Please "Bring Back" Rated Games

[sithBracer]

34 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

This is all true.

But it’s like the saying, if they build it they will come. Of course that’s an over simplification. 

Let’s consider the reasons the PvP part of the game has been bleeding players since 7.0 & more importantly, 7.2. 

1. Whether we like it or not, removing ranked drove off a big chunk of the PvP population. 

2. Adding 8 man premades drove off a lot of the new potential pvpers that seasons was supposed to bring in to replace the ranked players that left (devs really shot themselves in the foot with that).

3. Poor class balance since the 7.0 pruning exercise. That still isn’t fixed. 

4. The current gearing is better than it was at 7.0 launch, but it’s still not great & contributed to driving players away. 

5. The deserter lock out the gets exponentially longer & lasts all week is a massive turn off & has driven players from the game. 

6. Matchmaking is broken. It’s not fit for purpose & honestly, will never work while ever there are premades in the queue. 

7. Poor incentives vs winning or losing. They were on the right track with the medals idea (it needed more work still). Then they lowered the medal requirements instead of fixing it properly. Which has led to AFKers cheesing the system to complete seasons. 

Now, nearly all of those issues, except the gearing system & deserter lockout, were addressed in my suggestion. I believe if they were to implement what I’m suggesting properly (not some half baked version of it), we would get an increase in the PvP population again. Then the “fixed & improved” matchmaking would have a chance to work properly too. 

But they first need to address the issues that have driven players away & make PvP unfun for casuals & hardcore pvpers alike. 

The population was decimated in 5.X and never recovered. Before that, it would've been possible if they developed cross server queues. But after 5.X it was pretty much over. 6.X population was nothing to brag about and definitely not enough to do anything you wanted.

None of your ideas will bring people back at this point, not to the level you need to in order to support any ranked system.

I personally think the only thing that might bring people back is if they use the amazon servers to create a "classic" swtor server, that has swtor as it was in the end of 1.X or 2.X. WoW did this to great success. It will bring back the people who loved playing in those times, it will bring back the nostalgia people, and a lot of newer players will go to the servers to see how it was like playing then. I think that would give enough of a population to support some sort of ranked, at least in the short term, then it will be up to BS if they can hold it.

EDIT-I personally think it was lack of real playable content that drove off the players. There is just nothing to do in the game anymore.

Edited March 1 by sithBracer

[TrixxieTriss]

9 minutes ago, sithBracer said:

The population was decimated in 5.X and never recovered. Before that, it would've been possible if they developed cross server queues. But after 5.X it was pretty much over. 6.X population was nothing to brag about and definitely not enough to do anything you wanted.

None of your ideas will bring people back at this point, not to the level you need to in order to support any ranked system.

I personally think the only thing that might bring people back is if they use the amazon servers to create a "classic" swtor server, that has swtor as it was in the end of 1.X or 2.X. WoW did this to great success. It will bring back the people who loved playing in those times, it will bring back the nostalgia people, and a lot of newer players will go to the servers to see how it was like playing then. I think that would give enough of a population to support some sort of ranked, at least in the short term, then it will be up to BS if they can hold it.

EDIT-I personally think it was lack of real playable content that drove off the players. There is just nothing to do in the game anymore.

I can’t really argue with that. But if they do nothing, PvP will continue to get worse & drive more people from the game. Doing nothing will just speed up the demise of PvP & the game as whole. At least attempting something like my idea would bring some people back & hopefully stem the bleed out.

[septru]

On 2/29/2024 at 11:59 AM, HaoZhao said:

Ranked wasn't taken away because of win traders. It was taken away because it was deader than dead.

Any game mode that requires you to chant "queue solos" over and over and over again in fleet chat to get a pop is a dead game mode.

These days when I log on SF impside fleet, I see people spamming "que arenas." By your standard should we remove arenas from the game? 

 

On a more serious note, arenas are more dead now than they ever were during ranked. Ranked had a serious population issue, there's no denying that. Complete mismanagement and a lack of resources killed the game population. There was no justifying continuing developing rewards for such a small proportion of players. It's just too bad that the devs removed ranked after creating PvP Seasons which would have arguably fixed ranked's population issue. 

[HaoZhao]

On 3/5/2024 at 4:18 PM, septru said:

These days when I log on SF impside fleet, I see people spamming "que arenas." By your standard should we remove arenas from the game? 

