PvP improvements (Broadsword survey)

[septru]

15 hours ago, SoyElSenado said:

The most important thing I think you said though is that everyone will be in the same matchmaking pool. Obviously we know from @JackieKo post a few weeks back that their absolute priority in PvP is the matchmaking speed so any suggestions offered need to have that in mind.

None of my suggestions would make matchmaking worse. All players would still queue in the same matchmaking pool. Players that wish to be more competitive can opt-in to see their rating, which the matchmaking system already tracks. Casuals that do not want to be concerned with the stress of a ranking system need not opt-in to see their rating and will continue to be matched up the way it is now.

 

What most people don't realize is that my suggestion would likely making matchmaking even better. A proper ranking system would bring back many longtime PvPers that want a competitive PvP mode. This would largely increase the PvP population and matchmaking pool helping veteran PvPers get placed against other veteran PvPers, instead of getting placed against casuals. 

Edited November 16, 2023 by septru

[RACATW]

1 hour ago, septru said:

None of my suggestions would make matchmaking worse. All players would still queue in the same matchmaking pool. Players that wish to be more competitive can opt-in to see their rating, which the matchmaking system already tracks. Casuals that do not want to be concerned with the stress of a ranking system need not opt-in to see their rating and will continue to be matched up the way it is now.

 

What most people don't realize is that my suggestion would likely making matchmaking even better. A proper ranking system would bring back many longtime PvPers that want a competitive PvP mode. This would largely increase the PvP population and matchmaking pool helping veteran PvPers get placed against other veteran PvPers, instead of getting placed against casuals. 

They already use hidden ELO / ranking in regs so not much would change by making it visible. I get what you're saying though, it would make things better because people would have more incentive to win.

Edited November 16, 2023 by RACATW

[septru]

2 hours ago, sithBracer said:

When solo ranked was around, only like 20-30 people took it seriously. Sure a few people might come back, but the number will be so negligible, it will make no difference at all.

A skilled based rewards that are part of PvP Seasons would be far more inclusive than ranked ever was. Primarily because it would all be in the same matchmaking que. Everyone would already be playing "ranked".

[krackcommando]

1 hour ago, septru said:

A skilled based rewards that are part of PvP Seasons would be far more inclusive than ranked ever was. Primarily because it would all be in the same matchmaking que. Everyone would already be playing "ranked".

I'm skeptical about awarding (e.g.) flairs for gold, silver, bronze. some obvious barriers to the idea of doing it with the present queue are 1) premades in the same queue, and 2) you'd need a far more restrictive queue. like if you don't accept a pop, what happens? are you penalized max elo? deserter debuff? and I'd be pretty annoyed with 3) counting healers as equivalent of tanks and vice versa. Also, there are A LOT of wonky team comps in arenas (multiple healers or tanks). I'm not sure you could do this without making the queue/MM more restrictive.

i like the idea of just creating three tiers for rewards. but I would be pissed if they were given out without a much more restrictive queue system. and I doubt Biosword would ever do that.

[RACATW]

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

I'm skeptical about awarding (e.g.) flairs for gold, silver, bronze. some obvious barriers to the idea of doing it with the present queue are 1) premades in the same queue, and 2) you'd need a far more restrictive queue. like if you don't accept a pop, what happens? are you penalized max elo? deserter debuff? and I'd be pretty annoyed with 3) counting healers as equivalent of tanks and vice versa. Also, there are A LOT of wonky team comps in arenas (multiple healers or tanks). I'm not sure you could do this without making the queue/MM more restrictive.

i like the idea of just creating three tiers for rewards. but I would be pissed if they were given out without a much more restrictive queue system. and I doubt Biosword would ever do that.

What they could do is track "rank" per group size e.g. solo rank, duo rank, trio rank, quad+ etc where you're compared against other players with stats for those group sizes (or just as solo).

Edited November 17, 2023 by RACATW

[Ardarell_Solo]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:13 PM, sithBracer said:

Can you explain why the ignore literally every beta tester that they personally hand picked when they were told not to release galactic command?

What makes you think I could?

