My thoughts about the new PVP changes

[krackcommando]

10 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

I mean every ranked mode in every mmo is miniscule compared to the casual modes. Take WoW for example. It's the exact same way as it is in this game. Everyone there knows the top 5 players like here and it's waaayyy smaller in comparison to regs simply because it's harder to get into. When I played guild wars 2 it was the exact same as well. It's to be expected.

What you don't do is push those people who are paying customers out of the game because you don't know how to balance it.

I don't think those ratios work across other big mmos with pvp. I think the percentages are a lot lower. in wow, for example, the fastest way to gear is through the SL rated bg vendor. that alone makes it a very popular format. it's not arenas though. arenas are another sort of beast.

I just roll my eyes when players who like rated arenas argue against the small population claims. cite 5k players on the leaderboards until the cows come home. I played the game for a long time. it was a constant struggle to get rated matches to pop. if just one "reg" didn't show on a given night, we missed out on a night's worth of matches. it was that fragile.

and it's BW's fault. as I've already said, you don't make 4v4 TDM the elite format when 90% of the pvp in the game is 8v8 objective maps. it's a total disconnect. and baiting inexperienced players into ranked arenas with gear they need for pve is just lambs to the slaughter stuff. but everything they did when they implemented arenas was half arsed. sooo easy to abuse without mixed factions. or swap servers to dodge competition. no stepping stone between regs and arenas. etc.

I do think the main reason for getting rid of the format is that maintaining it called for more effort than the tiny population was worth serving (in BW's estimation). I don't know this. but it's clear they didn't have the time or inclination to properly police the system.

and yeah. I played it a lot over the years. I don't agree with removing it. I didn't agree with removing 8v8 ranked either. but you could fill a swimming pool with pennies for every decision BW has made about this game that I disagree with.

[BorimorTheGreat]

On 11/13/2022 at 1:51 PM, RikuvonDrake said:

thats just being in denial, look at the most recent season, there weren't even enough eligible characters to give out all the rewards to, say bioware release a new operation and 3-4 months later there aren't even 100 players that have cleared it, you wouldn't see another operation released

ranked pvp costs way too much resources compared to what it brings in, its a sign of sound and good business practice for bioware to get rid of it and reallocate the resources previously dedicated to ranked into other projects, the seasons idea worked great for pve and will more than likely work well for pvp, certain people not liking that is largely irrelevant since its more a case of looking at it through rose tinted glasses and nostalgia rather than looking at reality

Let's talk very simple financial facts on the game because, there's been this massive misconception that Ranked is a sinkhole of Bioware's money and all they've done is lost money on it year after year. That IMO, is incredibly wrong. Last season from the solo ranked leaderboards alone there were 13,831 ranked CHARACTERS (This excludes any banned players, or people not listed on leaderboard for some reason). Each and every single person who owns one of those characters pays 15 dollars each month to pay ranked. So, with this out of the way let's do some basic math.

Now, I've played ranked and I comprehend there are players which have 20+ toons playing (although this is probably a minority). Which I take into consideration in my first proposition. To solve this I took that 13,831 ranked CHARACTERS and divided by 12 to assume each player has 12 toons (this is a major hyperbole but it still helps prove my point). The number you get is 1,152 people who subscribe to play ranked over the entirety of the season. Secondly to get what would be in my opinion a more fair estimate, I went ahead and also said each player had 5 toons, which is 2,766 people who subscribed to play ranked. The purpose of this, is too have 2 quantifiable amounts of people who subscribed to play ranked, which I will then go on to figure out my main point. How much revenue does SWTOR make from people subbing to play ranked. Furthermore, for the 12 player count I'll refer to it as count A, and for the 5 player count I'll refer to it as count B. 

The revenue focus is simple math, we take each number and times it by 15, as that's the base sub that it's paid. Before I do that though, I believe it's fair to say 40% of subscribers re-sub and are constantly subbing for ranked. I actually think that low balls it ALOT. My real number would be about 60-70% since the ranked community is so tight, however to benefit the people who claim Bioware is "wasting money on ranked", I will go with the previous percentage. If we assume that 60% of these players are subbing only once, and never again, the revenue SWTOR makes from Ranked PVP from count A (before the 40% calculation) is 10,368$. This profit is from only 1 time subs. Now, lets consider that probably out of the 40%, 15% of count A subs the whole season or (10 months) and, that adds in 25,920$. Lastly it's fair to assume the final 25% is subbing 5 months out of 10, and we end with a final 21,600$ added in. Ultimately for count A, ending with a profit of $57,888 alone from ranked. Now, before you comment lets do the more realistic formula of count B.

