PvP improvements (Broadsword survey)

[TrixxieTriss]

50 minutes ago, septru said:

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." 

It’s nearly right. He should have worded the second part to say “Mostly Focusing on the Cartel Market has and will kill this game”

[SentinalMasterWW]

Biggs basically stated how I feel honestly. 

This game has no meaningful content anymore its just grind systems so the Dev's can do the bare minimum while diverting all assets to making Cartel Market sets based off whatever Star Wars show is airing. 

When actually was the last time we had original Cartel Market sets based off original ideas? Seriously. 

Yes the Space Barbie players like whatever comes off, but I'm sure they want actual meaningful content? 

Like where are new Combat Styles? Where are new Nim Raids? Where are new PVP Maps and Modes? 

Does anyone honestly care about the current Story? Like we are just a bystander in this whole thing, My Character honestly could've been somewhere else in the galaxy leading against the opposing faction, but I have to play Human Resources and settle a playground fight.

To @JackieKo and @EricMusco, Please Take the time from the survey and seriously have a sit down and look at the feedback not just from that survey, but from the forums, Reddit, Youtube, etc. There are a lot of valid feedback that we give to you, but it feels like were ignored. Its why not a lot of people bother with the PTS, as all the feedback gets ignored and the PTS is mainly to solve bugs.

Doing pure Cartel Market is going to kill this game, and should NOT be the focus of any content Expansions! It can be a footnote, but NOT Something that is a main highlight.

[fabsus]

Perhaps the focus should not always be on the group that has the most players,
but also serve those who have a significant influence on the community.

Because ask yourself:
What casual has ever written a guide to a class themselves?
Which casual has ever tried out rotations and constantly optimised them?
Which casual has ever analysed an operation with all its buffs and debuffs and written a guide?
Which casual has ever even begun to think about how to distribute and optimise stats?

A community only works through diversity. But if you now make the game uninteresting for those
who have a strong influence on the community through their voluntary work in the background, 
which you all use, then you can do it yourselves in future. But how is that possible?
if you don't even manage to follow things?

With the last operations in particular, we have seen how some people have demanded elaborately designed guides instead of getting started themselves.

And here is no difference between PVE, PVP, GSF or whatever. If you just want casuals in that game, have fun wiping in heroics and storyquests. 

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by fabsus

[Ardarell_Solo]

On 11/12/2023 at 12:12 AM, ZUHFB said:

I promise, if they decided to keep ranked and just give out flairs based on rating and top3 based on counting to 96 once a year (if we're lucky) there would be ranked popping every evening. It's literally almost no effort, heck, just get an official influencer to do the counting, copy paste that list give out rewards bam. How long does this take? 15 Minutes at most? For how many subs? 50 or more? 

That kind of comment is exactly what I meant when I said "tend  to underestimate" 🙂

Edited November 13, 2023 by Ardarell_Solo

[Ardarell_Solo]

On 11/12/2023 at 3:15 AM, RACATW said:

1.2 million posts have been made by subscribers in the PvP forums. In the general forums only 3.6 million posts gave been made (where PvP players also post sometimes). This trend is also visible in the French forums (56k posts for PvP (JcJ) and 135k for General), and German.

Plus if you randomly inspect the achievements of people on fleet, (especially the max level characters), you'll see people almost always try PvP.

What I'd suggest for Broadsword is trying to retain and encourage that PvP participation and the subscriber activity.

I strongly assume devs have used more detailed and specific numbers than that to base their business decisions on in the last 10 years.

[ZUHFB]

2 hours ago, Ardarell_Solo said:

That kind of comment is exactly what I meant when I said "tend  to underestimate" 🙂

I'm on your side, but the ranked players with 50 or more games just aren't that many

BUT ranked was 0 effort for them, screw the balancing, doesn't matter

Edited November 13, 2023 by ZUHFB

[krackcommando]

2 hours ago, ZUHFB said:

I'm on your side, but the ranked players with 50 or more games just aren't that many

BUT ranked was 0 effort for them, screw the balancing, doesn't matter

that’s not true. even the half arsed way they ran it required more effort than they were willing or capable of giving. and calling it half arsed is being kind. 

er. wait, 0 effort for the 50 or BW?

Edited November 13, 2023 by krackcommando

[ZUHFB]

1 hour ago, krackcommando said:

that’s not true. even the half arsed way they ran it required more effort than they were willing or capable of giving. and calling it half arsed is being kind. 

er. wait, 0 effort for the 50 or BW?

0 effort for BW, just let it run, whatever happens happens.

I'd have continued playing probably

[RACATW]

6 hours ago, Ardarell_Solo said:

I strongly assume devs have used more detailed and specific numbers than that to base their business decisions on in the last 10 years.

Honestly, judging by the survey questions I'm not sure about that and wouldn't make that assumption.

