PVP in SWTOR is collapsing.

[sithBracer]

12 minutes ago, merovejec said:

I am fine with pvp seasons, like you said it makes people que, but the problem is the balance in the game. Its sounds crazy but i would rather go back to the previous system of random roles in the team as now you que a premade of a tank, healer and 2 dps (mostly PT tank, merc heal and 2 opers or sins) and they are paired with a solo healer, tank and dps. Then its a loss for the nonpremade team.

So let me see if I understand this correctly. Your complaint is that the system gives you balanced matches, that being each team has a tank a healer and 2 dps on each side. You don't like this because ... idk chances are the people in the premade will be better than the pugs and you want it to be completely random where one team can have 2 tanks, a heal and a dps while the other team has 3 heals and a dps because ... reasons?

[krackcommando]

1 hour ago, sithBracer said:

Well technically anything in a game is a hamster wheel, PvP just didn't have any motivation to run through it, except for those who just wanted to run through it for fun. 

I'm sorry I don't understand what your complaint is. PvP has had a severe decline in interest for the longest time. Group ranked was completely dead. Solo ranked was on a feeding tube, and regs was dying a slow death. BW did what they thought was the best solution at the time. They pulled the plug on ranked and tried to revitalize regs. Years of mismanagement by people like ben irving brought the game to this state, they didn't really have any real options at that point.

if you take my comment in context, I was expounding on septru's criticism not my own.

as I haven't noticed a significant difference between WZs in 5.x to 7.3, I don't really care about the hamster wheel...other than to say it's not constructive. it's just a means of making the most of a carcass before the meat goes bad. and it obviously increases toxicity on all counts except for the few who enjoy pvp primarily to rub randos' noses in it. but that hasn't changed in years either. so really...a net loss for WZs on all counts afaik.

on the other hand, the creation of a separate arena queue was a major plus for me, playing on SF, because unlike WZs, the vast majority of matches were played by ppl actually trying to win; the bully grps of gold-plated 3/4m grps was rare; and the level of play was casual enough that I didn't feel butterflies every time I got a pop.

[krackcommando]

19 hours ago, sithBracer said:

Lol, they can't stealth, they can't CC, they can't fight according to this person. What are they allowed to do except stand there and die to his precious merc who has 9 lives?

gas is a real advantage to mercs and sorcs if they plan their cds well. I don't think anyone else has such powerful stuff that doesn't rely on healing. iunno. maybe an acutely spec'd warrior. I haven't looked too deeply into their ability pruning.

[merovejec]

2 hours ago, sithBracer said:

So let me see if I understand this correctly. Your complaint is that the system gives you balanced matches, that being each team has a tank a healer and 2 dps on each side. You don't like this because ... idk chances are the people in the premade will be better than the pugs and you want it to be completely random where one team can have 2 tanks, a heal and a dps while the other team has 3 heals and a dps because ... reasons?

The more random the more chances that one side will be better and will win. There are many games that have a stale mate because they are almost perfectly balanced (novare coast, no one caps a turret)  or you have the premade which rolls over the other team.

[sithBracer]

1 hour ago, merovejec said:

The more random the more chances that one side will be better and will win. There are many games that have a stale mate because they are almost perfectly balanced (novare coast, no one caps a turret)  or you have the premade which rolls over the other team.

Ok I'm really confused now. Aren't stalemate matches a good thing? That means everything is properly balanced and working the way it should be.

Also, I don't understand why it's ok for pugs to roll over pugs because of a coin flip on which teams pugs are better who which teams gets the tanks/healers, vs pugs getting rolled over by a premade because they set up a strong composition with a tank/healer/both?

If the system is balanced the way it is now and not completely random, it will at least give pugs a fighting chance-a small one, but it is still there.

[Prapcaster]

19 hours ago, sithBracer said:

 

Well, the entire game is a hamster wheel of some sort.

As for rated arenas, while I personally don't agree with their removal (I don't agree with removing content), but I understand why they did it. Not enough people were playing it to make up for the cost of keeping it going, as low as they tried to keep it. 

As for 8man queue ... I agree, no idea why they did that or why they thought it was a good idea. Even the most hard defenders of premades are in favor of keeping it to a maximum of 4 people. They already have the data from the illum event. It started dying more when they changed the limit of groups inside the PvP area. So, I guess they don't even look at numbers like they say they do.

yor realise they admitted to removing it because they didn't know how to change the coding right? They still for some strange reason haven't removed that embarassing post about it. It had nothing to do with its population and even if it did, look what's happened. The pvp community has completely disappeaered from this game and nobody but conquest guilds actively participate in pvp. It's a pointless minigame now.