Same formula, 5 toons average though. 60% are 1 time subs, 1,659. This figure is now 24,894$ alone from 1 time ranked subs. 15% or 415 players sub throughout the season, 62,250$ from that, and the other 25% is 51,863$. This would equate to about 139,006 alone from the ranked community. Now, if we really wanted to make this realistic, I'd say there's only about 40% of one time subs, 30% 3 month subs, 20% half szns and 10% full szn subs. This would change the number to about 176,420. However, while I consider that figure to be the most realistic, we will keep the Count A and Count B and leave that alone.

TO REITERATE
PROFIT A: $57,888

PROFIT B: $139,006

Now, let's put the real line and sinker in. Ranked PVP receives no attention from a money perspective what so ever. We haven't had a new map added in ages, rewards now are just reskins with new names which take like what twenty seconds to code in LMAO. And rewards are completely automated at this point. The modifications of flairs and banners is incredibly miniscule to the point that I think with no coding experience I could create all of the new flairs for a theoretical szn 15 by just retouching the previous szn ones with a brush in MS Paint. Besides for Airbone Agent, the only new set we have gotten recently, there has been no money poured into ranked at all.  SWTOR is making at a HYPERBOLE, AND I MEAN I FACTORED SO MANY THINGS TO BENEFIT THE REMOVAL OF RANKED ARGUMENT 57,888 dollars FROM DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL. Keeping ranked in the game is a very easy 139,006 dollars going towards the game, and towards the developers salaries. While the ranked community is small, it's still a profit influx you gain on your game, which tbh helps keeps it alive. 

To conclude, with the set changes for 7.2 you lose that 139k on the game that is quite literally passive income for DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. (And if you can think of any way the devs have spent money on ranked over the last year, I'd love to hear it, because there hasn't been a dime dropped on it). On a game with roughly 3,740 average players (according to steam count), most of those unsubbed. You don't really ever make that money back. 

Now, even if a sub is required to play pvp in the new update (which they can never do), you won't gain back that money you've lost. Already a majority of players doing regs aren't subbed, and losing the ranked population hurts you so much more. This is an incredibly dumb financial decision, and really will cost the game long-term. If a dev is reading this, I urge you to reconsider.

ADDITIONAL POINTS
-I rounded down on all numbers besides 1 figure for Count B (I think it was like the players subbed for the 25% and since it was .9 I made it a whole player).

-I had planned to do the portion of the community that was playing ranked out of all subs at any given time but that's very complex with no measure for concurrent subs on the game.

-A majority of ranked players aren't just paying a sub, they're paying cc's for sets they like, or really the big kicked character transfers. They probably make a massive profit off of that as well but again impossible to quantify.

-No, fixing a set or toning it down or even a class does not count towards spending money on Ranked. I'm looking soley for money spent on ranked within the past season, to bring anything else up would force me to do calculations on the past szns to find the profit.

-LASTLY, I do agree Ranked is a big time sink, but really all we want is the banning of players like Moophy who just advently throw, or the advent win traders in the community. I think all that would take is maybe an hour of time of just looking at the submissions of videos sent to you.

 

[ZUHFB]

55 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

I think s12 was the last time I played ranked, but I did play it 1-12, give or take one or two seasons. there's no way you can convince me that the population wasn't minuscule (compared to regs). I specifically remember begging players to queue and jumping into streams and discords to let ranked players know that there was enough to queue, etc.

as clueless as these people praising the removal of ranked are, they are not wrong to say the ranked population was tiny.

there were always blips on the radar where the population spiked (beginning and end of seasons, server mergers, mixed factions), but those were blips in my experience. i mean...literally jumping into players' twitch streams and scanning arena populations to figure out if ranked was popping. that ain't a healthy population.

you're right, and we got no content which we could also live with - but actively removing content? What is this? Destiny2? Do the devs want to make the game small enough for console play? All jokes a side, a small community is still better than none. Regs simply don't have a community, sure there are some premades but there aren't regs content creator or hardcore regstars actually trying to win, none of that. Regs do not have a community and with the removal pf ranked by extention PvP has no community anymore

[Jarbarian]

So what I gather from this is "Removal of ranked PVP means BW doesn't have to balance PVP classes"....

