State of PvP - Things that should / could change for the better.

[Beyrahl]

There are a lot of issues that not everyone inside the PvP scene or outside of the PvP scene is privy to.
So I want to lay out the most important issues and while I do that explain why. If you're interested in getting into PvP or are a PvPer having a rough time there will be info here that's important or reassuring. 

First, starting with.

Point of Failures

• No bolster for augments. Purple aug 14x 144 Endurance, 144 Power, 108 secondary = 2,016 Endurance, 2,016 Power, and 1,512 secondary.  5,544 total stats, gold augments are even more than this with 6,608 total stats. This immediately puts anyone that's not already geared at a large disadvantage. Augments are also extremely expensive for fresh players - not being augmented is a big deal.
• The gearing system is still needlessly complicated, no matter how it's explained the average new player does get confused. This often leads to unoptimized stats as a lot of people don't want to bother with a system they don't understand. Hence, the augments issue is amplified. 
• Secondary stat pools are low, meaning it's very easy to do very little to no damage with unoptimized stats it's more important than ever to at least attempt to have a reasonable critical rate. Surprise this further amplifies the importance of the previous point of failures.
• Dead talents - "Play your way" There are dead talents on every single spec ingame currently and some rather unforgiving selections, even more so on some of the weaker specs at the moment. It's very easy to forego something as important as trauma regulators as an inexperienced PvPer making you die at least 2x more than you probably would with them. This further makes the previous issues more of an issue too, they all compound together. 
• Class buffs - While some may think it's not as important it definitely is and it's a compounding factor, who would have guessed? Class buffs add raw power to your character, 5% Endurance, 5% critical, 10% elemental DR, and so on, those being the more important ones but don't get me wrong every buff is important and they all stack together with previous issues. A lot of new players won't have every buff available and even after the last time they "fixed" the issue, it's still a large issue. Even if you have all story done there are times you may be missing one, without a way to reapply them it's another stacking disadvantage. 

That's it for now, even if there are more these are the most important and need to change ASAP or at least be educated upon to improve everyone's experience for PvP.

 

Now to go into issues that are generally ruining the experiences for most and causing the decline of PvP to accelerate. 

Obvious problems

• Matchmaking, while no matchmaker will be perfect, having no mercy rule for the unbalanced & unfair matches to end early is quite the tragedy. We have a mechanic that'll end games early if too many leave, but instead, players get backfilled and it never goes into effect. I don't propose a change, though it would be nice to distribute matches better. A simple way to do so is to stop premades from declining matches so less premade versus pugs is a thing. 
• Lack of tutorials and a general lack of direction in some maps. OPG is a prime example, most roam the map aimlessly and only want to fight the king of the hill style - which this map could be incredible for if the map wasn't so big and random. While other times you may play objectively and never have to move / fight anyone for the whole entire game. It's not a healthy design and gives players false expectations as to what PvP is like.  
• Class balance - something that's barely touched. A lot of people consider guides to be outdated 3-6months+ after they come out, however, in SWTOR most guides that are even a year old or older sometimes still remain somewhat relevant. The game receives very few changes combat-wise that impact PvP or shake up the PvP meta since 6.0 was released. I personally would love to see a mix-up, somethings going to be OP it's an MMO, but at least put more things on an even playing field or mix it up. 
• Lack of a competitive mode.

I have tried my best to keep it short for the sake of being coherent and further press the acknowledgment of these issues. Also, to hopefully educate anyone who is unaware of how much of a disadvantage they might be as a new player trying to get into PvP or someone who hasn't done much with their gear yet. Along with reassuring others who pretty much have the same issues of bad matchmaking, confused teammates, and generally how stale the meta is due to the lack of any sort of meaningful change to shake it up since the launch of 7.0 and arguably longer depending on what mode. 

Anyway, hopefully, we can be heard.

[septru]

12 hours ago, Beyrahl said:

• Lack of a competitive mode.

I obviously agree with everything you wrote. But the fact that this point is not at the top of the list is a HUGE problem. 

 

If you want to talk about problems that people might not understand its that literally everything on your list is either a direct or indirect result of the lack of competition. 

