7.2 PvP Revamp: Feedback

[CliffRedemption]

Hey there,

I wanted to share some feedback I've come up with since it has been almost 2 weeks since 7.2 dropped and we saw some changes to PvP in the game. At the time of writing this post, I have finished the two "Big" achievements in the PvP Season One category for completing 25 weeklies of both 8v8 and 4v4, and feel qualified at this point to give you my perspective on everything as well as list off a few stats for those curious. Since there were big changes, I have waited to share my thoughts publicly on removing / combining game modes until I have tried them.

Server: Satele Shan

Win/Loss Record

8v8 Warzone: 100 Wins, 8 Losses

4v4 Arenas: 204 Wins, 8 Losses

Weekly Mission Length

When you break it down, you essentially have to get 300 wins in PvP Season One to qualify for the time-gated achievement Title and extra tokens. I think this is quite out of reach for most players given the length of the season. The adjustment I would suggest is making the 4v4 Arena Weekly equal to the 8v8 Warzone Weekly. (So 0/12, Wins count x3) This way, you would need 200 wins total and 100 wins from each queue type.

8v8 Warzone Feedback

Since winning a game is three times as fast as finishing everything as losing, I'm going to do everything I can to increase my chances of winning. I 8-man stacked at least 70 out of my 100 8v8 warzones and my team had no chance of ever losing. I don't understand how allowing an 8-man premade to get a queue pop against randoms encourages "Positive Play" at all. It became a joke at certain points where the enemy team would just stand still during Huttball or Novare Coast in spawn staring at us. Since they increased the lockout penalty significantly with the new update, these players can't leave the match, they are instead forced to suffer even though they know they are going to lose. I think that queueing as an 8-man premade should only queue pop against another 8-man premade, and if not, it needs to be removed from the game immediately.

4v4 Arena Feedback

4v4s is the game mode that I enjoy the most in PvP and I used to be a Ranked Player. Unfortunately, out of the 212 arena games I played, not a single match felt anything like a game during an active Ranked Season. (Except the occasional /stuck'er, ha ha.) Even though I know most people didn't experience Ranked and don't care, this is a real bummer that there are no stakes in these games anymore. The adrenaline rush can be very satisfying, and learning to cope with losing when you have played to the best of your ability is important. Honestly, if you have ever played Poker with fake money you will know it is absolutely not the same as playing with real money.

This mode is taking forever to pop. Regardless if I am queueing Solo, or with one, two, or three teammates, I would say the average pop is 10 minutes. I think this is because there is a more direct correlation between a player's skill and the outcome of the match in this mode, versus Objectives in 8v8. There is a higher skill requirement in this mode and I don't think the casual player base is willing to get outside of their comfort zone to play this often. Bioware has done a good job on their new Onderon Palatial Grounds map, but it's hard to tell what areas of the map will end up being good in different scenarios, where fights will tend to happen, and so on, when in these potato games all 8 players run straight forward and get globalled. Unless a Ranked mode or some sort of skill-gated reward is reintroduced, establishing a meta on the new map will never happen. In my estimation, 90% of players who are repping either "The Founder" (Playing since launch) or "Elite Warlord" (Max Valor rank 100) who are Sorcerers / Sages get globalled by Electro Net and fundamentally do not know how to survive. It's honestly embarassing, and I don't know how you fix this other than separating the very bad "Veterans" from the people who understand the basics of the game with a seperate game mode. Oh... we removed that. 

A little PSA on 4v4's: if you are queued as all DPS, you will only get matched against all DPS, or 1 Support and 3 DPS. If you are queued as 2 Support and 2 DPS, you will only get matched against 2 Support and 2 DPS, or 1 Support and 3 DPS. Therefore, if you queue as 1 Support and 3 DPS in a premade, you qualify to get into any match for faster pops. If someone declines a match or leaves early, this doesn't apply because matchmaking will do weird things to fill the match. Obviously you only have full control over this if you are in a 4-man premade.

4v4 Arenas highlight how terrible the Class Balance is at the moment. Pressure compositions almost always win, so Lethality and Madness do quite well, while Snipers are just horrendous right now, and some classes having to choose hardstun instead of it being baseline is just absurd. 

PvP Season Objectives

I find these Objectives to be strangely designed. In large part, these can be ignored because you don't have to do anything out of the ordinary to earn them. Since you can earn 4 out of 6 total each week, but only 3 apply to 8v8 Warzones and only 3 apply to 4v4 Arenas, there is no efficient way to earn them. Basically if you are an 8v8 main but you want to earn one more from doing 4v4s, in the process of trying to earn 1 4v4 weekly, you will probably complete or be 90% done with the other 2. As long as you are playing like 20 games per week with at least one friend you will hit 1,000 points regardless of these weeklies which is why I recommend you completely ignore them.