If that's true, they've basically killed the game for good for many, many people.

[Defiant_Agent]

Anyone who praises the ranked PvP removal based solely on toxicity of that community is utterly ignorant. Ever been in an RP guild? RP guilds blow up ALL THE TIME, the toxictiy is insane. So should we remove RP guilds just beause of that?

[meddani]

ugh why are the pvp weeklys on a 24 hour timer?

[Bigfallenstar]

5 hours ago, Defiant_Agent said:

Anyone who praises the ranked PvP removal based solely on toxicity of that community is utterly ignorant. Ever been in an RP guild? RP guilds blow up ALL THE TIME, the toxictiy is insane. So should we remove RP guilds just beause of that?

I have. Multiple. And they were the most chill and understanding of people. Something that can't be said about ranked. If there was a problem between players, it was handed in a mature way, not telling someone to kys because that broke on first stun.

[-Garmonbozia]

15 hours ago, Bigfallenstar said:

I have. Multiple. And they were the most chill and understanding of people. Something that can't be said about ranked. If there was a problem between players, it was handed in a mature way, not telling someone to kys because that broke on first stun.

That doesn't mean your experience was the only experience. 

[Jarbarian]

All the complaints about how PVP is bad right now (group imbalance, class unbalance, etc) and I bet they do nothing to fix it.

Because they do not care about PVP.  It's been 10 years. I'm ready to delete the game. Its not fun.

[davensuitelife]

On 11/13/2022 at 9:27 AM, alasamaya said:

Before writing anything, I dont pretend this topic to be a war between people "cheering" that ranked was removed and ranked players. Is not where Im pointing my ideas.

First of all, I was a ranked player. The only reason kept me suscribing to this game for around 9 years was solo ranked. I loved the gamemode, because of two reasons: It allowed me to improve as a player, I learnt my classes through it. And second, the specific mode wasnt present in any aspect of the game. When people complained that in regs you can queue solo and face a premade...well, that issue never happened in solos -appart of some buggy moments when the other team could have support and you did not-. Solo Ranked -and group ranked- was like a solution for the unbalance that happens in regular warzones: You are either by your own versus other 7 players by their own, or with a full group vs another full group. That "content" wont be in Star Wars anymore, and if someone is "cheering" for that content to be removed from YOUR GAME, should be ashamed of called themselves Pvpers.

Being said that, I want to point some issues that the gamemode had:

- No transition between regular warzones and ranked ones: Regular warzones doesnt have any kind of "balance". You can be in a full dps team against a healer/tank one. You couldnt actually try to prepare for ranked doing the regular warzone content, since the playstyle is quite different. New players that got into ranked had to face the ones playing it for years, without any chance of practicing arenas. You never had an option to queue only regular arenas, in order to prepare for ranked, which caused a lot of frustration for them. And before someone says "oh but they are including that option again" presenting it as new content, let me remind you that anybody could queue for ranked arenas before, grouped and solo. So it was "balanced". Now you can queue solo and be against a premade. Dont let the devs fool you, this is just a removal of content. This isnt new content.

- Toxicity? I cant deny ranked had a few guys -believe it or not, was just a few guys, not the majority- that would tell you "dont queue ranked ever again" or harass you in whispers. But my overall experience was the contrary. I received lot of advice when I first got into ranked, which made me improve a lot. And if its toxicity related, are we going to remove the Imperial Fleet cause excess of toxicity? I have never seen more toxicity in fleet that in any other aspect of the games. Oh, and also the amount of whispers I received for playing regular warzones were WAY MORE than all my years playing ranked. I never saw more drama in there than anywhere else.

-Throwers: People have been throwing matches in ranked for years. The best example is the famous thrower on the server Satele Shan, which I believe I cant name -I will do some crime like naming Voldemort, and might be banned from forums-. Is the "ranked player" fault that this guy has been allowed to throw matches for years? There is a post from 2013 about him, and yet he came back to play ranked season after season. This issue, that people still use to say "ranked is a joke", is something that didnt get fixed from the Devs end. Players have nothing to be with it. We reported, reports got ignored.

