Fixing PVP 8x8

[RACATW]

7 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Possibly time by of day I’m playing too. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Pops are 5-10 mins sometimes.
So I’m guessing it’s easier to manipulate if there are only 6-10 people in the queue. 

What’s bugging me is the trinity premades or class stacked ones in lowbies 🤦‍♀️.

You get 3 matches against them and the queue dries up for 40+ mins & stops popping. And I’m not talking rubbish players either. They were ranked quality.

Had another guy multiboxing today too with 3 characters. Every time I was put on his team was an instant loss.
 

Oh yes I agree, the tank I was talking about was a gold player on a new account. Not sure about the healer but they are highly disliked by ranked players as well.

[TrixxieTriss]

6 hours ago, RACATW said:

Oh yes I agree, the tank I was talking about was a gold player on a new account. Not sure about the healer but they are highly disliked by ranked players as well.

Started PvP fresh on a new Alt at lvl 30. Got put against that ranked premade 7 times in a row. So I’m 0-7 in arena now on that Alt with 0% 🤦‍♀️. They totally destroyed the arena queue in the process & it stopped popping after that. But my WZ win rate is 76% where they weren’t queuing at first. And when they did queue we still beat them because they didn’t try to play objectives. I guess HB isn’t there thing 🤷🏻‍♀️

Edited November 15, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[kjarnage]

So we are taking here 8x8 in this thread. I have been in 8x8 in lowbies that were actually 5x5. not sure if it pops at 4x4 in a 8x8. My point here is if the 8x8 premades are limited to 3 or 4 it would result in faster pops rather than wait for more closely balanced team sizes.  Much more likely to get two teams facing against each other and flesh out with solos.

[TrixxieTriss]

15 minutes ago, kjarnage said:

So we are taking here 8x8 in this thread. I have been in 8x8 in lowbies that were actually 5x5. not sure if it pops at 4x4 in a 8x8. My point here is if the 8x8 premades are limited to 3 or 4 it would result in faster pops rather than wait for more closely balanced team sizes.  Much more likely to get two teams facing against each other and flesh out with solos.

Yes, 8v8 WZ still pop as 4x4 or 5x5 if there aren’t enough people in the queue. I’ve played plenty of matches like that.

But I do wish it would lock out backfills once they start & both sides have the same numbers of players. Because sometimes it’s actually fun having 4v4 or 5v5 in a WZ size map. It’s actually much more dynamic & presents different challenges  to getting objectives completed with less people in the match. Plus is not really fair when the back fills aren’t even & you can get teams with 4v6 or 5v8 because it randomly keeps adding people once the match has started. 

I do agree, that 5-8 man premades sizes need to be reduced back to 4 man maximum in WZ. And I would reduce them to 2 man in Arena. 

Edited November 15, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[kjarnage]

Once again I see a 24 to 1 kill ratio and the follow-up WZ is the same only this time it managed to get it down to 7-1 kill ratio. here again if the sides are not well matched change the game board. Better to always change the board each time give few close matches. 

Understandably they do not want to use win/lose as a way to determine the teams. Maybe damage/healing done minus damage taken. That might mix the teams better.

I agree above small premades. 

[BallisticKaine]

On 11/12/2023 at 9:27 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

The problem with that is the queues would get longer between pops. They won’t even reduce premade sizes. 

I would rather deal with longer que then go up against a premade that class/spec stacks. 

Take for example this picture of a premade running 3 Madness Sorcerers, 1 TK Sage, 1 Guardian, I Juggernaut, and 1 Mercenary Healer. The fact of 4 Sorcerer/Sages one team and three being the OP madness spec just shows why they need to limit Class/Spec in premade teams.

Also the Madness/Balance needs something done to it if so many people are running it knowing full well that it is a range tank that is damn near unstoppable. 

[krackcommando]

9 hours ago, BallisticKaine said:

Also the Madness/Balance needs something done to it if so many people are running it knowing full well that it is a range tank that is damn near unstoppable. 

it's pretty easy to kill a sorc/sage of any spec. granted, I'm normally on a merc with enet. it annoys me when my team allows the sorc to set his pw and then fight on the other side of the map. like...attack him there. worst case scenario, he gets his barrier off and then dies 4 gcds later. but ppl are afraid to focus sorcs. /shrug

however, class stacking is obnoxious no matter the spec.

it's particularly galling (to me) when it's a spec with a hard stun. then it's just constant stun stun stun with only the little time that white bar is active. I can live with everything else. but having lost my stun while other specs can afford to keep theirs is irritating.

