Private queue and premades: nothing changed?

kalina311 · October 2017

saying premades are not the issues and private Q will solve everything is 2 different things is it not ? as is trying shame such players and mis quote them

Moderator edited out a rule violation.

@pando83 said

"If you wish to stop using a trollish tone, we can discuss. If you prefer to personally attack me/ depict me as some paranoic dude or if you want to keep trying to say that there's some hidden reason behind what i write, then there's nothing to discuss with you."

you already did a pretty good job at proving you ARE paranoid .. nothing personal here we all want a better pvp cheers mate

yes the 4 hours no kick timer should help somewhat with the kick to win solo Q mentality
just trying to fluff up some debate as I an chaotic neutral and actually can argue either side ; D
even fully maxed out some classes can no longer effect match outcome no matter what I certainly cant and i used to be able to as a Cw

just trying to get more people involved to read the thread : D and make it interesting and keep the fans entertained

elrondknight · October 2017

kalina311 said:

andre#8369 said:
"- it was PvP guilds/ premade players who said that premades in mixed queue were not there for "stomping" but to meet other premades, and that if private queue/ premade queue was in place, the issue would be solved. Yet, you still find premades in mixed queue. This is a simple fact."

@pando83 I imagine you must have characters that are 12k-14k ... so the second it pairs you with a simaliar geared player in pvp ... are YOU not then the "Premade player that is stomping" for someone on the opposing teams perspective ?and by your example then ..

If the SYSTEM pairs him with anybody, then it is not a premade

kalina311 · October 2017

@elrondknight

exactly what i was waiting for and the point i wanted to make ... If the system matches 2 people from the same alliance/guild Q for pvp seperatly and end up on the same team are they a :premade" ? or not cause their intention was solo ? the OP said as little as 2 people are a premade by the way ..so if the system pairs him with another hi level player he is now a premade by his definition ..but nota premade ..cause he did not consciously q together with someone.. i get that

2 strong players on 1 team if they are matched randomly or not .. appear to be a "premade" to people on the other team regardless if they are or not .. perception is reality .. that is why pvp is dead

whether they intended to Q solo or deliberately paired(and the system looked for another pair ) the result is still the same a blowout .. and not necessarily their fault either ..but still considered some big master conspiracy

trgluestickz · October 2017

kalina311 said:

trgluestickz said:
I see partial truths scattered in what @pando83 has stated here though its missing a lot of nuance and he makes a lot of absolute claims that don't actually apply to 100% of premades or anything close to it.

I agree though that premaders overall should do a lot more private que matches and premading into a public que with more than 2 people should be kept to a minimum considering how unbalanced PVP is at the moment.

Here is my personal background on premading if you wish to see my own motives and some nuance:

I was an oportunistic premader before private que was introduced, meaning I usually would go with a freind or alone but occationally I'd do a 5 man if there was one avalable. I have taken a temporary break from PVP to work on my character and offer more forum feedback. I haven't done much PVP since private que and the new SOD buff was introduced.

Some of the premades I did were que syncs where 2 premades would coordinate with eachother via TS to try and get into the same match as eachother. This process usually took between 30 minutes and 2 hours. These sync matches did not get organised that often compared to other kinds of matches owing to how much of a pain they were to set up.
This shortage of pre vs pre matches was further amplified by how boring these matches were in most cases. The very dullest pre vs pre matches I can name took place before mod 10 weapons were introduced as well as any match with more than one support class/healer per team. This is because those matches have virtually no deaths and play out more like a tacky board game for the elderly than an action packed PVP match. My respects to anyone who mangages to stay awake in such matches.

Many of the 5 man premades I did were using search to see if there were any premades about and then we'd attempt to snipe them. Other matches I was in did not have a specific premade in mind we were trying to stalk and we would just play through a few matches hoping to get a challenging match.
In the majority of 5 man matches I can recall, we weren't looking for weak players to squash, we were hunting for good matches and would put up with easier matches before scoring a good match because it was faster than que syncing.

There are admittidly some premade teams I joined that were probably formed for the reasons @pando83 discribed though its hard to tell for all of these. On a couple of these, I'm 99% sure it was leaderboard farming, habbit, lazyness, and fear of losing driving my teamates to form these premades.
On my end, I can name some times where my mind was done for the day and I would jump into a pre hoping for an easier match or 2 before calling it quits for the night. I think it was me not actually wanting to go to sleep yet but not having enough energy left to want to go do anything hard.

