PvP Seasons increased to 16 weeks long with 7.5

[septru]

1 hour ago, AocaVII said:

The developers have created this. The players have made it worse both the elites and the players who refuse to play better and do better just playing for rewards.

Damage/kill farmers should get 0 blame for the dysfunctionality of warzones. 

 

Players play the game in the way that brings them the most fun. For those players, there is no fun in playing objs because there are no meaningful rewards in playing objs. The lack of meaningful rewards is not the players' fault, it's BroadSword's fault and a garbage developer choice. 

[supertimtaf]

9 minutes ago, septru said:

Damage/kill farmers should get 0 blame for the dysfunctionality of warzones. 

there always were damage farmers in warzone, for as long as I can remember. The main issue now is that, while they are not good players, they're faced against even worse players now which are getting decimated by a bunch of bad players queing together in voicechat fully geared and ready to seismo the first person who's actually threatening.
 

11 minutes ago, septru said:

The lack of meaningful rewards is not the players' fault, it's BroadSword's fault and a garbage developer choice. 

Agreed on that for the most part BUT I should also remind people that there was no issues in playing warzones in 4.0, even if there wasn't any rewards. Balance wasn't totally out of whack, there wasn't the possibility for an 8-man group to appear, and while premades were a thing, they also positively encouraged other players to group up and learn to get better together.

Rewards are good to make people want to try the gamemode. If balance, performance and the overall experience is bad however, players will not stay.

All in all, I disagree about saying that this is the damage farmers' fault though. Because just put any of these players against one of the old good group of 4.0 and they'll just be decimated. The current damage farmers suck. But the average swtor player is even worse now so that doesn't help.

[supertimtaf]

58 minutes ago, AocaVII said:

The damage kill farm thing worked when they were good players but there aren't good players anymore

Oh so that means that if someone is bad it's my fault for being better than them ?

While I see the point you're making, and it's a good one.

Still doesn't prevent the fact that people were better before. They were also not afraid to queue as groups to face other groups. The skill disparity was vastly different than it is now. People are so bad that they're complaining that the hutt fight in the main story is too hard. Is that the good players' fault too ? Or maybe probably something in the way the game is right now that makes it unable to teach new players how to play correctly. You decide.

[Samcuu]

5 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

Agreed on that for the most part BUT I should also remind people that there was no issues in playing warzones in 4.0, even if there wasn't any rewards

4.0 was really the last time people actually cared about doing objectives. I think there were several reasons why. A lot of players still had the 8 v 8 ranked mindset, there was a big community so there were a lot of rivalries, and also I'm thinking maybe there were actual rivalries between factions. I don't recall when they started mixing queues between imp/pub, but I do feel that made the warzones far less competitive. 

Having said all that, even tho most ppl played objectively, farming damage was still a thing. I guess it was more natural because all the players were congregating at nodes fighting over objectives...

[supertimtaf]

36 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

I don't recall when they started mixing queues between imp/pub, but I do feel that made the warzones far less competitive. 

middle of 5.0 was when they made it happen iirc ? I remember that Odessen battlegrounds were the first attempt at that.

 

36 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

Having said all that, even tho most ppl played objectively, farming damage was still a thing. I guess it was more natural because all the players were congregating at nodes fighting over objectives...

It was, but people also knew how to play so you could very well avoid the issue of "oh no they're steamrolling us we can't do objective". You wanted to do objectives ? Well get good, or stick close to the people doing the killing.
Imo Hypergate is roughly the only warzone where you still see that mentality, because kill farming = more points, that and the fact that the teams are usually either fighting at mid or near their own points.

[TrixxieTriss]

12 hours ago, AocaVII said:

I have a list of players and usually when they are online the war zones suck but amazingly when the people aren't logged on the war zone seem just to be fine to me, just like in the past casual chill PVP. However, you can no longer just turn the game on in PvP and expect it to be good most of the times will be bad so you will be lucky to get a few hours in a day of good games and even that is if you're lucky. 