[SoyElSenado]

On 11/12/2023 at 8:41 AM, RACATW said:

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.

 

 

This, along with what you said about how PvPers actually are a sizeable population of this game and care is pretty on point. I disagree with the folks saying that the ideas/priorities for fixing PvP from competitive PvPers vs casual PvPers are wildly divergent and nobody can agree on anything. I think everyone can broadly agree that full group premades and a poor reward structure are bad things. I also think these are both the driving factors for why there are so many problems with PvP right now. 

As I said in my OP I was going to repost what I put in the survey. It’s an essay for sure but I either go hard or not at all with this kind of stuff. It has the personal benefit of making me feel fine about saying "meh, I tried" and washing my hands of it if they don't end up doing anything. 

SWTOR’s PvP combat, game modes, and overall feel is amazing and on par with other MMOs that have 5x or more the dev team resources. And yet the system is going to waste by and large because of two fundamental problems: full group premades and a poor reward/incentive structure. The changes in 7.2 have by and large made PvP worse. It is more toxic for everybody from the casual player to the hardcore PvPer. A hidden rating system with no incentive to win and no consequence for losing besides quest completion rate is unrewarding and unfun, and it breeds toxicity in itself. Full group premades queuing up with solo players in arena and warzone is an absolute mess on so many levels and requires little explanation for why it is bad for the game and creates toxicity. The easiest bang for your buck solutions to improve PvP for everyone are 1) disallowing full group premades in arena and WZ and 2) using your already developed hidden rating system to allocate rewards at the end of PvP seasons to players based off of achieving broad percentiles.

On toxicity: I think the lack of rating and the full group premade are primary contributors to toxicity in SWTOR PvP. I am new to SWTOR PvP within the last 4 months, but I understand that toxicity is the often-cited reason for why ranked PvP was removed. What I can tell you is that level of toxicity in SWTOR PvP is unlike anything I’ve seen in other MMOs. I’ve experienced and witnessed more toxicity in 4 months of 'unranked' SWTOR than I did in almost 14 years on the high end ranked WoW PvP ladder. I am a pretty competitive gamer and toxicity does not discourage or bother me much, but that is not true for the majority of players. Case in point, my fiancé recently hit level 80 and we queued a game together yesterday. The toxicity she faced from our teammates (because we went against a premade and her gear was not maxed out) was so bad that she said she will never PvP in SWTOR again. She plans to share on her survey that it makes her, primarily a story player, less inclined to spend money in the CM and invest her time in the game. That perspective is more representative of the broader player base - I see it all the time on Reddit and in the forums here. This is a serious problem for you guys as a development team to contend with, and unfortunately to a degree it is always going to be baked in no matter what you guys do. The consequence of removing the separate ranked queue and putting everyone together is that there will be divergent skill, effort, and gear levels put on the same team. Nevertheless, the shear amount of toxicity is what it is because people have no incentive to try to win and they routinely are put up against full group premades.

People routinely queue without intending to try to win and this 100% breeds toxicity. The reason people do this can vary; many feel defeated because they queue into premades all the time and don’t want to bother trying, some just don’t like PvP, some just want to go in and kill the enemy team and ignore the objective, and a few (more and more every week) simply do so to intentionally grief others. The fact is, if you removed full group premades and made it so that winning and losing counted for something, we’d see a decrease in this because at the very least, more people would be trying to win games. This is particularly critical for warzones because having no reward/rating system has led to the current phenomenon where most skilled/veteran PvPers do not even play the warzone objective. Winning and losing does not matter, so instead they just focus on trying to rack up as many kills they can, or worse, messing with as many people as possible. Why bother supporting their teams and trying to win when it counts for nothing, and when killing the enemy player is more fun? Veteran PvPers either don’t need the quest rewards or they PvP so much in a week that it is irrelevant whether they lose or win because they finish the quests regardless. This quite literally epitomizes toxicity, and all of what I described will continue to get worse until there is a penalty for losing games and a reward for winning outside of a silly quest completion rate modifier. Yes, you’d still have clowns intentionally throwing games but not at the rate it is happening now. As it stands, there’s literally no cost to doing this because win to loss ratio does not matter. I can throw every single game I queue for and have 0 wins and 1000 losses and I will get the exact same rewards as someone who is 1000 and 0 at the end of the season.

On premades: premades suck for everybody except the players in the premades. Even in their case, I’d wager a great deal of them only join premades because of a “can’t beat em’, join em’” attitude. Jackie explained a few weeks ago that the premade issue is on your radar, but since the priority is to minimize player queue time, the commonly suggested separate premade queue is out of the question. I understand this, so the easy solution there is to just disallow full groups from queueing PvP. We can go in circles all day about whether it should only be solo, max at 2, at 3, etc. but fundamentally everybody agrees that full groups should be disallowed, so let’s start there.