However, I'm fairly certain glory farming/AD did not play a significant role in the premade matches I was in. If someone uses this as an excuse to premade they are either lieing or you are witnissing a rare scenario.
The reason for this is simple, premaders of the caliber discribed here do not need glory and the measly sum of AD they can get from PVP is not worth their time. The only thing worth buying with glory more than once is healing pots or dumping it into a guild coffer. The conversion rate for glory to guild marks is terrible and its easy to hit the coffer cap from natural play. When players lose a match, most teams will let you gg and cap for points so you rarely get a match where you get no glory. Its conquerer's shards that are more of a consern and its likely that not all premaders know that they can win icewind dale PVP matches to complete the daily shard quest.

I do have one personality quirk that many of the other premaders I have qued with don't have as far as I am able to tell. Many of them don't enjoy killing weak pugs at all that I can see and I know several of them that directly said they don't enjoy it and just feel pity for the pugs. I also know many PVPers who are bored out of their skull by this game in general and only stick around because of them wanting to interact with guildmates, these sorts have little to no motivation left in them for PVP matches but will do them anyway for the interaction time.
In my specific case, I have retained some of my old motivation for this game. There is also a primitive bit in the back of my mind that makes me want to go on a kill rampage and I enjoy any kill to some degree. That doesn't mean that I specificially look for easy targets and I seem to enjoy harder fights even more, they are just much harder to come by in the public que and shrinking PVP population so I take what I can get as an opportunist. Dueling has gotten me my best fights by far since I can have a fight that is both hard AND be physically able to kill more players without piercing damage or requiring help from teammates. I am also not tied down playing as everyone else's CB/CC companion in a duel.
I get annoyed when matches end early though will still follow gg etiquette even though I almost never actually want to stop. I tend to only accept an in match dual if I think we have enough time to finish it, though there often isn't enough time so I don't always bother to ask. There have also been numerous situations where the entire team that got squashed has no strong players on it so any dual I try to start would not be a fair match up. I'm considering creating loadouts for several different item levels so I can fight more people 1vs1.
good post more comming later ,,, im at work ...
one point glory was also used to buy feeder artifacts with power union and stability ... and saved tons of ads for upgrading ..

and glory boosters are helpful to limit the time you need to grind out pvp gear or artifacts

summons @CLONKYO1 to comment on the whole thread

I just checked artifact prices, the cheepest one avalable is bloodcrystal raven scull for 24k glory. Given how cheep this artifact is now along with other feeders, it probably hasn't been contributing to people's motives to premade for at least a year now if not more than that. There are 3 other artifacts that each cost 40k glory each. 24k is almost half the maximum amount of glory you can hold at a time and 40k is almost all the glory a player can hold at a time. It would take far longer to try to grind glory for feeder artifacts than it would to grind for AD to buy feeders off of the AH.

trgluestickz · October 2017

@pando83

There is another point of yours I would like to adress. From what you are saying, you belive the private que did not really change anything for the better in PVP. You claim that elite PVP players either lied about the private que's benifits so they could get a fancy new toy or were simply dead wrong.

I wouldn't be suprised if a couple of people got too absolute over their claims and made the case that private que would eliminate premades in public que altogether or overdefended premaders by claiming no premaders seek to pug stomp, but I am not convinced overkill claims came from a majority of PVP premaders and I'm not positive you didn't misunderstand some of the quotes you are reffering to. I also don't think premaders were lying so we could get a new toy. Those who claimed it would help probably did from time to time overstate the benifits of a private que but they were right in that it did have a significant positive effect on PVP.

I haven't done as much PVP since the private PVP que was introduced so I am not yet sure how good of a job the private que did at reducing public premades. As an educated guess, it should have cut down on public premade numbers significantly since it removes the main incentives for many players to premade into the public que.

You gave only a few direct examples but you did say that the premades you encountered were comming from the same 2 guilds and you kept running into the same premades repeatidly. It is likely that the number of premades actually did plummet after private que was introduced and the reason it looks like not much changed is because the premaders that remain were queing often at the time when you played.