Toxicity

The biggest lie I see stated again and again on the forums is that Ranked PvP is the most Toxic game mode in the game. After completing my 100 8v8 Warzone wins, I have never received so many unsolicited DM's often paragraphs of rage, frustration, harrassment, and in rare cases death threats than in any activity in this game in my life. Seriously, it has me actually thinking that people have put their life saving's worth of hypercrates on the line during these Huttball matches xD. You see, with 8v8 Warzones I think people are all playing for a different arbitrary status symbol. Some for highest damage / healing, some for highest objective score, some for highest medals, and some for outright winning. But at its essence, with the way combat works and how objectives integrate with the core gameplay experience in this game, all of these stats are completely meaningless.  What ends up happening is people use their arbitrary stat to argue with you in DM's, tell you how much better they are than you, how this actually shows why they are so good, and honestly it is such a waste of time. These people exist in a fantasy land, or what I refer to as Clownville, where you have to be a professional jokester to buy into anything they say. I don't know how you fix this other than reporting people who cross the line, but this is a community cultivated issue that stems from 8v8 Warzones that has always existed.

Vendor Token Prices

The rewards on Giradda the Hutt and Tullek are ridiculously overpriced. If you complete all 7,000 points in PvP Season One, you will come out with 12 tokens which is just enough to purchase the two brand new sets available at Tullek. Now let's say you go for the big boy achievements and earn the extra 8 for 20 total tokens. What else can you buy, two PvP Flags that are character bound? That's right, two flags that are permanently stuck on only one character out of your entire legacy. Oh - here's the kicker. You can't even use the flag in a PvP match. Is this an elaborate joke? Not to mention they deleted all previous PvP Flags and converted them into decorations.  So if they have taken the stance that flags are toxic, even though they could only be used in an active PvP match, why are we now allowed to spam them on people on Fleet and elsewhere in the game? Ok besides the flags stupidity which I'll chalk up to as a mistake by Bioware, you can literally purchase nothing more with the 8 additional tokens. There are a few brand new decorations that for some reason cost 12 tokens each! They are all trophy arts, and I think there are 7 of them. So you need 84 tokens, or 7 total seasons without doing the long achievements, to earn these wall paintings. And you don't even get multiple copies, you get one copy of each decoration for your entire account. At most, these paintings should cost one token each, but honestly they should all be put into one box for one token total.

I have every previous purchaseable PvP reward in the game. Since they have taken the stance that these rewards are here to stay, I don't think they should be this hard to get. At least between Ranked Seasons 10 - 14 you had the opportunity to continue earning tokens every day as long as you played. Now you get hard gated. My suggestion is to add 1 PvP Season Token for completing each PvP Season Objective, so you can earn an additional 6 tokens every week during an active season. Furthermore, if you go to the effort of doing the 25 Weeklies achievements, you should get like 50 of these tokens for putting in that much work. Also, push the currency cap up from 25 to like 1,000.

Archived Achievements

Bioware finally sharpened up and removed some of the ridiculous 8v8 Warzone achievements that were extremely difficult and in some cases outright impossible to get. (Without throwing matches with pre-coordinated groups). This had to do with getting 10 Solo Kills in 50 Games of each Warzone, 55 Player Kills in 50 Games of each Warzone, and Dying 10 or 15 Times in each Warzone. Yes, they actually had achievements to just die over and over again for each Warzone. But they didn't remove the following: Deliver 20 Killing Blows in 50 Games of Each Warzone. According to the achievement hunters and the coordinated guilds that were going for all these achievements before 7.2, this 20 Killing Blow achievement is the most absurd and difficult achievement type in the category. So it should be archived too.

Solo Queue

In its current state, Solo Queueing PvP in this game is a disaster. Not only do you earn less progress on your Season by not being grouped, but you will have a huge disadvantage in every game you play. At the very least, a Solo Queue should be added to 4v4 Arenas so that more balanced games can occur. Until that happens, 4v4 Arenas essentially do not exist as a game mode, and will have a difficult time encouraging new players to try it.

My Final Verdict

In its current state, I strongly recommend not PvPing in the 7.2 update if you are a solo player. If you are planning on queueing in a premade group, I recommend completing the 7,000 points in the Season to earn your 12 Tokens and purchasing the 2 new PvP Armor Sets. I would only recommend going for the 25 Weekly Achievements if you are among the most hardcore collectors in the game. I think removing Ranked PvP was a terrible mistake and only made Unranked Warzone quality go from bad to terrible. If their point was to encourage positive play, their new system has absolutely failed. If their point was to stop wintrading, all they had to do was remove the Top 96 Rewards from the ranked mode. I don't believe Bioware removed Ranked to create less work for themselves since they were releasing rewards at a Snail's pace, not moderating cheaters, and automating all Tier Reward handouts. I think that removing Ranked as a mode was more work than just running a Season 15. 

Would love to hear your guys' thoughts

 

[krackcommando]

57 minutes ago, CliffRedemption said:

I think removing Ranked PvP was a terrible mistake and only made Unranked Warzone quality go from bad to terrible.

