Pvp Premade group issues

[impally]

Hi, I figured I'd make a forum post about this as it seems to become a major effect in warzones more then Arenas. 

During a lot of matches I see on my pvp toon, there are at least 8 players [a whole team] of premades. Sometimes it just friends but mostly its a guild group formed together.

Although I do agree having one or two friends in warzones can be fun, but going over that limit and tag teaming certain players has started to make warzones dreadful and fewer players since most people dont want to deal with being targeted by a mass group. 

For those that dont know was Premades is, its a group of friends or guild members of up to 4-8 players that queue for pvp stuff, mostly warzones. They usually converse over discord or other voice message ways and target players and over rule the objective of the game. 

Personally I would like to ask if the Dev team will ever do anything about this issues as it is becoming more and more frequent and taking away the joy of working with other players to work together to achieve the game objective.

[Bullyabass]

Wondering if this is a troll post :). Premades have been the source of complaints for at least the last 6? months.

Yes they kill warzones and arenas, yes it has stopped people queueing and even playing SWTOR and yes the dev team don't care.

They've had the chance to fix it but have prioritised pointless gear grind and CM cash gouging for their latest "update"

Split the queues into solo only and general for premades or folks who don't care

But its probably too late now, the solo players have moved on and the rest are so addicted to their premades they wouldn't queue without them

 

[krackcommando]

I've run into very few 4m premades in arenas, and I queue at literally all times of the day (though obviously not on the same days). however, with the new gear and the ridiculously tight restriction on how many tech frags you can carry at one time, I tried jumping back into the WZ queue for the extra weeklies and dailies.

(Note: I have avoided WZs since S2 b/c I despise OPG, Quesh, and Vandin. if it were CWs or AHG all the time, I'd have queued alongside arenas despite the less desirable player base)

So in the past week, I've noticed the presence of a new guild name that stacks their team on SF. ok. whatever. BW allows 8m. it's idiotic. but they do it. what struck me as truly infuriating though was my first pop put me into a quesh match with a <reign....> trinity. we were all pugs. like...ok. whatever. typical WZ. then the next pop (like literally 30s later) is a CW. I'm on a team with a 2m premade and the other side has this <k...> guild running more than 4m but not quite 8m. once again, as a pug, it's annoying and all, blah blah blah. but what's absolutely infuriating is that I KNOW there's at least a 4m <reign...> trinity premade active in the queue right now, and the MM is throwing a bunch of pugs with a 2m dps grp against a 6m-8m premade. WTH? 

anyway, I'm back to arenas, and this was just a small sample size (one night...about 5 WZs). however, I have extensive "anecdotal" experience in arenas, and it's the same situation. the difference is that it's less pronounced because the grp sizes are much smaller and the horrible matchmaking is more about putting the 2 or 3 worst geared players on the same side when they could've easily been swapped with pugs on the other team. that's bad but not as brutal as the WZ experience last night. eesh. gl WZ players. 😄

[Samcuu]

8 man premades are a problem? First time I'm hearing about this issue... 🙃

[impally]

13 hours ago, Bullyabass said:

Wondering if this is a troll post :). Premades have been the source of complaints for at least the last 6? months.

Yes they kill warzones and arenas, yes it has stopped people queueing and even playing SWTOR and yes the dev team don't care.

They've had the chance to fix it but have prioritised pointless gear grind and CM cash gouging for their latest "update"

Split the queues into solo only and general for premades or folks who don't care

But its probably too late now, the solo players have moved on and the rest are so addicted to their premades they wouldn't queue without them

 

Nope, no troll here. Just someone who enjoys pvping for the pvp seasons. 
Which is when I always see premades sadly. I mean cool it would be fun and all that. Guild vs Guild lol. 
 

It would be a cool idea if they did split the group up. That would be rather interesting. 
Although I'm a solo player and if the premade thing keeps going on well...you know that saying " If you cant beat em you may as well join em"  but I doubt anyone would want me in their group haha.
I'm an operative Lethality named, I can handle premades but I figured I'd just voice the community concerns. 

