1.2. Good idea pulling Rated WZ? Just a thought.

[Ricen]

Exactly. And yeah sure they will say it is a "WOW COPY OMG ALERT THE MMO KILLERS" but i mean hey, if its better then wow systems, a more fluid, better ranking system. Bioware will look like very intelligent for this one move to not release them to early. Thats my point in all this.

/opinion fully voiced.

[Kayko]

It is with great reluctance that I have to announce Ranked Warzones are not going live with Game Update 1.2: Legacy. We had a fantastic run of testing on the Public Test Server and I can’t begin to thank the community enough for their tireless advocacy for this feature and the time people took to file bugs and voice their concerns.

After careful consideration, it is clear that to make Ranked Warzones the feature we all want it to be is going to take a bit more time. I apologize for any disappointment this may cause and ask for your patience as we work to make sure the Ranked Warzone Preseason launch is polished and fun. With Legacy, the new Warzone, Operation, and Flashpoint, as well as many other amazing features of Game Update 1.2 ready to go, we're very excited for tomorrow's additions.

In the future we'll be rolling the Ranked Warzone Preseason out in phases, listening carefully to player feedback and making adjustments as we go. The first phase will be full team, eight-player queuing only and from there we'll look at next steps as Preseason progresses. In the meantime we have provided an alternate purchase route for War Hero gear so you can start building your set while figuring out your teams.

I've read it, many times. Its loaded with crap IMO. The test server was never in any condition in order to properly test it. They put forth no effort into getting it properly tested and didn't even make the effort to open a couple different PvP related forum posts that were marked to "respond below" As forums popped up attempting to offer feedback, if they didn't get outright deleted, they were met with a "please post your feedback here <Link>" responses linking them to the never opened original topics.

They implemented every other change to anything related to PvP that was planned out for day 1 of PTR, and they all did it by ignoring guilds who may have not clear all the pre 1.2 PvE content but guilds that consisted of 90% V75+ players. Many of them did "apply" for the test realm but had a very little chance if they showed a more PvP priority.

Rolling it out in Phases? So, no rated for the next patch but at least you get a new phase.. so, I guess it is currently Pre-Pre-Pre-season or something like that.

Ya know what.. its working out just grand. Still no penalty for leaving a warzone and worthless rewards for a loss = no reason to stay in as soon as your team starts to lose. Rewards for winning rarely even cover simple stims for a match. Imbalance in starting groups worse then ever. Medal rewards still screw healers and favor classes with a taunt. yup, working fine after all that "fantastic" testing.

[Forsedar]

I've read it, many times. Its loaded with crap IMO. The test server was never in any condition in order to properly test it. They put forth no effort into getting it properly tested and didn't even make the effort to open a couple different PvP related forum posts that were marked to "respond below" As forums popped up attempting to offer feedback, if they didn't get outright deleted, they were met with a "please post your feedback here <Link>" responses linking them to the never opened original topics.

They implemented every other change to anything related to PvP that was planned out for day 1 of PTR, and they all did it by ignoring guilds who may have not clear all the pre 1.2 PvE content but guilds that consisted of 90% V75+ players. Many of them did "apply" for the test realm but had a very little chance if they showed a more PvP priority.

Rolling it out in Phases? So, no rated for the next patch but at least you get a new phase.. so, I guess it is currently Pre-Pre-Pre-season or something like that.

Ya know what.. its working out just grand. Still no penalty for leaving a warzone and worthless rewards for a loss = no reason to stay in as soon as your team starts to lose. Rewards for winning rarely even cover simple stims for a match. Imbalance in starting groups worse then ever. Medal rewards still screw healers and favor classes with a taunt. yup, working fine after all that "fantastic" testing.

You're basing all of your points on assumptions. You seem to be thoroughly upset for no reason. I see plenty of people happy with PvP. You aren't really posting feedback by raging and talking about how fail something is. Thats not helpful. That just shows nerdrage.

[Nellise]

You're basing all of your points on assumptions. You seem to be thoroughly upset for no reason. I see plenty of people happy with PvP. You aren't really posting feedback by raging and talking about how fail something is. Thats not helpful. That just shows nerdrage.

He has every reason to be upset, this was the feature pvp guilds were waiting for and they pulled it because Bioware didn't allow it to get tested properly. Bioware's post makes it seem like they did all they could to get it out with 1.2 when it was clear on the pts it had almost no priority for them.

I don't think it should have been released in the state it was on the pts, but it also should have never remained in that state with as long as 1.2 was on it.

[Forsedar]

He has every reason to be upset, this was the feature pvp guilds were waiting for and they pulled it because Bioware didn't allow it to get tested properly. Bioware's post makes it seem like they did all they could to get it out with 1.2 when it was clear on the pts it had almost no priority for them.

I don't think it should have been released in the state it was on the pts, but it also should have never remained in that state with as long as 1.2 was on it.

This isn't the first time a game developer had to postpone something. It sure isn't the last. Yes it sucks because PvPers were looking forward to it but its a lot better than releasing buggy content.

[Alvito]

It's never a good idea to pull a feature. If Rated warzones really were too buggy to release for 1.2, then Bioware should've prioritized them in the first place to make sure they would've been ready.