I don't think that's possible. regs were an abject disaster by 6.x unless all you cared about was number farming or DMing - and you can still do that in 7.x. I counted myself lucky if just 4 out of 8 teammates were trying to win in any given WZ. the only thing that kept me sane was joining the DM or just leaving when the wind was blowing in that direction.

Edited December 25, 2022 by krackcommando
typos

[Crystal_Mind]

19 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

I don't think that's possible. regs were an abject disaster by 6.x unless all you cared about was number farming or DMing - and you can still do that in 7.x. I counted myself lucky if just 4 out of 8 teammates were trying to win in any given WZ. the only thing that kept me sane was joining the DM or just leaving when the wind was blowing in that direction.

I promise you it is possible. Before the update I had some bad teams, but I didn't have the experience of watching my ENTIRE team go stand in a corner after the first 60s of the match.

Now, if I solo-queue, it happens regularly. Can't really number farm when you're 1v8, sorry to say.

Thankfully, I have guildies to queue with, so I've elected not to suffer through that experience anymore.

Edited December 25, 2022 by Crystal_Mind

[VaeVictis]

5 hours ago, CliffRedemption said:

Weekly Mission Length

When you break it down, you essentially have to get 300 wins in PvP Season One to qualify for the time-gated achievement Title and extra tokens. I think this is quite out of reach for most players given the length of the season. The adjustment I would suggest is making the 4v4 Arena Weekly equal to the 8v8 Warzone Weekly. (So 0/12, Wins count x3) This way, you would need 200 wins total and 100 wins from each queue type.

I would change this to complete any combination of the weeklies 25 times, but then the Arena queue would probably die if players weren't being forced into it.

The rewards are fairly mediocre and I think casual players (i.e. the vast majority in this game) are going to quit caring come season 2, especially when we're not in the holiday season where a lot of people are off work/out of school. Besides 300 wins another way to say it is you need to play 3-9 Arena games and 1-3 WZ's a day...if you only have an hour or two that doesn't leave much room for anything else.

[Katushe]

11 hours ago, CliffRedemption said:

PvP Season Objectives

[....] I recommend you completely ignore them.[...]

Already done that.

11 hours ago, CliffRedemption said:

My Final Verdict

In its current state, I strongly recommend not PvPing in the 7.2 update if you are a solo player.

Already done that.

Thanks for confirming I made the right choices!

[teclado]

GREAT write-up. I regret that I only have one “like” to give.

With that said, I’m glad I transferred off SS a while back. Sounds like a solo guy like myself would have a really bad time. I’ve only played about 20 8v8 games so far (because I don’t play much and can only hop on briefly -also it’s December and I’m on vacation for most of it), but I’ve fought tooth and nail for a ~20% win rate. I can imagine it would be close to zero on a lower population server.

I think the pvp mode in this game is still trying to find its identity. Is it competitive or casual? Right now we mix the two and deliver a platter of casuals to the competitive to devour.

Personally, I will keep playing casually, by myself. I simply don’t have the time to invest in finding friends, and I don’t want to feel obligated to stay and play longer. If I have to wait around and form a group, I might lose my time to play at all. I’m very stubborn though and will continue to fight uphill and lose most of the time. I doubt most casuals will do the same.

Only BW has the data to know if 8v8 grouped queue would be sustainable (population). I’m guessing the answer is no, based on their actions. I think as-is, this problem will be self-correcting as the competitive players will get bored and quit. The baddies will get tired of losing and quit. The casual diehards will keep playing solo. Eventually we will reach a state of equilibrium with only the occasional 8-man premade, but mostly casuals playing solo or in small groups.

[slowdude]

1 hour ago, teclado said:

as the competitive players will get bored and quit.

I don't think it will happen. Before the game servers will be turned off, than the premades of ranked players will disappear. This is their comfort zone, they invested a lot of time and effort, their friends stayed here, so it's easier for them to terrorize casual players than to leave for a new game where everything has to be started all over again. There has long been nothing in the game that could keep competitive players. Here even the prizes are old, and before that, ranked arenas were practically dead. There aren't even enough casual pvp players here, if you count accounts.

Edited December 26, 2022 by slowdude

[imthespamman]

1 hour ago, slowdude said:

 it's easier for them to terrorize casual players

Its not their fault that they're better than casuals, you want to forbid people to queue because they're better than others?

1 hour ago, slowdude said:

 than to leave for a new game

Actually there have been a lot of people migrating to different games like NW, WoW, etc. recently but ok

1 hour ago, slowdude said:

There has long been nothing in the game that could keep competitive players. 

Kind of true since we had like 8 months of preseason but a lot of people were waiting/hoping for season 15.

1 hour ago, slowdude said:

Here even the prizes are old, and before that, ranked arenas were practically dead. There aren't even enough casual pvp players here, if you count accounts.

Might be hard to believe for you but there were actually quite a few people playing ranked during actual season and I know a lot of people who were preparing and learning this past preseason for their first actual season.