I'd advise you try queing at different times of the day and see if you get different results. Each premade tended to have its own pattern and usually qued at around the same time everyday from what I remember.
If the number of public que premades running did drop, the following is what you should be seeing:

There should be a lot more time frames each day where premades are noticably abscent.
Your odds of running into larger premades overall should have gone down. You will likely still see 2 mans and 3 mans a lot.
You should be seeing almost no variaty when it comes to which players you run into when you do encounter a premade.
It should become easier to aviod premades via search too since you have fewer people you need to check for.

It also is to be noted that private que is not just for elite PVP players. While it was mosly elites that asked for it, it is a benificial feature for any PVPer and I strongly encourage all PVPers to use it. Anybody can use the private PVP que so lowbies could and should be doing more pre vs pre matches of their own.

I will mention that one of the reasons private que got introduced before solo que was probably because it was a strategic move by the devs. They wanted us to use the private que to test their new PVP changes as they continue to come out and offer feedback. That was another heavily promoted benifit for introducing the private que.

Another benifit to private que I noticed imediatly after it got introduced is that it made the PVP channels more active and lead to a new one forming and being sucessful.
Before private que, the PVP channels were a ghost town most of the time and occationally you'd see some trashtalking break out. Only once in a blue moon would I see someone forming a premade at all using a PVP channel, only some of these were premade vs premades.
Once private que got introduced, I was seeing people forming premade vs premades multaple times a day. Not only that but I was seeing people forming groups for both guantlgrym and domination. Before private PVP que, guantlgrym was pretty much dead.

kalina311 · October 2017

trgluestickz said:

kalina311 said:

trgluestickz said:
I see partial truths scattered in what @pando83 has stated here though its missing a lot of nuance and he makes a lot of absolute claims that don't actually apply to 100% of premades or anything close to it.

I agree though that premaders overall should do a lot more private que matches and premading into a public que with more than 2 people should be kept to a minimum considering how unbalanced PVP is at the moment.

Here is my personal background on premading if you wish to see my own motives and some nuance:

I was an oportunistic premader before private que was introduced, meaning I usually would go with a freind or alone but occationally I'd do a 5 man if there was one avalable. I have taken a temporary break from PVP to work on my character and offer more forum feedback. I haven't done much PVP since private que and the new SOD buff was introduced.

Some of the premades I did were que syncs where 2 premades would coordinate with eachother via TS to try and get into the same match as eachother. This process usually took between 30 minutes and 2 hours. These sync matches did not get organised that often compared to other kinds of matches owing to how much of a pain they were to set up.
This shortage of pre vs pre matches was further amplified by how boring these matches were in most cases. The very dullest pre vs pre matches I can name took place before mod 10 weapons were introduced as well as any match with more than one support class/healer per team. This is because those matches have virtually no deaths and play out more like a tacky board game for the elderly than an action packed PVP match. My respects to anyone who mangages to stay awake in such matches.

Many of the 5 man premades I did were using search to see if there were any premades about and then we'd attempt to snipe them. Other matches I was in did not have a specific premade in mind we were trying to stalk and we would just play through a few matches hoping to get a challenging match.
In the majority of 5 man matches I can recall, we weren't looking for weak players to squash, we were hunting for good matches and would put up with easier matches before scoring a good match because it was faster than que syncing.

There are admittidly some premade teams I joined that were probably formed for the reasons @pando83 discribed though its hard to tell for all of these. On a couple of these, I'm 99% sure it was leaderboard farming, habbit, lazyness, and fear of losing driving my teamates to form these premades.
On my end, I can name some times where my mind was done for the day and I would jump into a pre hoping for an easier match or 2 before calling it quits for the night. I think it was me not actually wanting to go to sleep yet but not having enough energy left to want to go do anything hard.

However, I'm fairly certain glory farming/AD did not play a significant role in the premade matches I was in. If someone uses this as an excuse to premade they are either lieing or you are witnissing a rare scenario.
The reason for this is simple, premaders of the caliber discribed here do not need glory and the measly sum of AD they can get from PVP is not worth their time. The only thing worth buying with glory more than once is healing pots or dumping it into a guild coffer. The conversion rate for glory to guild marks is terrible and its easy to hit the coffer cap from natural play. When players lose a match, most teams will let you gg and cap for points so you rarely get a match where you get no glory. Its conquerer's shards that are more of a consern and its likely that not all premaders know that they can win icewind dale PVP matches to complete the daily shard quest.

