PTS: GSF added to PvP Season 3 track

[JackieKo]

With Season 3, we will be adding GSF to the weekly objectives for the PvP Seasons track. The team would like to know what would be a sufficient amount of medals to earn that would satisfy the weekly objective requirement. We have a couple of numbers in mind, but we wanted to throw the question to all of you and get your insight before the change goes live. 

Let us know your thoughts! 

EDIT: Adding for clarification that this will only be a weekly Subscriber objective. 

[Aakurb]

I feel like medal-based objective might be suboptimal for the quality of GSF matches if it were introduced.

I base this statement on my experience completing the Galactic seasons objective (get Capture, Defense and Damage medals). The progression is very unbalanced between Deathmatch and Domination modes. Note how in Deathmatch you can only earn one type (out of three). If you really want to make medals an objective, you might need to rethink how you balance the two game modes. (Maybe don't discriminate between the medal types? Just use the total number of medals even if it's a bit "generous"). GSF is sadly not very popular and it could use such an incentive to attract players.

Another issue to be mindful of is that medal-based objectives encourage players to ignore their teammates, instead people just focus on maximizing their medals earned even if it's detrimental for the team's winning chances. A prime example would be a Domination match where one team just controls 1 point and all team members just keep guarding it instead of trying to capture the other two points. Instead of trying to win the match they just choose to go for guaranteed Defense medals. I've been on both sides in such matches, sometimes both teams just have a "truce" and just farm Defense medals.

[Twelfthdoctor]

My personal thought just based on the Galactic Seasons objective would be somewhere between 45-60, though *that* will depend on a few factors. The types of medals that count for Galactic Seasons heavily favor Domination matches over 'get 50 kills' Deathmatch ones. If *all* medals will count for the objective, the number could be a little higher.

That said, GSF has never had many Subscriber-based restrictions, and I'm not sure incentivizing it for the Season only to subscribers is the best option. I imagine it is being done that way to make it an optional extra, though I'd personally prefer it to have its own Season (perhaps a shorter one in between the others). That, however is a much bigger ask.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Twelfthdoctor

[AMAirlines]

36 minutes ago, JackieKo said:

With Season 3, we will be adding GSF to the weekly objectives for the PvP Seasons track. The team would like to know what would be a sufficient amount of medals to earn that would satisfy the weekly objective requirement. We have a couple of numbers in mind, but we wanted to throw the question to all of you and get your insight before the change goes live. 

Let us know your thoughts! 

EDIT: Adding for clarification that this will only be a weekly Subscriber objective. 

GSF should not be a part of pvp. These are not the same playerbase, and it will reduce the amount of participation because nobody wants to do GSF. AT MOST it should be an optional thing, not a required one.

[TyrFoge]

As much as I'm pleased to hear GSF is getting some attention I think this is a mistake. Despite GSF being "PvP" it really is it's own beast that deserves it's own reward track with actual GSF specific rewards. It makes about as much sense to reward GSF participants with armor sets as it does Warzone and Arena participants with ship paint jobs. Making a separate reward track with it's own tokens to purchase GSF specific items is honestly what should be happening here... 

Edited May 8, 2023 by TyrFoge

[Skarkdahn]

9 minutes ago, AMAirlines said:

GSF should not be a part of pvp. These are not the same playerbase, and it will reduce the amount of participation because nobody wants to do GSF. AT MOST it should be an optional thing, not a required one.

This should already be optional, no? A seventh objective to complete to add to the six already available, and you can only do four?

[phalczen]

So, I usually need about two [WEEKLY]s worth of 8v8 warzones to meet the weekly pvp season objective for medals (four matches with >= 7 medals).  Arena 4v4 is a little faster, but not by much.  I need about two [WEEKLY]s worth of GSF matches to earn enough medals for the weekly galactic seasons-specific objective of 45 medals.  However, I don’t think GSF medals and ground PVP medals are comparable 1:1 and you probably should need more GSF medals than 45 that are for the “Stay on Target.”

This also represents a great time to adjust the non-contributor mechanic, consider adjustments to how bombers earn medals in TDM, and brainstorm some solutions for forms of exploitation like self destructors and AFKers.  I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have all the answers to these important questions.  But if you are going to include GSF as a formal part of pvp seasons moving forward, it seems like these issues should be discussed.