-Wintraders: I think wintrading was an issue. There are always cheaters in any game. But was that big? I dont think so. At least, for the people doing solo ranked -I wont speak about team ranked for now, since it was big time exploited by the so called "big guilds" to get their conquest done- the matches were fun, and indeed were wintraders, but it wasnt the majority of the people. I played for 9 years and never asked a friend to throw a match for me. I wanted to do solos for fun, for the joy of having a balanced system -or at least more balanced than regular warzones-. And trust me when I say this. I reported more wintraders than anybody in this game. I used to make videos of it, send to the godly PVPreports email. And guess what. Everytime I sent a video, viewers never increased. They didnt care. Is that, then, a playerbase problem? Or was the judge in charge-devs-. If a sport is full of anabolic users that take advantage of it, is all of them fault? Or is the the judges fault? The evidence was provided, they didnt do anything about it.

- Mats as rewards: When Ossus was introduced to this game, PVPrs -or ranked ones- were complaining that introducing mats in Group Ranked was a bad idea. It would only encourage big guilds to wintrade. There is a difference between encourage healthy participation than encourage cheating. I have videos and videos of big guilds wintrading. Taking gear off to make it faster or just /stucking.

And again, evidence was provided, no action was taken. Devs, afterwards, recognized was a bad idea and removed them....to reinstall them in 6.0?! With the Rpm creation linked to ranked, most of the so called big guilds started to wintrade for them again. We pointed this issue back then, yet they did what they wanted. And is not only a mat issue. Conquest also gives you many points for group and solo ranked weekly, which is also and incentive for these guilds to do the same thing. Again, I sent reports of big guilds doing this, yet devs didnt care or take any action. Ranked NEVER had to be related with any kind of reward more than leaderboard or cosmetics, in my humble opinion. 

 

Now, all these issues that have happened in the game, like I pointed, arent a playerbase creation. Obviously cheaters and trolls has to be banned. But who does that? The generic issue with the gamemode was a Developer/customer service issue. Is not our fault they didnt read the reports. Players are being punished in a double way: 1)Devs didnt ban the cheaters/throwers, so we had to deal with them and 2) Now they are removing the mode. These issues can happen now in regular warzones also. If you include materials in reg pvp weekly, guilds will continue to "let their other guildies group win" to get them faster. Is this encouraging a healthy community? The more known ranked throwers will be throwing now in regs -good luck seeing them AFK in your matches-. What im pointing is this: These issues wont be solved by removing content from the game. They will be solved when the devs actually do something about them. 

 

One more thing about the removal: SWTOR  on twitch normally has 200 viewers, meanwhile some ranked streamers were holding around 70-90 viewers. With pvp tournaments, numbers could go to 400-500. I dont think anybody should be happy if those viewers will be basically gone or just watching another competitive games.

Just to finish, is sad that what made me change regular warzones to ranked was the will to improve in PVP and how unbalanced in terms of composition regs are. I found that balance in ranked and I was happy doing it. I remained as a sub for so many years just for the sakes of doing ranked, did some PVE content also but just in moments that ranked wouldnt pop. Content creators are leaving because of this, players are leaving. And again, this was never player base fault. Was your fault, Bioware. We pointed it for years, and you did nothing.

 

 

Wintraders: I think wintrading was an issue. There are always cheaters in any game. But was that big? I dont think so. At least, for the people doing solo ranked -I wont speak about team ranked for now, since it was big time exploited by the so called "big guilds" to get their conquest done- the matches were fun, and indeed were wintraders, but it wasnt the majority of the people. I played for 9 years and never asked a friend to throw a match for me. I wanted to do solos for fun, for the joy of having a balanced system -or at least more balanced than regular warzones-. And trust me when I say this. I reported more wintraders than anybody in this game. I used to make videos of it, send to the godly PVPreports email. And guess what. Everytime I sent a video, viewers never increased. They didnt care. Is that, then, a playerbase problem? Or was the judge in charge-devs-. If a sport is full of anabolic users that take advantage of it, is all of them fault? Or is the the judges fault? The evidence was provided, they didnt do anything.