• Lack of tutorials and other guides? Well duh, everyone qualified to make guides including the old PvP content creators quit when BioWare removed ranked.
• Matchmaking? Exacerbated by the vast skill gap between RPers and the few remaining longtime PvPers. Everyone else, including average PvPers quit when there was no challenge to work towards. 
• Gearing? Superseded by the fact that literally 90% of players don't know how to press buttons. We can't even begin to talk about gear gaps or other gear issues when the skill gap is so big. 
• One issue you didn't mention: deathmatchers and people who ignore objectives. There is 0 reasons to do objs in a participation based grindable reward system. 
   

At this point I'm just repeating myself. But as I said at the beginning of 7.2, the lack of a competitive PvP mode has an effect on EVERYONE. Not just the ranked players that lost their game mode and have since mostly quit the game; but the RPers that are having a terrible experience getting clobbered by the basically insurmountable learning curve, the everyday solo player that wants to play against other solo players but can't because there is literally no other premade in que, the average PvPer that wanted to improve but has no incentive now, and the longtime die-hard PvPer that comes for a week after a 3 month break to realize how utterly dog water garbage this game mode has become. 

 

You can't begin to address any of the other issues on the list, before you address the lack of a competitive game mode. 

Edited August 11, 2023 by septru

[Beyrahl]

Competitive mode or not we can all agree that the main points brought up hurt casual players far more. I didn't make this post come in hot and heavy about something like ranked. 
I have always enjoyed 8v8 far more than I have arena and T/H was the exception to that. Throwing in another competitive mode doesn't just fix things either, so I feel we're beyond that point for now, they need to do something big to fix the competitive aspects. 

Now to the point, this is mainly aimed at very large problems for the vast majority of players who dip their toes into PvP occasionally. They usually don't make it a habit and some go through the experience of being told it's great for gearing, while with a certain few exceptions it can be, it's mostly going to be a miserable experience due to what I mentioned. 

35 minutes ago, septru said:

Gearing? Superseded by the fact that literally 90% of players don't know how to press buttons. We can't even begin to talk about gear gaps or other gear issues when the skill gap is so big. 

All of them compound and it does in fact matter, it's dishonest to say they don't know how to press buttons, they simply could be inexperienced and not know what to do. When you die so fast or are there only for rewards you don't get an incentive to learn anything, or really even bother to try. Also, with some of the maps being directionless, there are a lot of matches people may go without a fight and think that's normal. Then be shellshocked when they get into a real game where all 16 players are interacting. While not having a competitive mode does impact everyone, it doesn't change the fact most casuals have and had no desire to play ranked. We can't create more hard-core PvPers if everyone is being driven away immediately as they step in, that's what this post is about and how big of a problem these compounding factors are preventing even creating casual PvPers. 

With no one new coming in and old going out... 
It's a shame. Really. 

[septru]

I didn't really understand what you were trying to say because your post was a bit all over the place. But to respond to one thing you mentioned: 

9 hours ago, Beyrahl said:

I didn't make this post come in hot and heavy about something like ranked... Most casuals have and had no desire to play ranked.

I have never said they need to bring back ranked. However, the removal of ranked PvP has resulted in an overall void of competitive PvP which (as I made clear in my OP) effects EVERYONE, casuals and veterans. Although I would support bringing back ranked, I think any basic form of a competitive PvP mode would go a long way. 

[_Miriya_]

Most of these issues were here when ranked arenas were still on.
So, yea, not the "main" problem. Just another issue that doesn't help... as much as you, personally, miss it, is not the main issue and never was.

Very nicely redacted op, I hope the new team can read this and give it a thought.

Edited August 11, 2023 by _Miriya_

[Prapcaster]

14 hours ago, Beyrahl said:

it's dishonest to say they don't know how to press buttons, they simply could be inexperienced and not know what to do. 
 

I disagree with that. Around launch I pvp'd all the time and was just a free kill because I straight up didn't understand the game and would press buttons randomly. There really weren't guides at this point so the information wasn't there. It took several months of a pvp friend to straight up tell me ability by ability to use until I understood the game. But now there's guides overflowing on the internet and people still choose to ignore rotations and whatnot. There's zero excuse to be terrible as people are in pvp right now. It's not ignorance from them it's pride and negligence that prevents a lot of bad players from improving. This obj>damage mentality is certainly adding to people refusing to learn.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Prapcaster

[Beyrahl]

57 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

I disagree with that. Around launch I pvp'd all the time and was just a free kill because I straight up didn't understand the game and would press buttons randomly. There really weren't guides at this point so the information wasn't there. It took several months of a pvp friend to straight up tell me ability by ability to use until I understood the game. But now there's guides overflowing on the internet and people still choose to ignore rotations and whatnot. There's zero excuse to be terrible as people are in pvp right now. It's not ignorance from them it's pride and negligence that prevents a lot of bad players from improving. This obj>damage mentality is certainly adding to people refusing to learn.