It would be interesting to see what the Dev's say though

[impally]

This is exactly why I made this post in the forums. I have noticed a particular guild as well with 4+ members. 

I do agree though with Arena's its more easier to handle premades and also its a better area to work on teamwork and strategy too as well as getting a decent idea to how pvp works kinda. 

[SentinalMasterWW]

The funny thing is that 95% of all premades you run into (At least for me on star forge) are complete Dogwater at pvp. They rely on meta Stacking, or doing the Flavor of the month strat, which is Jug skank tank, Sorc healer ususally, than stacking as heavy DPS be it Sorc or AP PTs. I fought numerous players out of their premade and they are terrible 1v1, I can 1v1 all day because I primarily Q solo, whish is why IMO Solo Q players are more skilled at PVP than premade players. 

This PVP season is honestly the last one i'm going to try and do, afterwards I don't care anymore. I just need 4 more PVP tokens, than I'm done and can get what I want from the PVP vendor. There is no point after this season for Me, I got basically everything I wanted, why would I want to play PVP to get thrown into a Huttball where I'm going to be farmed by 30 year olds who play this game all day and get into fights with strangers gloating that they grouped up on meta specs and killed everyone who Q'd solo?

PVP is honestly just a fat joke if you play solo, the Dev's claim they balance it, but they would have to be blind to not see the complaints, they just simply don't care about PVP. All their claims about, "well we throw premades against others" is a lie. Very few actual times does that happen, what really happens is that you have newbie players thrown into a slaugher machine as the premade just stomps over them. 

If you want to see a PVP match be quickly killed off, just have a sweaty premade farming everyone, players will get annoyed at this and leave, its honestly why Premades actually Kill the PVP population and they are actually a serious problem for the health of PVP. 

Don't get me wrong, I love playing with my guilde friends in PVP, we group up to get weeklies done or PVP seasons, but we actually are good sports about it. We don't do pocket tank and healer, and we don't main the Broken meta DPS like Ionic engis or Sorcs. I personally, if I feel like I'm killing a player over and over again, especially if I can see they are new, I will give them a reprieve, and go attack someone else, as I want them to have fun rather than me being a Sweatlord saying I got 67-0 KD by farming newbie players. 

Honestly if they want to fix premades there are so many solutions. 

1. Limit premades to 4 for Warzones, and two for arenas. 

2. Allow players to leave a match early one time for free, if they feel like they are being farmed by a premade.

3. Nerf the Meta specs or bring everyone else back up to  compensate.

4. Improve the team balancing, If there is a premade on the other team, throw more skilled players (i.e players with higher ELO) on the other one to compensate.

 

[Bullyabass]

3 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

4. Improve the team balancing, If there is a premade on the other team, throw more skilled players (i.e players with higher ELO) on the other one to compensate.

 

You can't create balanced matches with premades. Leaving aside that the most experienced players are the ones most likely to premade and that the healer and tank assigned to the entire team will spend most of the game running around behind their group mates you're trying to match one random combo against another. One premade streamed themselves as 4 engineering snipers spawn camping people people and killing them in the space of half a stun. How do you create a balanced match with that?

If people want to premade then let them. Just give solo players the option to queue for premade free matches.

[Samcuu]

9 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

Very few actual times does that happen, what really happens is that you have newbie players thrown into a slaugher machine as the premade just stomps over them. 

I mostly agree with the post but I will say that when I premade I usually get another premade on the other side. I don't do 8 man's because they simply aren't fun, but in a 3 or 4 man premade we usually (not always) get the 6 - 8 player premade on the opposing team. 

 

9 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

I personally, if I feel like I'm killing a player over and over again, especially if I can see they are new, I will give them a reprieve, and go attack someone else, as I want them to have fun rather than me being a Sweatlord saying I got 67-0 KD by farming newbie players. 

This is a good point sadly ppl love griefing. I actually do the same in world pvp if I see someone in a pvp zone I'll kill then but then I let them go about their dailies. I honestly don't get what's fun about continually killing someone who clearly can't defend themselves lol. 