On the lack of incentive and poor reward structure: I understand that the old ranked system was a large undertaking for you guys to manage. I get that there was toxicity and that particularly in light of the 7.0 changes, having top 3 per class and the top 96 ladder was just not going to work anymore. What I am suggesting is broad, percentile-based rewards in the forms of titles/flairs at the end of each PvP season using the MMR system you guys already have. This will improve PvP for everybody from the most casual player to the hardcore PvPer. Most of the issues people complain about every day on these forums (AFKers, people who /stuck, people griefing, etc.) are manifestations of having no incentive to win. A system like the one I suggest will at least marginally improve PvP for everybody, will reduce the toxicity we all experience and will undoubtedly increase participation metrics for PvP. Most importantly, I believe that this minor undertaking would not hurt anyone’s gameplay experience.

The obvious place to start for why this is important is with the reality that PvPers lost their avenue for “endgame” participation when ranked was removed from SWTOR. This is an MMO; PvPers need something to hang their hat on so they can feel proud of the effort and time invested in playing your game. PvErs already have a lot of this, and those systems require far more developer resources than a broad percentile-based reward system for PvP ever would, particularly given that you already have this system developed for MMR but keep it hidden. PvP seasons is a great system, but it is incomplete. There is nothing wrong with having baseline rewards functioning solely on participation. The issue is that these participation rewards are the only rewards available from endgame PvP. In PvE, we have story, veteran, and master ops/fps, wherein the difficulty of obtaining the rewards from story mode basically parallels the difficulty of obtaining the participation based PvP seasons rewards. PvE players who want to go to the next level can challenge themselves to veteran and master mode. When they beat these challenges, they are rewarded accordingly with better titles, flairs, gear, etc. PvP does not have anything remotely comparable to this.

It should be a massive red flag that this is now the only MMO on the market completely void of any endgame reward structure and rating/ranking system for PvP. In MMOs, when players take on greater challenges, they are supposed to get greater rewards. This is what makes investing your time and money into an MMO game worth it and is tried and true design philosophy. I happen to love Star Wars so I’m here regardless, but I know many people from WoW and other MMOs who will not come near SWTOR because of the poor PvP reward structure. As I said, I am newer to SWTOR PvP, having come from many years of mostly WoW PvP. I streamed some SWTOR PvP for friends on discord who were curious, and they all were impressed with how the gameplay, combat, etc. looked. Unfortunately, all of them do not want to get invested in the game because of the lack of reward structure. There is no incentive to invest time (and money) when there is no reward for challenging yourself. Basically, the common theme I have heard is, what is the point? The reality is that as it stands now, there is no point. When players who go into PvP and throw matches intentionally get the exact same rewards as players who actually try to win and participate with their team, why would  anyone bother investing time and money into this game? It feels like a slap in the face.

Having a rating system in PvP is a necessity because it incentivizes trying, working as a team, and most importantly makes your players care and feel invested, which is critical for an MMO. This simple tried and true philosophy works for PvE players. In PvE, if I join a group for a veteran/master operation and put in the effort to work with my group and defeat the boss, I get cool rewards that are a step above those obtainable from the more “participation” story mode. If, on the other hand, I join up and just /sleep, or worse, intentionally try to wipe the group, the group will kick me out and I won't get the rewards. The problem is that if I do that same thing in PvP, under the current system my only “penalty” is that it will take me marginally longer to obtain rewards identical to those received by players who actively try to win and participate with their teams.

This system is itself problematic and is fostering a lot of toxicity because it incentivizes the wrong people to queue more and the right people to queue less. Players who throw matches/put in no effort lose more games, so they finish the quest/objective more slowly and have to queue more. Players who win games because they tried/participated with their teams get the quest completed faster, and have to queue less. The latter players are effectively disincentivized from queuing further since there is no point in doing so - players who enjoy PvP want incentives to queue more, not less. The consequence of this is that the players who queue up and put no effort in are the ones who are forced to keep queuing. Whether this is because they are intentionally griefing or because they dislike PvP and only want the seasons reward is irrelevant. The point is, players like this are the ones having to queue more so your casual players who do want to try to win are likely to find themselves on teams with at least one person who just walks in and /sit than they are to be on teams full of players who are trying to win, as they’ve already completed their objective. This is simply poor design, and is hurting the very people you guys were supposed to be helping with the 7.2 changes. We saw extremes of this with the end of the last PvP season and it is only going to get worse as players continue to recognize there is no consequence to losing and no benefit to winning.