[septru]

10 hours ago, krackcommando said:

I'm skeptical about awarding (e.g.) flairs for gold, silver, bronze. some obvious barriers to the idea of doing it with the present queue are 1) premades in the same queue, and 2) you'd need a far more restrictive queue. like if you don't accept a pop, what happens? are you penalized max elo? deserter debuff? and I'd be pretty annoyed with 3) counting healers as equivalent of tanks and vice versa. Also, there are A LOT of wonky team comps in arenas (multiple healers or tanks).

1) The matchmaking should continue to prioritize premade v premade, like it already does. Hopefully we would see far less premade v solo matches as more PvPers coming back to the game. And I have already proposed cutting premade sizes to 4 in warzones and 2 in arenas which would also help with matchmaking. 

 

But most importantly, as I mentioned before in a another thread, "every now and then, a premade might vs pugs. But they will gain significantly lower ELO if they win (+2 to +5) than they would gain if they went against another premade (+ 10 to +15)." 

 

2) The old ranked system penalized you by declining a ranked pop with -15 ELO and a 15min lockout. I guess they could do the same thing for any player that opts-in to ranked. 

 

In the end, you want this to be a perfect system. It's not. BioSword only has so many resources and money, and that doesn't even begin to mention their general incompetency as developers. Will there be que dodgers, throwers, trolls, etc? Probably. But this is a start. And it's certainly better than what we have now. SWTOR PvP needs some sort of mountain to climb, some sort of meaningful goal, some type of incentive to get better. Otherwise you get what we have now: a maintenance mode endgame that is plagued by throwers and AFKers which dies the second PvP Seasons ends.

 

We're talking about player retention. And this is the only way to do that. 

[krackcommando]

3 hours ago, septru said:

1) The matchmaking should continue to prioritize premade v premade, like it already does. Hopefully we would see far less premade v solo matches as more PvPers coming back to the game. And I have already proposed cutting premade sizes to 4 in warzones and 2 in arenas which would also help with matchmaking. 

 

But most importantly, as I mentioned before in a another thread, "every now and then, a premade might vs pugs. But they will gain significantly lower ELO if they win (+2 to +5) than they would gain if they went against another premade (+ 10 to +15)." 

 

2) The old ranked system penalized you by declining a ranked pop with -15 ELO and a 15min lockout. I guess they could do the same thing for any player that opts-in to ranked. 

 

In the end, you want this to be a perfect system. It's not. BioSword only has so many resources and money, and that doesn't even begin to mention their general incompetency as developers. Will there be que dodgers, throwers, trolls, etc? Probably. But this is a start. And it's certainly better than what we have now. SWTOR PvP needs some sort of mountain to climb, some sort of meaningful goal, some type of incentive to get better. Otherwise you get what we have now: a maintenance mode endgame that is plagued by throwers and AFKers which dies the second PvP Seasons ends.

 

We're talking about player retention. And this is the only way to do that. 

I'm not opposed to the general idea of maintaining a mixed queue with something in there that encourages (can't believe this has to be championed) winning...excellence...or just improvement. and I really love the idea of flairs as rewards from rated. honestly, I think those were the only rewards rated needed. that's your status symbol right there. but I digress. sorry.

I think the mixed queue as it exists right now would be so easy to manipulate that it would be easier to game than s1 was (when factions were locked, there were  20-odd servers with different skill levels but sharing the same reward thresholds, and balance was so wonky that you could spam two buttons on AP to get 1500 rating in 20 matches). not saying current queue recreates the same issues, just that it would be that laughable.

I really think any sort of rewards based on merit should require at least some tightening of the queue (at least invalidate matches that pop with unbalanced roles). don't port players to the pvp maps until every single participant has accepted the pop. I like the previous poster's suggestion about grading various premades separately while allowing them to remain in the mixed queue. I know you cannot restrict the queue as tightly as rated (at its tightest), but...well...you have to sacrifice something in the way of pop times in order to run a rated/unrated mixed queue imo.