 

On a more serious note, arenas are more dead now than they ever were during ranked. Ranked had a serious population issue, there's no denying that. Complete mismanagement and a lack of resources killed the game population. There was no justifying continuing developing rewards for such a small proportion of players. It's just too bad that the devs removed ranked after creating PvP Seasons which would have arguably fixed ranked's population issue. 

I've said it a million times before and I'll say it again, I don't know why people bother lying about stuff like this. I get arenas at all hours of the day. Why is that?

The only people you can gaslight with this nonsense is people here who don't know better. You literally cannot successfully gaslight the developers because they have the telemetry data. They can pull up the list of every single arena that happens on any given day and the exact times those arenas popped. So, making up lies about it isn't going to get the game changed because the developers know better.

PVP seasons wouldn't have fixed ranked. Ranked has exclusive rewards and it was still a dead game mode that popped like 3 hours a night.

[DarrelK]

Arenas are literally as dead as the worst times of end of s1, end of s2 ranked yes. The 30 min queues to pop with 2 n pcs to keep you company hits the nostalgia vibe just right.

What effort, what rewards, they literally switched to the flair model so they don't have to do anything for ranked after what was it, s8 or something... 0 maintenance or support and it was still going for years. And anything that doesn't have the population to support popping 24/7 can be fixed by gating it behind limited time availability - weekends only, or certain hours daily only, etc.

[septru]

16 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

I've said it a million times before and I'll say it again, I don't know why people bother lying about stuff like this.

 

When I que solo arenas on SF, my average wait time is 15-20 minutes. That is about the same, if not longer, than my average wait time in ranked. That's not a "lie." If you don't believe me you are more than happy to see for yourself on my twitch. 

 

16 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

PVP seasons wouldn't have fixed ranked. Ranked has exclusive rewards and it was still a dead game mode that popped like 3 hours a night.

As I and others (who have now long quit the game) have said over and over again... Ranked had a very healthy population for the first 3 months of the season. Games would pop frequently and at almost all times of the day, with as many as 5-6 instances of arenas going at the same time during prime time which is notably more instances of arenas than pop currently. However, as ranked seasons continued for over a year, as they usually did, as a result of developer negligence, the ranked population would shrink drastically. And let's be clear, the regular warzone population would be the same now if PvP Season 5 would continue for a year+. At the end of the day, PvP Seasons does 2 things really well: 1) maintain a fixed and relatively short schedule 2) bring new players into PvP. If the devs kept a ranked que and merged it into PvP Seasons, you would see a dramatic increase in the ranked population health. 

[MadCuzBad]

On 2/29/2024 at 9:59 AM, HaoZhao said:

Ranked wasn't taken away because of win traders. It was taken away because it was deader than dead. Ranked popped for like 3 hours a night and then it was dead for the other 21 hours of the day. Any game mode that requires you to chant "queue solos" over and over and over again in fleet chat to get a pop is a dead game mode.

Ranked was taking up resources from the rest of the game and only 0.1% of the players actually used it, so the devs pulled the plug on it. It was a good call.

6.0 ranked was the worst when half the queue was PVE players farming crafting materials and not caring if they won or loss. They should have pulled it then.

If what you said is true, then explain to me why all of my flags were taken from me that I worked very hard towards since season 7? Explain how that has anything to do with deader than dead.

People make up all kinds of lies to justify removing ranked and they are just that. LIES.

Ranked was not deader than dead. Any given day 7 days a week you could watch ranked pvp on twitched streamed from DM or SF non stop all day and all night. It was not deader than dead. It streamed all day and all night. I played ranked pvp from season 1 until it ended. It was much less active pre season 8. Since season 8 and the introduction to rewards such as mats etc it got bigger and bigger and more and more active as the seasons went on.

The only reason why ranked ended was because of WOKE mentality. That is why all of our flags were taken from us and instead of just simply removing top 3 and leader boards they shut the entire thing down and used non sensible excuses to justify it giving you everything but the real truth. 

Anyhow you are free to make up stories about why they removed ranked and believe whatever the heck you jolly well please about dead this, and farming mats that, and taking up resourses yadda yadda yadda all you want. There is one word why ranked was removed. That word is toxicity. And in a woke society that will NOT be tolerated unless it is coming from the woke crowd themselves.

That is my 2 cents. You can keep the change.

[HaoZhao]

6 hours ago, MadCuzBad said:

If what you said is true, then explain to me why all of my flags were taken from me that I worked very hard towards since season 7? Explain how that has anything to do with deader than dead.

People make up all kinds of lies to justify removing ranked and they are just that. LIES.