The developers have created this. The players have made it worse both the elites and the players who refuse to play better and do better just playing for rewards. It's a total toxic mess of people that don't want to help or improve a horrible situation.

The blame is fully the developers. Not the players. The devs create or don’t fix conditions that encourage poor player habits. When there are too many players that negatively affect PvP, it’s a symptom of a poorly designed system. 

Edited June 5 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, septru said:

Damage/kill farmers should get 0 blame for the dysfunctionality of warzones. 

 

Players play the game in the way that brings them the most fun. For those players, there is no fun in playing objs because there are no meaningful rewards in playing objs. The lack of meaningful rewards is not the players' fault, it's BroadSword's fault and a garbage developer choice. 

👍 It’s now 100% the devs fault for poor design & not listening to PvP player feedback. Anything negative the players are doing is proof of systemic failure on the devs behalf. 

Edited June 5 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

10 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

But the average swtor player is even worse now so that doesn't help.

And it’s probably getting worse because they aren’t being challenged by better players because nearly all have left. When the difficulty lvl in PvP is higher, people get better. When the difficulty reduces because better players than you leave, even good players get lazy & lose their previous skill edge. That is why the old ranked PvP should never have been removed entirely without some sort of system to replace it. Because it drove away all the top players. And adding 8 man premades just made it more face roll easy for those in the groups. So they became even lazier or reduced their skills because of it. And the bad or new players joining those groups never actually get any better either because there is no challenge for them. They can be as bad as ever & get carried. Which means the entire average skill lvl is constantly being reduced because of poor design elements that have made good players leave for better designed PvP games.

Edited June 5 by TrixxieTriss

[Toraak]

On 5/29/2024 at 7:29 PM, WaffleQwop said:

Yes I was checking through older patch notes from like 5.x and before and it's pretty crazy how long some of those patch notes could be. This might be a foolish take to many of you, but I believe that eventually we will get something for PvP. Obviously this is, best case scenario, months and months away (probably 6+). I know that the Devs lurk and read what everyone posts here. They know how angry the PvP playerbase is, and I do believe that they will attempt to do something to course correct and throw us a bone.

Bringing Ranked back is not gonna happen. But my hopes are that they do something with the premade situation, make some actual cool flairs for us again, and make more armor/weapon sets like the older days that were genuinely awesome. Even just limiting groups to 4 players max for queues would be a big deal. I guess ultimately what I am saying is, yes it's been a long time without anything really, but don't lose hope yet guys.

That is Optimistic. Look at GSF. They have gotten nothing since 5.5, which was in October of 2017. Expect little, and if you get anything it's more then some content will ever receive. 

[supertimtaf]

2 hours ago, AocaVII said:

it just shows that there's no active adaptive thinking and mere focus on concrete thinking just getting what you want for the day and not thinking about tomorrow. It's short-sighted thinking non-constructive bordering on self-destructive. 

Nice line of thinking but let's be honest for a moment.
I can play objective as much as I want (which, let's be honest, I do whenever I killed everyone), this doesn't change the fact that PvP is bad and will keep being bad until someone fixes it.

I get what you're saying but you also can't shift the responsibility from the devs to the players, because that's what Broadsword was already doing in 6.0. I remember vividly that point on discord when someone asked Swtor's lead designer at the time "hey so, is there anything you guys plan to do for balance ? or just anything to swap the current meta."

The answer was absolutely terrible. "Well idk, just find something better than the current meta ?"

You can't be a lead designer on a MMO, on *the* discord that's absolutely filled with *every* theorycrafter, so people who absolutely analyzed EVERY part of your game and say "well there's a meta because... Well you made it that way ! Just change it lol"

If this is the level of thinking that the devs in this team have it's terrible, because it's actually shifting the reality from "we made some class so strong that everyone found out" to "well the players are wrong for using what makes them win in ranked".

I get what you mean as a game designer. "Well play the game in a fun way and it'll become fun". Sure, that's fair. But the fact that there's even the *option* on the other side means that it's been badly designed from the start and should be fixed.