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, septru said:

1) The matchmaking should continue to prioritize premade v premade, like it already does. Hopefully we would see far less premade v solo matches as more PvPers coming back to the game. And I have already proposed cutting premade sizes to 4 in warzones and 2 in arenas which would also help with matchmaking

Krack’s not wrong with his concerns. But you could still do it your way if the system recorded premade games separately to solo games. Ie, currently if you look at your win/loss stats, it doesn’t show how many of those were on premade or solo. Someone can post they have a high win rate. But how do we know that wasn’t in a trinity premade 🤷🏻‍♀️.

They could change it so if you played in a premade, it would record as such. That way you could still have the queue like you’re describing. But you wouldn’t be competing against solo vs premade players for ranking. It would rank you separately for both. 

You could take it much further & even have ELO adjustments. So if you win as a pre-made vs solo, you don’t get much of a boost. But if you lose as a pre-made vs solo, you lose a lot of points. With the reverse for the solo team. If they lose to the premade, it has little to no affect on their ELO. But if they win, they get a nice boost. That way if the matchmaking forces a solo vs premade match, it allows a good solo team to get a nice boost. And really puts the pressure on the premade to perform. 

Of course, for that to work, the devs would really need to make the matchmaking work better than it does now. And sadly, I’m not sure they can do it. 

There is another other option they could try & still allow a mixed queue as your suggesting. If you opt into having your ranking published, only queuing as a solo player counts towards your ranking. If queue as a pre-made, it doesn’t count towards your rank at all. 

Edited November 17, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[SoyElSenado]

22 hours ago, septru said:

None of my suggestions would make matchmaking worse. All players would still queue in the same matchmaking pool. Players that wish to be more competitive can opt-in to see their rating, which the matchmaking system already tracks. Casuals that do not want to be concerned with the stress of a ranking system need not opt-in to see their rating and will continue to be matched up the way it is now.

Got it, again it was more ignorance on my part why I asked about it because I didn't know how the old system worked in terms of opt-in. I agree with you 100% then.

16 hours ago, sithBracer said:

Cute how you ignore all the other things I said and just give a basic non-answer answer to a small part of my 2 paragraph response. I guess reading more than a paragraph is tough?

I don't think you can accuse him of that given that he read my book on the other page. 

16 hours ago, sithBracer said:

Once again, the only thing it will do is create more queue dodging groups of 4 that will make the pvp even more miserable for the disorganized pugs than it already is. Stop pretending that all these pvpers are going to try their best to play against each other with the hope that their pugs aren't trash. They are all going to queue dodge each other and only farm disorganized pugs for easy points. Group ranked was a failure for a reason.

Anyway - in both mine and @septru's ideas your concern would be moot. My suggestion was two parts, eliminate full group premades AND have a ranking system that is simple, accessible, and percentile based that mixes in with the PvP seasons. Groups of 4 queuing up would not be allowed.  I don't know what the right answer is for how many to cap it at, but I'm inclined to think septru is right that it should be 2 for arena and 4 for wz. 

4 hours ago, septru said:

In the end, you want this to be a perfect system. It's not. BioSword only has so many resources and money, and that doesn't even begin to mention their general incompetency as developers. Will there be que dodgers, throwers, trolls, etc? Probably. But this is a start. And it's certainly better than what we have now. SWTOR PvP needs some sort of mountain to climb, some sort of meaningful goal, some type of incentive to get better. Otherwise you get what we have now: a maintenance mode endgame that is plagued by throwers and AFKers which dies the second PvP Seasons ends.

 

We're talking about player retention. And this is the only way to do that. 

facts. We can go around all day about different concerns and issues that may arise with these suggested systems but ultimately, what is being suggested would be at least moderately better than what we have now for a PvP system and that's pretty indisputable. 

41 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

There is another other option they could try & still allow a mixed queue as your suggesting. If you opt into having your ranking published, only queuing as a solo player counts towards your ranking. If queue as a pre-made, it doesn’t count towards your rank at all. 