EDIT: I would also like to know if and how GSF medals will contribute to the 1000 per week seasons points, like how 2 medals in an 8v8 warzone loss gives 2 seasons points and 7+ medals in an arena win gives 24, etc.

EDIT 2: I actually think the concept of using GSF to supplement your ground pvp is a novel idea, especially if it’s limited to just one of seven weekly subscriber objectives with a cap of 4 per week.  More choices is usually good, as long as it doesn’t lead to exploitation.

Edited May 8, 2023 by phalczen

[meddani]

27 minutes ago, Skarkdahn said:

This should already be optional, no? A seventh objective to complete to add to the six already available, and you can only do four?

this. it's just another way to earn points. you can literally ignore it.

[Nee-Elder]

39 minutes ago, TyrFoge said:

As much as I'm pleased to hear GSF is getting some attention I think this is a mistake. Despite GSF being "PvP" it really is it's own beast that deserves it's own reward track with actual GSF specific rewards.

Totally agree ^  , but considering  neither @EricMusco nor anyone from BioWare has even posted in the GSF forums section  in years much less committed just ONE development cycle to it , i'm gonna take this  move as at least a positive step in the right direction.

In other words:  BioWare first includes GSF into existing Seasons , then they check the feedback & metrics & such  after that Season is over....and.....maybe....just maybe EA will give them enough funding$ to put the *STAR* back into Star Wars.

[Toraak]

1 hour ago, AMAirlines said:

GSF should not be a part of pvp. These are not the same playerbase, and it will reduce the amount of participation because nobody wants to do GSF. AT MOST it should be an optional thing, not a required one.

I disagree with this. GSF is exclusively PvP, just like Ground PvP is. There is no PvE option for GSF. It is only a different type of PvP.

[Toraak]

Personally I'd like to see 3 different GSF objectives for each Domination matches and Total Death Match similar to those listed below, if all medal types are being counted.

 

Domination:

1) play x amount of Domination matches

2) Win x amount of Domination matches

3 Gain 60 medals during Domination matches. (this higher because it is easier to get more medals in Domination matches.)

 

Total Death Match:

 

1) Play x amount of Total Death Matches

2) Win x amount of Total Death Matches

3) Acquire 30 medals during Total Death Matches

 

Doing something like this would allow players that focus on the GSF aspect of PvP the ability to have both Dom, and TDM's be a way to gain points just like ground PvP has for both Warzones, and Arena's. Unfortunately I can't log into the PTS to see what the current objectives are because the login server appears to be down for me at least.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Toraak

[kalenath]

Medals can be good or bad, depending on what they require.

That said? GSF is even more of a gear check than regular PVP. As always, you play to get better gear, but you get stomped many, MANY times until you DO get better gear. Double that for GSF. Asking someone with a starter scout to take on a fully geared, well flown gunship is silly. That leaves aside premades who use voice chats to communicate and use actual teamwork. They can be really fun to work with or really insanely frustrating to try and fight when you get random groups.

I have 2 reasonably well geared pilots, one Rep side and 1 Imp. I have no plans to play any others on GSF. I get assist and defense medals fairly often, but between my system and my internet, it simply isn't fun to try and fly around trying to get kills. I cannot play ground PVP for that exact reason. My system cannot handle it. For some reason, space fighting it can handle. Go figure.

I hope we get something for GSF progress, since that IS PVP.

Edited May 8, 2023 by kalenath

[Screaming_Ziva]

2 hours ago, Skarkdahn said:

This should already be optional, no? A seventh objective to complete to add to the six already available, and you can only do four?

 

2 hours ago, meddani said:

this. it's just another way to earn points. you can literally ignore it.

Hopefully this is true.  However, if they decide to add achievements for xxx medals earned or complete xxx weeklies that are required for the overall season achievement, that would be a very bad idea.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Screaming_Ziva

[TrixxieTriss]

If the PvP seasons plan was to get more people playing Arena & WZ PvP to boost the queue numbers, then why add GSF into the mix which will reduce Arena & WZ queue numbers?

