Fixing PVP 8x8

[RACATW]

11 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

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

Dunno if that's true, if you're stacking sorcs / whatever like that, chances are you have at least 4 other level 80 toons of different types.

 

edit:

to be clear, I'm talking about premade stacking of classes (e.g. 4+ people queueing together as lightening sorcs and or madness sorcs)

 

I'd say limiting it to 2 or 3 of the same type would be pretty reasonable.

Edited November 13, 2023 by RACATW

[TrixxieTriss]

1 minute ago, RACATW said:

Dunno if that's true, if you're stacking sorcs / whatever like that, chances are you have at least 4 other level 80 toons of different types.

That’s assuming a lot for casual players.

Also how would those casual players know that the reason the queue isn’t popping for them is because everyone else is queuing up as a Sorc? It’s not like the game provides players with a queue update on how many people are queuing or on what classes or in groups. 

This is what would happen if the devs did as you suggest & restricted how many of “x” class could be in each match. People would queue up as normal & anyone with a class that had more than usual numbers in the queue would end up waiting a long time for it to pop. 

[RACATW]

29 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

That’s assuming a lot for casual players.

Also how would those casual players know that the reason the queue isn’t popping for them is because everyone else is queuing up as a Sorc? It’s not like the game provides players with a queue update on how many people are queuing or on what classes or in groups. 

This is what would happen if the devs did as you suggest & restricted how many of “x” class could be in each match. People would queue up as normal & anyone with a class that had more than usual numbers in the queue would end up waiting a long time for it to pop. 

Casual players handled it just fine for tanks and healer restrictions over the past 5+ years. You weren't able to queue as a group due with more than 2 tanks casually.

 

It pops up telling you that you're not allowed to class stack like that.

 

In short, this already exists. We just need it for dps players now to prevent them from class sticking, same as tanks.

Edited November 13, 2023 by RACATW

[TrixxieTriss]

7 minutes ago, RACATW said:

Casual players handled it just fine for tanks and healer restrictions over the past 5+ years. You weren't able to queue as a group due with more than 2 tanks casually.

 

It pops up telling you that you're not allowed to class stack like that.

 

In short, this already exists. We just need it for dps players now to prevent them from class sticking, same as tanks.

I’m telling you it won’t work. But you do you. 

[RACATW]

8 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I’m telling you it won’t work. But you do you. 

Why is it currently working for tanks then?

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, RACATW said:

edit:

to be clear, I'm talking about premade stacking of classes (e.g. 4+ people queueing together as lightening sorcs and or madness sorcs)

 

I'd say limiting it to 2 or 3 of the same type would be pretty reasonable.

To be clear, my responses to your post were before you went and edited this one and were based on solo players or small random premades in the queue, not 4man+ premades. 

So let me respond based on your cleared up argument. 

While you could limit roles in the mixed queue or even in premades, like currently happens for tanks & healers, that would be a harder proposition to do for DPS because they make up the majority of roles in PvP.

You may also not be considering the devs holy grail of faster pops. Even if there were only 8 tanks & 8 healers in the queue, the system would still force a game eventually because they value pops over every other consideration.

Sure it might take 10-15-20 mins to pop a match like that (depending on the systems setting). But that’s my whole point, the pop times would be longer for everyone, which would eventually make less people queue up. 

Now imagine they try limiting DPS per team to 4 or 6 like they limit tanks & healers. And there are 36 DPS (because that role is the most popular) in the queue & no tanks or healers. But because it’s limiting the role (based on your suggestion) it won’t pop for 10-15-20 mins. 

My point is it is much easier to limit niche roles like tanks or healers than it is to limit the most popular & abundant role of DPS. Trying to do so would kill PvP for good because the wait times for a pop would be too long. 

And sure, you can say it’s only for premades & such. But it wouldn’t really accomplish anything except to make the majority of DPS queue solo. So your idea would be ineffective & a waste of time to just do it to premades. They would need to adjust it in solo/mixed matchmaking. Which would then push up pop wait times. 