You still knew how to press buttons you just didn't understand what you were pressing. That is what I am saying, sure there's a lot more information nowadays but a lot of people tend to think even a few months old guide is out of date and don't even bother. As for Obj>damage, it's more about rewards and false expectations of what PvP actually is due to some maps being the way they are and how players decide to play them. 
The average person coming in isn't going to give it more than a few attempts before just giving up altogether or just dealing with it and putting no effort in for rewards/conquest, whatever made them initially want to queue. Some may stick through it but, the state of 7.0's PvP has been probably the worst ever. From a learning perspective, most don't get a chance to really even learn anything because they've already messed up multiple ways before they ever see if they "like" it's PvP enough to look up said guide. 

 

 

6 hours ago, septru said:

I have never said they need to bring back ranked. However, the removal of ranked PvP has resulted in an overall void of competitive PvP which (as I made clear in my OP) effects EVERYONE, casuals and veterans. Although I would support bringing back ranked, I think any basic form of a competitive PvP mode would go a long way. 

I was trying to make it clear it wasn't about this either, we cannot create more PvPers if everyone including old players are having terrible experiences with it. We're dwindling even the CASUAL population of Swtor's PvP and it's not because there's no ranked - while that heavily affects hardcore PvPers that's not the population this post is about. I was pointing out things that were specifically harming those players coming in as it is the vast majority of players' issue when coming into PvP. 
Generally, I think a seasonal ranked mode would suit SWTOR great, run it for a few months hype around it will remain at its peak. There'd be growth at the start of the season and no awkward decline in the middle until a year down the road when it's about to be over. It also generally gives them more time to think about rewards and could easily tie into their current systems of Galactic seasons and PvP seasons. 

 

 

2 hours ago, _Miriya_ said:

Most of these issues were here when ranked arenas were still on.
So, yea, not the "main" problem. Just another issue that doesn't help... as much as you, personally, miss it, is not the main issue and never was.

It's something that's been a relatively big problem since the 7.0 launch. Nowadays it's worsened further as the decline continues, as for missing ranked, I don't. 
The casual PvP community is all that's left and that's what the post is about, to help those players, these are the things negatively impacting them the most and preventing them from really getting into it. Nearly every new player I have seen or returning players has this impacting them and it's very easy to see it in almost every warzone. 

It's not like I suddenly realized this, we all knew it, we just didn't see them as often when the game had more players. We've seen it in previous expansions of course and in ranked before but those aren't the same and the reason is that they at least had buffs and bolster. If you go in woefully unprepared nowadays there's next to no hope of you doing damage without quite a lot of experience. Your survival will be even worse to boot, making it further impossible to get accustomed to or possibly learn much of anything about combat. 
Then when your team is mostly these kinds of players it's no shock as to why they may avoid combat, this then compounds with all the issues like before making that 1vX situation as an undergeared and unexperienced player a glorified respawn simulator with no hope.

Those who have put in the effort to learn a bit and gear. Still are affected by this because of what I just mentioned, no matter what they may have learned or gear they've obtained it doesn't help if the majority of your team is in this position and will not contribute. It's a lose-lose situation that has been getting worse over the year+ of 7.0. While ranked definitely impacted it, it isn't purely stemming from ranked but rather the way the game is currently designed with the obvious highlighted problems I mentioned. 

And yes, I do hope they will take something from the community and help us.
There's really no reason for gearing to be as complicated and augments as pricey as they are, simply make a new tier with ease of access or simply make PvP-only augments if need be. Add a stat addition for those missing their augment stats to have a mastery augment in every slot. Give us the ability to buff ourselves back so buffs can be spread across the whole team once again, ultimately fixing the issue of ever missing one and more incentive to go and get them all. As for talents, it's more work but even so much as reordering them would go a long way for a lot of specs. Pruning flat-out removed a lot of utility from the game and makes its pvp more dumbed down than ever, either full send with that idea or give us options back.

Anyway, thank you guys for taking the time to read this and comment. I assure you most of us are all in the same boat and don't want to see the game further implode on itself even if the majority of us don't agree with the choices they're making. I made posts then when they did what they did, this one is no different, yet another plea that I ask for to at least do the bare min of saving casual pvp.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Beyrahl

[krackcommando]

good luck finding a balance between node clickers who try to avoid battle and players who avoid clicking or even playing to win.