Edited November 22, 2023 by krackcommando

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

it's pretty easy to kill a sorc/sage of any spec. granted, I'm normally on a merc with enet. it annoys me when my team allows the sorc to set his pw and then fight on the other side of the map. like...attack him there. worst case scenario, he gets his barrier off and then dies 4 gcds later. but ppl are afraid to focus sorcs. /shrug

however, class stacking is obnoxious no matter the spec.

it's particularly galling (to me) when it's a spec with a hard stun. then it's just constant stun stun stun with only the little time that white bar is active. I can live with everything else. but having lost my stun while other specs can afford to keep theirs is irritating.

Yeah, pretty much all of this 👆
 

I will only add, that some classes/specs can more easily deal with Sorcs. 

And that every class should have kept their hard stun. If stuns were such an issue for the devs in PvP, they should have just extended resolves white bar to last longer. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[RACATW]

59 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Yeah, pretty much all of this 👆
 

I will only add, that some classes/specs can more easily deal with Sorcs. 

And that every class should have kept their hard stun. If stuns were such an issue for the devs in PvP, they should have just extended resolves white bar to last longer. 

Over the years marauders lost force choke, force push (in the beta), and obfuscate.

It'd be great if we got new content to choose from instead of making baseline old content a "choice".

 

Story players really miss the force powers juggernaut (e.g. freezing force) and Marauder had. People love that sort of stuff because it makes you feel like a jedi or sith.

 

We need all baseline content back, and for "new abilities" in the future to instead to become a choice. Baseline abilities should be reworked back in.

[TrixxieTriss]

35 minutes ago, RACATW said:

Over the years marauders lost force choke, force push (in the beta), and obfuscate.

It'd be great if we got new content to choose from instead of making baseline old content a "choice".

 

Story players really miss the force powers juggernaut (e.g. freezing force) and Marauder had. People love that sort of stuff because it makes you feel like a jedi or sith.

 

We need all baseline content back, and for "new abilities" in the future to instead to become a choice. Baseline abilities should be reworked back in.

Agreed, they should revert the pruning back to the way it used to be. But I don’t think they will 😞

[Whykara]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Agreed, they should revert the pruning back to the way it used to be. But I don’t think they will 😞

Maybe they'll add some of the pruned abilities back in 8.0 and call it a new feature

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Whykara said:

Maybe they'll add some of the pruned abilities back in 8.0 and call it a new feature

We can always hope. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. 

[SentinalMasterWW]

3 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Agreed, they should revert the pruning back to the way it used to be. But I don’t think they will 😞

 

2 hours ago, Whykara said:

Maybe they'll add some of the pruned abilities back in 8.0 and call it a new feature

My Personal theory on why we are seeing such imbalanced classes, is because of the pruning done at 7.0's launch. If you think about it, the top tier classes in PVP are the ones that got barely prunned. Madness sorc is at the top of the chain because sorcs barely got hit, What classes are not doing really well in PVP? An Argument can be made for mercs and Commandos, but it think their honestly b- almost C, When they get focused and rooted their stuck there. You might say take jet out, well that means giving up Reflect, which comes in handy when you are getting tunneled. 

Sniper/slingers are pretty eh right now, their better than what they once were, but they still get tunneled easily and if you are 1v1ing a madness sorc who knows what they are doing you have no chance of winning, same if you get tunneled which usually happens quite a lot especially in arenas as snipers are usually the first to be targeted. 

The point is that pruning threw out balancing and is IMO the reason we see such imbalanced specs. 

The Dev's advertised, "Play how you want." 

You know what I want Devs? 

To actually have all my class abilities, that I had baseline back before 7.0 launched. The abilities to which 6 Expansions of content was balanced and catered for.

I left on the survey that was sent out that pruning was hurting the overall enjoyment of the game for a lot of players, Why do I need to give up basic mobility for a defensive? 

I honestly want to know their reasoning for pruning? Is it to try and make SWTOR a single player game (The falling playerbase speaks for that). 

Is it because there is too many? I honestly never felt that when I first played back in 5.0, didn't look up a guide or anything. 

Even, than You have multiple quickbars for a reason, which is now redundant. 

My personal head cannon is that they just did pruning because they wanted to stretch it out to level 80 now and give the illusion of content. Instead of that how cool would it have been if we got a 5th class ability instead? 

 and see that's the thing that frustrates me and other players the most, 7.0 had the potential to have a battlefront 2 moment and rejuvenate the game, but instead we got overpromised content that was lackluster, and just removal of any substance in the game, instead being replaced by Seasons which only exists as a grind system, and shilling out of the Cartel Market stuff. 