Can you see the issue yet? That it’s not a viable option because it would kill PvP numbers more than now.
 

Edited November 13, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[RACATW]

8 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

To be clear, my responses to your post were before you went and edited this one and were based on solo players or small random premades in the queue, not 4man+ premades. 

So let me respond based on your cleared up argument. 

While you could limit roles in the mixed queue or even in premades, like currently happens for tanks & healers, that would be a harder proposition to do for DPS because they make up the majority of roles in PvP.

You may also not be considering the devs holy grail of faster pops. Even if there were only 8 tanks & 8 healers in the queue, the system would still force a game eventually because they value pops over every other consideration.

Sure it might take 10-15-20 mins to pop a match like that (depending on the systems setting). But that’s my whole point, the pop times would be longer for everyone, which would eventually make less people queue up. 

Now imagine they try limiting DPS per team to 4 or 6 like they limit tanks & healers. And there are 36 DPS (because that role is the most popular) in the queue & no tanks or healers. But because it’s limiting the role (based on your suggestion) it won’t pop for 10-15-20 mins. 

My point is it is much easier to limit niche roles like tanks or healers than it is to limit the most popular & abundant role of DPS. Trying to do so would kill PvP for good because the wait times for a pop would be too long. 

And sure, you can say it’s only for premades & such. But it wouldn’t really accomplish anything except to make the majority of DPS queue solo. So your idea would be ineffective & a waste of time to just do it to premades. They would need to adjust it in solo/mixed matchmaking. Which would then push up pop wait times. 

Can you see the issue yet? That it’s not a viable option because it would kill PvP numbers more than now.
 

Let me be clear again, class stacking in premades happens by players who KNOW what they're doing. They have many other classes they can play but do it purposely.

I completely disagree with the idea that they're helpless little lambs. It's no accident, whereas often with two tanks queueing they'd be casuals who had no idea what they're doing. And yet, one is restricted and the other is not?

[TrixxieTriss]

14 minutes ago, RACATW said:

Let me be clear again, class stacking in premades happens by players who KNOW what they're doing. They have many other classes they can play but do it purposely.

I completely disagree with the idea that they're helpless little lambs. It's no accident, whereas often with two tanks queueing they'd be casuals who had no idea what they're doing. And yet, one is restricted and the other is not?

First, none of what you just said negates  or refutes my point that adding a limit on how many DPS you can have in a group or in a match, would drive up pop times. Which would end up killing PvP.

Second, I didn’t say they were innocent of class stacking in premades or that class stacking doesn’t happen in solos either. If you go back a page, I actually said that class stacking can be a real problem on any class. The problem is your fix would ultimately be worse than the issue because it would kill PvP. 

I can only suggest you think about your idea a bit more & try & follow it through from start to finish. If you can do that, you’ll realise the major pitfalls with your idea & why it would more negatively affect PvP than the current random & sometime purposeful class stacking does. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[RACATW]

Just now, TrixxieTriss said:

First, none of what you just said negates  or refutes my point that adding a limit on how many DPS you can have in a group or in a match, would drive up pop times. Which would end up killing PvP.

Second, I didn’t say they were innocent of class stacking in premades or that class stacking doesn’t happen in solos either. If you go back a page, I actually said that class stacking can be a real problem on any class. The problem is your fix would ultimately be worse than issue because it would kill PvP. 

I can only suggest you think about your idea a bit more & try & follow it through from start to finish. If you can do that, you’ll realise the major pitfalls with your idea & why it would more negatively affect PvP than the current random & sometime purposeful class stacking does. 

Are you genuinely arguing that premades that partake in class stacking don't have other dps classes they can play? Class stacking among premades is a very specific problem that has an outsized impact on everybody else.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

14 minutes ago, RACATW said:

Are you genuinely arguing that premades that partake in class stacking don't have other dps classes they can play? Class stacking among premades is a very specific problem that has an outsized impact on everybody else.