[supertimtaf]

17 minutes ago, AocaVII said:

Subs/PvP mean nothing when you have ppl buying items for $51 on the cm.

Do the math, that's just one item. They sell a hundred of them a month. That's 5100.00 a month on one item. So how many subs does one item equal? That's the answer to why the game sucks.

Now multiply that by the thousand items that are on that cartel market it has to be 100,000 times more profitable than subs. 

You're talking about millions and millions of dollars from a cartel market and probably less than $50,000 in subs if even that so what do you think the game is going to look like?

What would you do if I told you I'm going to give you $10 million for giving me a piece of pizza but if you give me a bowl of cereal I'll give you $50,000 which one are you going to give me?

How much money does PVP make $10,000 per year? So what do you think's going to happen?

You want $10 million or you want $10,000 which one do you want you tell me?

Oh I absolutely know what you mean. The sad part is that the devs don't even benefit from all these revenues. They're well beyond the billion of dollars of revenue in that game. Pretty sure that's been called for a while now here

I absolutely blame EA for prefering the idea of short term revenues like that and failing to see that the game's subscription was not bringing enough money because the game in itself is not good enough to warrant a sub. But I also blame the developpers for falling into that mentality of "we must do what the publisher says because that's gonna be bad otherwise". Standing up against the bad ideas of a publisher is also part of the job. Having the moral integrity to release something that's not bugged and actual quality content is also part of the job. Bioware *and now Broadsword* is failing in both of these areas.

I don't mind a cash shop, I'm very much enjoying ESO, and am actually okay with spending money on it for the cash shop, just like I am for spending money on an expansion and a sub on top of that. Because I know that the game is not suffering just to put out overpriced cosmetics in a shop.

I don't mind bad MMOs, I played XIV 1.0 and that was absolutely terrible of an experience. I completely hated it. And yet, I can't help but notice that the dev team actually cared enough to want to fix the game, make it better and improve it. To the point that now it's been one of the biggest sales of the whole company. Same thing can also be said about ESO too tbh. Game is proving to be a success since they tried to fix their mistakes of the initial release.

Point is : Making a good game makes as much money. People just have to want to work for that.

There's also a part of resentment, definitely, I know that I'm biased about it. I know that right now I have to work day and nights on a game, with no guarantee of financial success no matter how good and perfect I make it. On the other hand you have these guys with the dream job on a dream IP just... Letting it go to waste just because "well what matters is that the publisher has its money". I seriously don't like people throwing away the chances they get, and emperor knows that we've given them way too many.

But again, I don't know what happens in the office. Maybe they've just given up. Some of them did seem kinda resentful when Bioware made its ten years retrospective and barely mentionned swtor. I mean yeah, they aren't getting the recognition that they probably deserve. But so do all of us. If they're not willing to fight for it and just assume that it's a given, I think that maybe gamedev shouldn't be their career of choice. They can't hide from the fact that they're as reponsible for their failures as EA is. Blaming the player for their own failures on top of that is just blatant denial, and if any of them thinks like that I'd say that they're probably not fit to work on this game.


Anyway, all that to say. 
They can only blame themselves for the current state of their team and the fact that they're so desperate for money. I know how easy it is to fall in the trap of immediate revenues from MTX. Doesn't mean that they should be absolved of all their mistakes.

[supertimtaf]

1 hour ago, AocaVII said:

I suggest things to other players they refuse to do them and just make the situation worse so therefore I have to redouble on my efforts to make the game fun for myself and not rely on those players that will continue to do things to make it worse.

Yeeeaaaaah... But I don't see how other players are the ones making the game not fun.
I don't have an issue dealing with the regstar players running around in a premade.
I don't have an issue dealing with the people rolling the OP class of the year because I still beat them.
I have an issue because the game is not fun for others. It's not fun because people playing against me either win by being 3v1 or are so bad that they can't learn anything from being killed by me. At this point the issue isn't on me, or on other players, but on the game for having bad systems and bad class balance that only exagerates the disparity between players.