[Raazmir]

24 minutes ago, imthespamman said:

 

Might be hard to believe for you but there were actually quite a few people playing ranked during actual season and I know a lot of people who were preparing and learning this past preseason for their first actual season.

People always say "quite a few" or "a lot" but at the most generous interpretation where every single name on the ranking boards was a unique individual who played throughout the season rather than tried and quit, ranked pvpers never so much as hit 1% of accounts.

[krackcommando]

33 minutes ago, imthespamman said:

Its not their fault that they're better than casuals, you want to forbid people to queue because they're better than others?

no. he wants to forbid anyone better than him from grouping up. he apparently thinks everyone who steps on him in a WZ is a shweaty ranked griefer who only pays (paid?) a sub to make his life miserable. and all players who played ranked should go away to play another, more competitive game now that there's no ranked format in swtor. because apparently no good pvpers played the game BEFORE rated (the word is actually "rated," fwiw) arenas were introduced. so...you know...like the first 2? 3? 4? years of the game. 🙄

my advice is to not bother replying or trying to parse what he says. it's so ridiculously nonsensical/bias that if he's not a troll account, he's incapable of rational discussion or doesn't understand that empathy isn't a thing that works exclusively for him.

[waisting]

23 hours ago, CliffRedemption said:

Solo Queue

In its current state, Solo Queueing PvP in this game is a disaster. Not only do you earn less progress on your Season by not being grouped, but you will have a huge disadvantage in every game you play. At the very least, a Solo Queue should be added to 4v4 Arenas so that more balanced games can occur. Until that happens, 4v4 Arenas essentially do not exist as a game mode, and will have a difficult time encouraging new players to try it.

I'm a casual pvper that solo queues and I pay for it. 44% win percentage right now in 80s arenas. I try my best but I'm definitely learning. Nothing like most of the players here almost certainly. I pay for it with the occasional toxic crap thrown my way too. But it is what it is. I enjoy the game mode so I just ignore them and queue up again. I enjoy it enough that I already have 28% achievements in the new arenas category. But it's the toxic crap that makes new / casual people not want to try it (or continue with it), not the premades. Most people can't just take that and want to keep playing.

From the perspective of a casual player like myself, premades aren't that big of a deal. I don't go in expecting to win almost every match I play like the more competitive players. So if we get stomped in 2 quick rounds, whatever. It wasn't fun, but it was quick and better luck next time. 

Warzones, yeah it stinks to run into a big premade 6-8 players but what can you do really. That's when I just bring out the celebration jawa and give up on the match, just jump around and have some sort of fun with it. I doubt this is what Bioware intended but for someone like me and my PUG team, we have no chance so why bother trying? 

Overall you had a great write up here and thank you for sharing. It's unfortunate that you experience so much toxicity in warzones. People lose perspective that this is a game sometimes. 

[Bigfallenstar]

2 hours ago, imthespamman said:

Its not their fault that they're better than casuals, you want to forbid people to queue because they're better than others?

Actually there have been a lot of people migrating to different games like NW, WoW, etc. recently but ok

Kind of true since we had like 8 months of preseason but a lot of people were waiting/hoping for season 15.

Might be hard to believe for you but there were actually quite a few people playing ranked during actual season and I know a lot of people who were preparing and learning this past preseason for their first actual season.

Better? If they were better, they wouldn't need to group up and gank people to win. That's all these former rated players are doing. And can you really call them better when they beat up on casuals? That's like saying you were in and won a fight against an old person with arthritis. You didn't do anything spectacular or noteworthy except beat on someone who doesn't sweat as much as you do.

[Bigfallenstar]

2 hours ago, krackcommando said:

no. he wants to forbid anyone better than him from grouping up. he apparently thinks everyone who steps on him in a WZ is a shweaty ranked griefer who only pays (paid?) a sub to make his life miserable. and all players who played ranked should go away to play another, more competitive game now that there's no ranked format in swtor. because apparently no good pvpers played the game BEFORE rated (the word is actually "rated," fwiw) arenas were introduced. so...you know...like the first 2? 3? 4? years of the game. 🙄

my advice is to not bother replying or trying to parse what he says. it's so ridiculously nonsensical/bias that if he's not a troll account, he's incapable of rational discussion or doesn't understand that empathy isn't a thing that works exclusively for him.

Is he farther from the truth, tho? Because who else is forming those so called 6-8 man premades that people keep saying they're coming across? Who else beside the sweaty griefers who need a premade to be any semblance of good? All the pvp guilds are gone, as people love to say. So who's doing it? And what classifies someone as a good pvper? Knowing rotations, when to use abilities? Playing the objective? Killing someone in less than 10 seconds? What makes someone definitively a good player? Because that's always the phrase ranked players tossed around, yet never tell what makes a good player besides having the highest gear level.