Ranked was not deader than dead. Any given day 7 days a week you could watch ranked pvp on twitched streamed from DM or SF non stop all day and all night. It was not deader than dead. It streamed all day and all night. I played ranked pvp from season 1 until it ended. It was much less active pre season 8. Since season 8 and the introduction to rewards such as mats etc it got bigger and bigger and more and more active as the seasons went on.

The only reason why ranked ended was because of WOKE mentality. That is why all of our flags were taken from us and instead of just simply removing top 3 and leader boards they shut the entire thing down and used non sensible excuses to justify it giving you everything but the real truth. 

Anyhow you are free to make up stories about why they removed ranked and believe whatever the heck you jolly well please about dead this, and farming mats that, and taking up resourses yadda yadda yadda all you want. There is one word why ranked was removed. That word is toxicity. And in a woke society that will NOT be tolerated unless it is coming from the woke crowd themselves.

That is my 2 cents. You can keep the change.

This is interesting fiction, but again, you can't gaslight the developers because they have the actual telemetry data. It's impossible to fool anyone who has to power to bring ranked back. So your end game here is to just lie and rile people up on the message board. It's your free time, you spend it how you like.

Ranked did not end because of "toxicity." The same whiners who exploded in rage every time they lost a game are still in regs and they still grind their teeth down to little nubs while steam shoots out of their ears. If the devs wanted to get rid of toxicity, they'd implement harassment rules like FF14 has where you get suspended for a week if tell someone they have bad DPS.

No, ranked did not pop 24/7. I'm not sure if even anyone here is going to be fooled by that one. SWTOR twitch is also mostly dead and the most popular PVPers have trouble breaking 15 viewers. They certainly do not stream PVP all day long, let alone ranked. This just never happened. 

Edited March 12 by HaoZhao

[dftu]

7 minutes ago, HaoZhao said:

No, ranked did not pop 24/7. I'm not sure if even anyone here is going to be fooled by that one. SWTOR twitch is also mostly dead and the most popular PVPers have trouble breaking 15 viewers. They certainly do not stream PVP all day long, let alone ranked. This just never happened. 

SWTOR Twitch is in a very sad state now, but you used to be able to hop on and find someone streaming solo ranked at just about any time. There was also a solid community there who pretty much always showed up to watch any given solo ranked stream. The 15 viewer cap you're seeing now didn't exist back then. Some people would legitimately get 100+ viewers whenever they streamed solo ranked. Still not a lot compared to more popular games, but it was far from what we see now. 

[HaoZhao]

4 minutes ago, dftu said:

SWTOR Twitch is in a very sad state now, but you used to be able to hop on and find someone streaming solo ranked at just about any time. There was also a solid community there who pretty much always showed up to watch any given solo ranked stream. The 15 viewer cap you're seeing now didn't exist back then. Some people would legitimately get 100+ viewers whenever they streamed solo ranked. Still not a lot compared to more popular games, but it was far from what we see now. 

Again, very bad gaslighting. Ranked did not pop 24/7, so there could not be streams of it 24/7. lmao

[dftu]

44 minutes ago, HaoZhao said:

Again, very bad gaslighting. Ranked did not pop 24/7, so there could not be streams of it 24/7. lmao

I have no idea how you could completely miss what it was like unless you weren't playing solo ranked or watching twitch streams of it back then. Saying there wasn't a core community of like 30-50 people who watched it consistently with higher numbers for streamers who crossed over into casual audiences could not be farther from the truth. If it wasn't popping on DM, it was probably going on SF and vice versa. 

Edited March 12 by dftu

[ZUHFB]

6 minutes ago, dftu said:

If it wasn't popping on DM, it was probably going on SF and vice versa. 

This was correct at the start weeks and last month of a season. Mid season I doubt it was true but prime time for each region it popped every day.

[septru]

 

2 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

This is interesting fiction, but again, you can't gaslight the developers because they have the actual telemetry data.

 

I want to be very clear here since you've made this argument twice now about "gaslighting" the devs.... 

 

The devs gaslight themselves on a daily basis by their sheer incompetence. Every single dev change in the past 10+ years has been a highlight of the reality that the devs fundamentally do not, and have never, understood their game. 

[HaoZhao]

2 hours ago, dftu said:

I have no idea how you could completely miss what it was like unless you weren't playing solo ranked or watching twitch streams of it back then. Saying there wasn't a core community of like 30-50 people who watched it consistently with higher numbers for streamers who crossed over into casual audiences could not be farther from the truth. If it wasn't popping on DM, it was probably going on SF and vice versa. 

