Changes coming to PvP in 7.2.1 / Season 2

[krackcommando]

22 minutes ago, Sappharan said:

Nah.  Evidently you believe that a vote of some sort means that the voter agrees with all points and all sentiments expressed by the poster.  That is asinine.  I am not going to bullet point every post where I do and do not agree to satisfy you or anyone else.  When I agree with an overall argument I will support it.  If you want to lump me in the "all premades are bad" category, have at it.  Don't care.

Same as above. 

let's take your personal intentions out of it. be honest here. what do you think it says to people who see the "like" there with no follow-up or qualification of any kind? (while you're still subbed, ofc) look at the other people who upvote with you. look what THEY have to say when they quote that stuff and say "THIS^ 100% PREMADES IN THEIR OWN QUEUE!" I can think of a few but not naming names b/c infraction points, right? but that's what you're lumping yourself in with if you don't qualify your likes.
 I mean come on. do you honestly believe the message you're sending is "I agree with this one part of it, but not this other specific part. but hey, everyone who sees my *like* is going to know that I'm 100% behind limiting premades and better matchmaking but not against ostracizing them to their own queue."

iunno. I find that difficult to divine. but w/e. I don't think I can be more clear. so I'll just leave it at that. or try to at any rate.

Edited March 17, 2023 by krackcommando

[DeannaVoyager]

10 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

so in a mmo you want to restrict players' ability to group up and do content with their friends? yea best of luck buddy

 

That's not what I said and you know it, but thank you!

 

10 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

you play the way you want, others can play the way they want, not seeing the point in trying force others into playing the game the way you want instead of letting others enjoy the game the way they wan

 

Exactly. I have no problem with premade vs premade. If people want to play with their friends only, I don't mind, as long as they are not in the same queue with me and other random solo players. I only have a problem with premades vs solo. Premades are the ones who want to force solo players against their groups because they are worried their queue will die if BW stops feeding them free matches. So yeah, I agree: let everyone -including the solo players- enjoy the game they want to. Separate the queues to make it happen.

 

ps. I find it kinda funny that for years most people here judged wintrading, including BW. Suddenly it's fine everyone who needs those free matches. 

 

[ThadiusMoor]

My $0.02...

 

I am an Elite Warlord title-holder. I got it the day before pvp changed.

In the old pvp system, premades were not nearly as bad an issue as they are now.

The new system makes premades the only viable way to compete now, otherwise you spend hundreds of hours struggling through the pvp season tasks.

You might ask yourself, why does it matter to you what other people are doing?

Well, the answer is simple, what they are doing is interfering with my game-play.

When I queue as a solo pvper, my expectation is to be put into a totally random group of 16 players split into 2 teams randomly.

There definitely should be a group pvp only queue, like ranked used to be. If you had a group, it had to be a premade and you were matched to only other premades. This is what I expect when I get a group together to do pvp, and more-so when it's an 8-player team.

The way things are now, I have pretty much stopped pvping because it is a terrible slogg of loss after loss because one or more premade group(s) is/are dominating the queue. And it doesn't take long to see when the other team is a premade farming the queue.

The problem this causes is that the average player is forced to feed their scores instead of getting to earn your own scores... And no player is going to put up with that garbage long. Pretty soon the pvp queue will be just a bunch of premade groups fighting each other and the fun will slowly disappear as less and less people do pvp over the whole sad state it is in.

If you really want people to participate in pvp seasons, and make it truely a fair and level play-field, there is a number of things that need to happen:

1. Set a group pvp queue separate from solo pvp queue.

2. People who do things to get around the above to form premades in the solo queue should be automatically be kicked out of the wz.

3. Actually fix the damn bolsterizer and make pvp item level 332 capped like you said you would.

4. Bring back pvp-specific gear so that using pve gear in pvp is severely penalized, forcing people to have to earn and use pvp-specific gear for pvp and use their pve gear for pve.

5. And lastly, stop nerfing pve because some bleeding heart pvper is crying about this class or that class over abilities they have... People need to learn how to play properly before they pvp. Simple as that.

 

Overall... The new pvp system caters to groups and ruins the game-play of solos. That can't be allowed to continue because that is not in the spirit of the original design, so changing something so dramatically is not only unfair, but uncalled for. Noone asked to make it so premades can ruin the fun for everyone else that isn't grouping for pvp.