As an aside, I’ve seen proposals from players to simply disallow losses from counting towards the quest completion. I personally don’t think this is in line with your design philosophy of accessibility and is probably a nonstarter. I also don’t think it really even best solves the problem, as a rating system would make it almost moot. I have experienced systems where losses both count and don’t count for weekly PvP objectives over many years of WoW PvP, as they have experimented with both. By and large it didn’t have much of an impact. Instead, the fact that there was a cost to losing games in meant people always tried to win (with the exception of boosters intentionally tanking rating for carries). If you lost, your rating went down, meaning your end of season rewards went down – the quest completion for losses or wins really didn’t matter in terms of whether people were intentionally losing.

I don’t have all the answers for how this system should work; all I know for sure is that we need something. My suggestion would be to start with three broad categories like a gold, silver, bronze based on 25^th percentile, 50^th percentile, and 75^th percentile using the already existing hidden rating system you have. Distribute rewards by percentile at the end of the PvP season in the form of flairs and titles, maybe even a pet or mount recolor. It does not need to be a bunch of crazy CM level armors and weapons - what’s important is simply that there is something meaningful to work towards and feel proud of achieving. I see no issue with maintaining the current PvP seasons design where the high-quality armor/decorations/weapons are broadly available to everybody based on participation. This means that players who don’t care about their rating and just want baseline PvP seasons rewards will not be remotely affected by this. I would even argue that with such accessible and broad percentiles, players who simply lift a finger and try a little bit in PvP will be able to easily achieve the 75^th percentile rewards. In fact, I’m willing to bet that as it stands now, meeting the 75^th (maybe even 50^th) percentile would not even entail a positive W-L ratio. This kind of system is the best compromise alternative because it is simple to manage, it is broadly accessible, not gatekept to top 3 players/a specific cutoff list of 96, and is very flexible. Down the road, perhaps you could experiment with higher percentile rewards (5^th, 10^th etc.) for the best of the best players but again, right now what matters is giving people something to work for that makes players’ time and effort feel valuable.

An MMO needs rewards that make players feel good about their effort and time invested. There just is nothing like that in SWTOR PvP right now. There’s nothing that feels good about finishing the quests faster for the weekly. There’s nothing that makes you feel proud about spending money and time in this game when the reward for your chosen endgame activity is the same as someone who queues up and does /sleep. I’m not saying the solutions I offered would fix every single issue in PvP and make every type of player 100% happy, but again, removing full group premades and instituting a rating system like I suggested does not stand to hurt any player’s PvP experience, and will at least moderately improve it for most.

[septru]

... well that was a book and then some

[severe-trauma]

On 11/9/2023 at 11:53 AM, JackieKo said:

Hi there, 

The survey went out to active players regardless of the server they play on. I do want to call out that the survey itself is only in EN. Know that we are looking to have future correspondence like this localized. 

Thanks!

I am disappointed by this. My mother tongue is French but I speak enough English that I can get along. Not all of us in EU speak enough English to be able to do the survey. It is unfortunate that I had to translate it for my guild mates. It makes us feel like we do not matter. Maybe we don't, lololol.

I am new to the forum, so far the only thing that made me happy is it is IPB forum software and not vBullet. 

Edited November 14, 2023 by severe-trauma

[severe-trauma]

 Sorry for my double post. The quote system was giving me trouble and it was easier to reply another time.

The survey asked too many questions about cartel market but I fit my pvp complaints into the writings at the end. Biosword, you see in this forum that we are loyal players in pvp making ideas and efforts about fixing the game. In return for caring about the game we get ignored and our game modes taken away. EU pvpers feel double ignored when you don't put the survey in our language that you make the game in. French and German translation of that survey would have cost less than €150. 

5 hours ago, septru said:

... well that was a book and then some

His is only a news strip in comparison to one of my guildmates. He wrote almost 5 pages google document into the survey on pve, pvp, and the developer interactions. 2 pages were about the R-4 and how they treated players about that.🤣

6 hours ago, SoyElSenado said:

There’s nothing that makes you feel proud about spending money and time in this game when the reward for your chosen endgame activity is the same as someone who queues up and does /sleep.

I didn't think about this before and now I am angrier about pvp which I did not think was possible for me.  

6 hours ago, SoyElSenado said:

I don’t have all the answers for how this system should work; all I know for sure is that we need something. My suggestion would be to start with three broad categories like a gold, silver, bronze based on 25^th percentile, 50^th percentile, and 75^th percentile using the already existing hidden rating system you have.

Your post was all my English practice for the month. The read was worth my time poggers. I wish more for ranked to return but I would be happy with a rated like that. Your suggestion seems like a mixture of the rating systems in league and wow. These games are very popular, maybe Biosword should take a hint from games that are successful for once.

On 11/13/2023 at 12:37 AM, TrixxieTriss said:

It’s nearly right. He should have worded the second part to say “Mostly Focusing on the Cartel Market has and will kill this game”

I hope they know they are going to run out of players to spend money if they keep going this strategy. I used to spend €50+ each month for decoratives and armor. Now I spend nothing because I enjoy the game less since ranked is gone and pvp suck.