Edited November 23, 2023 by SentinalMasterWW

[krackcommando]

2 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

The point is that pruning threw out balancing and is IMO the reason we see such imbalanced specs. 

pruning was necessary. it was just (predictably?) done unevenly. it's not really even unbalanced. it's just stupidly tilted. they took away (or made impossible "choices") on abilities that have been core to specs since 1.0.

 

[SentinalMasterWW]

57 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

pruning was necessary. it was just (predictably?) done unevenly. it's not really even unbalanced. it's just stupidly tilted. they took away (or made impossible "choices") on abilities that have been core to specs since 1.0.

 

I agree and disagree, there was some justification in some areas, of dead abilities. 

But there was a lot of abilities that should be mainline that we all agree, like Force stun should be given as mainline for both sentinels and Guardians. 

If they prunned the abilities that were not often used and put them in the tree instead of the class, I'd be fine with that, say I want spike on Assassin, or I want obfuscate on my Marauder. 

Things like that I felt would have made prunning not as bad as what it is. 

[krackcommando]

13 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

I agree and disagree, there was some justification in some areas, of dead abilities. 

But there was a lot of abilities that should be mainline that we all agree, like Force stun should be given as mainline for both sentinels and Guardians. 

If they prunned the abilities that were not often used and put them in the tree instead of the class, I'd be fine with that, say I want spike on Assassin, or I want obfuscate on my Marauder. 

Things like that I felt would have made prunning not as bad as what it is. 

people don't like to hear this because everyone likes and gets used to their toys. but the fact of the matter is that too many classes/specs have (well had) too many survival/mobility/escape abilities (dcds). that needed to be curbed. it's just that the way this was done seems terribly uneven. additionally, some abilities are simply core to the class identity.

 

[Samcuu]

14 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

I agree and disagree, there was some justification in some areas, of dead abilities. 

But there was a lot of abilities that should be mainline that we all agree, like Force stun should be given as mainline for both sentinels and Guardians. 

If they prunned the abilities that were not often used and put them in the tree instead of the class, I'd be fine with that, say I want spike on Assassin, or I want obfuscate on my Marauder. 

Things like that I felt would have made prunning not as bad as what it is. 

Before pruning the biggest complaint was "stun wars" too many stuns in game. Of course it's not just about stuns it's how the resolve bar is broken as well, however they removed a lot of stuns or just made them useless due to other choices in the row that are more necessary to take. You hardly see anyone take the 8 second cc for operative or sorc anymore. 

[krackcommando]

On 11/22/2023 at 2:02 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

And that every class should have kept their hard stun. If stuns were such an issue for the devs in PvP, they should have just extended resolves white bar to last longer. 

just noticed something here. white bar is actually a great thing imo. the problem with it isn't how long it lasts. any longer would be broken in the other direction tbh. plus too many classes already have caked-in immunities (something that maybe should've been pruned?). my beef - especially in WAR ZONES - is that half the time you don't get to do anything with white bar b/c it drains away in spawn or while you run back to a relevant section of the map. that's unacceptable, imo. white bar resets behind the screen, but your 2m(?) breaker is still on cd. it's just total arse.

nobody seems to play the games to win anyway. they just treat it like team death match with infinite respawns. you might as well reset everything upon death (similar to arenas) or do something really revolutionary that requires some degree of thought like not ticking white bar until you take dmg or are under cc. some cc are out of combat, but it still takes skill/thought to stealth out and sap the guy who is white barred, hence including cc.

Edited November 24, 2023 by krackcommando

[TrixxieTriss]

17 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

is that half the time you don't get to do anything with white bar b/c it drains away in spawn or while you run back to a relevant section of the map. that's unacceptable, imo. white bar resets behind the screen, but your 2m(?) breaker is still on cd. it's just total arse.

That’s a gripe I’ve had for years. What’s also annoying is still having debuffs on you once you respawn. In my opinion, if you die, all debuffs & CD’s should reset instantly in WZ’s. 

I also didn’t go into much detail when I said extend resolve. What I should have said is they could have allowed the build up of resolve to last longer before white barring. What I mean by that is, things that apply resolve to the bar would not dissipate as quickly once applied. So people would have needed to be more careful when applying affects over a longer period. The actual white bar could have stayed activated the same length of time still.