 

 

And compared to other games, like WOW, the ranked format is more competitive. That should be right up the ranked players' ally since WOW didn't cut all of the abilities for classes and can be as toxic as they like.

[krackcommando]

1 hour ago, Bigfallenstar said:

Because who else is forming those so called 6-8 man premades that people keep saying they're coming across?

anyone with half a brain who wants to win.

1 hour ago, Bigfallenstar said:

Who else beside the sweaty griefers who need a premade to be any semblance of good?

wth does griefing have to do with wanting the best possible team. seriously. what is wrong with you?

1 hour ago, Bigfallenstar said:

And what classifies someone as a good pvper? Knowing rotations, when to use abilities? Playing the objective? Killing someone in less than 10 seconds? What makes someone definitively a good player? Because that's always the phrase ranked players tossed around, yet never tell what makes a good player besides having the highest gear level.

gear level means virtually nothing in instanced pvp. gear is capped and bolstered. begone with the "they wouldn't be so good without the gear advantage" nonsense.

a skilled player knows his class and the class of the person he's playing against. he knows all of the chess moves (this is a rock/paper/scissors game - there are only so many moves in a spec's kit). he knows what your counters are and what to do when you use them.

 

Edited December 27, 2022 by krackcommando
fwiw

[imthespamman]

2 hours ago, Bigfallenstar said:

Better? If they were better, they wouldn't need to group up and gank people to win. That's all these former rated players are doing. And can you really call them better when they beat up on casuals? That's like saying you were in and won a fight against an old person with arthritis. You didn't do anything spectacular or noteworthy except beat on someone who doesn't sweat as much as you do.

If you have the world chess champion play for fun in a local tournament he would still be a very good player even if he only stomps much weaker opponents, I dont really understand your analogy?

Its kinda hard to not beat up casuals if the only pvp mode you can play is a casual one.

 

They (former rated players) dont need a group to beat a casual player, they can do that just fine on their own. I know the concept is hard to grasp for you but some people actually have friends that they like to play with, so they group up. 

[KumbayaGOD]

On 12/26/2022 at 5:23 AM, CliffRedemption said:

Hey there,

I wanted to share some feedback I've come up with since it has been almost 2 weeks since 7.2 dropped and we saw some changes to PvP in the game. At the time of writing this post, I have finished the two "Big" achievements in the PvP Season One category for completing 25 weeklies of both 8v8 and 4v4, and feel qualified at this point to give you my perspective on everything as well as list off a few stats for those curious. Since there were big changes, I have waited to share my thoughts publicly on removing / combining game modes until I have tried them.

Server: Satele Shan

Win/Loss Record

8v8 Warzone: 100 Wins, 8 Losses

4v4 Arenas: 204 Wins, 8 Losses

Weekly Mission Length

When you break it down, you essentially have to get 300 wins in PvP Season One to qualify for the time-gated achievement Title and extra tokens. I think this is quite out of reach for most players given the length of the season. The adjustment I would suggest is making the 4v4 Arena Weekly equal to the 8v8 Warzone Weekly. (So 0/12, Wins count x3) This way, you would need 200 wins total and 100 wins from each queue type.

8v8 Warzone Feedback

Since winning a game is three times as fast as finishing everything as losing, I'm going to do everything I can to increase my chances of winning. I 8-man stacked at least 70 out of my 100 8v8 warzones and my team had no chance of ever losing. I don't understand how allowing an 8-man premade to get a queue pop against randoms encourages "Positive Play" at all. It became a joke at certain points where the enemy team would just stand still during Huttball or Novare Coast in spawn staring at us. Since they increased the lockout penalty significantly with the new update, these players can't leave the match, they are instead forced to suffer even though they know they are going to lose. I think that queueing as an 8-man premade should only queue pop against another 8-man premade, and if not, it needs to be removed from the game immediately.

4v4 Arena Feedback

4v4s is the game mode that I enjoy the most in PvP and I used to be a Ranked Player. Unfortunately, out of the 212 arena games I played, not a single match felt anything like a game during an active Ranked Season. (Except the occasional /stuck'er, ha ha.) Even though I know most people didn't experience Ranked and don't care, this is a real bummer that there are no stakes in these games anymore. The adrenaline rush can be very satisfying, and learning to cope with losing when you have played to the best of your ability is important. Honestly, if you have ever played Poker with fake money you will know it is absolutely not the same as playing with real money.

This mode is taking forever to pop. Regardless if I am queueing Solo, or with one, two, or three teammates, I would say the average pop is 10 minutes. I think this is because there is a more direct correlation between a player's skill and the outcome of the match in this mode, versus Objectives in 8v8. There is a higher skill requirement in this mode and I don't think the casual player base is willing to get outside of their comfort zone to play this often. Bioware has done a good job on their new Onderon Palatial Grounds map, but it's hard to tell what areas of the map will end up being good in different scenarios, where fights will tend to happen, and so on, when in these potato games all 8 players run straight forward and get globalled. Unless a Ranked mode or some sort of skill-gated reward is reintroduced, establishing a meta on the new map will never happen. In my estimation, 90% of players who are repping either "The Founder" (Playing since launch) or "Elite Warlord" (Max Valor rank 100) who are Sorcerers / Sages get globalled by Electro Net and fundamentally do not know how to survive. It's honestly embarassing, and I don't know how you fix this other than separating the very bad "Veterans" from the people who understand the basics of the game with a seperate game mode. Oh... we removed that. 