 

 

 

That's not true at all I can't name name but I know for a fact and sent in evidence of certain top 3 achiever's that win traded a ton. One would que as a tank one as dps if together he was a great tank but is against each other no guard no taunt nothing but a body. Nothing was ever done about this. It killed ranked I would get an ops group of people to organize solo q they would obviously not join but que as well throw and kill the que.

 

Then also in the early time of ranked when it was still sith vs pub the pub population was very small so they basically had a 4 man in comms against random imp players. I will say ranked was a joke throwing and win trading was abundant and there never was true ranked with out any cross server and IMHO cross server pvp would of saved ranked a long time ago. 

[krackcommando]

3 hours ago, davensuitelife said:

Then also in the early time of ranked when it was still sith vs pub the pub population was very small so they basically had a 4 man in comms against random imp players. I will say ranked was a joke throwing and win trading was abundant and there never was true ranked with out any cross server and IMHO cross server pvp would of saved ranked a long time ago. 

I think it needs to be pointed out how rated arenas evolved. because the early seasons on small servers with no x-faction and no x-server meant you didn't even have to cheat or win trade. it was just a really really REALLY dumb - idiotic...MORONIC - implementation. I don't have the words to describe how myopic it was to launch a rated format with that cluster**** of unaddressed issues. I literally only had to hop on my PT and mash 2 buttons for 30s straight each round to get gold in ~20-30 wins. all I had to do was not play on the faction that had the bad player(s) at that moment (usually pub on my server, but it didn't matter. you just faction swapped when you saw the "clicker" was in queue and then farmed him).

at that time, rated matches were really really bad (the in-fighting, language, etc.). in another earlier season I queued up on merc - and merc was really bad at that point - and I was really bad (compared to everyone else in rated queue). whew. the **** I took. some of it I reported or threatened to report. I mean...I wasn't going to get better in arenas by dominating regs. so I kept queuing. but it was pointless b/c nobody wants to lose, so everyone but the best of the server just didn't queue rated. well, the best and me (most nights). so yeah. rated was a really really bad atmosphere in the first few seasons.

by the time things moved to SF (in NA), x-faction was a thing. x-server was irrelevant b/c there was only one defacto server. and soon it seemed like even the relevant SS players moved to SF.

there was the one dude who was good but constantly went nuts on everyone. and there were always one or two "followers" or hangers on. but for the most part, solos was fine.

by the time s14 rolled around, I was exhausted with the intensity of rated. found I had more fun watching and analyzing than playing. I never really liked the game since tacticals were introduced. so I just spammed 4-10 reg games a night. what a total disaster REGS were in 6.x. just stupid. the same reg stars every night, like the same tank who ran to delay a pylon and then got mad in ops chat when we didn't cap "ours." the sin who knows everything and rage quits when you don't do exactly what he told you to do in the first round of a reg arena, cursing you on his way out the door. the guarantee that at least half of your ops and half the opponents wouldn't even try to win but would rather DM "at mid." the fact that most HB obstacles could be rolled, leaped, sprinted, blinked, jetted, etc. through. you have OPs pinging all over the map w/e they roll an elevation change. man. regs were horrible. just a complete mess. at the time, you didn't even get the participation "trophy" for sticking out a loss and were penalized for leaving matches in which nobody even tried to win. I left. I was done with SWTOR at that point. you talk about rated being this unmoderated cesspool. what the hell would you call what regs was? and that's w/o even talking about the GS hordes. eesh.

forum pvp is more fun that swtor pvp was...and that's BEFORE the 7.x mashups. also, wth is the point of combat styles. roll a class. change spec as needed. troopers don't need to pretend to be sentinels. that's asinine. you roll a toon on monday and he levels 1-80 by friday. it's not like creating a new toon for that sweet "combat style" is work.

[Nee-Elder]

On 12/13/2022 at 2:51 PM, meddani said:

ugh why are the pvp weeklys on a 24 hour timer?

Pretty sure that's a  BUG , no?  --> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/926376-game-update-72-known-issues/#comment-9732982

[Weswhitebore]

2 hours ago, Nee-Elder said:

retty sure that's a  BUG , no?  --> https://forums.swtor.com/topic/926376-game-update-72-known-issues/#comment-9732982

I don't see anything about the PVP weeklies being on a 24 hour timer as a bug on that list.