[illgot]

16 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

Lol exactly 😂😂 I don't like that they are taking things out of game that ppl enjoy. My only point has been the reality is the pvp community is not strong and its a small part of the entire population of the game right now (granted that's Biowares fault not the players). These changes are going to happen because of that. That post kinda shows how even within the community the seasons start out strong and fizzle out relatively quickly. So in that aspect I'd expect ppl to see that some sort of change was needed. I get that you guys were comfortable playing amongst yourselves in a low population, but wouldn't it be better if somehow more ppl became interested in playing? 

I'm betting Space Missions are accessed more frequently than ranked pvp. I was a bit shocked to find out people like these to level new characters. Predictable game where the experience gain scales to your character level.

[Samcuu]

I basically only play swtor for the pvp. So it's not like some sort of flex to say the pvp community is small. That's not a good thing. I transfered from SS to SF a few years ago and the regs pop was already bad there. Maybe 2 matches going on during prime time..same ppl over and over again. Pvp has needed a revamp for a while. I'm going to assume bioware isn't doing this in bad faith. I just hope it's a first step in the direction of making pvp better. 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Samcuu

[Bullyabass]

Removing ranked is a good start but it won't be enough to rebuild pvp as a pleasant experience for the general population

The hope may be that toxic warzone players will realise that there are consequences to acting like a jerk but these aren't people given to complex thought processes so probably not.

Ultimately devs will need to address the toxicity directly with pvp block lists

 

[dylanfailbh]

17 minutes ago, Bullyabass said:

Removing ranked is a good start but it won't be enough to rebuild pvp as a pleasant experience for the general population

The hope may be that toxic warzone players will realise that there are consequences to acting like a jerk but these aren't people given to complex thought processes so probably not.

Ultimately devs will need to address the toxicity directly with pvp block lists

 

Removing ranked is not a good start at all, removing any end game content should be universally bashed by the entire player base. To go against one sector of players and to label the all toxic is exactly how people in real life use labels to divide us while those in power seek to destroy us by division. 

[alasamaya]

1 hour ago, Bullyabass said:

Removing ranked is a good start but it won't be enough to rebuild pvp as a pleasant experience for the general population

The hope may be that toxic warzone players will realise that there are consequences to acting like a jerk but these aren't people given to complex thought processes so probably not.

Ultimately devs will need to address the toxicity directly with pvp block lists

 

Removing endgame content, instead of fix it, is a good step for you? lol. Toxicity will remain in this game as long as the devs dont care about the reports at all -or customer service-. Lets remove fleet, is too toxic too. Oh, lets remove NiM raids, too toxic as well. In my personal experience, at least, I got hundred of hate whispers for playing regs. Literally for just playing the game. So delete content is the solution for it? You making zero sense with the statement. Devs work is make new content and fix the content that is already in a game if its not working propperly, right? We could agree on it? Remove it, because you failed your job, shouldnt be a reason for the playerbase to be happy at all. Unless you dont see that removing content and players from a game that is already lacking of population is a terrible idea.

Edited November 15, 2022 by alasamaya