(copied from the other thread)

Addition:

Even with your new algorithm, the chances are still very high that premades will continue to dominate the queue and ruin the fun for everyone else.

You need to fix this properly. A bandaid is not going to work.

[black_pyros]

1 hour ago, ThadiusMoor said:

The problem this causes is that the average player is forced to feed their scores instead of getting to earn your own scores...

No one is forced to feed premades as long as everyone is free to form their own premade. If they refuse to do so, it's their choice. Choices often have consequences.

1 hour ago, ThadiusMoor said:

4. Bring back pvp-specific gear so that using pve gear in pvp is severely penalized, forcing people to have to earn and use pvp-specific gear for pvp and use their pve gear for pve.

As a player that likes to do both, I vote no. I hated the days when I had to either constantly change my gear while doing some heroics or other pve stuff while waiting in pvp queue, or suffer in inferior pvp gear during said pve content, or suffer in inferior pve gear during pvp.

If you are interested in solving this issue once for all, I have a much better proposition. Simply make gear in pvp irrelevant and make everyone have the exact same stats. They can even change the stats between classes slightly as a way of balancing them.

[Exly]

2 hours ago, black_pyros said:

No one is forced to feed premades as long as everyone is free to form their own premade. If they refuse to do so, it's their choice. Choices often have consequences.

As a player that likes to do both, I vote no. I hated the days when I had to either constantly change my gear while doing some heroics or other pve stuff while waiting in pvp queue, or suffer in inferior pvp gear during said pve content, or suffer in inferior pve gear during pvp.

If you are interested in solving this issue once for all, I have a much better proposition. Simply make gear in pvp irrelevant and make everyone have the exact same stats. They can even change the stats between classes slightly as a way of balancing them.

People who refuse to feed premades just don't queue.  That leads to longer queue times.

Separate queues might lead to longer queue times too, but probably more so for the group queue.  So, in that case, grouping would be a choice that people could make, and longer queue times if they happened would be the consequence.  

Choices often have consequences after all.

In regards to your opinion on gear, I agree with you.  That would still not solve the premade vs pug problem since grouping still circumvents any matchmaking system that would try to build balanced teams.  Separate queues would still be necessary to solve the real problem.

[AwesomeTacoCat]

3 hours ago, black_pyros said:

No one is forced to feed premades as long as everyone is free to form their own premade. If they refuse to do so, it's their choice. Choices often have consequences.

 

But if the solo players just quit queing as a result of premades then the que dies and everyone is worse off. This logic isn’t really that hard to follow. Premades often just kill the queue entirely, I’ve seen it happen dozens of times since 7.2. 
 

As people have said dozens of times, there’s a reason group ranked was entirely dead. It wasn’t fun because you knew the outcome of the match before it even started. Same with premades atm. Separate queues is really the only solution. 

[black_pyros]

11 minutes ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

But if the solo players just quit queing as a result of premades then the que dies and everyone is worse off.

This is because sadly they are too stubborn, too shy, too lazy, or whatever other reason to socialize more, group up, and cooperate. By doing so, not only they have worse experience in game mode designed on cooperation when facing coordinated premades, they also miss that awesome satisfying feeling of interacting with other human beings in a team while working together on a common goal.

Bioware is also stubborn, when doing everything possible to persuade players to group up. But probably for a very good reason. Players that make friends in game have an additional reason to keep playing. Rather than soloers who have only the game itself. It's more likely socialized players then last longer and are more keen to keep playing and more resilient when facing bad development decisions.

[AwesomeTacoCat]

57 minutes ago, black_pyros said:

This is because sadly they are too stubborn, too shy, too lazy, or whatever other reason to socialize more, group up, and cooperate. By doing so, not only they have worse experience in game mode designed on cooperation when facing coordinated premades, they also miss that awesome satisfying feeling of interacting with other human beings in a team while working together on a common goal.

Bioware is also stubborn, when doing everything possible to persuade players to group up. But probably for a very good reason. Players that make friends in game have an additional reason to keep playing. Rather than soloers who have only the game itself. It's more likely socialized players then last longer and are more keen to keep playing and more resilient when facing bad development decisions.

This is also a bad argument. What if the four best players group up together (which is usually what happens mind you). Even if the solo players group up they’re gonna get farmed and they’ll just stop queueing and then the queue dies, just like group ranked. I really don’t get how it’s so hard to connect the dots here. 