A little PSA on 4v4's: if you are queued as all DPS, you will only get matched against all DPS, or 1 Support and 3 DPS. If you are queued as 2 Support and 2 DPS, you will only get matched against 2 Support and 2 DPS, or 1 Support and 3 DPS. Therefore, if you queue as 1 Support and 3 DPS in a premade, you qualify to get into any match for faster pops. If someone declines a match or leaves early, this doesn't apply because matchmaking will do weird things to fill the match. Obviously you only have full control over this if you are in a 4-man premade.

4v4 Arenas highlight how terrible the Class Balance is at the moment. Pressure compositions almost always win, so Lethality and Madness do quite well, while Snipers are just horrendous right now, and some classes having to choose hardstun instead of it being baseline is just absurd. 

PvP Season Objectives

I find these Objectives to be strangely designed. In large part, these can be ignored because you don't have to do anything out of the ordinary to earn them. Since you can earn 4 out of 6 total each week, but only 3 apply to 8v8 Warzones and only 3 apply to 4v4 Arenas, there is no efficient way to earn them. Basically if you are an 8v8 main but you want to earn one more from doing 4v4s, in the process of trying to earn 1 4v4 weekly, you will probably complete or be 90% done with the other 2. As long as you are playing like 20 games per week with at least one friend you will hit 1,000 points regardless of these weeklies which is why I recommend you completely ignore them.

Toxicity

The biggest lie I see stated again and again on the forums is that Ranked PvP is the most Toxic game mode in the game. After completing my 100 8v8 Warzone wins, I have never received so many unsolicited DM's often paragraphs of rage, frustration, harrassment, and in rare cases death threats than in any activity in this game in my life. Seriously, it has me actually thinking that people have put their life saving's worth of hypercrates on the line during these Huttball matches xD. You see, with 8v8 Warzones I think people are all playing for a different arbitrary status symbol. Some for highest damage / healing, some for highest objective score, some for highest medals, and some for outright winning. But at its essence, with the way combat works and how objectives integrate with the core gameplay experience in this game, all of these stats are completely meaningless.  What ends up happening is people use their arbitrary stat to argue with you in DM's, tell you how much better they are than you, how this actually shows why they are so good, and honestly it is such a waste of time. These people exist in a fantasy land, or what I refer to as Clownville, where you have to be a professional jokester to buy into anything they say. I don't know how you fix this other than reporting people who cross the line, but this is a community cultivated issue that stems from 8v8 Warzones that has always existed.

Vendor Token Prices

The rewards on Giradda the Hutt and Tullek are ridiculously overpriced. If you complete all 7,000 points in PvP Season One, you will come out with 12 tokens which is just enough to purchase the two brand new sets available at Tullek. Now let's say you go for the big boy achievements and earn the extra 8 for 20 total tokens. What else can you buy, two PvP Flags that are character bound? That's right, two flags that are permanently stuck on only one character out of your entire legacy. Oh - here's the kicker. You can't even use the flag in a PvP match. Is this an elaborate joke? Not to mention they deleted all previous PvP Flags and converted them into decorations.  So if they have taken the stance that flags are toxic, even though they could only be used in an active PvP match, why are we now allowed to spam them on people on Fleet and elsewhere in the game? Ok besides the flags stupidity which I'll chalk up to as a mistake by Bioware, you can literally purchase nothing more with the 8 additional tokens. There are a few brand new decorations that for some reason cost 12 tokens each! They are all trophy arts, and I think there are 7 of them. So you need 84 tokens, or 7 total seasons without doing the long achievements, to earn these wall paintings. And you don't even get multiple copies, you get one copy of each decoration for your entire account. At most, these paintings should cost one token each, but honestly they should all be put into one box for one token total.

I have every previous purchaseable PvP reward in the game. Since they have taken the stance that these rewards are here to stay, I don't think they should be this hard to get. At least between Ranked Seasons 10 - 14 you had the opportunity to continue earning tokens every day as long as you played. Now you get hard gated. My suggestion is to add 1 PvP Season Token for completing each PvP Season Objective, so you can earn an additional 6 tokens every week during an active season. Furthermore, if you go to the effort of doing the 25 Weeklies achievements, you should get like 50 of these tokens for putting in that much work. Also, push the currency cap up from 25 to like 1,000.

