PvP improvements (Broadsword survey)

[TrixxieTriss]

27 minutes ago, Illedros said:

I got one and I live just north of Sydney

Guess it’s me then 😞

[Lord_Malganus]

35 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Guess it’s me then 😞

Maybe its as simple as since you are a long time player, you are not in their selective focus group?

[ZUHFB]

1 hour ago, Lord_Malganus said:

Maybe its as simple as since you are a long time player, you are not in their selective focus group?

nah its entriely random

[DIVAvonFarstar]

2 hours ago, Lord_Malganus said:

Maybe its as simple as since you are a long time player, you are not in their selective focus group?

It can't be as simple as long-time players not being part of the focus group because, for example I received the survey and I am heaving a subscribtion since the first day.

[RACATW]

7 hours ago, DWho said:

I brought conquest in because you brought in looking at achievements as a way to gauge interest in PVP. Lots of those achievements were very likely obtained by people who's only interest in PVP was the conquest points they got making achievements generally a poor measure of PVP interest. If you made some other aspect of the game equivalent to PVP for conquest they would go there instead (just look at what is going on now with GSF after they massively boosted the rewards for that mode).

Having the easiest/quickest path to rewards drives a lot of "participation" in PVP. The people are there for the rewards not the gameplay.

As far as posts go, that is one of the worst ways to measure anything. Forum posts are overwhelmingly negative and a whole lot of the PVP posts are about "nerf his class and buff mine". PVPers are passionate about PVP and the number of posts is indicative of that passion but not general interest in PVP by the game community as a whole.

How would you rank: Player-Player interaction, premades, class balance, pop times, and the arenas themselves?

I'd rank them in order of importance as

1) Player-Player interaction (warzones need to be more mission like encouraging players to work together)

2) Ease of assembling premades (playing in a group with your friends is a lot more fun that being split up)

3) Number/variety of warzones

4) Pop Times

5) Class balance

 

 

Yes, people like a gold medal after competing within a competition. In my years of experience doing PvP min-max conquest players make up maybe 10% at absolute best of the population. In fact I see more RP guilds than conquest people play, and some NiM or PvE guilds. I'd also point out conquest isn't deemed important enough to have its own forum section for feedback.

Generally, you can judge the level of interest in a product by looking at the number of reviews. The simple fact that such an overwhelming amount of feedback exists for PvP demonstrates the level of interest subscribers have in it. I'd also point out that competition is part of every culture, and nothing is more competitive than PvP.

You can also say that about any part of the game. For example, the few times I do see posts about conquest they're complaints that small guilds can't compete with large guilds. Usually I see some massive guild abusing the small guild ladderboard anyway, you'd think it would be limited by member count (e.g. a 1000 member guild can't invade a small guilds conquest leaderboard).

Not sure what you're ranking exactly but warzones need you to engage in legitimate PvP if you want to win objectives. For example, knowing how to control mid. If I'd encourage anything, it's maybe incentivizing joining a PvP guild somehow.

 

 

[DWho]

2 hours ago, RACATW said:

Not sure what you're ranking exactly but warzones need you to engage in legitimate PvP if you want to win objectives. For example, knowing how to control mid. If I'd encourage anything, it's maybe incentivizing joining a PvP guild somehow.

If you want to "fix" PVP you need to determine why people don't want to play it not force them to do it for a game advantage. That is where the list comes from. In my experience those are the top 5 complaints in the PVP (and General) forum. The point also is that casual PVPers and "Pros" have very different priorities for "fixing" PVP

The player to player interaction is about not playing objectives and deathmatching instead and not playing objectives is a particular problem right now. Deathmatching is not enjoyable for the majority of the casual PVPers but seems to something the "pros" revel in.

Pop Times are a perennial complaint and the current rate goes against your "observation" that most people PVP regularly based on the number of posts in the forums and the number of their achievements. Casual PVPers queue for warzones and then go do something else while they wait while the pros tend to sit in their stronghold or on fleet and wait for pops (making them much more sensitive to pop rates than casuals are)

Another perennial complaint is about class balance which really means little or nothing to a casual PVPer but is the holy grail for the "pros".

There are also continual complaints about there not being enough warzones or of them not being the right type. Also something casual PVPers aren't concerned about but the "pros" are.

The newest complaint is about pre-mades. For the most part it seems that the "pros" are against them and the casuals like them because they get to play with their friends.