[black_pyros]

1 hour ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

What if the four best players group up together (which is usually what happens mind you). Even if the solo players group up they’re gonna get farmed.

Bingo! Finally, another player realizes, the premades aren't the real problem, but the skill discrepancy and the inability of matchmaker to put similar skilled players against each other.

You can have solo-only queue, and the unskilled players are still going to get farmed when facing the more skilled ones.

Grouping up is never going to help such a player, the same as the solo-only queue. Only practicing and improving their skill can help them. But that takes certainly more effort than blaming the premades.

[DeannaVoyager]

2 hours ago, black_pyros said:

This is because sadly they are too stubborn, too shy, too lazy, or whatever other reason to socialize more, group up, and cooperate. By doing so, not only they have worse experience in game mode designed on cooperation when facing coordinated premades, they also miss that awesome satisfying feeling of interacting with other human beings in a team while working together on a common goal.

Bioware is also stubborn, when doing everything possible to persuade players to group up. But probably for a very good reason. Players that make friends in game have an additional reason to keep playing. Rather than soloers who have only the game itself. It's more likely socialized players then last longer and are more keen to keep playing and more resilient when facing bad development decisions.

 

For the millionth time: just because someone prefers to queue solo, doesn't mean those people are  "lonely" or any less social than the people who can only play in premades because risk of losing. I raid pretty much every day in a group with my friends and I get enough grouping up and "socializing" with that. I don't need some pvp muppets bothering me every time I login to game, I am perfectly capable of playing on my own, unlike many people here, apparently. It's actually a good trait, try it some day?

 

I also wouldn't want to be identified as someone who is scared of a fair fight, and that's exactly what premades now stand for. 

 

 

 

[AwesomeTacoCat]

31 minutes ago, black_pyros said:

Bingo! Finally, another player realizes, the premades aren't the real problem, but the skill discrepancy and the inability of matchmaker to put similar skilled players against each other.

You can have solo-only queue, and the unskilled players are still going to get farmed when facing the more skilled ones.

Grouping up is never going to help such a player, the same as the solo-only queue. Only practicing and improving their skill can help them. But that takes certainly more effort than blaming the premades.

Sure but it’s just semantics at this point. The ability to group generates an inability of matchmaker to make balanced matches. That’s the whole point we’re trying to make. Yes, groups per se aren’t a problem, it’s the fact that groups of good players lead to unfair matches which hurts participation and overall enjoyability of pvp. I often queue solo and then get invited to join premades with the other 3 best people in queue. And my choices at this point are: 1) farm others or 2) get farmed. Both of these are boring but 1) is better than 2). I’d much rather it just be the case that you can’t group up so we don’t get into dumb situations where the four best people group together and roflstomp the queue for a few matches before it dies. 
 

For the millionth time, we just want some balanced matches. That’s it. 

[black_pyros]

13 minutes ago, DeannaVoyager said:

I raid pretty much every day in a group with my friends

If you already have friends and are fully capable of making them, why not spread this social skill to incorporate PvP as well? Maybe because of this:

13 minutes ago, DeannaVoyager said:

I don't need some pvp muppets bothering me every time I login to game

Calling other players muppets and saying they are bothering you is the exact opposite of being social. This is actually being antisocial. No wonder you have problem teaming up in PvP if you treat others like this.

13 minutes ago, DeannaVoyager said:

I am perfectly capable of playing on my own

Then do so? If you already are fully capable, you don't need solo-only queue to help you.

Edited March 17, 2023 by black_pyros

[black_pyros]

11 minutes ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

The ability to group generates an inability of matchmaker to make balanced matches

I get your point. I am not sure if it generates an inability but it certainly makes it harder. But transfering the servers to cloud should finally allow for cross-server queues and a proper matchmaking, capable of creating balanced matches even with teams in queue.

I am affraid BW is simply not capable of ever implementing a proper matchmaker, but then the solo-only queue will simply never help with the skill discrepancy problem. Nonetheless, it would be fun to see what all the players confusing existence of premades with skill issues start to blame in solo-only queue.

[black_pyros]

37 minutes ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

For the millionth time, we just want some balanced matches. That’s it.

We both want the same. Except unlike you, I value the option to play with friends more than balanced matches. Because of this, it's impossible to fully satisfy both of us. You have every right to ask the BW to satisfy your needs over mine. Naturally, I will always vote against it. I am still happy we can have a civilized discussion. If only more players are like you.