I do have one personality quirk that many of the other premaders I have qued with don't have as far as I am able to tell. Many of them don't enjoy killing weak pugs at all that I can see and I know several of them that directly said they don't enjoy it and just feel pity for the pugs. I also know many PVPers who are bored out of their skull by this game in general and only stick around because of them wanting to interact with guildmates, these sorts have little to no motivation left in them for PVP matches but will do them anyway for the interaction time.
In my specific case, I have retained some of my old motivation for this game. There is also a primitive bit in the back of my mind that makes me want to go on a kill rampage and I enjoy any kill to some degree. That doesn't mean that I specificially look for easy targets and I seem to enjoy harder fights even more, they are just much harder to come by in the public que and shrinking PVP population so I take what I can get as an opportunist. Dueling has gotten me my best fights by far since I can have a fight that is both hard AND be physically able to kill more players without piercing damage or requiring help from teammates. I am also not tied down playing as everyone else's CB/CC companion in a duel.
I get annoyed when matches end early though will still follow gg etiquette even though I almost never actually want to stop. I tend to only accept an in match dual if I think we have enough time to finish it, though there often isn't enough time so I don't always bother to ask. There have also been numerous situations where the entire team that got squashed has no strong players on it so any dual I try to start would not be a fair match up. I'm considering creating loadouts for several different item levels so I can fight more people 1vs1.
good post more comming later ,,, im at work ...
one point glory was also used to buy feeder artifacts with power union and stability ... and saved tons of ads for upgrading ..

and glory boosters are helpful to limit the time you need to grind out pvp gear or artifacts

summons @CLONKYO1 to comment on the whole thread
I just checked artifact prices, the cheepest one avalable is bloodcrystal raven scull for 24k glory. Given how cheep this artifact is now along with other feeders, it probably hasn't been contributing to people's motives to premade for at least a year now if not more than that. There are 3 other artifacts that each cost 40k glory each. 24k is almost half the maximum amount of glory you can hold at a time and 40k is almost all the glory a player can hold at a time. It would take far longer to try to grind glory for feeder artifacts than it would to grind for AD to buy feeders off of the AH.

ya a year or more ago when gg was running(and you could convert coins to glory as well ) and pvp popped more glory was easy to come by and fill up also during pvp hours and with boosters running and with a pvp set only for glory to put on just as the match ends : D.... ya now with tons of artifact packs with feeders/ improved loot tables dropping artifacts glory is not needed so much anymore for feeding
a couple mods ago it was ..

as for now (mod12b) glory is needed again for new pvp sets ..and to have alternate sets as well

+1 well said on your other paragraphs trying to explain that a lot of premades you just wont even see anymore that are using the private Q.. also low level tunes wanting to have fun and not be cannon fodder : d

ya its much easier to pop into a 1 v1 match to test changes and powers on the live server now as well
instead of going to preview or laggy icewind dale with more variables

grampyrulz · October 2017

I remember the solo queue discussions. Many that we're against it slung a lot of poo. So did those that were for it.

@pando83 I'm sure you are still seeing the same thing that has been going on for such a long time on PC that I would hate to suffer the same fate on PS4. It hasn't been a good experience, and I do hope solo queue will be implemented right so it will help alleviate some of this problem. I don't think it will entirely go away with just solo queue. The 5v5 dom maps are just terrible for this. Small teams, small map can more easily end up pinning the enemy to one location. Now your entire team can stand at the drop down point and wait. You can see if all the enemy team is at the campfire, you don't have to go looking around for them and you don't have to stay on a node to acquire points. The maps almost seem designed for pug stomping. And I don't think that they actually were, but it is flawed, repetitive, and boring. I can see boredom being somewhat to blame here.