I have been in a PVP guild in the past and it is no different than any other guild (it's long dead now, like PVP servers and PVP zones, because there are so few people interested in PVP). If anything, it was less social because people were queuing for PVP solo anyway. There are some that organize open world PVP "events" themselves but that is a very small fraction of the PVP guilds, which are themselves a very small fraction of guilds in total (even excluding the 1 player vanity guilds). Most other guild types have guild activities which have their members working together to accomplish a goal. With the increase in the use of pre-mades, I have seen an increase in PVP participation in non-PVP guilds though it is generally for guild vs guild PVP (where both guilds assemble premades and then queue together).

[krackcommando]

36 minutes ago, DWho said:

Another perennial complaint is about class balance which really means little or nothing to a casual PVPer but is the holy grail for the "pros".

balance is incredibly important to both pvp and pve. I'm not sure what you're saying here. casual players in both formats will either A) flock to the fotm class/spec because it's easy for a casual to pick up and play, or B) bemoan loudly that their chosen class/spec is woefully underpowered, and they are therefore pushed out of progression spots and have nothing to do but organ grinder SM content. The latter are also the most likely to complain about fotm in WZs. Or not bemoan loudly and simply login less.

Edited November 12, 2023 by krackcommando

[DWho]

2 minutes ago, krackcommando said:

balance is incredibly important to both pvp and pve. I'm not sure what you're saying here. casual players in both formats will either A) flock to the fotm class/spec because it's easy for a casual to pick up and play, or B) bemoan loudly that their chosen class/spec is woefully underpowered, and they are therefore pushed out of progression spots and have nothing to do but organ grinder SM content. The latter are also the most likely to complain about fotm in WZs. Or not bemoan loudly and simply login less.

But we are not talking about significant differences in performance. You can complete just about all the content in the game with any of the classes. The majority of the complaints are about Class A performs badly against Class B in PVP. You do see some Class X doesn't have enough damage output for a specific advanced Operations or Flashpoint, but that is more often than not about the way the content is designed rather than an inherent weakness in the class.

[krackcommando]

1 hour ago, DWho said:

But we are not talking about significant differences in performance. You can complete just about all the content in the game with any of the classes. The majority of the complaints are about Class A performs badly against Class B in PVP. You do see some Class X doesn't have enough damage output for a specific advanced Operations or Flashpoint, but that is more often than not about the way the content is designed rather than an inherent weakness in the class.

the fact that you can complete virtually anything with any class (or solo) in this game is a product of game shaping. that has nothing to do with casual. casual pvp players, just like casual pve players, are still going to see/feel and ask for balance changes. There's always a healer who's better for one thing or another, tank, range, etc. the game shaping issue is more along the lines of pvp players and raiders (hardcore or casual) have been "pruned" in a manner of speaking since...gawd. I don't know. Since the 2nd xpack when they basically gave up on end game content outside of story?

[TrixxieTriss]

7 hours ago, RACATW said:

it's maybe incentivizing joining a PvP guild somehow.

Sadly, there really aren’t any real PvP guilds around anymore. Most of them left during 5.x & those that remained left after ranked was removed in 7.3.

[TrixxieTriss]

4 hours ago, DWho said:

But we are not talking about significant differences in performance. You can complete just about all the content in the game with any of the classes. The majority of the complaints are about Class A performs badly against Class B in PVP.

That’s not exactly true though because if a class, like Madness Sorcs, is so OP at the moment, that they are unbalanced against ALL classes. So you end up in a situation where the majority of people choose that class & build to play on. Which unbalances whole matches due to class stacking. That is why getting the balance right in pvp & also pve is a very important part of the developers job. 

[DWho]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

That is why getting the balance right in pvp & also pve is a very important part of the developers job. 

It is a massive time sink for devs with little positive gain (every time they have tried it in the past all you get is a new FOTM which is just as bad if not worse if the PVP posts are to be believed). The vast majority of players playing won't even see the difference. A simpler solution would be to just limit the number of Sorc (if they really are overpowered) in any warzone. Less coding, more effect. That's a matchmaking issue not a class balance issue.

Edited November 12, 2023 by DWho

[TrixxieTriss]

53 minutes ago, DWho said:

It is a massive time sink for devs with little positive gain (every time they have tried it in the past all you get is a new FOTM which is just as bad if not worse if the PVP posts are to be believed). The vast majority of players playing won't even see the difference. A simpler solution would be to just limit the number of Sorc (if they really are overpowered) in any warzone. Less coding, more effect. That's a matchmaking issue not a class balance issue.

That’s not actually true either. It’s what they get paid to do. They are either professional developers supporting a game or they aren’t. Spending time balancing classes in the game is part of their job. Because we aren’t talking about fine tuning here with madness Sorcs as an example, where talking about extremely overpowered class. Which also throws out pve balance too. Then you have too many players who only play that class. Which leads to player boredom. 