Archived Achievements

Bioware finally sharpened up and removed some of the ridiculous 8v8 Warzone achievements that were extremely difficult and in some cases outright impossible to get. (Without throwing matches with pre-coordinated groups). This had to do with getting 10 Solo Kills in 50 Games of each Warzone, 55 Player Kills in 50 Games of each Warzone, and Dying 10 or 15 Times in each Warzone. Yes, they actually had achievements to just die over and over again for each Warzone. But they didn't remove the following: Deliver 20 Killing Blows in 50 Games of Each Warzone. According to the achievement hunters and the coordinated guilds that were going for all these achievements before 7.2, this 20 Killing Blow achievement is the most absurd and difficult achievement type in the category. So it should be archived too.

Solo Queue

In its current state, Solo Queueing PvP in this game is a disaster. Not only do you earn less progress on your Season by not being grouped, but you will have a huge disadvantage in every game you play. At the very least, a Solo Queue should be added to 4v4 Arenas so that more balanced games can occur. Until that happens, 4v4 Arenas essentially do not exist as a game mode, and will have a difficult time encouraging new players to try it.

My Final Verdict

In its current state, I strongly recommend not PvPing in the 7.2 update if you are a solo player. If you are planning on queueing in a premade group, I recommend completing the 7,000 points in the Season to earn your 12 Tokens and purchasing the 2 new PvP Armor Sets. I would only recommend going for the 25 Weekly Achievements if you are among the most hardcore collectors in the game. I think removing Ranked PvP was a terrible mistake and only made Unranked Warzone quality go from bad to terrible. If their point was to encourage positive play, their new system has absolutely failed. If their point was to stop wintrading, all they had to do was remove the Top 96 Rewards from the ranked mode. I don't believe Bioware removed Ranked to create less work for themselves since they were releasing rewards at a Snail's pace, not moderating cheaters, and automating all Tier Reward handouts. I think that removing Ranked as a mode was more work than just running a Season 15. 

Would love to hear your guys' thoughts

 

i think cliff is spot on on the topic , as semi hardcore - casual player this is my opinion 

so to recap and BIOWARE should read this :

1. arena win need to be reduce to 12 wins , 3 point for win 1 for lose , because many times the arena is even longer than wz if tank healer and not to mention wait time is much longer 

2. solo que option for solo que only no grouping this is a very good idea 

3. premade 8 man is just insane , who come up with this ? like cliff said must face 8 other premade, no matter how good you are if you get ganked by 4 people at once you wont survive that long and you wont like it too much if you get stomped over and over again 

4. pvp token , bioware tend to over do things , but like poster said, most token 20 token mean, you can spend many seasons just to get ONE reward ! , i mean playing games must have some kind of satisfaction reward by the end of it, i am not saying give it away but jeeeezzz , holy mama

at least you can buy like 2-3 items out of many item i think thats fair , you still need many seasons to collect ALL 

it is like hauling a 1 kgs item with dump truck 

5. achievement must be change to reflect posibility not impossilibity , 

how can you do solo kill 10x in warzone, i want to see people actually can do it without somekind of win trade for achievement , it is like you asking people to jump 10 meter high in bare foot 

 

[slowdude]

8 hours ago, imthespamman said:

Its not their fault that they're better than casuals,

Stop confusing choice and skill. Playing premade is a choice, standing in a 4v4 queue 24/7 and then complaining that group arenas are dead, like the top group players did, is a choice. In the same way, all ways of cheating matchmaking in solo arenas (some even got banned for having too many friends lol) is a choice, use of broken relics, macros - not some non-alternative situation. Using vote kick, flags is also a choice (and then there will be fairy tales about how casuals invent ranked toxicity). In the same way, stop talking about guaranteed winrate and competitiveness.

About numerous players in ranked arenas. You only have unsubstantiated claims that are based on the number of unique names, without taking into account the number of games and accounts. If everything was so good, why even during those couple of hours a day when the arenas happened, the players begged in the chat for people to q?

By the way, the game has an interface that allows players to create groups and play against each other. Have ranked players used this opportunity?

Edited December 27, 2022 by slowdude

[Ahwassa]

OP: only lists as premade with his ranked friends and complains about premades & toxicity and that the matches aren´t engaging.

Lol, you list as premade and that creates toxicity. Also you kill the queue pretty fast.

Please do your server a favour and list solo - in that way your teammates can actually learn a thing or two.

Because if you lose against a premade you can´t learn anything - you get stomped to fast.

 

Also please post your new winrates here and how the toxicity is this time.

[krackcommando]

4 hours ago, Ahwassa said:

OP: only lists as premade with his ranked friends and complains about premades & toxicity and that the matches aren´t engaging.

Lol, you list as premade and that creates toxicity. Also you kill the queue pretty fast.

Please do your server a favour and list solo - in that way your teammates can actually learn a thing or two.

Because if you lose against a premade you can´t learn anything - you get stomped to fast.

 

Also please post your new winrates here and how the toxicity is this time.

I...uh...might be mistaken, because pb names aren't necessarily in-game toon names, but I think the OP you're talking to/about was the number one rated SOLO arenas merc.