I would really love to see bigger teams and bigger maps with an enclosed campfire. Two exits from there, one leading to a drop down ledge that has a npc guard or two at the bottom to dissuade ppl from camping these areas, and an alternate entrance on the map that could land you at random points or at least to a different, out-of-the-way section of the playing field. There are so many ways to dissuade stomping in just map/scenario alone before you even get to gear and class balance.

kalina playing devil's advocate again? It is easy to draw angst from others, even when they know you are doing it. They didn't call Socrates "the gadfly" for nothing.

pjohnny1 · October 2017

@kalina311

You mentioned that you as a CW along with several other classes no longer have the same impact on a match . Would you care to clarify that statement ? Curious to know what has changed to cause CW and other classes to be less affective .

kalina311 · October 2017

@pjohnny1

by impact i mean a cw choosing / going in solo and bolstering your team and helping them where ever you need to go and winning the match and having some impact .. i cant do that any more prior mods i could . i cant turn around a blow out match at all anymore as a cw ..normally you can tell your teams health as how well they are doing by the cws death count .. and this comming for the cw that had extremely low death counts in prior mods (lowest from any pvp cw )
and a build no one was using ... I was also top in kills on the leaderboard despite having an extreme defensive build ..
this came from a mix of premades matches and solo matches not just stomping . and mostly with rank 8s-10s back in the day ..

what had changed *mod (10/11/12) was no one was dying ( insignias) and everybody was super tanky in premades matches
you mostly become a repel bot on the node since you cant kill anybody at your gear level in a reasonable amount of time .. and no amount of burst damage was good enough to take out tanky targets in a reasonable amount of time either (un buffed and unboosted by team members ) all I had to do was dig in and take out the opposing teams cw (by outlasting him thru heals until all his sources ran out and mine did not ..and this is while the cw is being healing by the opposing cleric as well ..) and then the node would fall ..

in pug matches with no team as a cw either you go in kamazazee and take lots of deaths with your team not helping you
or you become extremely defensive and tanky preparing for worst care scenario and getting in kills where you can opportunistically ...

next mod this resets i think there is going to be more fighting off node and in the balconies and on top etc .. at extreme range
one thing the cw has going for them an extreme range glass cannnon crit build with no shield (4th damage encounter power ) with possible timed cc combo ... or endlessly kitting people since you only get onle repel in .. or having repel on tab(multiple targets ) hoping it works on some people that are off cc cooldown

I can make builds to get around the cc next mod however they are extremely gear dependant /extremely high mobility ..require low internet ping and extreme hand eye co ordination and jump casting such that all the muscles/fingers in your hand are burning after the match lol

also if you play a squishy build and get taken out fast you will always get targeted first strategically as the weakest link
you probably dont want that as it puts extra pressure on the cleric and then team member have to baby sit you and you cant be left alone for your team to transition else where without risking losing the node to your death

A shout goes out to all the fans and people that bothered to read this .. I may have a Pvp CW guide for mod 12b

pjohnny1 · October 2017

@kalina311

Thanks for explanation , funny always occurred to me how often I was killed or killed a opposing cw last couple mods . I hope 12b turns out better for all classes .

plavia · October 2017

i did few private Q. as far as i remember its 0 reward.
not clear why
AD cap is strong and if you think regular Q there is no trading points, I sugest you try a match.
90% of matches are GG after 1 min.

grampyrulz · October 2017

"2 strong players on 1 team if they are matched randomly or not.. appear to be a premade to people on the other team regardless if they are or not .. perception is reality .. that is why pvp is dead"
- @kalina311

I think this is very true, but not the only reason it is dead. From this perception also comes another that stomping is completely acceptable and rewarded. Regardless if you are pug stomping or premade for farming or not, it looks like you are. I don't think you can completely stop ppl from doing it, but it could still be frowned upon, dissuaded, and especially not rewarded.

ravenskya · October 2017

I had a really long post written and then thought better of it and deleted.