I think that ship sailed long ago (5.x).

the streamlined gearing and balance issues should help everyone's QoL.

pruning was a disaster. not surprised, really. but I would prefer that BS take the "full send" approach rather than back away from it. take more control over it. don't even give players a choice. as you said in the State of PVP video, bake certain things into the builds instead of making them choices in a shared ability tree. Other things just remove. personally, I'd like to see most hard stuns removed rather than choices as it's an impossible choice for some but not others.

I do think the game is better served with trinity comps, and all the DCDs that every class received over the years made players too self-sufficient. but as you've said many times, w/o those dcds, it's apparent how out of wack healing vs. dmg is. also how important guard is. (that last part is a good thing imo)

trying to hit anything in this game w/o proper gear and stat ratios is futile (for me in merc). huge difference when I got gear. but I think the survival issue is overblown (in the above video). if you know how to manage your CDs, you can still live long enough in 306s. you just can't kill anything. 😄

[Beyrahl]

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

trying to hit anything in this game w/o proper gear and stat ratios is futile (for me in merc). huge difference when I got gear. but I think the survival issue is overblown (in the above video). if you know how to manage your CDs, you can still live long enough in 306s. you just can't kill anything. 😄

As a select few classes, you can. But there's more that can't, sometimes it will be up to talent choices adding in here and there. With most players not doing damage that they could do (which this fast TTK meta would be more apparent) this game would be even less fun. This is part of why players have almost no willpower left to face premades because it's not that they're so incredibly good, but rather it's too overwhelming for almost any skill-tier player without any help, even more so if they're not playing a meta spec.

To put it into basics for others as I know that you personally already know this.

The average survival of players is around 8-12k DTPS (Damage taken per second, this is assuming you stay in combat for nearly the entire game averaging 5m+ Dmg taken in 10min or longer games) in order to hit that damage mark it only takes one decent player or two okay players. This is obviously not the statistic you see in your character sheet but rather a summarization of the average damage taken per game and how high it goes before it's constantly deadly. Even with defensives it's very easy to brute force through them, in previous expansions defensives meant something, maybe not a ton in 6.0 but in 5.0 they definitely were more impactful. Damage to HPS and damage to HP pool or defensive power felt right up until 258 gear where auto criticals and scaling with alacrity CC meta hit its peak.
When support roles like tanks and healers are added into the game this DTPS goes up quite a lot, but typically it only adds around 10,000 more, the record-high DTPS I have ever taken is 24k without actually ever dying. This was as Pyrotech with guard and heals, the enemy team was similar too so definitely not the average player scenario. 

The point of all of this is to show you how easily it is to actually meet damage requirements to kill anyone, even more so to keep them on constant respawn. Granted keeping that targeted damage on specific players is much harder with pugs but something as simple as even a 2man group can most likely meet the requirements to constantly kill a target over and over. Now that most players don't survive that much damage let alone use their defenses even less damage can keep them dead over and over.
I know it's a weird concept to think about for some but this is something we haven't seen since maybe 1.0, we can hit the "damage wall" as I call it where you can keep the entire enemy team on respawn for the whole game. No one can do more damage because there's no one alive to continue hitting. It's not a stalemate but rather utter domination. It used to be incredibly hard to do if ever possible, nowadays it's not only easy to do so, you can make a group with more than 4 DPS to ensure you can do it. It's not a fun time in those situations, for example, the most common layout that's super dominant is 3-4 DPS with a healer or with also a tank. 4 DPS is the same amount a proper 8v8 double premade would have but in a simple 5-6 man group, which is a lot easier and common to do. 

I think we're just short of what our TTK should be, I don't mind it but I know for a lot of players it's too much, though most of those factors can be chopped up to what I mentioned in my original post. I do think some things need tuning or we just need new / higher HP augments that are easy to get to help with these issues. Just a bit more health would put us in a really good spot I feel in survival. 

To think I took for granted this era.

Edited August 11, 2023 by Beyrahl

[krackcommando]

2 hours ago, Beyrahl said:

To think I took for granted this era.

OMG! where did that silly merc's teammates go??? I hate stealth on my team. I hate playing against them.