[sithBracer]

12 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

yor realise they admitted to removing it because they didn't know how to change the coding right? They still for some strange reason haven't removed that embarassing post about it. It had nothing to do with its population and even if it did, look what's happened. The pvp community has completely disappeaered from this game and nobody but conquest guilds actively participate in pvp. It's a pointless minigame now.

can you link that here? I sort of want to see it.

[Samcuu]

16 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

yor realise they admitted to removing it because they didn't know how to change the coding right? They still for some strange reason haven't removed that embarassing post about it. It had nothing to do with its population and even if it did, look what's happened. The pvp community has completely disappeaered from this game and nobody but conquest guilds actively participate in pvp. It's a pointless minigame now.

Seems like an excuse from the devs to me because on the new "battle record" you can pull up on ur character, there is a drop down menu that filters ur stats based upon what combat styles you have. On my operative my win% and average dmg stats are different from when he's spec'd as power tech for example. 

[Prapcaster]

1 hour ago, Samcuu said:

Seems like an excuse from the devs to me because on the new "battle record" you can pull up on ur character, there is a drop down menu that filters ur stats based upon what combat styles you have. On my operative my win% and average dmg stats are different from when he's spec'd as power tech for example. 

This https://forums.swtor.com/topic/926287-follow-ups-on-pvp-in-72/#comment-9731390 under the "why not keep leaderboards active" bit. He straight up admits they can't figure out how to get it to work then rambles on about positive play for the rest of it. They've done everything but promote positive play the past year.  They need to just tear the band-aid off already and say they're no longer working on pvp and be done with it.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Prapcaster

[Samcuu]

17 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

This https://forums.swtor.com/topic/926287-follow-ups-on-pvp-in-72/#comment-9731390 under the "why not keep leaderboards active" bit. He straight up admits they can't figure out how to get it to work then rambles on about positive play for the rest of it. They've done everything but promote positive play the past year.  They need to just tear the band-aid off already and say they're no longer working on pvp and be done with it.

Yes I remember them saying that I always just thought it was an excuse because even tho the old leaderboard actually couldn't continue they made a new function to track all the stats anyways so lol. 

[Prapcaster]

2 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

Yes I remember them saying that I always just thought it was an excuse because even tho the old leaderboard actually couldn't continue they made a new function to track all the stats anyways so lol. 

Not being skilled enough to do it or being too lazy to do it. I can't say either of those are better or worse then the other.

[Prapcaster]

11 minutes ago, sithBracer said:

Wait this is your entire reasoning as to why they got rid of ranked? Do you actually know how to read or did you pay a blind drunk man to read it for you? 

just say you didn't read it lil bro it's fine. You're kind of throwing off 5'3" energy if I'm being real.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Prapcaster

[sithBracer]

10 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

just say you didn't read it lil bro it's fine. You're kind of throwing off 5'3" energy if I'm being real.

I read it. No idea how you took "we are removing the old leaderboards because we're not really sure what to do with combat styles, the leaderboards were making people toxic to each other, and its not worth the effort keeping them; but we are introducing this new, better way for you keep track of your win record on all your combat styles, so enjoy" and got "omg omg omg, we don't know how to code anymore, lets get rid of ranked completely, because we just don't know what to do with combat styles on the old leaderboards!!!!". 

[Prapcaster]

3 minutes ago, sithBracer said:

I read it. No idea how you took "we are removing the old leaderboards because we're not really sure what to do with combat styles, the leaderboards were making people toxic to each other, and its not worth the effort keeping them; but we are introducing this new, better way for you keep track of your win record on all your combat styles, so enjoy" and got "omg omg omg, we don't know how to code anymore, lets get rid of ranked completely, because we just don't know what to do with combat styles on the old leaderboards!!!!". 

This would have meant even just for the leaderboards to continue as is, would have taken a large rewrite to how we handled player data.

That's a direct quote. So please stop acting like a little brat that can't comprehend the laziness of the devs. Pretending to be stupid for bait is a really unaatractive quality.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Prapcaster

[Samcuu]

47 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

Not being skilled enough to do it or being too lazy to do it. I can't say either of those are better or worse then the other.

How hard would it be to take the "battle records" and create a leaderboard based upon that? 

I think the point they made about the leaderboards leading to toxic behavior and breaking the terms of service is more telling in that post... ie win trading/exploting and their inability to police it all  

Edited September 6, 2023 by Samcuu

[Prapcaster]

11 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

How hard would it be to take the "battle records" and create a leaderboard based upon that? 