[AwesomeTacoCat]

13 minutes ago, black_pyros said:

We both want the same. Except unlike you, I value the option to play with friends more than balanced matches. Because of this, it's impossible to fully satisfy both of us. You have every right to ask the BW to satisfy your needs over mine. Naturally, I will always vote against it. I am still happy we can have a civilized discussion. If only more players are like you.

Fair enough. That’s exactly what it boils down to. I think that it’s more important to have (a better shot at) balanced matches than it is to have the ability to group with friends and you think the reverse. I *think* more people agree with me but that’s just based on forum feedback which we all know is obviously a statistically biased source of information. 

[black_pyros]

19 minutes ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

Fair enough. That’s exactly what it boils down to. I think that it’s more important to have (a better shot at) balanced matches than it is to have the ability to group with friends and you think the reverse. I *think* more people agree with me but that’s just based on forum feedback which we all know is obviously a statistically biased source of information. 

Yup, except that in your setting I am simply incapable to play my way anymore because with separate queues, group queue will die.

While in my setting, you still have a choice between playing solo if balance is the ultimate value to you, or group up and have some more pleasant experience at the expense of balance. Terrible choices, I agree but still, more choices.

Edited March 17, 2023 by black_pyros

[RikuvonDrake]

11 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

Separate the queues to make it happen.

BioWare have addressed this before, such a change would result in longer warzone queues for premades and for soloplayers to the degree they found to be too long, as such they introduced a priority system to match premades vs premades and solo vs solo but obviously following the industry standard with expanding search parameters to avoid long queue times

welcome to reality

Edited March 17, 2023 by RikuvonDrake

[AwesomeTacoCat]

23 minutes ago, RikuvonDrake said:

BioWare have addressed this before, such a change would result in longer warzone queues for premades and for soloplayers to the degree they found to be too long, as such they introduced a priority system to match premades vs premades and solo vs solo but obviously following the industry standard with expanding search parameters to avoid long queue times

welcome to reality

We need some second order thinking here. If they separate the queues, in all likelihood, group queues would be unsustainably long so that the vast majority of players would switch to solo queue at which point we’d have the same queue times for a solo only queue. Unless you think all the players currently grouping up would quit pvping. But given that it’s mostly more serious pvpers currently grouping, that seems highly unlikely to me. Next flawed argument please. 

Edited March 17, 2023 by AwesomeTacoCat

[RikuvonDrake]

8 minutes ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

We need some second order thinking here. If they separate the queues, in all likelihood, group queues would be unsustainably long so that the vast majority of players would switch to solo queue at which point we’d have the same queue times for a solo only queue. Unless you think all the players currently grouping up would quit pvping. But given that it’s mostly more serious pvpers currently grouping, that seems highly unlikely to me. Next flawed argument please. 

in a mmo ppl who like to play with their friends group up, not restricted to warzones, its common for any type of content, flashpoints, operations, open world stuff, world bosses and sometimes story. not seeing the point in trying to limit players ability to play the game together with their friends

obviously, you can have the opinion that players shouldn't be allowed to group up with friends in this MMO, I just don't think devs will agree that this is a "flaw"

[DeannaVoyager]

3 hours ago, black_pyros said:

If you already have friends and are fully capable of making them, why not spread this social skill to incorporate PvP as well? Maybe because of this:

Calling other players muppets and saying they are bothering you is the exact opposite of being social. This is actually being antisocial. No wonder you have problem teaming up in PvP if you treat others like this.

Then do so? If you already are fully capable, you don't need solo-only queue to help you.

You seem to lack the basic understanding what social skills are. It doesn't mean being needy of other people around you 24/7, like you seem to think. That's would be a sign of personality disorder. 

 

I choose my company carefully because I actually have social skills and I like the people I play with.  That would be the opposite of clinging on to whoever happens to be around, just to avoid being alone. But hey, whatever floats your boat!

 

 

[DeannaVoyager]

1 hour ago, RikuvonDrake said:

in a mmo ppl who like to play with their friends group up, not restricted to warzones, its common for any type of content, flashpoints, operations, open world stuff, world bosses and sometimes story. not seeing the point in trying to limit players ability to play the game together with their friends

obviously, you can have the opinion that players shouldn't be allowed to group up with friends in this MMO, I just don't think devs will agree that this is a "flaw"

No-one is saying friends shouldn't be allowed to group up and play together. We are saying the queues should be separate. 