(ignore the early reflect. move along. move along. 😒)

[SentinalMasterWW]

On 8/11/2023 at 3:54 PM, Beyrahl said:

I think we're just short of what our TTK should be, I don't mind it but I know for a lot of players it's too much, though most of those factors can be chopped up to what I mentioned in my original post.

Just for Clarification I'm assuming you mean an increase to TTK? 

If so I agree, 

I think TTK is too fast, players don't have time to properly pop defensives. 

I'm not saying Go back to 6.0 TTK, but I think there should a middle ground the Dev's need to adjust to.

[SentinalMasterWW]

On 8/11/2023 at 3:54 PM, Beyrahl said:

The point of all of this is to show you how easily it is to actually meet damage requirements to kill anyone, even more so to keep them on constant respawn. Granted keeping that targeted damage on specific players is much harder with pugs but something as simple as even a 2man group can most likely meet the requirements to constantly kill a target over and over. Now that most players don't survive that much damage let alone use their defenses even less damage can keep them dead over and over.
I know it's a weird concept to think about for some but this is something we haven't seen since maybe 1.0, we can hit the "damage wall" as I call it where you can keep the entire enemy team on respawn for the whole game. No one can do more damage because there's no one alive to continue hitting. It's not a stalemate but rather utter domination. It used to be incredibly hard to do if ever possible, nowadays it's not only easy to do so, you can make a group with more than 4 DPS to ensure you can do it. It's not a fun time in those situations, for example, the most common layout that's super dominant is 3-4 DPS with a healer or with also a tank. 4 DPS is the same amount a proper 8v8 double premade would have but in a simple 5-6 man group, which is a lot easier and common to do. 

I agree heavily on this too, I was playing OG Huttball and was farmed by a premade of PT's, and Pocket healers camping in our spawn. In 6.0 This would have been impossible, but there was like 2-3 AP PTs farming and a sorc playing healer, and they were able to farm us as we left. 

How is this fun Gameplay, and why do the Dev's ignore this? 

If I was just starting out, I'd Quit PVP and be like "yeah that was a dumpster fire" and go do something else besides PVP. 

I don't think the Dev's can continue this Radio Silence, They need to Acknowledge that PVP has Issues that is driving both new and old players away. 

It doesn't matter how shiny the new PVP Roman/Japanese armor is, If no one wants to deal with the BS in PVP, their just going to either not Q or stop playing the game entirely and move onto another MMO with better PVP.

 

[krackcommando]

3 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

It doesn't matter how shiny the new PVP Roman/Japanese armor is, If no one wants to deal with the BS in PVP, their just going to either not Q or stop playing the game entirely and move onto another MMO with better PVP.

😄

that's false. the space barbies will spin any hamster wheel for their grind bling.

[Bullyabass]

Solo only queue should be top of the list

When regular players form up meme premades and run around in a group killing everyone in a single stun duration then its boring for experienced players, whatever side they're on, and gives new players no chance to learn so they stop qing or roll a sin and afk "in the endzone" or "guarding the node". Then the premades go "pops are slow and matches are boring" and drift off to other games leaving the queues dead and pvp with its reputation for being toxic.

Solo only qs will give new players a chance to learn and more fun matches for experienced players who don't enjoy easy kills and number parsing.

[JowyyKazza]

It doesn’t help that the pvp seasons offer little to keep people playing. Sure you can buy old ranked items, which is fine, getting old crystals or old weapons, but as mentioned already, most of the track offers items that few will want. I mean a random silver rarity weapon cm box is not really worth anything.

I used to enjoy grouping with friends for pvp, but most of them are gone, so I meet new people, continue the cycle, until they’re also gone. I’ve tried to help returning players by giving them purple augments, but now I’m penalized for doing that. I would like a healthy pvp community, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen long term. A lot needs to be done to improve pvp overall, lowering the groups allowed from 8 people back to 4 would be a start. If they asked the players, they might actually get good ideas. 

[krackcommando]

6 hours ago, Bullyabass said:

so they stop qing or roll a sin and afk "in the endzone" or "guarding the node".

careful. gotta distinguish between stealth that think they're contributing to the team by stealthing in the EZ while the other team controls spawn and the ball's on the other side of the map from the guys stealthed in the corner of the EZ to AFK. don't wanna throw incompetents under the bus of those "forced to pvp" because they're *cough* entitled to the seasonal rewards (or the pvp rewards formerly gated behind performance thresholds).