After reading through what you guys have said, I think it's as simple as having a separate solo rewards based on bronze, silver, gold. It would have to still be the same queue pool (WoW solo shuffle is sometimes a 40+ min queue, imagine what it'd be in this game) but it'd at least incentivize people to not always queue with groups. Plus it would expand accessibility to the progression system/"climbing the mountain" for players who prefer to play solo and don't want to group up and go on discord etc. 

Edited November 17, 2023 by SoyElSenado

[septru]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

You could take it much further & even have ELO adjustments. So if you win as a pre-made vs solo, you don’t get much of a boost. But if you lose as a pre-made vs solo, you lose a lot of points. With the reverse for the solo team. If they lose to the premade, it has little to no affect on their ELO. But if they win, they get a nice boost. That way if the matchmaking forces a solo vs premade match, it allows a good solo team to get a nice boost. And really puts the pressure on the premade to perform. 

Sorry I didn't explain myself well. That is exactly what I mean (and btw how it used to work in ranked when a high rated player beat a low rated player). Premade vs solo win = +6ELO, premade vs solo loss = -30ELO. 

 

2 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

They could change it so if you played in a premade, it would record as such. That way you could still have the queue like you’re describing. But you wouldn’t be competing against solo vs premade players for ranking. It would rank you separately for both. 

I really don't think premade vs solo would be that much of an issue, especially with a 2man cap on groups. And even if you are getting relentlessly farmed by a group of 2. It really isn't that hard to find 1 friend. But if premade vs solo really is that big of an issue then sure, you could have it this way. However, I think separating the rewards for premades and solo players is a lot more work for BioSword, and we all know how BioSword doesn't like doing anything that requires actual work. 

[Darkestmonty]

One thing I would like is a player can only see their stats at the end of a Warzone match.

You can not see another players medals, damage, heal, protection, damage taken, etc.

The only stat everyone should be able to see is Objectives since Warzones are an objective based game mode.

This would stop some of the ego stroking people do yelling at new players about their DPS, kills, etc.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Darkestmonty

[DeannaVoyager]

11 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

ou could take it much further & even have ELO adjustments. So if you win as a pre-made vs solo, you don’t get much of a boost. But if you lose as a pre-made vs solo, you lose a lot of points. With the reverse for the solo team. If they lose to the premade, it has little to no affect on their ELO. But if they win, they get a nice boost. That way if the matchmaking forces a solo vs premade match, it allows a good solo team to get a nice boost. And really puts the pressure on the premade to perform. 

This is what they do in another game where they struggle to get people to join pvp. They have a public ranking for everyone, and if someone wants to climb to the top of the ladder, the best way to get higher rank is not to join a premade, but play against one. It balances the teams quite nicely.

On top of that they also have a happy hour twice a day. Matches during the happy hour give same rewards for winners and losers. That makes pvp pop fast at least twice a day because everyone gets something, and even the bad players don't have to suffer more than that one hour at a time. 

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

One thing I would like is a player can only see their stats at the end of a Warzone match.

You can not see another players medals, damage, heal, protection, damage taken, etc.

The only stat everyone should be able to see is Objectives since Warzones are an objective based game mode.

This would stop some of the ego stroking people do yelling at new players about their DPS, kills, etc.

Let me explain what would happen if they did that.

People would start using something like Star Parse to track their own damage & other people’s stats so they can compare. Which shows way more detail than the current scoreboard, like everyones rotations & specific ability damage they are doing as it happens. Which would give them way more ammunition to yell at people who aren’t performing to their standards. 

(My old PvP guild used to use Star Parse when we were training guild newbies to help them improve & I’ve used it to help my wife as well)

So I believe it would be better to leave the current system they have already, which gives minimal info & just leave the WZ as soon as the scoreboard pops up. 

If you have anyone PMing you to yell after them match, just put them on legacy ignore. 

Edited November 18, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[krackcommando]

1 minute ago, AocaVII said:

They will never fix PVP. They don't understand PVP and never will. This whole part of the forearm should just be shut down because they are going to do absolutely nothing. And if they do something it'll be the worst thing possible.

not gonna lie. there's a good deal of truth to this.^

[AocaVII]

They will never fix PVP. They don't understand PVP and never will. This whole part of the forum should just be shut down because they are going to do absolutely nothing. And if they do something it'll be the worst thing possible.