It's easy to miss it. It never happened, so everyone missed it. I'm glad we cleared that up! There has never been a point in this game's history where ranked has popped 24/7. The end. Fin. Stop trying to gaslight me because I've been around longer than you. lol

You keep trying to pass off this fabricated anecdotal evidence as a real evidence but once again, you can't fool telemetry data from the developers. They are immune to gaslighting. Who are you trying to convince? Do you even know?

[dftu]

6 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

Stop trying to gaslight me because I've been around longer than you

Wow congrats dude, you have me beat by a whole three months. That's so much of a difference, wow! 

7 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

You keep trying to pass off this fabricated anecdotal evidence as a real evidence but once again, you can't fool telemetry data from the developers.

https://twitchtracker.com/. Here you go since we're talking about data. Look up any solo ranked streamer that comes to mind. Have fun! 

[ZUHFB]

we need snave to so save this discussion honestly

[AocaVII]

They are not going to babysit players who win trade for Flairs. These players ruined it because people like that are toxic, destroying everything they touch.

 

Edited March 13 by AocaVII

[HaoZhao]

On 3/13/2024 at 3:24 AM, dftu said:

Wow congrats dude, you have me beat by a whole three months. That's so much of a difference, wow! 

https://twitchtracker.com/. Here you go since we're talking about data. Look up any solo ranked streamer that comes to mind. Have fun! 

Thank you for that link which contains exactly zero evidence of ranked ever popping 24 hours a day, I guess. You've been very helpful in debunking this horrible attempt at gaslighting which will never fool a single developer. Thank you.

[dftu]

1 hour ago, HaoZhao said:

Thank you for that link which contains exactly zero evidence of ranked ever popping 24 hours a day, I guess. You've been very helpful in debunking this horrible attempt at gaslighting which will never fool a single developer. Thank you.

Then by all means, feel free to link your ranked data Mr. Developer. My whole point was about Twitch streams. You can literally search up just about any solo ranked streamer you can think of with that link, and the numbers are pretty consistent with what I was saying. 

[HaoZhao]

1 hour ago, dftu said:

Then by all means, feel free to link your ranked data Mr. Developer. My whole point was about Twitch streams. You can literally search up just about any solo ranked streamer you can think of with that link, and the numbers are pretty consistent with what I was saying. 

You keep asking me to search for evidence for your argument that you can't find. I'm waiting for you to post evidence of a higher quality than "just go to google.com bro"

[dftu]

2 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

You keep asking me to search for evidence for your argument that you can't find. I'm waiting for you to post evidence of a higher quality than "just go to google.com bro"

So you can't give any evidence for your own points, can't do the bare minimum for a search, but I'm the one gaslighting? Ok dude. 

[HaoZhao]

47 minutes ago, dftu said:

So you can't give any evidence for your own points, can't do the bare minimum for a search, but I'm the one gaslighting? Ok dude. 

Evidence for what? You're asking me to prove a negative which is a logical fallacy.

Your little link doesn't show a single case of ranked ever happening 24/7. Your own source contradicts you. lol

[SentinalMasterWW]

On 3/12/2024 at 5:31 AM, MadCuzBad said:

If what you said is true, then explain to me why all of my flags were taken from me that I worked very hard towards since season 7? Explain how that has anything to do with deader than dead.

People make up all kinds of lies to justify removing ranked and they are just that. LIES.

Ranked was not deader than dead. Any given day 7 days a week you could watch ranked pvp on twitched streamed from DM or SF non stop all day and all night. It was not deader than dead. It streamed all day and all night. I played ranked pvp from season 1 until it ended. It was much less active pre season 8. Since season 8 and the introduction to rewards such as mats etc it got bigger and bigger and more and more active as the seasons went on.

The only reason why ranked ended was because of WOKE mentality. That is why all of our flags were taken from us and instead of just simply removing top 3 and leader boards they shut the entire thing down and used non sensible excuses to justify it giving you everything but the real truth. 

Anyhow you are free to make up stories about why they removed ranked and believe whatever the heck you jolly well please about dead this, and farming mats that, and taking up resourses yadda yadda yadda all you want. There is one word why ranked was removed. That word is toxicity. And in a woke society that will NOT be tolerated unless it is coming from the woke crowd themselves.

That is my 2 cents. You can keep the change.

I to this day, Think Killing off ranked was the biggest misstep this Dev team took (That and everything else they did that messed up and ruined this game in 7.0). 