  

[DeannaVoyager]

6 hours ago, SoyElSenado said:

It should be a massive red flag that this is now the only MMO on the market completely void of any endgame reward structure and rating/ranking system for PvP.

 

You were spot on with everything you said, but I'm gonna poke this one a bit because it's in contradiction with the rest.  There is a reward structure and that's part of the problem. 

 

- pvp gives most conquest points, a lot of it is infinitely repeatable.

- pvp gives a lot of tech frags compared to pve, people who start gearing up for end game pve are better of gearing with pvp than pve (which is stupid)

- pvp seasons reward track has some cool items (for people who don't already have it), and because they can only buy up to level 15, they need to play pvp to get those rewards

 

The quality of pvp is what it is because people play it for the wrong reasons. When they see how toxic and unbalanced it is against premades, they just sit through it without actually trying to win, because they have decided they want the rewards no matter what. I bet majority of them have their chat window closed too, so all that toxicity gets wasted (and so do calls from defenders). 

 

A lot of people have listed a lot of good things how to make pvp better, here's one from me too:

Weeklies take too long to finish if you are unlucky with the group finder. Change it like it is in GSF, four matches if you lose everything, 2 if you win. At least that way the people who aren't even trying to win will be gone sooner and only pvp players will remain.

 

 

 

[krackcommando]

8 hours ago, severe-trauma said:

I hope they know they are going to run out of players to spend money if they keep going this strategy. I used to spend €50+ each month for decoratives and armor. Now I spend nothing because I enjoy the game less since ranked is gone and pvp suck.

7.x has been an utter disaster in terms of content. iirc, it has been an all time low in story, pve, and pvp additions.

pvp had the most "work" done on it with 7.2, but all they really did was replace one queue with another and add one arena map. meanwhile they effectively removed any sort of "progression" end game from the mode (now everything is effectively Story Mode).

pve OPs are a mess with R-4.

story, which was (I think) the mainstay of the three modes before 7.x, was probably the most neglected, probably to allow devs to devote time to pruning and redesigning the character sheet? (and eliminating any semblance of progression end game content 😄). although personally, I thought story was trash since maybe Ossus (I liked the planet, but the story was super bland).

 

[Ardarell_Solo]

On 11/13/2023 at 5:26 PM, RACATW said:

Honestly, judging by the survey questions I'm not sure about that and wouldn't make that assumption.

You don't last as long as SWTOR already did if you chose to use the same content for customer surveys and internal evaluations of user behaviour that business decisions are based on.

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Ardarell_Solo said:

You don't last as long as SWTOR already did if you chose to use the same content for customer surveys and internal evaluations of user behaviour that business decisions are based on.

Swtor has only lasted this long because it’s Star Wars. If it had been any other IP, it would have shuttered years ago.

Edited November 14, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[septru]

23 hours ago, SoyElSenado said:

.

 

I actually took time to read over your book, although I doubt BioSword will do the same.

 

I can't agree with it more. In fact, it's exactly what I've been suggesting since 7.2. These are the exact suggestions I made in a previous post. LMK what you think. 

 

1) Keep the participation reward structure of PvP Seasons just as it is, to incentivize casuals to PvP.

2) Bring back an opt-in ranking system for arenas using the old ELO ranking system (but slightly modified using the current matchmaking algorithm that prioritizes premade v. premade). Anyone that plays arenas will be put in the same matchmaking pool, but will only see their ranking if they opt-in. 

3) Reward exclusive flairs and additional PvP Season Tokens for gold, silver, bronze placement. No need for top3 rewards. 

 

These changes would be fairly low effort and minimum changes, but create a huge different. Besides the ranking system which may take a minimal amount of time to design (which btw BioWare spent resources to remove in the first place), the reoccurring rewards could be automatically granted with limited resources. Without top3 rewards, there would not be a huge need for moderation. If BioSword really wanted to put actual resources into PvP, they could remake a leaderboard to go alongside the ranking system. But it is not necessarily needed. 

[Ardarell_Solo]

9 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Swtor has only lasted this long because it’s Star Wars. If it had been any other IP, it would have shuttered years ago.

Analysts say it's because it's the only MMO with consistently voiced cinematics for hundreds of hours of vanilla content on eight classes with male/female performers and still lots of it in its expansions that also include "space barbie" changes you make to your character.

That USP makes for a constant influx of new players, makes existing players create alts and also makes it rewarding to revisit characters you made at times. That "stickiness" is what you aim for in a business context and you can see how most of SWTOR's decisions point in that direction. This is relevant to the ongoing PvP discussion as well insofar as it shows the nature of the players this applies to: they're not the competitive/minmaxer type.