 

9 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

3. Nerf the Meta specs or bring everyone else back up to  compensate

I dont think this is an option personally. It's an mmo there will always be an op/fotm spec. The key to diminish the effects of that is for the devs to try and balance classes more often than once every 6 months. Also fix bugs like how Viral Elements was broken for more than two years and allowed leth ops to run roughshod for an eternity. 

[krackcommando]

19 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

I dont think this is an option personally. It's an mmo there will always be an op/fotm spec. The key to diminish the effects of that is for the devs to try and balance classes more often than once every 6 months. Also fix bugs like how Viral Elements was broken for more than two years and allowed leth ops to run roughshod for an eternity. 

controversial opinion here, but I don't think there is any spec that's way over the line atm. and the two specs I think need work aren't the ones ppl generally hate. I think AP and deception hit too hard too quickly, and still have access to hard stuns. I'm not saying they're OP or unbalanced. I just don't like the way they are balanced. it makes playing without a tank unbearable, imo.

the real problem is class (and spec) stacking. one madness sorc is whatever. idc. two or THREE (in an arena) is unbearable. any crap player can dot and run with 2 others dotting and snaring eveyone to death. multiple juggs? that's at least 2 chokes and multiple immunities. a good player on any spec is a good player. but there's nothing like getting gang banged by 2 or 3 of the same (particularly w/o a guard).

TL; DR: individually, there's no spec that I think is way too OP. but the stacking is absolutely obnoxious. not sure what to do about that though.

[impally]

Devs should just simply put a cap on premades. A group of 4 is all that should be allowed to queue for Warzones, a group of 2 is all that is allowed to group for Arena's. I haven't played GSF in ages but I know that is another big area for premades. 

I also agree with you on this part.

On 12/10/2023 at 3:54 AM, krackcommando said:

the real problem is class (and spec) stacking. one madness sorc is whatever. idc. two or THREE (in an arena) is unbearable. any crap player can dot and run with 2 others dotting and snaring eveyone to death. multiple juggs? that's at least 2 chokes and multiple immunities.

Devs really need to look at the specs, states, and the insane about of stuns. 

But I think its all just wishful thinking and praying to devs like as if they will do something. 
 

On 12/9/2023 at 5:53 PM, SentinalMasterWW said:

 

This PVP season is honestly the last one i'm going to try and do, afterwards I don't care anymore. I just need 4 more PVP tokens, than I'm done and can get what I want from the PVP vendor. There is no point after this season for Me, I got basically everything I wanted, why would I want to play PVP to get thrown into a Huttball where I'm going to be farmed by 30 year olds who play this game all day and get into fights with strangers gloating that they grouped up on meta specs and killed everyone who Q'd solo?

PVP is honestly just a fat joke if you play solo, the Dev's claim they balance it, but they would have to be blind to not see the complaints, they just simply don't care about PVP. All their claims about, "well we throw premades against others" is a lie. Very few actual times does that happen, what really happens is that you have newbie players thrown into a slaugher machine as the premade just stomps over them. 

 

 

This is exactly what I am going to be doing. Once I get this armor thats it. I think I will focus on pve stuff like HM and NiM Nefra. Its just not worth the pain anymore.

Pvp is dead on most other servers but Star Forge. 

[krackcommando]

7 minutes ago, impally said:

Devs really need to look at the specs, states, and the insane about of stuns. 

But I think its all just wishful thinking and praying to devs like as if they will do something. 

there is not an insane amount of stuns. but the stuns are in the hands of specific classes. so when they stack,  you're kinda screwed. so a jugg leaps to you. he cannot be controlled (immunity). he pops a dcd and cannot be damaged. you cannot run b/c he cc's you. ok. I can eat on cc. break the next one. and then 15s later, i'm getting choked or w/e the op and sin hard stun is. for the full 8s. which ofc i have no shot at surviving.

I don't think I need to explain the frustration of having to deal with 3 nets to a sorc, stealthy, or mara (oddly, net doesn't bother merc unless they're RO or PT). it's just dumb. and the game regularly puts random pugs on the same team of the same spec the same way it often puts the two poorly geared players on the same team despite all 8 ppl in the arena being solo pugs. it's very frustrating.

personally, i think they need to completely eliminate any sort of "elo" matchmaking for generic/reg pvp, and just do a better job at these highly objective factors like role, gear, and spec (prioritized in that order, imo).