The concept of "fun" in PvP will vary broadly depending on who's playing. Are they winning ? Are they losing ? Are they getting carried ? Are they carrying the game ? Are they farming kills or are they doing objectives ? All these things are various fun factors that back then used to be somewhat balanced because everyone was at least *decent* at doing their part.

Now the game has shifted. And no matter how hard I try, I can't kick their ass on a 4v1 with my class. Nor can I purposedly lose or make it challenging against someone who doesn't use anything else than saber strike. Nor can I do much about the people doing duo queue to farm huttball wins. They're trying their best to have fun in their own way, just like you, or me.

Now if these ways of having fun aren't compatible with each other anymore, is it the player's fault or the devs for letting the game get into that state.

[AocaVII]

3 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

Yeeeaaaaah... But I don't see how other players are the ones making the game not fun.
I don't have an issue dealing with the regstar players running around in a premade.
I don't have an issue dealing with the people rolling the OP class of the year because I still beat them.
I have an issue because the game is not fun for others. It's not fun because people playing against me either win by being 3v1 or are so bad that they can't learn anything from being killed by me. At this point the issue isn't on me, or on other players, but on the game for having bad systems and bad class balance that only exagerates the disparity between players.

The concept of "fun" in PvP will vary broadly depending on who's playing. Are they winning ? Are they losing ? Are they getting carried ? Are they carrying the game ? Are they farming kills or are they doing objectives ? All these things are various fun factors that back then used to be somewhat balanced because everyone was at least *decent* at doing their part.

Now the game has shifted. And no matter how hard I try, I can't kick their ass on a 4v1 with my class. Nor can I purposedly lose or make it challenging against someone who doesn't use anything else than saber strike. Nor can I do much about the people doing duo queue to farm huttball wins. They're trying their best to have fun in their own way, just like you, or me.

Now if these ways of having fun aren't compatible with each other anymore, is it the player's fault or the devs for letting the game get into that state.

IDK what the solution for each person. That would be an individual thing.

[WaffleQwop]

10 hours ago, supertimtaf said:

The concept of "fun" in PvP will vary broadly depending on who's playing. Are they winning ? Are they losing ? Are they getting carried ? Are they carrying the game ? Are they farming kills or are they doing objectives ? All these things are various fun factors that back then used to be somewhat balanced because everyone was at least *decent* at doing their part.

To me it's just part of any PvP experience. Sometimes you go against scrubs and dominate, sometimes you have bad teammates or toxic ones, sometimes you get absolutely facerolled. But if you enjoy the modes and PvP as a whole for the challenges and fun then you will continue to queue.

 

I will say this, it is difficult for new players to enjoy or learn PvP when they get farmed constantly. A way for newer players and low geared players to be incentivized to learn PvP and get better would be great. Obviously current rewards are flat out terrible. There is absolutely 0 reason to PvP for rewards since they are basically nonexistent, unless you count the older seasons rewards. Also, limiting premades to 4 players maximum would make a difference. There are several ways to fix that problem but that's the easiest, since the other solutions would require actually having a decently high population with constant queues.

[TrixxieTriss]

At the end of the day the devs have ignored the most basic changes needed to improve PvP since 7.2. 

We aren’t talking huge costs to fix or implement either. They just don’t care enough to fix the the most basic things like reducing premades back to 4 man or rebalancing over performing or underperforming classes. 

Most of us agree on the very basic things that the devs have ignored since 7.2 was released 18 months ago. They’ve had more than enough time to tweak them. It’s not about cost, it’s about caring.

[Liarrrra]

On 6/4/2024 at 9:49 PM, supertimtaf said:

Rewards are good to make people want to try the gamemode. If balance, performance and the overall experience is bad however, players will not stay.

Players create the balance. New players need players on their own skill level to be able to get into the PvP content while veterans need players on their own skill or higher to further up their game. But it is impossible to create healthy environment when people shy away from effort to improve.