 

No, I’m arguing that your solution is flawed. 

I would also argue that premades in general are a problem for solo queuers, regardless of their composition. Because a full trinity premade is just as destructive to solo players as a pre-made stacked with 1 class. 

But you support premades vs solo players. You just don’t like it when said players band together with other like minded classes in the same match. Regardless if they are premades or solo players. 

You can’t have it both ways. If you support premades, you have to accept that you’ll get class stacking in them. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[krackcommando]

45 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

First, none of what you just said negates  or refutes my point that adding a limit on how many DPS you can have in a group or in a match, would drive up pop times. Which would end up killing PvP.

Second, I didn’t say they were innocent of class stacking in premades or that class stacking doesn’t happen in solos either. If you go back a page, I actually said that class stacking can be a real problem on any class. The problem is your fix would ultimately be worse than the issue because it would kill PvP. 

I can only suggest you think about your idea a bit more & try & follow it through from start to finish. If you can do that, you’ll realise the major pitfalls with your idea & why it would more negatively affect PvP than the current random & sometime purposeful class stacking does. 

i actually like the idea of limiting class in grps to just 1 per role (so you cannot have two PT dps but you can have a PT tank and PT dps). but I also think this is a minor QoL tweak at a moment when there are a solid 6+ catastrophic, game breaking issues that take precedence.

it wouldn't hurt late night arena pops when half the queue is op and sin dps so long as the ops aren't grouped. and this would serve as a "soft" incentive to break-up premades (which you are all for?).

but it's very low on the totem pole, as already mentioned.

[RACATW]

37 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

No, I’m arguing that your solution is flawed. 

I would also argue that premades in general are a problem for solo queuers, regardless of their composition. Because a full trinity premade is just as destructive to solo players as a pre-made stacked with 1 class. 

But you support premades vs solo players. You just don’t like it when said players band together with other like minded classes in the same match. Regardless if they are premades or solo players. 

You can’t have it both ways. If you support premades, you have to accept that you’ll get class stacking in them. 

Generally speaking, the ye olde days of solo players being able to effectively compete against a trinity premade are long gone. I distinctly recall queueing as solo (along with 7 other solo players) against some of the best trinity premades on our servers and giving them a run for their money. Now, a single long-time pvp player can dominate a match solo.

So I don't really see the difference. My winrates queueing solo in lowbies and midbies (in both warzones and arenas) are 90%+ simply because I dominate the matches. I'm not even trying to play objectives sometimes in warzones and still win at that rate. In 80s, it's lower aside from arenas but my point remains. And we also know that winrate doesn't tell the full story either, the scoreboard does sometimes (in kill-ratios).

What we do know, is letting people play in groups does help activity to some extent. Making friends to queue with is a tale as old as time itself. It's how villages are formed, it's just part of society and you're never going to be able to change that. You can "tweak" it, to make it more fair in some ways but the social part is pretty integral to this game. You can even reliably queue sync solo.

[RACATW]

8 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

i actually like the idea of limiting class in grps to just 1 per role (so you cannot have two PT dps but you can have a PT tank and PT dps). but I also think this is a minor QoL tweak at a moment when there are a solid 6+ catastrophic, game breaking issues that take precedence.

it wouldn't hurt late night arena pops when half the queue is op and sin dps so long as the ops aren't grouped. and this would serve as a "soft" incentive to break-up premades (which you are all for?).

but it's very low on the totem pole, as already mentioned.

Right, but it's pretty low-hanging fruit given we already have the code written for it. It's basically just a quick 30 minute implementation and test.

[TrixxieTriss]

20 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

i actually like the idea of limiting class in grps to just 1 per role (so you cannot have two PT dps but you can have a PT tank and PT dps). but I also think this is a minor QoL tweak at a moment when there are a solid 6+ catastrophic, game breaking issues that take precedence.

it wouldn't hurt late night arena pops when half the queue is op and sin dps so long as the ops aren't grouped. and this would serve as a "soft" incentive to break-up premades (which you are all for?).

but it's very low on the totem pole, as already mentioned.