We have decided that there are 15 people in the PS4 pvp... because when we go in, we are constantly against one of three premade teams. It doesn't matter when we queue, how long we wait from our last queue or what day of the week. We pretty much recognize the names and just stand there at the top of the ledge and don't even bother anymore. We keep hopping in trying to find a team like us - one that would just like a fair match in the hopes for some Conqueror shards. But no... always one of those three teams.

grampyrulz · October 2017

@ravenskya

Wish my time meshed with you all. I am EST as well, but I'm a 3rd shifter and just got done with 3 great matches, all ending around 1000-700, it is a good experience. But it is still hit and miss day-to-day, and I could probably name the same names you are talking about. My best advice at this point is either everyone pug in to see if some of you can hit a good match (it can take several tries and is so time consuming) or just wait for 12b and see if solo queue has been done right and is a better experience.

ravenskya · October 2017

grampyrulz#4209 said:
@ravenskya

Wish my time meshed with you all. I am EST as well, but I'm a 3rd shifter and just got done with 3 great matches, all ending around 1000-700, it is a good experience. But it is still hit and miss day-to-day, and I could probably name the same names you are talking about. My best advice at this point is either everyone pug in to see if some of you can hit a good match (it can take several tries and is so time consuming) or just wait for 12b and see if solo queue has been done right and is a better experience.

I hear ya - the key is that we don't pvp, we are only going in there for the shards. But if it had been fun, we probably would have gone in there more often. If it had EVER been fun I probably would have gotten another loadout and gotten PVP gear... but as it is, the three of us have to force ourselves to go in there. At this point when we see those guys we just stand at the top of the cliff and throw water balloons while they glitch themselves up to our fire to spawn kill us

pjohnny1 · October 2017

grampyrulz#4209 said:
"2 strong players on 1 team if they are matched randomly or not.. appear to be a premade to people on the other team regardless if they are or not .. perception is reality .. that is why pvp is dead"

- @kalina311

I think this is very true, but not the only reason it is dead. From this perception also comes another that stomping is completely acceptable and rewarded. Regardless if you are pug stomping or premade for farming or not, it looks like you are. I don't think you can completely stop ppl from doing it, but it could still be frowned upon, dissuaded, and especially not rewarded.

I play on xbox and I don't think it is perception that pug stomping or pm farming is accepted . It is the normal everyday occurrence. There is from what I can tell a little over 100 people that pvp on this platform. There is 110 pages of boards and after the first ten pages your lucky to find someone with 20+ games played . Only 2 major guild that pvp with a couple guilds with groups that pvp. They all farm pugs , some try to catch matches with other pm's but for the most part they que dodge . Board placement is more important than a fun close match as far as I can tell on xbox . The higher end bis players with a few groups and individual exceptions won't solo que or play against other pm's . Lol before someone comes in saying pm yourself , I do all the time with the same random people since pvp population is so low that only 1 or 2 instances are running at any given time .

wintersmoke · October 2017

grampyrulz#4209 said:
"2 strong players on 1 team if they are matched randomly or not.. appear to be a premade to people on the other team regardless if they are or not .. perception is reality .. that is why pvp is dead"

- @kalina311

I think this is very true, but not the only reason it is dead. From this perception also comes another that stomping is completely acceptable and rewarded. Regardless if you are pug stomping or premade for farming or not, it looks like you are. I don't think you can completely stop ppl from doing it, but it could still be frowned upon, dissuaded, and especially not rewarded.

Ring of Invisibility

Ring of Ambush

grampyrulz · October 2017

Can you see matches in progress on Xbox? I've seen PC ppl post that you can search and see this, or at least something like that, can't remember for sure. It would be a nice addition, and a great time saver if we had this option.

pjohnny1 · October 2017

I am not sure if you can but I haven't seen an option to do so . To be honest as it is right now there really is only 1 or 2 instances of pvp going at a time now. The weekend you will see 3 or 4 sometimes that is the most I have seen at any given time . Very small population of pvp players and even smaller population that will solo random ques .

ravenskya · October 2017

pjohnny1 said:
I am not sure if you can but I haven't seen an option to do so . To be honest as it is right now there really is only 1 or 2 instances of pvp going at a time now. The weekend you will see 3 or 4 sometimes that is the most I have seen at any given time . Very small population of pvp players and even smaller population that will solo random ques .

And here is the question that I keep dancing around - if there are only 4 instances going at a time - that's 40 people.

There are 40 in two instances alone of chult. I just can't understand why in the dev's minds making things better in PVP (nerfing PVE stuff/feats/gear/encounters) feels like their priority.