[Liarrrra]

On 6/5/2024 at 2:18 AM, supertimtaf said:

People are so bad that they're complaining that the hutt fight in the main story is too hard.

I saw someone asking earlier how to level up.

[Exly]

38 minutes ago, Liarrrra said:

Players create the balance. New players need players on their own skill level to be able to get into the PvP content while veterans need players on their own skill or higher to further up their game. But it is impossible to create healthy environment when people shy away from effort to improve.

People who want to play usually want to get better.  The problem right now is that not enough people who want to play.  I am one of those people. 

There was a time that I enjoyed pvp, but it is not worth playing right now.  There are things that the devs could do as stated in some of the above posts to make pvp better, but for whatever reason, they are not showing any signs that they even care enough to listen to our input let alone do anything to try to make pvp fun again.  Instead, they say nothing and show no signs that they have any plans to address their games shortfalls.

Blaming new players doesn't seem like the answer to me.  We were all new players at some point and while I can't speak for anyone else, I know that did some pretty stupid stuff in the beginning, but over time I learned because wanted to learn and I got better.

So maybe  the problem isn't with the players as much as it is with the game.  Just saying.

[Liarrrra]

3 hours ago, Exly said:

Blaming new players doesn't seem like the answer to me

You misunderstand.

I wasn't blaming new players, quite the opposite. New players nowadays get rolled over by more experienced players often playing the current meta or premades, which isn't healthy for the game.

New players need someone on their own level to figure things out and improve as they go. Which essentially doesn't happen right now. Especially when half the team calls it quits because they're 'losing.' 

The same can be said for the veterans. They need people who are just as good as they are or better, because they obviously won't learn anything new from players that don't play as well .. most of the time.

Players now simply don't feel the need to engage in the game and seek out the combat at all. They run somewhere, die once and then they sit on node all match. They have no incentive.

There are exceptions of course, which I commend. Because I, for one, feel like people don't want to look bad for dying over and over. It may sound stupid to some, but the reality is that it's all part of the game. 

There is also the fact that majority of the people don't care for wins or losses, which don't take me wrong, isn't a problem. I am not here to preach. But the objectives in the game, especially huttball.. although often boring, can be a lot of fun. 

If you have two teams actually engaging in the objectives that are well balanced in their know how of the game then the run there and back feels completely different. 

The same can be said for balance. 

I understand that some PvP only for the 'rewards'.. the weeklies. I mean. So losing isn't an option for them. But for the good majority of the players that PvP simply because they like to compete, objectives can also help to maintain balance between the teams during the fights as well as prolong the match if they feel like it. 

There is quite a few players in the game and each has their own mindset of what is fun, which I think is a major issue within such a small community as swtor has currently. 

[Liarrrra]

1 minute ago, Liarrrra said:

New players need someone on their own level to figure things out and improve as they go.

This was also easier when players could duel without being bothered by cap and bolsters in world pvp.

[Wulfurkin]

7 hours ago, Liarrrra said:

You misunderstand.

I wasn't blaming new players, quite the opposite. New players nowadays get rolled over by more experienced players often playing the current meta or premades, which isn't healthy for the game.

New players need someone on their own level to figure things out and improve as they go. Which essentially doesn't happen right now. Especially when half the team calls it quits because they're 'losing.' 

The same can be said for the veterans. They need people who are just as good as they are or better, because they obviously won't learn anything new from players that don't play as well .. most of the time.

Players now simply don't feel the need to engage in the game and seek out the combat at all. They run somewhere, die once and then they sit on node all match. They have no incentive.

There are exceptions of course, which I commend. Because I, for one, feel like people don't want to look bad for dying over and over. It may sound stupid to some, but the reality is that it's all part of the game. 

There is also the fact that majority of the people don't care for wins or losses, which don't take me wrong, isn't a problem. I am not here to preach. But the objectives in the game, especially huttball.. although often boring, can be a lot of fun. 

If you have two teams actually engaging in the objectives that are well balanced in their know how of the game then the run there and back feels completely different. 