 

Developers in the past/present always think they know better than the players because they think they're better than the players and therefore you have what we have now which is the worst PVP in an MMO ever.

Stop wasting your time posting here because they're never going to do what you want..

[SoyElSenado]

3 hours ago, sithBracer said:

How does this make my concern moot? In fact septru even admit there will be queue dodgers in a different post, but we should still listen to him because ... reasons?

I'm not against giving players something to strive and work for, but this system is not it. It encourages the few groups that are available to dodge each other and raise their rating by farming disorganized pugs. If we had like 1000 groups queueing who were all interested in getting ranked up, then yes I would agree that this would be a good idea, in fact I even suggested it back a long time ago (specifically I suggested making everything ranked, but allowing people to disable having their rating posted publicly on the leaderboards like GW2 does). If we did that in 2.X or 3.X-especially if they went ahead with cross server-it would work. Now it will not. 

You will only get maybe 5-10 teams of 4 (some of them from the same guild/group of friends) who will queue dodge each other, queue at different times, always be on voice and will always farm the heck out of pugs. If you are annoyed with @TrixxieTriss's and everyone else premade vs pug complaints now, just imagine how bad it will become if this gets enacted.

Seriously, does NO ONE remember how group ranked ended up?

I don’t know if you just straight up didn’t read or are confused or what. I suggested in my original post to eliminate full group premade in addition to this ranking system. I didn’t specify a number to cap the group at. @septru suggested limiting to 2 players queue for arena and 4 for wz. I thought that made sense.
 

Where are you getting it from that this will all be groups of people queue dodging? I don’t see how that will be a widespread problem if you are limited to queuing up with 2. 

12 minutes ago, AocaVII said:

And if they do something it'll be the worst thing possible.

There’s no ranking system which is awful for the game mode, breeds toxicity, and eliminates any way for PvP players to participate in end game. They allow full group premade which is a disaster. 

I really don’t think anything they do would make it any worse than it is now. It already is the worst possible. We can meme about that and be like, “just wait,” but truly I think it’s already terrible and anything more terrible is just that, more terrible. It’s like, we’re already eating ‘dung’ (I hate these moderation rules) so if they make the ‘dung’ grosser it’s kind of whatever. 

Edited November 18, 2023 by SoyElSenado

[AocaVII]

1 minute ago, SoyElSenado said:

I don’t know if you just straight up didn’t read or are confused or what. I suggested in my original post to eliminate full group premade in addition to this ranking system. I didn’t specify a number to cap the group at. @septru suggested limiting to 2 players queue for arena and 4 for wz. I thought that made sense.
 

Where are you getting it from that this will all be groups of people queue dodging? I don’t see how that will be a widespread problem if you are limited to queuing up with 2. 

They are not going to fix anything go back 10 years we've been saying the same thing stop posting please close down this whole section of the forum already, total waste

[AocaVII]

This is the anatomy of how a dysfunctional organization works. The upper management and main management do not listen to the actual workers and people who are actually doing the work day in and day out. In the same way, the management and the developers do not listen to the players who are actually playing the game. This always results in a broken system and a failed organization. Remember there were 24 servers or more now there's nothing.

Business 101

Edited November 18, 2023 by AocaVII

[SoyElSenado]

4 minutes ago, AocaVII said:

This is the anatomy of how a dysfunctional organization works. The upper management and main management do not listen to the actual workers and people who are actually doing the work day in and day out. In the same way, the management and the developers do not listen to the players who are actually playing the game. This always results in a broken system and a failed organization. Remember there were 24 servers or more now there's nothing.

I don’t disagree with you here. This issue is true of most games out there. The companies that actually do listen to their communities are few and far between. With swtor being a smaller studio now  we can hold out some (perhaps naive) hope that they will try to listen to players, particularly in PvP which is objectively dying and bad. If they do nothing about these issues it’s ultimately their loss.

[Darkestmonty]

11 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Let me explain what would happen if they did that.