[omeru]

When ever i think they cant make it worse than current state SWTOR devs always finds a way to prove me wrong. After  all that wasted developement hours gettting complete .... is frustrating.

[Samcuu]

Dayum the hardcore ranked community is really triggered over the changes. I do feel ur guys pain tho when u really were passionate about a game mode and they just eliminated it, I would be salty too tbh. 

 

 

 

 

[-Garmonbozia]

On 12/25/2022 at 2:23 PM, CliffRedemption said:

Toxicity

After completing my 100 8v8 Warzone wins, I have never received so many unsolicited DM's often paragraphs of rage, frustration, harrassment, and in rare cases death threats than in any activity in this game in my life. Seriously, it has me actually thinking that people have put their life saving's worth of hypercrates on the line during these Huttball matches xD. You see, with 8v8 Warzones I think people are all playing for a different arbitrary status symbol. Some for highest damage / healing, some for highest objective score, some for highest medals, and some for outright winning. But at its essence, with the way combat works and how objectives integrate with the core gameplay experience in this game, all of these stats are completely meaningless. 

Would love to hear your guys' thoughts

 

Just curious.

Do you feel it's toxic for players to verbally harass people they don't even know over which class they choose to play in pvp, when they also play that same class? Or to rage whisper them calling them bad, when they die, lose an arena, and get out-dpsd by them? 

I agree with that last line though, everything in the game is technically meaningless. They're fun personal gaming achievements, not unlike world first raiding achievements (though these are extremely irrelevant in SWTOR with no pressing race happening), but it's not exactly like personal real-life achievements. The only time there's really any crossover is when teams are competing in actual moderated tournaments, particularly in professional e-sports.

[Bigfallenstar]

On 12/26/2022 at 9:10 PM, imthespamman said:

If you have the world chess champion play for fun in a local tournament he would still be a very good player even if he only stomps much weaker opponents, I dont really understand your analogy?

Its kinda hard to not beat up casuals if the only pvp mode you can play is a casual one.

 

They (former rated players) dont need a group to beat a casual player, they can do that just fine on their own. I know the concept is hard to grasp for you but some people actually have friends that they like to play with, so they group up. 

That still doesn't make him good. If he was, he'd play people on his skill level, not people who don't play as much as him. Let's try simpler terms. It's like a NFL team winning against a college football team. The only thing you've proven is that you beat someone who's on a lower tier than you. Or a black belt beating up someone who's a white belt. Proves nothing but that you beat someone who's not in your skill range. That's considered good?

 

Please. Now that they can't win trade, they have to actually try. They can't do anything without someone backing them up or standing there to let them beat them up. They're just as bad as they accuse people who only do regs. Those aren't friends grouped up to have a good time, they're ranked players who decided to take their frustration to regs.

[Bigfallenstar]

On 12/26/2022 at 8:40 PM, krackcommando said:

anyone with half a brain who wants to win.

wth does griefing have to do with wanting the best possible team. seriously. what is wrong with you?

gear level means virtually nothing in instanced pvp. gear is capped and bolstered. begone with the "they wouldn't be so good without the gear advantage" nonsense.

a skilled player knows his class and the class of the person he's playing against. he knows all of the chess moves (this is a rock/paper/scissors game - there are only so many moves in a spec's kit). he knows what your counters are and what to do when you use them.

 

So you can't win on your own and have to have 6-8 people covering your butt. Got it.

 

The best possible team? You seriously one of those people who think everything's a competition? Let me tell you something: Not everything's a competition and you can't win them all. And that's what currently happening right now. Team are formed that if they can't win or take the lead in 10s, they afk and feed the enemy team. And let's not forget the pms of harassment they send to anyone who does something they don't like. Get out of here thinking that you want the best team and pubstomp when you just want to screw other people over with your nonsense.

 

Bolster doesn't do a thing except put you at the minimum stats to do barely anything. It wasn't the end all be all. You still had to do your part unless you wanted to be target practice for the enemy. That's what bolster was for. People who wanted to do the minimum amount of work and felt like they did something. You think someone in 300 gear will beat someone in 336?

 

So your definition of a skilled player is someone who knows the ins and outs of their class and can read the enemy like a book. In a perfect world, that might be it. But it's not. You can't completely know everything someone's going to do and predict every outcome. For all you know, they're could be 2 stealths going for the cap and the jugg attacking you is just distracting you. So it's not an open and shut case.

[imthespamman]

1 hour ago, Bigfallenstar said:

That still doesn't make him good. If he was, he'd play people on his skill level, not people who don't play as much as him. 

He is good regardless of him beating up worse players or not.

Also that's actually happening, we had one of the best players in the world at our local christmas tournament 3 years ago and he obviously stomped the competition. The thing is he wasn't playing to prove his skill, it was just for fun. 

Same goes for (most) ranked players in regs - its just for fun. Noone of them needs of tries to prove themselves by beating up weaker players.