I wasnt buggy the system they had in place was just poorly set up and designed. It would have also been impossible to do on most of the servers due to insanely long queue times. With what they were planning on doing it would have eliminated norma warzones for all lvl 50 toons since you could just go into a ranked warzone and try to unlock much better gear. No gating or system was in place to make ppl join as a group or play with ppl near or at their ranks. The server only pvp that is currently out now mixed with low population realms had to have been a major part of this. Its 30 minutes or more on many servers to get a queue that most often just ends 120 seconds in when one or both sides are short players.

---------- Post added 2012-04-16 at 01:31 AM ----------

Ok, so what could have been wrong with it? It was basic as basic could be for what they were planning. I don't see what could have gone wrong that made them pull it. They rolled out every other single change that was to be paired with Rated Warzones and just maybe, it wouldn't have been so bad with the reduced amount of everything you get if rated was in.. but who knows.. they pulled it without saying what possibly could have been the issue.

The claim a "fantastic" test for the new feature yet the post first off wasn't even opened that testers were supposed to post in.. A post was made but that only made it to 2 pages with the majority of people posting in it were non testers just asking questions. Queue times were nothing short of meh, 10-15 minutes at a time to get paired in a group of 5 v 8.. of which people were mostly in PvE gear and didn't appear to have ever spent time in a warzone up to that day. Way too often the question of what to do was seen in chat. They put virtually no effort into having PvP tested by a public player base, simple as that.

From the numbers that I gathered, you did lose more then gained in a 50W-50L rate but it was clear that the ratings were close to simulating WoWs Arena Rating.

If they set it up to be like WoW's mmr and scoring system you would keep very slowly going up if you were winning half the time you faced equal teams and losing half the time you faced them. The real way you make big jumps up or down with that system is losing to worse teams or beating higher ranked ones. There is a link sticked in the pvp area breaking down the vodoo math they use. Let ppl play with random players rather then set teams is a major flaw that I hope they dont get into. I know ppl want to be able to pug these but I would hope ppl can figure out or understand why that can be or is a bad idea.

[Kayko]

I wasnt buggy the system they had in place was just poorly set up and designed. It would have also been impossible to do on most of the servers due to insanely long queue times. With what they were planning on doing it would have eliminated norma warzones for all lvl 50 toons since you could just go into a ranked warzone and try to unlock much better gear. No gating or system was in place to make ppl join as a group or play with ppl near or at their ranks. The server only pvp that is currently out now mixed with low population realms had to have been a major part of this. Its 30 minutes or more on many servers to get a queue that most often just ends 120 seconds in when one or both sides are short players.

---------- Post added 2012-04-16 at 01:31 AM ----------



If they set it up to be like WoW's mmr and scoring system you would keep very slowly going up if you were winning half the time you faced equal teams and losing half the time you faced them. The real way you make big jumps up or down with that system is losing to worse teams or beating higher ranked ones. There is a link sticked in the pvp area breaking down the vodoo math they use. Let ppl play with random players rather then set teams is a major flaw that I hope they dont get into. I know ppl want to be able to pug these but I would hope ppl can figure out or understand why that can be or is a bad idea.

To the first point, yes, I agree here.. kind of. Many servers would have had a terrible time with doing anything that resembled Rated Warzones. On the other hand, they sure didn't have a problem rolling out lvl 50 only brackets to those servers a month after release basically eliminating Warzones for certain factions for a good month or more after. On my first server, I did not see a warzone for the first week after 50 only brackets were put in queuing (on a EST server) from 7CST to 11CST.
The server I rerolled on had a FANTASTIC PvP community (especially for being a PvE server) and wished that cross server warzones wouldn't be needed. As much as I don't like the idea of them, I am fully aware that cross server warzones would be needed first before rankings could even be tossed out on the Dev table. (or closing down a bunch of servers and mass migrating people) Rift has done it and survived a very healthy year and they can always open new servers and let people move (like WoW used to do) if the overall population was increasing.

The second point, I don't feel the were ever attempting to test an actual match making type system. It seemed more like they were using an arbitrary number based on what your rating was to how much you gained or loss. I was thinking that you had to win 4 of 7 or 5 of 9 to come out about even in the numbers no matter who you were against.
As far as the pug version of rankings, it would work but only if those solo queue players were put up against other solo queue players, then again, you know that people would attempt to queue simultaneously in order to attempt to get the solo queue challenge with a group of friends. oh.. and they would need to fix the issue with matches being able to start with unbalanced groups.

...............

@Forsedar:
I am not nerdraging in any way. They simply did not let in guilds based on PvP, maybe a few snuck in but it was really cause of their PvE progression. Come on, they did not even unlock a few different PvP based topics they created for feedback and many of the ones that were created for feedback were removed all together or locked down with a link to never opened topic.
It appears they wanted to focus a large majority of their resources on PvE content in which they clearly did, the new ops is amazing IMO.

I have tried posting posting positive feedback on a multitude of test content. Though as a primary PvPer, I attempted to post my feedback based on my observations. There was never enough information or even a direction to give proper feedback and on top of that, when issues came up or felt that something was working well, the community never received feedback from Bioware. If they want valuable testing to be done, they need to give feedback to the community as well.

[xeonix]

With all the changes in the trees and stuff, i think its a good idea rated wz was postponed until peeps are familiar again with the nerfs/buffs and accumulate some gear etc.

[Forsedar]

Honestly, I don't think they even brought in competent people to test their content. I know for their raid content, some of the guilds that got accepted were just... well I don't want to say the word. I couldn't possibly imagine the PvP content being tested. I just let Bioware make their decisions and I trust that they are doing their best to make the right one.