The usual forum bewilderment how discussions there differ from what's ultimately done in the game shows that, too: Forum users tend to be more involved in and critical about what happens in the game than the majority of players that form the game's backbone from a business point of view. That explains why changes made often will and must differ from the "consensus" on the forums. Internal surveys e.g. of sticky gameplay vs. abandoned gameplay are simply much more relevant. If they weren't, "game would have shut down years ago."

Which is still not saying the Star Wars IP doesn't help. But ask Ron Howard and Alden Ehrenreich if the Star Wars IP alone saves you from failing if you don't get the basics right. 🙂

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, 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? Literally every beta tester told them not to do it, that's right, all of them, not even 1 deviated. Not only did they tell them, they begged them not to do it, warning them it would destroy the user base. 

They did it anyway, and it destroyed the user base worse than ever before and they never recovered. Harbinger used to have 12 instances at peak in 4.X, shadowlands had 9. After the drop off, they couldn't even get into the 4s and servers were merged.

Galactic command or its current iteration of GS is really here nor there for player retention. It had a minuscule affect of population as a game system. It was their whole of game shift away from an MMO centric design to solo player design, that caused such a mass exodus. 

But the things that destroyed the MMO community in this game did start in 4.x. When they went to chapters, which stopped people in groups from completing pve content together. If you wanted to group, you had to do it multiple times for each player in the group or just play solo. That actually drove more MMO centric players (including pvpers) from the game than anything else.. 

Then they launched 5.x, which destroyed the PvP ecosystem entirely. Because they removed PvP gear & Comms. Which meant there was no reason for people to PvP as they lvl’d up. This saw a big drop in player skill for new players when they reached max lvl PvP. New People didn’t learn maps, tactics, strategies in lowbies like they should be. And the pve content was also being dumbed down so much that most of them didn’t know what 70% of their abilities even did. 

From 5.x onwards, PvP has never recovered & only gotten worse with each iteration. Player skills seem to continue to diminish. More & more dedicated pvpers leave, which means new people learn less because there are less people with the knowledge to teach them. 

Poor design choices across the entire game is why people left, not just Galactic Command. 

[SoyElSenado]

On 11/13/2023 at 8:07 PM, septru said:

... well that was a book and then some

Lol I tend to go 100 or 0 with things, sort of like a real life Sith in that I very much deal only in absolutes.

On 11/14/2023 at 1:47 AM, severe-trauma said:

 The survey asked too many questions about cartel market but I fit my pvp complaints into the writings at the end. Biosword, you see in this forum that we are loyal players in pvp making ideas and efforts about fixing the game. In return for caring about the game we get ignored and our game modes taken away. EU pvpers feel double ignored when you don't put the survey in our language that you make the game in. French and German translation of that survey would have cost less than €150.

Your post was all my English practice for the month. The read was worth my time poggers. I wish more for ranked to return but I would be happy with a rated like that. Your suggestion seems like a mixture of the rating systems in league and wow. These games are very popular, maybe Biosword should take a hint from games that are successful for once.

I hope they know they are going to run out of players to spend money if they keep going this strategy. I used to spend €50+ each month for decoratives and armor. Now I spend nothing because I enjoy the game less since ranked is gone and pvp suck.

  

Thanks, I'm glad you found it useful. As you may guess from my username, I grew up bilingual so I can definitely appreciate that it is not easy to read something like that in a second/third language. Speaking of languages, I do agree that it was messed up of them not to send the survey in German and French, particularly since it would not have been much of an expense at all to have it translated.

I obviously wasn't around for ranked in this game but I fully see your point that having the endgame progression system for PvP effectively deleted caused you and that group of players to spend less money on the game (and I'm sure many quit entirely). Speaking for myself, if there were a PvP system like the one I suggested that made me feel motivated and devote lots of time to this game, I would 1000% be spending more money in the CM. It's obvious why... unlike now I would care more about what my character looked like, whether I had enough credits for full 300 augments, getting cool decorations for a SH, etc. And yeah you're exactly right, my idea is not some crazy theory I formulated after many nights in the lab. It's totally a ripoff of how WoW's end of season titles work with a bit of league and valorant. My own ideas are sprinkled in really just insofar as how they can make a rating system with minimal dev effort/resources that's also more accessible for the majority of players than the ones in those games are.

I also think what you (and @septru) said in response point to the wider reality that former ranked players would be more than happy with some alternative rating system. Even one that is far less hardcore and much easier to manage than the original. Too many clowns on the forums and Reddit think all of the veteran PvP community's complaints and solutions are simply "lul bring back ranked." 

On 11/14/2023 at 1:59 AM, DeannaVoyager said:

 

You were spot on with everything you said, but I'm gonna poke this one a bit because it's in contradiction with the rest.  There is a reward structure and that's part of the problem. 

 

- pvp gives most conquest points, a lot of it is infinitely repeatable.