Perhaps in mod 13 they will announce that they have completely scrapped the PVP system as it currently is and open up a whole new one that is unattached from PVE and includes multiple options for those that really only PVP. I don't want the PVPers to get hosed - but at the same time as a business person you have to think - If I nerf the TR again because of PVP, I will upset a large portion of my PVE customer base, to make the 40 people who PVP happy. Dollar wise (which they have shown is really all they care about) it would be easier for them to just dump the pvp, lose those 40 people and move on with just focusing on PVE. Now I don't want that to happen necessarily - but if the PVP people keep running everyone else out of PVP, then they cease to be a money maker for the game and lose their clout with the company.

pjohnny1 · October 2017

@ravenskya

From a corporate/developer point of view they stopped making money on bis pvp players a good while ago . What is a bis pvper buying once they have max enchants , gear , legendary mount ? There is only about a 1000 if even that many of these people from all 3 platforms added together. Looking at it from a developer point of view with millions of pve players , keeping them satisfied by not making changes in pvp that affect pve is the smart move . As far as I can tell pvp has not been a priority for quite awhile and that majority of the pvp players left years ago because of it . You can tell how healthy a pvp/pve community is by its forums most of the time . No new threads , days between posts , the amount of people posting usually a clear indication of how the game is doing . Pve wise this game is healthy , pvp only couple crickets left . Lol some of those crickets are very tenacious and go at the devs and don't give up , have to give kudos to those people . All in all it is the most quiet pvp forums in any game like this I have played . I guess why I am so surprised is that over 10 million people supposedly play this game and not even 1/10th of a percent pvp in it . Kind of sad since at one time neverwinter had what was considered the best instanced pvp for balance and game mechanics . I'm sorry I missed most of it.

pando83 · October 2017

Let's ignore the trolls then and try to discuss the issue.

I didn't really notice a drop in the number of premades i meet. To be honest, i usually PvP in very different hours of the day. Can be (europe time) morning, afternoon, evening or even night, since i work in shifts. Most of the time i meet 2-3-4 men from the same guild, in the same team. Or the same 3 guys in the same team, multiple matches in a row. These are the times i call premade. Not just when 2 or 3 strong players happen to be in the same team.
And it happens a lot even now. I can queue 10 times, and end up against such groups 9 times. Sometimes, expecially in the morning (european time) you can meet 5-6 times in a row the same 3-men partial premade, due to low PvP population.

About why PvP died: i can bring this one example. GG used to pop quite easily. Then we got the time when T.Negation and T.Fey were so overpowered that they made any fight one-sided. During that time, PvP guilds, let's say "many pvp guilds" grabbed all such enchants, leaving some in AH to sell for absurd prices. Then, GG was literally FLOODED with premades (5-men or 10-men exc...) of PvP guilds (might say quite a few names) using those enchants vs pugs without them. Needless to say, those players were simply in god mode (and they even said, at the time, that their enchants were "working as intended and that all the pugs got to do, was to go on AH and buy them. You would end up most of the time against or with such premades. And most matches were one-sided. Shortly after, players stopped going to GG. These are facts. Sadly.
To dissuade stomping, in my opinion, a few changes might work.

One change is to move leaderboard to Private Queue/ PMvsPM. This way, you would solve a ton of mixed queue issues created by the need, for some players, to farm leaderboard stats, or to kick players/ try to manipulate matches, just to have better leaderboard. It also makes more sense, because in PMvsPM, the performance of each team and player is more solid and closer to reality.
The other change might be to apply to solo queue in mod 12b the rewards we got during NCL.
Also, refusing a match (cancelling a queue) more than 2 times should lead to a 30 minutes ban (to discourage solo queue sync).

pjohnny1 · October 2017

@pando83

Lol in a little over a year and half have done 2 GG. One was a alliance set up run , the other was a random que . Thought it was disabled since it never popped up . It must have really been pretty bad that no one ques for it still .

pando83 · October 2017

pjohnny1 said:
@pando83

Lol in a little over a year and half have done 2 GG. One was a alliance set up run , the other was a random que . Thought it was disabled since it never popped up . It must have really been pretty bad that no one ques for it still .

I obviously talk about my experience.
PvP in general used to be very populated when i started playing in 2013. Keep in mind that, at that time, there were no boons, power creep exc... Still, PvP guilds and premades were not rare to meet in PvP, and class/ build balance was still not perfect. Domination popped easily. In a few seconds or instantly. GG was for guild members only. Later, it was made public.