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, krackcommando said:

personally, i think they need to completely eliminate any sort of "elo" matchmaking for generic/reg pvp, and just do a better job at these highly objective factors like role, gear, and spec (prioritized in that order, imo)

It’s quite possible that having actual ELO randomness like that would produce more balanced teams. 

[Whykara]

15 hours ago, krackcommando said:

personally, i think they need to completely eliminate any sort of "elo" matchmaking for generic/reg pvp, and just do a better job at these highly objective factors like role, gear, and spec (prioritized in that order, imo).

This. Everytime my win rate is up I then get paired with undergeared or just bad players until it's down again. I mean this is balance from a certain point of view, but it's not fun. 

[krackcommando]

4 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

It’s quite possible that having actual ELO randomness like that would produce more balanced teams. 

i have zero doubt that eliminating ELO from consideration and just going by 1.) role, then 2.) gear, then 3.) spec would be far better matchups. good players and dominant premades actively or passively ignore win conditions of WZs (thus completely obliterating the value of ELO in the first place). iunno. meanwhile, there's no approximating or calculating or subjective estimation or comparing games played, or legacies or any crap like that at all in going by role, gear, and spec.

ELO for rated? yeah. I get it. ELO for these incredibly random mixed queues? no. just....no. stahp. human. what are u doing!

[TrixxieTriss]

1 hour ago, Whykara said:

This. Everytime my win rate is up I then get paired with undergeared or just bad players until it's down again. I mean this is balance from a certain point of view, but it's not fun. 

This is exactly how it feels to me too.

[Zunayson]

On 12/9/2023 at 11:54 AM, krackcommando said:

controversial opinion here, but I don't think there is any spec that's way over the line atm. and the two specs I think need work aren't the ones ppl generally hate. I think AP and deception hit too hard too quickly, and still have access to hard stuns. I'm not saying they're OP or unbalanced. I just don't like the way they are balanced. it makes playing without a tank unbearable, imo.

the real problem is class (and spec) stacking. one madness sorc is whatever. idc. two or THREE (in an arena) is unbearable. any crap player can dot and run with 2 others dotting and snaring eveyone to death. multiple juggs? that's at least 2 chokes and multiple immunities. a good player on any spec is a good player. but there's nothing like getting gang banged by 2 or 3 of the same (particularly w/o a guard).

TL; DR: individually, there's no spec that I think is way too OP. but the stacking is absolutely obnoxious. not sure what to do about that though.

How are three madness sorcs any worse to play against than a madness, lethality, and IO player? I think any 3 players, competently played are gonna annihilate a solo target, without a guard or support. 

Because TTK is so short in 7.0 and skill disparities are greater than ever, playing against competent players is going to be cancerous if your team isn't pulling their weight.

I get the sense that "muh class stacking" is just someone not having fun because they're getting globaled, but any class composition can global a lone target.

[krackcommando]

2 minutes ago, Zunayson said:

How are three madness sorcs any worse to play against than a madness, lethality, and IO player? I think any 3 players, competently played are gonna annihilate a solo target, without a guard or support. 

i thought I explained the triple madness in the example.

but I think maybe I didn't state the underlying issue of class stacking: it's especially dumb because one team has 2-3 "rocks" and the other team has 2-3 "scissors" when each team could have just as easily had a "rock" and a "scissor." is that, at least, clear enough? this is a rock/paper/scissors game.

[WHstwroATo]

On 12/11/2023 at 9:04 PM, Whykara said:

This. Everytime my win rate is up I then get paired with undergeared or just bad players until it's down again. I mean this is balance from a certain point of view, but it's not fun. 

This feels like is happening with my characters which play pvp with.

One of my characters is completely "stuck" at 50% win rate, if I ever get to above 50% it seems to start a losing streak until the percentage drops to below 50% and then seemingly start winning more until get over 50% and the cycle starts over again.

With other character it's the same except it's circulating at around 40%.