Bioware you refuse to add a solo only queue to Arena & WZ’s because you say you’re worried about splitting the queues & increasing pop times, but this is exactly what you’re going to do by adding GSF to the PvP seasons.

Im not against GSF, I’m just suggesting you’re reasoning is backwards. Premades vs solo is a terrible experience. How about addressing that first. 

Edited May 9, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[ValeriyaBlue]

Please oh please make it a high number. Like at least 100 medals. More would be even better. Make all medals count, not just the ones that currently count for the season objectives. 

Don't make it based on matches played, and if you do, make it so that wins count for a lot more than losses. GSF has had enough trouble in recent history with people throwing matches for rewards (in particular there is a player who is known for logging into multiple accounts at once and queuing them all for GSF and then self-destructing on all of them), and I'd love to see season objectives that encourage players to actually try to win and fly well, rather than to just queue and throw for the rewards. I'm one of the top pilots in GSF, and I know for a fact that a lot of other top pilots feel the exact same way.

So my suggestion is to make ALL medals count toward a GSF season objective, that way players are awarded for assists and kills, which help progress the match. The previous (galactic) seasons objectives have either been based off of matches played - with little incentive to actually play well aside from getting 2x progress if your team wins - or been based off of only capture, defend, and damage medals. Capture and defense medals are only even available in domination matches, and to get them all that's required is to fly to a node at the start of the game and get the medal or capturing it, and then literally sitting afk under it for the defense medal. First of all, camping on a controlled objective isn't even usually a great way for good players to try to win the match, as attacking enemy nodes or moving between two controlled nodes for a more active defense is simply better, meaning that these medals only encourage newbies to go afk under a node for the entire match.

Instead of this, all medals should be counted, and there are lots of medals. There are medals for repairs, kills, assists, etc., which help your team to actually try to, y'know, win the match. Then just make the number required for the season objective be high enough that you need to actually fly in order to get it. Something like the PvP one where you have to get X number of matches with at least Y medals in each would be welcome too. 

Before someone says something to the key of "omg she's an elitist and only wants the top players to be able to get it!" or something like that, no, that's not the case. What I want is for there to be objectives that encourage people to at least TRY. There are some who queue for GSF and not only don't help their team, but ACTIVELY HINDER their team and make them lose on purpose. PS please please fix the fact that self-destructing and respawning only to self-destruct again counts as "contributing" for the purposes of allowing a player to be vote-kicked. 

Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk. 

Edited May 9, 2023 by ValeriyaBlue

[phalczen]

1 hour ago, kalenath said:

Medals can be good or bad, depending on what they require.

That said? GSF is even more of a gear check than regular PVP. As always, you play to get better gear, but you get stomped many, MANY times until you DO get better gear. Double that for GSF. Asking someone with a starter scout to take on a fully geared, well flown gunship is silly. That leaves aside premades who use voice chats to communicate and use actual teamwork. They can be really fun to work with or really insanely frustrating to try and fight when you get random groups.

I have 2 reasonably well geared pilots, one Rep side and 1 Imp. I have no plans to play any others on GSF. I get assist and defense medals fairly often, but between my system and my internet, it simply isn't fun to try and fly around trying to get kills. I cannot play ground PVP for that exact reason. My system cannot handle it. For some reason, space fighting it can handle. Go figure.

I hope we get something for GSF progress, since that IS PVP.

I dunno.  25000 tech frags to upgrade implants (if you have the achievement unlocked), billions for augments, four different types of currency to upgrade ... I'd say the upgrade path is very easy and fast compared to ground pvp.  Plus you can use fleet comms on your primary pilots to buy requisition grants which are legacy-bound, facilitating alt gearing.

[Urthal]

This is excellent news. I hope you mean to add enough objectives so GSF is a viable way to finish the season, without having to engage in ground PvP. It is also a great time to fix the bug that prevents medals from displaying on the scoreboard, and the one that made them all gold instead of bronze (1-7) / silver (8-14) / gold (15+).

The number of medals required would depend on whether you are restricting which medals count. I'd rather you didn't and all medals count. A good pilot can usually get around 7-10 medals (15+ can happen, but are definitely not the norm). An average pilot might get 5. A rookie will often get nil. How much of a time investment do you want an objective to be? If you set it to a decently large number like 100, it would take an average pilot 20 matches. Probably what I'd set as an upper limit. 60-80 if the time investment should be smaller.