When a part of the PvP community found out that T.Neg+T.Fey were overperforming, they went all straight for the enchants, and later you could find some in AH for absurd prices, out of the reach of normal players. The combo was so absurd that fights between "have" and "have not" were trivial. CW with shield + T.Neg were also tankier than tanks, with monster ranged damage, and exploited a lot. Around that time, i remember that GG was literally flooded with smaller or larger premades farming it. All with that combo. And i remember that GG queues started to last longer during that time. Normal players got tired, in my opinion, to queue for a GG match, just to end up in the next one-sided match due to premades with the mentioned combo, farming GG (probably for a mix of GG tokens and PvP campaign tasks). Same with domination, with people tired of going to PvP just to get wrecked by some players abusing the next bug or overperforming item/ enchant. Even legit "pro-pvpers" used such stuff (except ambush ring, which was "banned" by them) because not using it would make them "fall behind" other PvP guilds that were exploiting them.
Then it got worse as time passed, for multiple reasons. So it was not the only reason, but i remember that the decline started during that time, when T.Neg+T.Fey groups started to farm GG. People also was tired of going to PvP just to find players exploiting the next bug to wreck them easily.

Another reason is that people used to enjoy the combat system in PvP, but the devs added a lot of bad/ poor mechanics that, in my opinion, kept taking away action and skill form NW combat system.
NWO combat system should have its foundations in 3 words: aiming, timing and dodging. Aim and time your attacks to hit, and dodge to avoid damage or reduce it. These should be ABSOLUTE LAWS that should work in any situation. You fail to aim, you fail to time your attack...your damage is reduced or lost. You manage to time your dodge/ shift mechanic with the enemy attack, you should get rewarded. Piercing damage, auto aim exc...all take away fun and skill from the combat system.

NWO combat system could be much better. It used to be much better.

grampyrulz · October 2017

I would hate to see PvP scrapped or made obsolete. And where I do see premades, stomping, farming stats or currency, as probably the biggest barrier now, from what I have gathered reading what the long time players have said, it wasn't always this way. Would have been great playing during this "golden age".

You do the same thing over and over and over you can't help but to get really good at it. Most classes have one PvP build that works best. You might come up with slight variations, but the meat of the build will usually remain the same. And even if there was something radically different to experiment with you need Respec tokens and a ton of AD for different gear just to see if it works. So things stagnated, dedicated pvpers playing the same builds, on the same maps, no other objective but domination, lost any sense of challenge or variety and now let's see who can kill the most pugs. Nothing better to do.

Where would PvE be if there was nothing past, say, Sharandar? or Dread Ring? or pretty much any of the mods? Population would stink, or be fairly non-existent as well. So while tweaks and small changes are nice to do for PvP, and needed, if something radical doesn't happen I fear the old bugger just might kick the bucket, or just keep dragging on in it's general malaise.

They said solo queue, private queue, pretty much all the recent PvP changes, are "down payments". It makes me curious, and I wonder what they envision the total price of the bill to be.

pjohnny1 · October 2017

@grampyrulz

I figure that cryptic is looking over their shoulder right about now. When NW went to console their population got huge and they have enjoyed being 1 of the 2 games in this genre on console . This is going to change in the next 6 months with 2 new titles coming to console . Cryptic is looking at everything that they can make improvements on NW right now . Pvp changes that should of happened years ago , bugs fix thread , streamlined refinement system , better rng on lockbox drops. I Wouldn't be surprised if a new class and a increased level cap were announced in the near future . All the QOL things players have been asking for years are starting to happen. They are trying to minimize the population loss that is coming . It isn't really cryptics fault, its most likely that perfect world has been sucking the cash cow that NW is dry from the get go. Always amazes me that more developers don't follow blizzards example when it comes to their games . Keep all aspects of your game as balanced as possible whether its pvp or pve . Fix the bugs and keep your player base happy. Lastly put money back into it so you have new content and enough Devs to over see it and make things work . Can't say it hasn't worked considering WoW is going on 18 yrs now and is still pulling in billions in revenue. I like NW the look and the game mechanics , just don't like how it takes years to fix obvious problems .

Private queue and premades: nothing changed?

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