I think the point they made about the leaderboards leading to toxic behavior and breaking the terms of service is more telling in that post... ie win trading/exploting and their inability to police it all  

Inititially I thought that's what they were going to do because it would be an even better system. All they did was make the hidden matchmaking elo visible which was a huge mistake. If you get around 70% or more in 8v8 the queue becomes super slow so I've seen people bomb their win rate just to get matches faster. It's like wintrading in reverse lmao.

[sithBracer]

21 minutes ago, Prapcaster said:

This would have meant even just for the leaderboards to continue as is, would have taken a large rewrite to how we handled player data.

That's a direct quote. So please stop acting like a little brat that can't comprehend the laziness of the devs. Pretending to be stupid for bait is a really unaatractive quality.

Yes. that was his response to why they are getting rid of the old leaderboards. To me it just sounds like its too much work, and not worth the effort just to keep old leaderboards up. He later goes into saying that they were used to harass people, and that they have introduced a new way for you to flex with your personal battle record.

How you took this, and thought they just don't know how to code and because of this sole reason they decided to just scrap ranked completely, is honestly beyond me.

[Prapcaster]

6 minutes ago, sithBracer said:

Yes. that was his response to why they are getting rid of the old leaderboards. To me it just sounds like its too much work, and not worth the effort just to keep old leaderboards up. He later goes into saying that they were used to harass people, and that they have introduced a new way for you to flex with your personal battle record.

How you took this, and thought they just don't know how to code and because of this sole reason they decided to just scrap ranked completely, is honestly beyond me.

Why you're so triggered over words on the internet, is honestly beyond me. Take a breath and go for a walk I swear you'll be okay.

Don't @ me again because I won't be responding to your man baby rage like everyone else does on here.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Prapcaster

[Beyrahl]

8 hours ago, Prapcaster said:

I've seen people bomb their win rate just to get matches faster. It's like wintrading in reverse lmao.

Reverse boosting is a common thing in CoD. Very real. Zero doubt it happens here either, I have seen people intentionally play badly consistently and then suddenly play at least 10x better one time. Though, literally no point I guess you can say that to those who do it on CoD, they simply care about ingame performance a bit too much so they can flex. 

[merovejec]

14 hours ago, sithBracer said:

Ok I'm really confused now. Aren't stalemate matches a good thing? That means everything is properly balanced and working the way it should be.

Also, I don't understand why it's ok for pugs to roll over pugs because of a coin flip on which teams pugs are better who which teams gets the tanks/healers, vs pugs getting rolled over by a premade because they set up a strong composition with a tank/healer/both?

If the system is balanced the way it is now and not completely random, it will at least give pugs a fighting chance-a small one, but it is still there.

How is that any good if the match doesnt progress at all?

Players are different, some are good some are bad. When its random there is a higher chance for it to be a onesided match, which is good, i mean in the end people want to progress the match (win or even just lose).

The way it is now is that premades que tank, healer combos and are matched with same but pugs. Also, good players que tank healers but are rarely matched with premades so it sucks cause the standard player is always rolled over.

[septru]

16 hours ago, Samcuu said:

How hard would it be to take the "battle records" and create a leaderboard based upon that?

This is the big question. 

 

Ranked was removed. We can argue about the real reasons, but it doesn't matter anymore. The reality is it's gone and not coming back. 

 

With all of that said, when Bioware removed ranked they made the decision to replace it with an entirely participation based reward system where all rewards can be eventually earned by grinding regardless of performance. Maybe they could have done something with the battle record, leaderboards, win rate, objectives... anything. But they didn't. And at the end of the day, PvP is devoid of any performanced based reward.

 

The issue is not about the removal of ranked PvP, it's about the shortcomings of Seasons. Seasons could have been great. It could both incentivized new players to try PvP, and motivated returning players to continue playing. At the moment it does none of that. 

[krackcommando]

1 hour ago, septru said:

The issue is not about the removal of ranked PvP, it's about the shortcomings of Seasons. Seasons could have been great. It could both incentivized new players to try PvP, and motivated returning players to continue playing. At the moment it does none of that. 

iunno. it brought me back...for a season. 😄

but doing the same thing got boring and I couldn't find the motivation to play my other toons in 7.3 (sent, jugg, sin). dunno why. game isn't hard. jugg is really easy to pick back up tbh. arenas were mostly fun for me. WZs were not and I stopped doing them when I accumulated all the gold augs I wanted. iunno. it felt stale? maybe I just played too much? whatever. the forum pvp is more interesting than in-game atm.