[Ramalina]

So the per game amount of medals you can get is approximately 20 or so.    For most skilled players getting in the high teens is an above average game, and 8-12 is fairly normal.   Getting six medals or less is not a very good game.

 

Call it say 3 games on average to win a weekly, (ie, losing at least one game during the course of the weekly), that's 30 medals or so for an "average" weekly.    So say you do the weekly three out of the four times available per week, and that would be 90 medals.   Seems reasonable as a starting point.

 

I'd say 75 to 150 medals is manageable for a fairly casual approach to it.   Maybe up to 200 if you want to make it a fairly stiff challenge for newer players.   Making it a stiff  challenge for GSF nutcases would be unreasonable for most players, because you'd be talking over 400 medals in a week.

 

Very important to-do item before you implement this though.  FIX THE SCOREBOARD MEDALS DISPLAY AT THE END OF THE MATCH.   If new players don't have an easy way to find out how to achieve the medals in question, they will get very frustrated very fast.

[phalczen]

4 minutes ago, Urthal said:

I hope you mean to add enough objectives so GSF is a viable way to finish the season, without having to engage in ground PvP.

As an avid GSF fan and a willing participant in S1 and S2 of ground pvp seasons, I'm not really sure I agree with this particular statement.  I agree with Trixxie in the sense that I don't believe GSF should be an alternative fully viable path.  I disagree with her that it shouldn't be part of it at all, I think a supplement as a proposed seventh weekly objective is very reasonable.

1. I think adding enough objectives to make it a fully viable alternative would reduce the pool of players in ground which will adversely affect matchmaking and pop waits

2. GSF is far less, shall we say, robust, against exploitative behavior.  Admittedly, you can "self-destruct" in arenas as it were, and you will get credit for participation, but I don't know if I could stand doing that for 16 matches in a row for the weekly objective, and then another 8 times to complete a weekly, and then another 24 matches per [WEEKLY] times 11 [WEEKLY]s for the achievement.  You couldn't get any significant progress towards seasons level 25 that way ... 100 points a week wouldn't even get you to four tokens by the end of the season.  I don't know about you, but in 70 arenas this week I encountered a "self-destructor" exactly once and it only occurred during one round.  I encounter self-destructing and AFKers far more often in GSF, although its not every match or even every day.  But if you make GSF participation a specific weekly objective, then the distinct deficiencies of the non-contributor system become all the more problematic.  Tying the pvp season objective to medals ensures some level of participation in the overall match, much as ground pvp enforces that through seasons points being tied to medals.

[ValeriyaBlue]

1 minute ago, phalczen said:

As an avid GSF fan and a willing participant in S1 and S2 of ground pvp seasons, I'm not really sure I agree with this particular statement.  I agree with Trixxie in the sense that I don't believe GSF should be an alternative fully viable path.  I disagree with her that it shouldn't be part of it at all, I think a supplement as a proposed seventh weekly objective is very reasonable.

1. I think adding enough objectives to make it a fully viable alternative would reduce the pool of players in ground which will adversely affect matchmaking and pop waits

2. GSF is far less, shall we say, robust, against exploitative behavior.  Admittedly, you can "self-destruct" in arenas as it were, and you will get credit for participation, but I don't know if I could stand doing that for 16 matches in a row for the weekly objective, and then another 8 times to complete a weekly, and then another 24 matches per [WEEKLY] times 11 [WEEKLY]s for the achievement.  You couldn't get any significant progress towards seasons level 25 that way ... 100 points a week wouldn't even get you to four tokens by the end of the season.  I don't know about you, but in 70 arenas this week I encountered a "self-destructor" exactly once and it only occurred during one round.  I encounter self-destructing and AFKers far more often in GSF, although its not every match or even every day.  But if you make GSF participation a specific weekly objective, then the distinct deficiencies of the non-contributor system become all the more problematic.  Tying the pvp season objective to medals ensures some level of participation in the overall match, much as ground pvp enforces that through seasons points being tied to medals.