I don’t disagree with the premise. I disagree with the solution. He’s not just talking about limiting a class role, he’s talking about limiting actual class numbers.

And while I can see a limit working on roles in a pre-made, it’s not going to work with classes because some classes can be DPS/TANK or DPS/HEALS. Not only that, but what if someone only wants to play “x” class? 

And while ever you are going to have premades mixed in with solo players, it really doesn’t matter trying to limit premade DPS roles when players who want to play DPS will just go solo. So the developers time would be totally wasted trying to do this when players would circumvent it with in days. 

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[RACATW]

1 minute ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I don’t disagree with the premise. I disagree with the solution. He’s not just talking about limiting a class role, he’s talking about limiting actual class numbers.

And while I can see a limit working on roles in a pre-made, it’s not going to work with classes because some classes can be DPS/TANK or DPS/HEALS. Not not that, but what if someone only wants to play “x” class? 

And while ever you are going to have premades mixed in with solo players, it really doesn’t matter trying to limit premade DPS roles when players who want to play DPS will just go solo. So the developers time would be totally wasted trying to do this when players would circumvent it with in days. 

 

No, I'm talking about class role.

[TrixxieTriss]

2 minutes ago, RACATW said:

Generally speaking, the ye olde days of solo players being able to effectively compete against a trinity premade are long gone. I distinctly recall queueing as solo (along with 7 other solo players) against some of the best trinity premades on our servers and giving them a run for their money. Now, a single long-time pvp player can dominate a match solo.

So I don't really see the difference. My winrates queueing solo in lowbies and midbies (in both warzones and arenas) are 90%+ simply because I dominate the matches. I'm not even trying to play objectives sometimes in warzones and still win at that rate. In 80s, it's lower aside from arenas but my point remains. And we also know that winrate doesn't tell the full story either, the scoreboard does sometimes (in kill-ratios).

What we do know, is letting people play in groups does help activity to some extent. Making friends to queue with is a tale as old as time itself. It's how villages are formed, it's just part of society and you're never going to be able to change that. You can "tweak" it, to make it more fair in some ways but the social part is pretty integral to this game. You can even reliably queue sync solo.

Those win rates sound like an exaggeration. Because I know as a solo player myself in lowbies & mids, that once your win rate goes up past 60%, that the matchmaking makes you carry a whole team. And 1 player can’t be everywhere at once on a map scoring or guarding & capping & killing. But if you insist those are your winrates because your super skilled, then please take a screen shot & post them so we can marvel at your skill or luck 😉

[TrixxieTriss]

28 minutes ago, RACATW said:

No, I'm talking about class role.

Please explain how you make the matchmaking system enforce that for DPS if no one wants to play as a tank or healer?. 

Because wether you like it or not, tanks & healers are niche classes & not actually that popular to play. 

Which is the gapping hole in your idea that I’ve been hoping you would notice. 

Edited November 13, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[RACATW]

18 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Please explain how you make the matchmaking system enforce that for DPS if no one wants to play as a tank or healer?. 

Because wether you like it or not, tanks & healers are niche classes & not actually that popular to play. 

Which is the gapping hole in your idea that I’ve been hoping you would notice without me needing to point it out to you. 

This is what is being discussed:

1) Premades groups of 4+ players stacking the Lightening / Madness Sorceror DPS role

2) An existing mechanism in matchmaking preventing premade groups with 2 tanks from queueing

The 2nd point is what can prevent the 1st point from happening. We can use this mechanism to prevent class role stacking.