 

If the premade queue times will get longer, then the people who want to play premades need to decide if they want to wait longer, or if they want to start going solo instead. They can still chat in voice even if they end up against each other. Separating the queues would make solo matches pop faster because more people would be participating in pvp.

 

Forcing solo players to get farmed is not even real pvp, it's feeding free matches for the groups and that's not a design flaw, it's design disaster. 

 

 

[DWho]

Couldn't they just offer something like they do with Group Finder where you can select the "playstyle" you want. Offer check boxes for "everything", "just solos", and "just premades". Maybe even offer slightly better rewards for the less popular "playstyles" to help fill out their queues.

[Exly]

2 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

in a mmo ppl who like to play with their friends group up, not restricted to warzones, its common for any type of content, flashpoints, operations, open world stuff, world bosses and sometimes story. not seeing the point in trying to limit players ability to play the game together with their friends

obviously, you can have the opinion that players shouldn't be allowed to group up with friends in this MMO, I just don't think devs will agree that this is a "flaw"

Forming teams to go up against npcs is different than forming premade groups to compete against random groups of players.  

Of course, people should be allowed to form premade groups for pvp, but they should also compete against other premade groups and not against pug groups.

[RikuvonDrake]

2 hours ago, DeannaVoyager said:

No-one is saying friends shouldn't be allowed to group up and play together. We are saying the queues should be separate. 

If the premade queue times will get longer, then the people who want to play premades need to decide if they want to wait longer, or if they want to start going solo instead. They can still chat in voice even if they end up against each other. Separating the queues would make solo matches pop faster because more people would be participating in pvp.

Forcing solo players to get farmed is not even real pvp, it's feeding free matches for the groups and that's not a design flaw, it's design disaster. 

again, bioware addressed this, separate queues would make wait times for warzones too long for their liking, for both premades and solo players, as such they have one queue with expanding search parameters to make it more likely premades face another premade while at the same time ensuring queue times are reasonable for everyone

1 hour ago, Exly said:

Forming teams to go up against npcs is different than forming premade groups to compete against random groups of players.  

Of course, people should be allowed to form premade groups for pvp, but they should also compete against other premade groups and not against pug groups.

bioware reasons and this makes sense IMO, that it is weird to allow grouping up for certain types of group content and not others, so obviously they enable players to group up with their friends for both pvp and pve, welcome to gaming, this is how it has always worked, you are encouraged to play with your friends, bioware wont change that industry standard

the game tries to match a premade vs a premade but like any any game, the search parameters for which players are put into the same warzone is expanding the longer you are in queue, if 8 solo players are in queue at the same time the game will put those 8 into a match, but it there aren't the game will wait a while and then add in a premade to make a warzone happen to avoid long queue times

bioware already doubled down on this system but allowed the queue time to be longer before the search parameters got extended to allow premades in the mix. Those are reasonably "easy" adjustments to balance queue times

Edited March 17, 2023 by RikuvonDrake

[Exly]

5 hours ago, RikuvonDrake said:

again, bioware addressed this, separate queues would make wait times for warzones too long for their liking, for both premades and solo players, as such they have one queue with expanding search parameters to make it more likely premades face another premade while at the same time ensuring queue times are reasonable for everyone

bioware reasons and this makes sense IMO, that it is weird to allow grouping up for certain types of group content and not others, so obviously they enable players to group up with their friends for both pvp and pve, welcome to gaming, this is how it has always worked, you are encouraged to play with your friends, bioware wont change that industry standard

the game tries to match a premade vs a premade but like any any game, the search parameters for which players are put into the same warzone is expanding the longer you are in queue, if 8 solo players are in queue at the same time the game will put those 8 into a match, but it there aren't the game will wait a while and then add in a premade to make a warzone happen to avoid long queue times

bioware already doubled down on this system but allowed the queue time to be longer before the search parameters got extended to allow premades in the mix. Those are reasonably "easy" adjustments to balance queue times

The problem is that BioWare has not adequately addressed this issue.  Their reasoning doesn't make sense, and they too often match premade teams with pug teams.

BioWare says that they are doing things to "try" to match premade teams with other premade teams, but they are failing, and I have no reason to believe that things will change just because they say they will try to do a better job.