Ranked kept PVP very healthy, Not only were ranked players Qing Ranked itself, but also unranked as well, so you had a steady population of PVP'ers. It kept players sub'd to the game, and was a great incentive to keep PVPing. 

Nowadays, I could care less, Why should I put time and Effort into basically just cosmetics? Not even good ones to, like Season 2 & 3 were actually really nice, but Season 4 and now Season 5 is absolute joke of cosmetics. 

I'm going to be honest, I played Ranked in the Post Season 14 time, to try and practice for Season 15. I barely encountered any toxicity, so this myth that it was just a dumpster fire is wrong. I played and everyone was pretty chill, and I even won a 2v1 on Orbital Station on my first match. I'm sure it could get heated, but its nowhere near as toxic as it nowadays. Literal mentally insane people start drama on Warzones 24/7, they no life this game and get into arguments with everyone. Sooo was it really that bad compared to now? 

The removal of flags and all the rewards given to ranked players was uncalled for, Musco or whoever lead that should apologize to the ranked community and undo it. While there is an argument of who win traded, who cheated, etc. At the end of the day, a lot of ranked players put time and effort into the game mode and for Biosword to undo all that hard work? It's a massive kick in the crotch for the ranked community. 

The PVP changes if they were to combat "Toxicity" are a joke. 

1. The game has never been more toxic. 

2. MVP for some reason has been removed, Why? I have no clue, maybe biosword didn't want other players to feel special more than others so they removed it. Srsly why though? I gave it to Tanks/Healers and players who literally played objectives and won the match. 

3. Ranked was given the middle finger, same for its community, and any trophies/ Signs of prestige they had are now gone, because PVP is now a literal participation mode. 

Remember when Ranked PVP weapons were cool signs of prestige? Now they can literally be gotten by PVE'rs AFKing all matches. Compared to how ranked players had to put in a decent amount of time grinding and getting better at ranked to get them. Now I see literally the furious weapons rocked by Space barbie players nowadays and it lost all the prestige it had. 

Just a reminder that Season 15 of ranked was a confirmed thing they announced but than back tracked it because they didn't want to bother putting effort into their PVP community anymore 

Quote

PvP Season 14 - Season 14 of Ranked PvP has come to a close. New rewards will be available at Giradda the Hutt on the Fleet with our next patch. Highest ranked players will receive rewards based off of their highest ranked rating when Season 15 starts later this year! More information about the PvP Season 14 Rewards here.

I honestly Don't think PVP as a whole or this game as a whole tbh are going to get better, not unless different leads take over, or they actually for once start listening to their playerbase. Honestly the best thing that could happen is support is ended, and the Fans take over much like SWG and start implementing fixes themselves. 

 

Edited March 15 by SentinalMasterWW

[dftu]

16 hours ago, HaoZhao said:

Evidence for what? You're asking me to prove a negative which is a logical fallacy.

Your little link doesn't show a single case of ranked ever happening 24/7. Your own source contradicts you. lol

 

On 3/12/2024 at 3:01 PM, HaoZhao said:

Ranked did not end because of "toxicity."

Evidence for your original point. The "trust me bro, I've seen the data for why ranked ended, and it had nothing to do with toxicity." 

https://www.swtor.com/info/news/article/20221209 "Our goal is to create a positive and engaging PvP experience for all players by increasing the overall participation and quality of PvP matches and offering new incentives that benefit everyone who participates in PvP."

If we look at what the devs have actually said here about the removal of ranked, they do make a note that they intended to create a more positive and engaging experience (whether they've succeeded or not is a different issue entirely). One would think that there was an issue of toxicity if they felt the need to include something about that, especially when they're pointing to the quality of matches as an issue. Yes, I can see that they did have an issue about getting more people engaged when they're talking about participation since it again was that core group plus a few others here and there, but saying that ranked ending had nothing to do with toxicity and then claiming "gaslighting" to any dissenting point even when the devs have made a point that it was a factor is really something. "lol"

[BallisticKaine]

13 hours ago, SentinalMasterWW said:

The removal of flags

This happened after ranked was removed and the groups of ranked players dropped MULTIPLE flags on newer players or solo que players in PvP they NUKED with their premade. To me that is the same as calling someone a sh***er, even though you had multiple people on 1 person. To me that just screams TMP syndrome and toxicity. Sure you want drop flags in a duel have fun doing that. Doing it to newer players and players who solo que'd into uneven match making just to be flagged multiple times by premade was just uncalled for. The removal of the flags that went boom and laughed as they went off was a good call in my opinion.