[DWho]

15 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

That’s not actually true either. It’s what they get paid to do. They are either professional developers supporting a game or they aren’t. Spending time balancing classes in the game is part of their job. Because we aren’t talking about fine tuning here with madness Sorcs as an example, where talking about extremely overpowered class. Which also throws out pve balance too. Then you have too many players who only play that class. Which leads to player boredom. 

As game devs they also have limited amount of time to spend on anything so they have to choose to spend time on something 1% of the player base will notice or something 99% of the playerbase will notice. In a perfect world they could spend time on everything, but its not a perfect world. There are more important things in the game to focus on than class balance. I'd rank matchmaking for PVP far ahead of class balance in any event. Choosing to play only the most powerful class in the game is your choice so you are contributing to your own boredom if you do that.

[krackcommando]

8 minutes ago, DWho said:

As game devs they also have limited amount of time to spend on anything so they have to choose to spend time on something 1% of the player base will notice or something 99% of the playerbase will notice. In a perfect world they could spend time on everything, but its not a perfect world. There are more important things in the game to focus on than class balance. I'd rank matchmaking for PVP far ahead of class balance in any event. Choosing to play only the most powerful class in the game is your choice so you are contributing to your own boredom if you do that.

actually....

balance issues are applicable to all aspects of the game. matchmaking is pertinent to that small fraction that plays pvp.

that said, whenever there's a balance change that a PVE player doesn't like, he blames it on PVP and (mostly) vice versa. 😄

[DWho]

1 minute ago, krackcommando said:

that said, whenever there's a balance change that a PVE player doesn't like, he blames it on PVP and (mostly) vice versa.

I agree. What seems to happen is they base the balance on PVP (lowering damage and defenses) which tends to negatively impact group PVE. In PVP you can compensate with a variety of crowd control mechanics (and my personal favorite, grenades - I never PVP without grenades) whereas almost all bosses and their spawns (whether operation, flashpoint, or uprising) are immune to those crowd control mechanics making the group PVE content more difficult (not that most of it is particularly difficult to start with but those on the edge are impacted and are generally the ones to complain)

[RACATW]

10 hours ago, DWho said:

If you want to "fix" PVP you need to determine why people don't want to play it not force them to do it for a game advantage. That is where the list comes from. In my experience those are the top 5 complaints in the PVP (and General) forum. The point also is that casual PVPers and "Pros" have very different priorities for "fixing" PVP

The player to player interaction is about not playing objectives and deathmatching instead and not playing objectives is a particular problem right now. Deathmatching is not enjoyable for the majority of the casual PVPers but seems to something the "pros" revel in.

Pop Times are a perennial complaint and the current rate goes against your "observation" that most people PVP regularly based on the number of posts in the forums and the number of their achievements. Casual PVPers queue for warzones and then go do something else while they wait while the pros tend to sit in their stronghold or on fleet and wait for pops (making them much more sensitive to pop rates than casuals are)

Another perennial complaint is about class balance which really means little or nothing to a casual PVPer but is the holy grail for the "pros".

There are also continual complaints about there not being enough warzones or of them not being the right type. Also something casual PVPers aren't concerned about but the "pros" are.

The newest complaint is about pre-mades. For the most part it seems that the "pros" are against them and the casuals like them because they get to play with their friends.

I have been in a PVP guild in the past and it is no different than any other guild (it's long dead now, like PVP servers and PVP zones, because there are so few people interested in PVP). If anything, it was less social because people were queuing for PVP solo anyway. There are some that organize open world PVP "events" themselves but that is a very small fraction of the PVP guilds, which are themselves a very small fraction of guilds in total (even excluding the 1 player vanity guilds). Most other guild types have guild activities which have their members working together to accomplish a goal. With the increase in the use of pre-mades, I have seen an increase in PVP participation in non-PVP guilds though it is generally for guild vs guild PVP (where both guilds assemble premades and then queue together).

About pop times. The entire games populations definitely has its ups and downs according to steam player charts. This spring and summer wasn't too hot for swtor player counts. However, currently (in this present month) it's finally on an upward swing. So obviously Broadsword is starting to do something right recently and people are noticing.

 

My guild has in fact organized pvp events in the ye Olde days. But what's really the point when there's no real rewards for doing that. There's no real incentive like something involving conquest. Like what if you could challenge for a planets conquest using pvp under certain conditions?

I'd say interesting little improvements that add to excitement, drama and a sense of real achievement can create a lasting experience. And why not incentivize and encourage players in PvP guilds?

 

Implying there's some split between hardcore and casuals on premades or groups is also strange to me. I guess it's a misinformed opinion from someone looking on the outside in. You see, there's plenty of "hardcore" pvpers who group up. They're all in different guilds so it can be hard to spot unless you're a frequent pvper. Usually it's in response or rivalry to other pvpers grouping up or in response to a semi decent casual pvp group.