The same can be said for balance. 

I understand that some PvP only for the 'rewards'.. the weeklies. I mean. So losing isn't an option for them. But for the good majority of the players that PvP simply because they like to compete, objectives can also help to maintain balance between the teams during the fights as well as prolong the match if they feel like it. 

There is quite a few players in the game and each has their own mindset of what is fun, which I think is a major issue within such a small community as swtor has currently. 

The main reason i even got into pvp and stilll play at times are the weekly rewards, specifically the tech frags. Im always playing to win, since it means i complete the weeklies faster and so can do more of them. This is why i dont understand these kill farming premades, especially those that ignore objectives, there is quite literally nothing to be gained.

[supertimtaf]

On 6/8/2024 at 1:33 PM, Wulfurkin said:

This is why i dont understand these kill farming premades, especially those that ignore objectives, there is quite literally nothing to be gained.

It makes a warzone last longer if you can just be a general nuisance.
A good premade that's well coordinated can end a huttball game in two minutes at best. Now imagine that same premade but focused on killed the ball carrier over and over. Yeaaaah that whole game is gonna last a lot longer.
Novare Coast. A good premade can end the game very quickly if they do objectives. Now the same team that just goes to one point to kill everyone, doesn't cap, then goes to another... Yeah you guessed it. They make games longer.
My personal take on this is that it comes down to, once again, how it used to be back then. When players were good, games lasted longer. There were more interesting things to happen, people played for longer in a single game if everyone was really good because there was an actual reason for tryharding. Now there isn't. So yeah, better just make the thing last, to kill more noobs before it ends and you have to start all over again.

I'm not for just kill farming, but I'm also not forgetting that killing the enemy team makes it harder for them to play the objective. Just a shame that most of the time the enemy team doesn't know how to do the same to you. That would make playing objective actually interesting just like before.

[Wulfurkin]

1 hour ago, supertimtaf said:

It makes a warzone last longer if you can just be a general nuisance.
A good premade that's well coordinated can end a huttball game in two minutes at best. Now imagine that same premade but focused on killed the ball carrier over and over. Yeaaaah that whole game is gonna last a lot longer.
Novare Coast. A good premade can end the game very quickly if they do objectives. Now the same team that just goes to one point to kill everyone, doesn't cap, then goes to another... Yeah you guessed it. They make games longer.
My personal take on this is that it comes down to, once again, how it used to be back then. When players were good, games lasted longer. There were more interesting things to happen, people played for longer in a single game if everyone was really good because there was an actual reason for tryharding. Now there isn't. So yeah, better just make the thing last, to kill more noobs before it ends and you have to start all over again.

I'm not for just kill farming, but I'm also not forgetting that killing the enemy team makes it harder for them to play the objective. Just a shame that most of the time the enemy team doesn't know how to do the same to you. That would make playing objective actually interesting just like before.

What you describe here ive seen a lot too but i dont consider this as playing the game. They are just makng sure others cant play it  especially newer players. Since this makes people stop going into q or possibly leave the game entirely this behaviour cant be excused,  ever.

 

[supertimtaf]

1 hour ago, Wulfurkin said:

What you describe here ive seen a lot too but i dont consider this as playing the game. They are just makng sure others cant play it  especially newer players. Since this makes people stop going into q or possibly leave the game entirely this behaviour cant be excused,  ever.

 

Agreed. But unless we find a way to make new players stick to PvP so they can learn, things won't change. And player behaviour is one of the hardest things to change, so that probably means that there should be other things to change before that

[Wulfurkin]

1 hour ago, supertimtaf said:

Agreed. But unless we find a way to make new players stick to PvP so they can learn, things won't change. And player behaviour is one of the hardest things to change, so that probably means that there should be other things to change before that

Better incentives would help. We have a legacy panel so tying interesting rewards to personal pvp achievements would encourage people to play well. This does mean that warzones should be solo only. This is where people can and should learn the game. As for arenas the q should be split and the games could be rated accordingly.