They could have also added or increased some of the soft resolve affects from slows, Mez & even added interrupts to it (to make it interesting).

There were so many interesting things (I’ve not even mentioned) that they could have done with resolve & the white bar if they wanted to address stun & slow wars affects before even considering pruning class abilities. 

I would add, that if they ever make another WZ map with objectives, one of those objective should be to not die (like you have in arena). And the way to do that is to cap how many times you can respawn in the match. Which obviously depends on how long the match length is because no one is going to want to sit around for 10 mins because they died too fast at the beginning. But this idea deserves its own thread, so I’ll leave it at that for now. 

[kjarnage]

What I have seen is 6-0 hutt ball and it resets hutt ball, Whenever a group wins by 80% reset a new map.  Do not reset the same map. It the balancing were better you would not get back to back kill scores.

Speaking of over kill saw a 386 to 21 kill game.  Now we have to remember kills are shared but still this is clear unbalanced. 

Not only am I seeing more people drop out but calls for people to let them put the bomb on, leave the node empty, or simply hiding.

Make me wonder if they are tracking these things. or even tracking stats of the games so they can gage the effects of modifications in the maps such as release times....

 

[kjarnage]

Another issue is players not wanting to be farmed so half the team sits at a node getting medals leaving the other half in an impossible task. It is time to give medals to those that die in combat too. You need to give medals to defenders that sit there doing nothing but how about those that die a glorious death against impossible odds. There is/was a pin cushion award for 16 deaths. I think it is time to give medals to those that die against such odds as they will never get the damage /healing/protection medals.  Frankly anyone that died 16 times should get 8 medals. So 2 medals at 4 and 1 for every 2 would be good.  

[RACATW]

7 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

That’s a gripe I’ve had for years. What’s also annoying is still having debuffs on you once you respawn. In my opinion, if you die, all debuffs & CD’s should reset instantly in WZ’s. 

I also didn’t go into much detail when I said extend resolve. What I should have said is they could have allowed the build up of resolve to last longer before white barring. What I mean by that is, things that apply resolve to the bar would not dissipate as quickly once applied. So people would have needed to be more careful when applying affects over a longer period. The actual white bar could have stayed activated the same length of time still.

They could have also added or increased some of the soft resolve affects from slows, Mez & even added interrupts to it (to make it interesting).

There were so many interesting things (I’ve not even mentioned) that they could have done with resolve & the white bar if they wanted to address stun & slow wars affects before even considering pruning class abilities. 

I would add, that if they ever make another WZ map with objectives, one of those objective should be to not die (like you have in arena). And the way to do that is to cap how many times you can respawn in the match. Which obviously depends on how long the match length is because no one is going to want to sit around for 10 mins because they died too fast at the beginning. But this idea deserves its own thread, so I’ll leave it at that for now. 

As someone who almost always has the #1 amount of damage taken (as a dps player), I'm not a huge fan of this idea. I feel like it could have balance implications. I'm already not super happy about the hypergate changes which in my opinion unbalanced things, since people respawn a bit too fast. With DCDs reset it'd be even harder to deal with them, especially if they're stealth players.

[krackcommando]

20 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

That’s a gripe I’ve had for years. What’s also annoying is still having debuffs on you once you respawn. In my opinion, if you die, all debuffs & CD’s should reset instantly in WZ’s. 

as i understand it, that’s a bug and a reflection of the “current” dev team’s lack of command over the hackneyed hero engine forked code that the initial devs cooked up. 

[TrixxieTriss]

19 hours ago, kjarnage said:

Another issue is players not wanting to be farmed so half the team sits at a node getting medals leaving the other half in an impossible task

Had several matches like that yesterday on SV.

Sadly, it’s been my experience that it’s the US based players doing it & not the APAC located players.

My gripe, is if people are going to come to SV to PvP, then actually PvP & don’t AFK your way through. Otherwise, stay on SF or SS to do your PvP season 😡

Because AFKing like that on a brand new server trying to increase numbers is negatively affecting player retention in PvP. I had players saying they were quitting again if this is the state of PvP. 
 

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

51 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

as i understand it, that’s a bug and a reflection of the “current” dev team’s lack of command over the hackneyed hero engine forked code that the initial devs cooked up. 

I nearly redied in a respawn in ARENA yesterday because of the amount of debuffs still on me. And I would have if I didn’t notice & started healing up 🤦‍♀️

Edited November 25, 2023 by TrixxieTriss