- pvp gives a lot of tech frags compared to pve, people who start gearing up for end game pve are better of gearing with pvp than pve (which is stupid)

- pvp seasons reward track has some cool items (for people who don't already have it), and because they can only buy up to level 15, they need to play pvp to get those rewards

 

The quality of pvp is what it is because people play it for the wrong reasons. When they see how toxic and unbalanced it is against premades, they just sit through it without actually trying to win, because they have decided they want the rewards no matter what. I bet majority of them have their chat window closed too, so all that toxicity gets wasted (and so do calls from defenders). 

 

A lot of people have listed a lot of good things how to make pvp better, here's one from me too:

Weeklies take too long to finish if you are unlucky with the group finder. Change it like it is in GSF, four matches if you lose everything, 2 if you win. At least that way the people who aren't even trying to win will be gone sooner and only pvp players will remain.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading. You're right, when I said "no reward structure" that was incorrect. At least in the beginning I tried to make it clear that my issue was poor reward structure, but I know I definitely messed that distinction up at times because I remember re-reading it and changing that line in places thinking about how "technically" the quest completion rate is a reward.

I honestly didn't consider the things you brought up about conquest points and tech frags being higher from PvP because I just haven't been playing this game long enough to know that, so I appreciate learning that from you. That makes it even worse for sure, you're totally right - it basically means that not only are there people who don't like PvP and are only there for the seasons stuff, there's also people there solely for the fragments and conquest. Like I talked about, these players are not really winning games, whether because they just /sleep or they don't really care to try.... which means they are the ones stuck having to queue the full slate of arenas and wzs since they are losing. That's obviously not a healthy system and I think that's why your suggestion is great. What is it, 16 warzones and 12 arenas if you lose every time? Maybe in addition to lowering the number of losses, lower the tech fragment/conquest yield for the weeklies or make it not repeatable as many times to disincentivize people from grinding out losses in general.

On 11/14/2023 at 3:42 PM, TrixxieTriss said:

Swtor has only lasted this long because it’s Star Wars. If it had been any other IP, it would have shuttered years ago.

For sure. The voice acting, all the vanilla story content, and the space barbie that was cited keeps the game alive because it's Star Wars content. Nobody would be spending money in the CM if this were some obscure IP. 

On 11/14/2023 at 6:22 PM, septru said:

 

I actually took time to read over your book, although I doubt BioSword will do the same.

 

I can't agree with it more. In fact, it's exactly what I've been suggesting since 7.2. These are the exact suggestions I made in a previous post. LMK what you think. 

 

1) Keep the participation reward structure of PvP Seasons just as it is, to incentivize casuals to PvP.

2) Bring back an opt-in ranking system for arenas using the old ELO ranking system (but slightly modified using the current matchmaking algorithm that prioritizes premade v. premade). Anyone that plays arenas will be put in the same matchmaking pool, but will only see their ranking if they opt-in. 

3) Reward exclusive flairs and additional PvP Season Tokens for gold, silver, bronze placement. No need for top3 rewards. 

 

These changes would be fairly low effort and minimum changes, but create a huge different. Besides the ranking system which may take a minimal amount of time to design (which btw BioWare spent resources to remove in the first place), the reoccurring rewards could be automatically granted with limited resources. Without top3 rewards, there would not be a huge need for moderation. If BioSword really wanted to put actual resources into PvP, they could remake a leaderboard to go alongside the ranking system. But it is not necessarily needed. 

Lol yeah, I doubt they will either but like I said in my book, it's more of a personal thing for me to go all out and suggest all of what I can to fix the problem. It makes me feel better about washing my hands of it if they don't do/say anything about these issues and we're still in the same place 6 months from now.

Thanks for reading the whole novel. I read your post that you linked as well as that thread in general. I'm really glad to see, like I said in response to @severe-trauma, that it's total fake news that all you former ranked guys are willing to accept is the old ranked system back. This idea gets propagated all over the forums and Reddit, meanwhile I bet if you ask one of the people who say "bring back ranked" if they'd be cool with a system like we have suggested, almost all of them would say absolutely yes. I really think it's just a matter of it being easier for most players to say "bring back ranked" than it is for them to write treatises. Not everyone is going to take the time like we have to think about alternative ideas for rating that works within their new systems/philosophy. They just know they want a rating system back that makes them feel good about the time they invest into the game, and that it is full stop unfair that PvE players have story, veteran, and master mode and all they have is "participation" mode. 

I mean, just look at your first point - you are also saying to keep their already built PvP seasons exactly the same. We aren't trying to say they need to just dumpster everything they've changed, we're trying to suggest improvements within that system. It's really this simple: just use what they already have to give people end of season rewards (flairs + I like your idea in point 3 of additional PvP seasons tokens) based on that rating. I suggested 25-50-75 because it is insanely broad and everybody who just tries in PvP will get at least bronze. I'm not going to reiterate why it's important for there to be a rating system and why it will reduce toxicity but yeah. The only thing that I think is unanswered is whether there'd be separate rewards based on percentiles for wz and arena. I guess this depends on whether the current MMR system they have is entirely separate for WZ and arena or if it somehow aggregates data from both to matchmake players. 