Your second point is why I suggested objectives that would not be so easily obtainable by self-destructors. In particular X matches with at least Y medals. No self-destructor is going to be able to get that one. I also suggested that all medals counted, to encourage people to try and get more than just the defense ones, with a high enough number of medals needed that self-destructing/afking would not be a viable way to achieve the season objective.

[AwesomeTacoCat]

5 hours ago, JackieKo said:

With Season 3, we will be adding GSF to the weekly objectives for the PvP Seasons track. The team would like to know what would be a sufficient amount of medals to earn that would satisfy the weekly objective requirement. We have a couple of numbers in mind, but we wanted to throw the question to all of you and get your insight before the change goes live. 

Let us know your thoughts! 

EDIT: Adding for clarification that this will only be a weekly Subscriber objective. 

Are you going to be adding a completion Weekly for GSF to the Seasons title/rewards? If so, that’s complete garbage. There are many pvpers out there who do not want to feel compelled to do gsf for pvp rewards. Please don’t heavily nudge us to do content that we don’t want to do. 

[phalczen]

28 minutes ago, AwesomeTacoCat said:

Are you going to be adding a completion Weekly for GSF to the Seasons title/rewards? If so, that’s complete garbage. There are many pvpers out there who do not want to feel compelled to do gsf for pvp rewards. Please don’t heavily nudge us to do content that we don’t want to do. 

Again, as an avid GSF fan and willing participant in S1 and S2 of pvp seasons, I completely agree with this.  If there are going to be titles and meta achievements associated with GSF then it should have its own seasonal structure.  It should not be a requirement for completing whatever the meta upper echelon achievement is called come Season 3.

[Toraak]

1 hour ago, phalczen said:

As an avid GSF fan and a willing participant in S1 and S2 of ground pvp seasons, I'm not really sure I agree with this particular statement.  I agree with Trixxie in the sense that I don't believe GSF should be an alternative fully viable path.  I disagree with her that it shouldn't be part of it at all, I think a supplement as a proposed seventh weekly objective is very reasonable.

1. I think adding enough objectives to make it a fully viable alternative would reduce the pool of players in ground which will adversely affect matchmaking and pop waits

2. GSF is far less, shall we say, robust, against exploitative behavior.  Admittedly, you can "self-destruct" in arenas as it were, and you will get credit for participation, but I don't know if I could stand doing that for 16 matches in a row for the weekly objective, and then another 8 times to complete a weekly, and then another 24 matches per [WEEKLY] times 11 [WEEKLY]s for the achievement.  You couldn't get any significant progress towards seasons level 25 that way ... 100 points a week wouldn't even get you to four tokens by the end of the season.  I don't know about you, but in 70 arenas this week I encountered a "self-destructor" exactly once and it only occurred during one round.  I encounter self-destructing and AFKers far more often in GSF, although its not every match or even every day.  But if you make GSF participation a specific weekly objective, then the distinct deficiencies of the non-contributor system become all the more problematic.  Tying the pvp season objective to medals ensures some level of participation in the overall match, much as ground pvp enforces that through seasons points being tied to medals.

I believe GSF should have a full path to getting PvP season complete, or BW is wasting it's time even adding only 1 objective in truth. For those like me, they will never touch ground PvP no matter what incentive BW may throw at us. It's hot garbage for balance (GSF has a lot more balance in it), and the complete toxicity in ground PvP has made it so it's simply not worth doing for the rewards. 

 

With that being said GSF is 100% PvP, however the community isn't anywhere near as toxic, so those of us that are all about GSF would be willing to actually do the PvP season's if we have a route through GSF.

 

Edit: Granted I wouldn't mind a different reward track, but in truth I don't think that is something GSF players should be expecting. We're lucky they're even looking at adding GSF to the PvP season's.

Edited May 9, 2023 by Toraak

[eabevella]

I'm glad GSF is in the PvP tracks.

Yeah I caved in and do PvP S2 for the decos. I hate it. Especially Arena with all those toxic losers.

At least in Warzone and GSF people are quiet so that's a good addition.

As long as the weekly objectives are well balanced, I'll actually be happy to run GSF and Warzone for PvP season.

[merovejec]

Stop forcing people into doing content they dont want!

Sure, I like GSF but why include it in the PVP Season? You need to fill some quotas to show management that players play all modes or what?