 

Quote

Those win rates sound like an exaggeration. Because I know as a solo player myself in lowbies & mids, that once your win rate goes up past 60%, that the matchmaking makes you carry a whole team. And 1 player can’t be everywhere at once on a map scoring or guarding & capping & killing. But if you insist those are your winrates because your super skilled, then please take a screen shot & post them so we can marvel at your skill or luck 😉

I don't think it desperately needs a screenshot but sure here, everybody knows how easy it is to dominate mids and lowbies as an experienced player. 

 

This is on DPS jugg no less. The worst class in the entire game for arenas. Literally no class is weaker at arenas than this and yet that's my win rate. I even have 100% on veng.

Anyway, you get the point about how easy lowbies and mids are to dominate. Even just from this one character, my others are 80s now mostly. Although I can check my VG who recently leveled to 80.

 

As for the win rate change, I usually don't notice a difference on my characters because I've played for so long (and my internal ELO is probably not too shabby overall, especially given the devs specifically implemented endzone changes to prevent me from scoring with the huttball and ending the game too quickly at one point). The people are still totally clueless no matter what your winrate is. It's like anakin killing the younglings in the jedi temple.

Arena's can be even worse sometimes, people don't know the slightest thing about who to focus or when to attack them.

[TrixxieTriss]

17 minutes ago, RACATW said:

As for the win rate change, I usually don't notice a difference on my characters because I've played for so long

Each alt has its own ELO as far as we know, but maybe not 🤷🏻‍♀️. What annoys me is if my rate is above 60, I get every bad player in the queue on my team and it’s even worse in Arena than WZ. At least in WZ you can sometimes carry a bad team. But that’s much harder to do in Arena. Ie, I noticed the other day on a new Alt, that as soon as my rate hit 60, it started to only put me on teams with 3 players vs 4 players on the other. As soon as my rate dropped to less than 60 again, it would give us 3v3 or 4v4 teams. But as soon as I hit 60 again, back to 3v4 & I’d have the 2 worst players. 

[krackcommando]

I was going to say I don't think this would work at all in WZs, but again, it's not that you wouldn't still have class stacking. it's just that you wouldn't have premade class stacking. so I guess it could work.

I don't know if I agree with how "easy" it would be to implement or how pressing an issue it is though. anyway. it is intriguing.

[TrixxieTriss]

On 11/14/2023 at 5:29 AM, RACATW said:

This is on DPS jugg no less. The worst class in the entire game for arenas. Literally no class is weaker at arenas than this and yet that's my win rate. I even have 100% on veng.

So I have to ask, how many of those marches were in premades. Because I can categorically say, that my experience with the solo matchmaking in lowbies is it starts putting you with the worst players once you hit 60% if there is no one higher than you in the queue. So your either really lucky to have other in the queue with higher win rate or your in premades for some of those matches. 

[mjxzo]

On 11/14/2023 at 4:29 AM, RACATW said:

I don't think it desperately needs a screenshot but sure here, everybody knows how easy it is to dominate mids and lowbies as an experienced player. 

 

This is on DPS jugg no less. The worst class in the entire game for arenas. Literally no class is weaker at arenas than this and yet that's my win rate. I even have 100% on veng.

Anyway, you get the point about how easy lowbies and mids are to dominate. Even just from this one character, my others are 80s now mostly. Although I can check my VG who recently leveled to 80.

Arena's can be even worse sometimes, people don't know the slightest thing about who to focus or when to attack them.

This is ridiculous.  Look at this guy’s average damage and average damage taken - it’s all 0...  in 35 matches he has done zero damage, taken zero damage and managed to win most of them.  Sure….

Even in your 5 losses you managed to take zero damage.  You just queuing two groups and taking turns stucking it like cringe pve guilds were in preseason group ranked?  Seems like it.  