[DWho]

5 minutes ago, RACATW said:

Implying there's some split between hardcore and casuals on premades or groups is also strange to me. I guess it's a misinformed opinion from someone looking on the outside in.

It's not that there is a difference between casuals and hardcore PVPers in premades (since they are usually from guilds there is a good chance of there being a mix), its that the loudest complainers about the existence of premades (people who want them out of the "solo" queue) are people who are definitely hardcore PVPers. Hardly a misinformed opinion when you can see by the post history of those complaining what their "status" is.

To add something to the discussion about PVP improvements. I'd like to see a dedicated 8 vs 8 and 4 vs 4 that are exclusive to guilds (with conquest rewards different from the normal solo queue). So that guilds can challenge each other to a warzone or arena competition without worrying about getting grouped in the normal solo queue. No need for a guild to be a dedicated PVP guild in order to engage in a little friendly competition with another guild. The negative I guess would be that it would reduce the pop times in the solo queue as it would likely reduce the number of players queuing in that manner.

Edit: added note about dedicated guild 4v4 and 8v8

Edited November 13, 2023 by DWho

[RACATW]

Just now, DWho said:

It's not that there is a difference between casuals and hardcore PVPers in premades, its that the loudest complainers about the existence of premades are people who are definitely hardcore PVPers. Hardly a misinformed opinion when you can see by the post history of those complaining what their "status" is.

"hardcore pvpers" can be found in groups generally speaking of 2-3 people. Then, upon the entrance of an ops group to the scene, they all form up into an ops group to challenge them.

Or when a group of 4-5 are around, they form up into a group roughly around that size. Currently the attitude of "hardcore pvpers" on starforge is that ops groups are generally boring unless there's another one in queue.

[DWho]

1 minute ago, RACATW said:

"hardcore pvpers" can be found in groups generally speaking of 2-3 people. Then, upon the entrance of an ops group to the scene, they all form up into an ops group to challenge them.

Or when a group of 4-5 are around, they form up into a group roughly around that size. Currently the attitude of "hardcore pvpers" on starforge is that ops groups are generally boring unless there's another one in queue.

See, that is the difference between "casual" PVPers and "Pros". The casuals group up to play with friends and the Pros group up to gain an advantage or find a challenge. It's why making adjustments to PVP based only on comments from the "experienced" PVP players is problematic. The "casual" PVPer and the "Pro" have different ideas of what they find enjoyable (or important) about PVP.

[RACATW]

3 minutes ago, DWho said:

See, that is the difference between "casual" PVPers and "Pros". The casuals group up to play with friends and the Pros group up to gain an advantage or find a challenge. It's why making adjustments to PVP based only on comments from the "experienced" PVP players is problematic. The "casual" PVPer and the "Pro" have different ideas of what they find enjoyable (or important) about PVP.

So what you're saying is hardcore pvpers don't have friends? Lol

[DWho]

Just now, RACATW said:

So what you're saying is hardcore pvpers don't have friends? Lol

I don't know, do they?

[RACATW]

1 minute ago, DWho said:

I don't know, do they?

That's what you're saying?

[septru]

https://youtu.be/5F8Tlv5uPD4?t=411&si=7npv-QYtbchR2KBz

 

For those who haven't seen it... Mark Biggs (former official SWTOR influencer and content creator) dropped a rare Youtube video about SWTOR's Player Survey. I link to the last part of the video because it is the most relevant. Everyone should watch it. 

 

TLDR (quoted from the video): "Two things can be true at once. Focusing on the Cartel Market will keep this game alive. Focusing on the Cartel Market has and will kill this game." 

Which I hope brings people back to an earlier comment I made specifically about reviving PvP: 

 

On 11/11/2023 at 10:24 AM, septru said:

My general point is that you (and BioSword) frame SWTOR PvP as an "either/or." Either we tailor this game to hardcore PvPers or we tailor this game to casuals, but you can't do both. This is entirely wrong. You can do both with limited resources, and in fact, must do both if you want the game to emerge from maintenance mode.

[krackcommando]

22 minutes ago, septru said:

https://youtu.be/5F8Tlv5uPD4?t=411&si=7npv-QYtbchR2KBz

 

For those who haven't seen it... Mark Biggs (former official SWTOR influencer and content creator) dropped a rare Youtube video about SWTOR's Player Survey. I link to the last part of the video because it is the most relevant. Everyone should watch it. 

crystal meth. hehe. brilliant. (prolly get an infraction point for that statement on this board though).