2 hours ago, JowyyKazza said:

It doesn’t help that the pvp seasons offer little to keep people playing. Sure you can buy old ranked items, which is fine, getting old crystals or old weapons, but as mentioned already, most of the track offers items that few will want. I mean a random silver rarity weapon cm box is not really worth anything.

I think you underestimate how attractive the silly seasonal rewards are to the hoards who hop on the hamster wheel for (e.g.) samurai skinned BH gear. so they'll play half the season and buy the skips for the rest. and then complain on the forum that pvp is too hard b/c they cannot reach the thresholds for a handful of (volume-based) achievements related to kill and weeklies completed. god bless the brain trust behind 7.2. 😄

Edited August 15, 2023 by krackcommando

[Beyrahl]

 

16 hours ago, Bullyabass said:

Solo only queue should be top of the list

I can't see anyone willingly wanting to play healer in a solo queue-only mode, I feel it would become stagnate and players who are good both before and after the change will still dominate. While I know personally I would have fun with it and quite a lot of others would too, it doesn't hide the fact that matchmaking doesn't do its job, along with there being no mercy rule for unbalanced and or clearly unfair matches. For example, solo queuing as a healer or tank and simply leaving the queue, that match will now be 'unfair' but still could be balanced. At what point do we change things until it's too silly? A mercy rule bandaids a lot of these issues and just removing the ability to decline queues as a group would go a long way. Most of the time premades aren't just going against no other group unless people are declining. There are a lot of casual/pver/rping/conquest groups that go under the radar because they're not seen as often in PvP, but they're still there and enable matches like this. 

I'm not for either side so please don't pitchfork me, I am trying to show that things can be done differently as it more than seems they're not budging on the whole 'group' thing and never have. Lowering the group size be a huge step forward.
There are a lot of simple things they can do and doing any of them would go a long way.

[Prapcaster]

21 minutes ago, Beyrahl said:

 

I can't see anyone willingly wanting to play healer in a solo queue-only mode, I feel it would become stagnate and players who are good both before and after the change will still dominate. While I know personally I would have fun with it and quite a lot of others would too, it doesn't hide the fact that matchmaking doesn't do its job, along with there being no mercy rule for unbalanced and or clearly unfair matches. For example, solo queuing as a healer or tank and simply leaving the queue, that match will now be 'unfair' but still could be balanced. At what point do we change things until it's too silly? A mercy rule bandaids a lot of these issues and just removing the ability to decline queues as a group would go a long way. Most of the time premades aren't just going against no other group unless people are declining. There are a lot of casual/pver/rping/conquest groups that go under the radar because they're not seen as often in PvP, but they're still there and enable matches like this. 

I'm not for either side so please don't pitchfork me, I am trying to show that things can be done differently as it more than seems they're not budging on the whole 'group' thing and never have. Lowering the group size be a huge step forward.
There are a lot of simple things they can do and doing any of them would go a long way.

I love solo queueing as a healer. The problem is the odds of getting on a team full of rp/conquest players instead of a team iwth people that know how to pvp is super high. That's not even pvp at that point it's just watching people get deleted in 2 gcd's. There's zero fun in those matches and it just makes you spec into madness to tryhard pvp. I don't understand the logic with allowing super queues for this long aside from a last ditch attempt to keep the last few pvpers here after the ranked removal fiasco.

 

Edit: Pressed send to early lmao. I also agree that having a dedicated solo queue for at least 8v8 would be a queue killer. There's times when you're waiting 7+ minutes solo queueing when you're getting against premades so imagine how terrible it would be when it's filtering them out.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Prapcaster

[TrixxieTriss]

Until the dev team work out how to seperate premades from solo players, the game will continue to bleed solo pvpers.

Edited August 16, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Lord_Malganus]

14 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Until the dev team work out how to seperate premades from solo players, the game will continue to bleed solo pvpers.

Agreed. This has been stated no less than 1000 times, yet there has never been a true solo queque.

[WHstwroATo]

16 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Until the dev team work out how to seperate premades from solo players, the game will continue to bleed solo pvpers.

Vast majority of the time solo queue and this will be my last pvp season which will participate in (as many have said already the general balance in pretty much everything in pvp is just awful and more or less non-existant). After this season ends won't look at pvp until something comes that changes something (preferably to a better direction) other than what cosmetic is being offered in the track.

2 hours ago, Lord_Malganus said:

Agreed. This has been stated no less than 1000 times, yet there has never been a true solo queque.

And there probably never will be by the time that counter reaches a million.