People would start using something like Star Parse to track their own damage & other people’s stats so they can compare. Which shows way more detail than the current scoreboard, like everyones rotations & specific ability damage they are doing as it happens. Which would give them way more ammunition to yell at people who aren’t performing to their standards. 

(My old PvP guild used to use Star Parse when we were training guild newbies to help them improve & I’ve used it to help my wife as well)

So I believe it would be better to leave the current system they have already, which gives minimal info & just leave the WZ as soon as the scoreboard pops up. 

If you have anyone PMing you to yell after them match, just put them on legacy ignore. 

They can run any parcer they want, but pointing at an empty summary at the end the match and screaming "SEE YOUR DPS IS GARBAGE KILL YOURSELF NOW!" will become laughable.

Ego is about showing off and they can't do that if they are the only ones seeing the parcer stats.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

3 hours ago, AocaVII said:

Stop wasting your time posting here because they're never going to do what you want..

I don’t know, I would have lost a big bet they’d never open another APAC server & I would have lost that bet 3 days ago 🤷🏻‍♀️

If they can open an APAC server now, there is still some hope they can fix PvP 

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, Darkestmonty said:

They can run any parcer they want, but pointing at an empty summary at the end the match and screaming "SEE YOUR DPS IS GARBAGE KILL YOURSELF NOW!" will become laughable.

Ego is about showing off and they can't do that if they are the only ones seeing the parcer stats.

 

Those stats can & are often published on a 3rd party public website. It wouldn’t take long for them to start linking them in chat. 

[SoyElSenado]

3 hours ago, sithBracer said:

I did read it, you clearly haven't read what I wrote. Let me put it here and give a nice bold for you:

 

Queue dodging was a thing even in solo ranked. People would try to best to dodge being stuck with/against certain people. They would keep them in their friends list and wouldn't queue until they were already in an instance. It's not very hard, especially if there are only maybe 5-10 teams actually competing. All this system would do is ENCOURAGE such a thing.

I understand in your fantasy you think we are going to have lots and lots of

4 person 

teams queuing up and the system will match make perfectly, people will see how well these premades play together and will get inspired to get better, and we will all live happily ever after. Welcome to reality. That will not happen. Aside from 1 or 2 dominant teams, all other teams will do their best to not get matched up against other teams by either queuing at hours when they don't appear or wait until they are in an instance and queue up then for easy points. How do I know this? Because they did it in the past. Queue syncing and Queue Dodging was a huge thing all the way up to 7.2. In fact, the guy you are quoting was banned for queue syncing/win trading before, and he was caught on video queue syncing on voice afterwards and claimed "he just had too many friends" as his excuse.

Yeah, so again not sure if this is a reading comprehension issue or what, but your complaint is moot. 4 people would not be able to queue up for arena in this suggested system. The system wouldn’t allow a group of more than 2 people to queue. Sure queue dodging or even people trying to time queues to get put with 2 other friends can occur, but that stuff happens in every game with good PvP systems. It’s very common in the higher end ladder in WoW arena. In that game which has always had more people PvPing than swtor I’ve had to wait an hour for queue pops at the higher end of the ladder in 3s because of dodging or because there’s just very few teams at that time of day at that rating. It is what it is, I really don’t care. It isn’t significant enough of a problem to say that we shouldn’t implement an alternative system from the trash we have now.

There will always be little drawbacks but implementing a system as has been suggested would be such a net positive any of these concerns about queue dodging or whatever else are small beans.

Edited November 18, 2023 by SoyElSenado

[Darkestmonty]

52 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Those stats can & are often published on a 3rd party public website. It wouldn’t take long for them to start linking them in chat. 

awesome, let me just manually type out that url so i can confirm...

There is a teeny tiny difference between a braggart yelling at people because he and everyone can see all the stats in game and that same person telling everyone to visit a url so they can bask in his glory as trash talks you.

Warzones are not about DPS, they are objective based games. There really is no need to show everyone's stats as it only supports toxic behavior in game.

Edited November 18, 2023 by Darkestmonty