I'm curious on your 2nd point about what the "opt-in" system would entail, because I don't fully know how the old system worked. I hadn't thought of allowing the rating and whether someone was currently at bronze/silver/gold to be hidden for players who don't want to see their rating/don't care. I think that's a really great idea and makes the whole thing even better. Effectively this means if you just want to PvP for your seasons armor or whatever, you don't have to even worry about the rating, you can focus on your PvE or story and won't feel bad every time you open your window because you aren't silver, etc. 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.

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, SoyElSenado said:

For sure. The voice acting, all the vanilla story content, and the space barbie that was cited keeps the game alive because it's Star Wars content. Nobody would be spending money in the CM if this were some obscure IP. 

I’m not discounting that.

The point I was trying to make is BioWare have made some really bad, terrible game breaking decisions & designs choices since 4.0.

Some were so bad in fact, they have driven away whole portions of the community.

And if the game hadn’t been Star Wars with movies & TV shows releasing during those times, those “design mistakes” would have shuttered the game because everyone would have left & NO new players would have joined to replace all the ones BioWare drove away. 

The players like me who stayed, only stayed because it was SW. If it had been any other IP, I would have left years ago. 

Edited November 16, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[SoyElSenado]

9 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I’m not discounting that.

The point I was trying to make is BioWare have made some really bad, terrible game breaking decisions & designs since 4.0.

Some were so bad in fact, they have driven away whole portions of the community.

And if the game hadn’t been Star Wars with movies & TV shows releasing during those times, those “design mistakes” would have shuttered the game because everyone would have left & NO new players would have joined to replace all the ones BioWare drove away. 

The players like me who stayed, only stayed because it was SW. If it had been any other IP, I would have left years ago. 

Haha, I know, I know. I agree with you. I wrote that to expand on what you said in response to the notion from someone else that swtor is alive because of voice acting/story and space barbie and that the IP doesn’t carry it. That’s why I said the voice acting and space barbie only matter because it’s got Star Wars IP.

Edited November 16, 2023 by SoyElSenado

[TrixxieTriss]

2 hours ago, SoyElSenado said:

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

Which makes their decision to increase premade sizes from a maximum of 4 man to 8 man totally illogical. Because 8 man size means those people have to sit in the queue waiting longer for pops. Where if it was still 4 man max, those 8 players would get a faster pop with 4 on each team. 

But if the devs were absolutely prioritising pop speeds, they would have gone in the opposite direction & removed all premades. Because with no premades, matchmaking would work faster, pop faster & be better based on individual skills that have nothing to do with being in a premade or having to wait for another premade to be against.

It’s why I’m so reluctant to really believe the sorts of statements like Jackie made regarding pop speeds. Because what she said only makes logical sense if the rest of the design choices reflect that premise and they don’t, they are not even close. And I’m not saying she lied, she’s just relaying what the devs & management have told her to say.

Also, to be clear before people jump down my throat. I’m not suggesting they totally remove premades. I’m just trying to point out how Jackie’s statement that “pop times are the priority”, totally contradict the way the devs went & designed the current system. 

Edited November 16, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[krackcommando]

9 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Which makes their decision to increase premade sizes from a maximum of 4 man to 8 man totally illogical.

that was crazy. I think everyone in the game, when they saw that, their eyes popped out. even players who do form 8m teams (or as close as they can get to them) were like, "wow! really? ok. lolololol."

and at the same time BW opened up access to 8m teams in what is a defacto "regs queue," they also opened the floodgates for a legion of space barbies and solo/SM players to run into pvp in the mythical way lemmings run in droves off the cliffs of Ireland. just an astonishing combination of nonsensical (dare I say dumb?) design decisions by someone(s) in charge over at Biosword.

it was such an epically bad/dumb design decision that, honestly, you kind of have to laugh out loud. like...legit lol. not the generic typing lol.

I talk a lot about Biosword looking at the same "problem" that I look at and coming up with diametrically opposed "solutions." omg. this. lololololol so. bad.

did they actually expect a bunch of SM/Space Barbies to form up their own 8m teams like a school of prey fish in the ocean? and even if they did, did Biosword somehow think that was going to make them improve or enjoy the pvp experience? that's called a "bait ball," and it gets attacked by literally every predatory fish/mammal in the ocean until all the little fishies are devoured. it's the only time you'll see dolphins, sharks, BIRDS, whales, and seals working TOGETHER to devour a common prey. just imagining Space Barbies grouping up "for protection" when they join WZ or arena queues. lolololololol

Edited November 16, 2023 by krackcommando