[SentinalMasterWW]

I think one of the many frustrations for players is that, I think TTK is too fast in PVP currently. 

I think that is one of the main causes of frustrations, I've been playing Healer Sorc to try something new in PVP and I'm just getting Annihlated in 3 secs, combine that with the fact that sorc healer isn't the best right now and yeah. 

When players are saying their being CC'd to death, Its a combination of fast TTK and broken CC meta currently. If you watch Cease's video that is linked to this post, he touched on how CS Trees are not even amongst classes, there are some trees that have way better abilities and options than others. 

The Fast TTK also contributed a lot to the Spawn Camping that happens in games, where all it takes it like 3 Strong DPS to lock down a spawn. Huttball is pretty bad for this as they can just funnel you out of one point. 

I do agree with Cease in that we are close to what TTK should be, but right now its too fast, they need to increase it a bit to get to that Sweet spot. 

Also as I and others like Trixxie have stated, they need to address the Premade issue. The Dev's cannot sit on it and ignore it, If you look at the Steam Charts in the month of june the Game lost 2000 Players, and is still slowly declining. While not everyone plays on steam, it does give a general idea of how the population is doing. While there are many options, Seperate Q, etc, I think just limiting Premades to 2-4 Players would work. The game just does not have the Population to match premades against premades, it just doesn't. 98% of the time Premades that are Qing are going to fight solo Pugs. 

A Majority of Premades nowadays are just Ex-Ranked players looking to farm kills, They really don't try and win matches, they'd rather farm their KD because they don't care about winning. 

[TyrFoge]

The "premade issue" is a tricky one and one that cannot be "solved" with a simple solution. On one hand you cannot punish players for wanting to queue with friends in an MMO. No one can really argue that queing with friends rather than just strangers isn't more fun. It just is. However the premade issue brought up in this thread are also very real as well. I think they were certainly exacerbated by the introduction of 8 man groups (which in theory is great and eliminating them isn't the final solution some believe it is) but more importantly I think the problem lies in not locking out "improper group compositions".

8 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

limiting Premades to 2-4 Players would work.

Maybe maybe not but most certainly forcing "proper" groups for 3 and above (including analalizing for Tanks in DPS gear to subvert any "Tank requirement") would be a step in the right direction.

[krackcommando]

3 hours ago, TyrFoge said:

 analalizing for Tanks in DPS gear to subvert any "Tank requirement"

no. here's the thing with tank gear: it's useless in pvp. tank gear/components is designed with self-preservation in mind b/c the tank is the team member pulling aggro and absorbing the big hits. the flaw in BW's trinity system (which is a really really good, innovative design to pvp!) is that they never evolved tank gear to accommodate the new role they made for tanks in pvp. they've more or less fixed guard (taking it out of the hands of DPS specs), but the gear is still designed around being the target of focus fire. Tank Tunneling is a strat in certain instances (mostly certain arenas), but all in all, the gear is sub-optimal in pvp. honestly, the only benefit a pvp tank has ever really gotten from tank gear is more HP (which means you can split more dmg away with guard before having to drop it). that's cool and all, but the tertiary stats are useless. and in most use case scenarios, the extra HP doesn't outweigh the tertiary stat gains.

simply "forcing" tanks to wear tank gear is flat wrong. BS needs to address the root problem. one thought is simply to bind guard to the tank set as a 4 or 6 piece "bonus." the problem there is you'd have to grind out the gear to use guard as a tank at max level, and you wouldn't have it at all while leveling.

another thought is to perhaps rewrite the ability choices available to tanks/healers (separate them from dps choices). but that blends into another can of worms related to the uneven pruning and "fixing" specs by making something inherent to their spec instead of being shared choices with all the specs of the class.

at the end of the day, tank gear needs to change rather than forcing tanks to wear pointless gear. the gear cannot be designed for PVE. PVP tanks (when tanking) generally are not the focus of enemy fire, so piling mitigation gear on them is pretty silly. of course they'll put on dps sets. that's on BW, imo.

edit:

TL; DR: tanks can accomplish their role just fine w/o wearing tank gear. BS needs to make it worthwhile to wear tank gear. best thing I can think of it tying core tank mechanics to them in pvp instances.

Edited August 18, 2023 by krackcommando

[merovejec]

PVP is unplayable at peak times. Too many tanks and heals in groups which leads to stale mates in most warzones. People then just give up or leave. This is no fun.