[Whykara]

6 minutes ago, WHstwroATo said:

One of my characters is completely "stuck" at 50% win rate, if I ever get to above 50% it seems to start a losing streak until the percentage drops to below 50% and then seemingly start winning more until get over 50% and the cycle starts over again.

Absolutely. For me it's the 55% mark I can't seem to crack. I wouldn't consider myself a bad player, but I'm definitely not good enough to carry three leeroy jenkins with their chats disabled as an assassin skank tank.

[TrixxieTriss]

18 minutes ago, WHstwroATo said:

This feels like is happening with my characters which play pvp with.

One of my characters is completely "stuck" at 50% win rate, if I ever get to above 50% it seems to start a losing streak until the percentage drops to below 50% and then seemingly start winning more until get over 50% and the cycle starts over again.

With other character it's the same except it's circulating at around 40%.

If you’re good enough or the other team is bad enough, you can carry a team in Arena. But it’s impossible to be everywhere at once in a WZ match. Team work is such an integral part of winning WZ’s. 

I’ve got characters that have 80-100% winrate in Arena, but struggle to stay above 50-55% in WZ’s. And I’m actually much better at WZ tactics & strategy than Arena.

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[krackcommando]

46 minutes ago, WHstwroATo said:

This feels like is happening with my characters which play pvp with.

One of my characters is completely "stuck" at 50% win rate, if I ever get to above 50% it seems to start a losing streak until the percentage drops to below 50% and then seemingly start winning more until get over 50% and the cycle starts over again.

With other character it's the same except it's circulating at around 40%.

if you truly care about your win percentage, you should be rolling in premades regardless of the format. i'm not a big advocate of going premade for winning b/c it's a fairly casual queue and that's like shooting fish in a barrel. but really. if you are focused on your win rate and you queue solo, you're doing it wrong.

[Zunayson]

3 hours ago, krackcommando said:

i thought I explained the triple madness in the example.

but I think maybe I didn't state the underlying issue of class stacking: it's especially dumb because one team has 2-3 "rocks" and the other team has 2-3 "scissors" when each team could have just as easily had a "rock" and a "scissor." is that, at least, clear enough? this is a rock/paper/scissors game.

That rock paper scissors clarification makes more sense. Seems like the idea of "no free lunches" should apply here. A premade stacking rock like that leaves them vulnerable to being pitted against a team of paper so occasionally they will have easy and hard games. Since this is not like overwatch with role quotas, people will play what they want with their friends, and that is good.

For solo queue Biosword matchmaking could be worse. In all of my couple hundred arenas as a sniper in 7.0, the other sniper is like always on the other team. So they take class into account. There is still much to be desired because just matchmaking off average damage is probably way better.

[vTempus]

We can complain about it all we want, but the fact to the matter is that Bioware or Broadsword does not care. The premade dilemma will always be in the game (and always has been), but the least they could do is to cap the number of players per premade to four. I wouldn't get my hopes up though, considering they "revamped" PvP "recently" I don't expect them to lift a finger for at least a year from now. Creating a solo queue for warzones is not feasible with the current pool of players and would cause other adverse outcomes. You would never get games in the premade queue because building matches from only premades is nigh on impossible. 

 

Also to the one gentleman a few posts above, if you care about your WR that much just don't queue solo on that character. If you exclusively solo queue and you want to tryhard just go skank every game lol. Playing solo is just fine, sometimes you run into a death stack of 5-8 in queue and then you simply go play arenas or touch grass for a while. 

Edited December 12, 2023 by vTempus

[krackcommando]

37 minutes ago, Zunayson said:

For solo queue Biosword matchmaking could be worse. In all of my couple hundred arenas as a sniper in 7.0, the other sniper is like always on the other team. So they take class into account. There is still much to be desired because just matchmaking off average damage is probably way better.

not by much. snipers are relatively rare on SF arenas. they're packed with mercs, stealth, juggs, and sorcs. the number of times they're stacked when solo is just eye roll. it's a low priority if at all. I don't think it should be FIRST. but my gawd. when you have 3 of 1 and 3 of another on opposite sides, swap one off ffs.

Edited December 12, 2023 by krackcommando