[kjarnage]

So here is a 63 to 1 kill ratio and what happens 6 people drop out.  Most times when the battle is terribly balanced the next pop takes longer. Dropouts make the popping even longer.  No reason you can make adjustments to the dead area holds based on scores.  Limit the size of the premades. I do not think the argument the increasing the loser point value to 2 will decrease the number of players and increase the queues. I think the players losing 12 in a week will just stop playing and in the long run that is worse.  Limiting the premade size will make balancing easier.  Like GSF limit 4 and the four are rated to the top scale of the four. and 4 loses get you the weekly.

Maybe have an elimination tourney once a year for 8x8 premades as a special event.  

I certainly would like to see data on scores, win/lose records...We tend to remember the worse show us what it really is.

 

 

[RACATW]

3 hours ago, mjxzo said:

This is ridiculous.  Look at this guy’s average damage and average damage taken - it’s all 0...  in 35 matches he has done zero damage, taken zero damage and managed to win most of them.  Sure….

Even in your 5 losses you managed to take zero damage.  You just queuing two groups and taking turns stucking it like cringe pve guilds were in preseason group ranked?  Seems like it.  

If you're actually serious, here you go more screenshots from 80s instead of lowbies and midbies (which seem to have broken battle stats for me aside from medals / kills etc? kinda weird):

 

5 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

So I have to ask, how many of those marches were in premades. Because I can categorically say, that my experience with the solo matchmaking in lowbies is it starts putting you with the worst players once you hit 60% if there is no one higher than you in the queue. So your either really lucky to have other in the queue with higher win rate or your in premades for some of those matches.

 

0 in a premade, nobody should need a tank and healer in lowbies and midbies. Not sure why you can't get past 60%, maybe your levels too low or classes not correct for arena to achieve the win rate you expect? And yep, it does put you with pretty bad players! However, once in a while the matchmaker finds a good player to queue you with. I've solo queued against a very good tank and healer duo in midbies and beaten them in a 3v4 (me being the solo queued on the 3 side). My team had a very good player who I recognized and talked to, super chill and skilled guy who doesn't trash talk. We won by playing off each other and putting them under a ton of pressure. Since it was lowbies and midbies we could basically ignore their dps players since they were quite bad.

So I disagree that it puts the very worst players on your team all the time, sometimes you do get very unlucky. But generally speaking what's happening is you're facing duo's that are in different guilds or trios. It's hard to spot though, since they're unguilded or in different guilds. While solo queueing you're basically stacking the odds a bit against yourself.

You also used to be able to queue sync in solo, or use /who and alt chars with lower elo to queue sync alongside of people you wanted to queue with or into. So there's always been ways to manipulate the matchmaker and get on the side you want to be on, stacking odds

Edited November 15, 2023 by RACATW

[TrixxieTriss]

13 hours ago, RACATW said:

If you're actually serious, here you go more screenshots from 80s instead of lowbies and midbies (which seem to have broken battle stats for me aside from medals / kills etc? kinda weird):

 

0 in a premade, nobody should need a tank and healer in lowbies and midbies. Not sure why you can't get past 60%, maybe your levels too low or classes not correct for arena to achieve the win rate you expect? And yep, it does put you with pretty bad players! However, once in a while the matchmaker finds a good player to queue you with. I've solo queued against a very good tank and healer duo in midbies and beaten them in a 3v4 (me being the solo queued on the 3 side). My team had a very good player who I recognized and talked to, super chill and skilled guy who doesn't trash talk. We won by playing off each other and putting them under a ton of pressure. Since it was lowbies and midbies we could basically ignore their dps players since they were quite bad.

So I disagree that it puts the very worst players on your team all the time, sometimes you do get very unlucky. But generally speaking what's happening is you're facing duo's that are in different guilds or trios. It's hard to spot though, since they're unguilded or in different guilds. While solo queueing you're basically stacking the odds a bit against yourself.

You also used to be able to queue sync in solo, or use /who and alt chars with lower elo to queue sync alongside of people you wanted to queue with or into. So there's always been ways to manipulate the matchmaker and get on the side you want to be on, stacking odds

Possibly time 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.
 

Edited November 15, 2023 by TrixxieTriss