8 years ago

Pairing players in PvP and switching between shards

Hi, at first I'll state my problem. I have not played SW:Heroes for cca 2 years. Now I started again. I'm currently level 70. My problem is with PvP battles like squad arena, fleet arena or galactic war. I'm always paired with 80+ players, usually with 85. So just by leveling their characters they have a lot more power in their squads than me (sometimes twice as me). It's really flustrating to play vs. them because I have literally no chance of defeating them.

At first I wrote on the live helpdesk chat. They told me that they cannot do anything about it and that I should create a bug. So I created it here - https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/Pairing-players-that-did-not-play-for-long-time-with-too-high/m-p/6813087. As I expected it was just closed without anything. They only suggested that I should write feedback here. So here I am!

I want to suggest some mechanism to allow people changing shards if they were not playing for long time like me. It's flustrating to be cut of of the PvP content just because you was not active in last months/years.
This mechanism/feature can be for example monetized with ingame currency (not directly money) or it can be available only via help chat/bugreport or something like that.

I have now just these three options:
1. Play in the state as it is and try to catch up
In this case I will be basically cut of of the PvP battles (squad arena, fleet arena, galactic war) because there is only very little chance of doing something in them. For example I just got full sith 83lvl squad agains me in the FIRST galactic war node (I'm lvl 70).

2. Start from beginning
This means that I should throw away all my progress and all what I achieved in weeks/months of playing this game and start from beginning. I think that most of the players will find this boring - playing same thing again.

3. Pay a lot of money to catch up
I really don't like the idea to pay huge amount of money just to be in the state where I left it. And I don't think players should be forced to pay for this.

I personally think the best solution will be to allow changing shard somehow. I don't know how is this game implemented and how much effort is in moving player from one shard to shard where are players equal to him (or slightly better). But I don't think it will be that hard and it will allow people like me enjoy the game again.

30 Replies

449710430e37db5
8 years ago
You cannot switch shards, best option is to restart, 70 is very easy to hit again.
emvedebe
8 years ago
"Mao42;c-1558201" wrote:
The simplest way of solving this is to just implement a level bucket system, similar to the one in World of Warcraft Battlegrounds. PvP encounters such as arena would be segmented into 10-levels-wide buckets inside which players would climb the ladder.
Dead simple.

The majority of the players is lvl 85, so lvl buckets ain't going to help.
NyKynoe
8 years ago
The "only" fair way to group people is by starting time, as they are not. (There may be others but I have not heard of one that is equal to all.)

Time =$$. So everyone gets to where they are through a combination of commitment (time) and/or $$. Someone who has been less committed being pushed into a group where they can be competitive against someone who has been committed but started later, is not fair to the "newer" player.

The general idea here is that the groups made the way they are reward people who have been helping and somewhat active in the community and game for longer periods of time, or support it in other ways $$$.

The dev team have also stated they dont have the tools to move people to different shards.
XxiCOLOSSUSxX
8 years ago
"Kyno;c-1558355" wrote:
The "only" fair way to group people is by starting time, as they are not. (There may be others but I have not heard of one that is equal to all.)

Time =$$. So everyone gets to where they are through a combination of commitment (time) and/or $$. Someone who has been less committed being pushed into a group where they can be competitive against someone who has been committed but started later, is not fair to the "newer" player.

The general idea here is that the groups made the way they are reward people who have been helping and somewhat active in the community and game for longer periods of time, or support it in other ways $$$.

The dev team have also stated they dont have the tools to move people to different shards.

The last part I feel is false, with the splitting the fleet arena shard to meet me it seems like they have the capability.. but not to argue that,

To the OP; as kyno said the fairest grouping is by time. And this game "rewards"(using the word loosely) players for their time and/or money, ultimately it was your decision to leave the game for an extended period of time putting you behind others who played daily.

I mean yeah. It sucks, but your options are to grind it out or start fresh
DarkHelmet1138
8 years ago
You're almost to 85 so the level gap should disappear soon. That just leaves gear, stars, and zetas. If you focus on an arena team it only takes a few months to get one team to 7 star g11 or g12 with enough zetas to be competitive. If you were permanently locked at the bottom i would say switching woukd be warranted but getting one team ready is doable.
Pyro2266
8 years ago
Yes, I agree that grouping players by starting time is fair. But it's fair only as long as you do not make bigger break in playing (let's say 6+ months). If you want to start again, you have only those options that I mentioned earlier.

It will be even more unfair if you actually paid for something with real money. If you want to start playing again you basically lose that money.

This is the only game I encountered so far that punishes you hard for making longer pause in playing. You are not able to pick up where you left it and be competitive to others. In most of the games you are matched against the players that are +- equal to you.
emvedebe
8 years ago
"Pyro2266;c-1558433" wrote:

This is the only game I encountered so far that punishes you hard for making longer pause in playing. You are not able to pick up where you left it and be competitive to others. In most of the games you are matched against the players that are +- equal to you.

It's just squad arena though, maybe fleet if you had that unlocked before you took a break.
I think only competing vs a limited group of players who started around the same time as you did has more upsides than downsides tbh. It may suck if you take a 6 month break, but it's awesome when you start playing 6 months after the game launched.
Pyro2266
8 years ago
"leef;c-1558440" wrote:

It's just squad arena though, maybe fleet if you had that unlocked before you took a break.

It's not only for squad arena. Bad thing about fleet arena is that it was introduced after I stopped playing and I have no ships nor credits/materials to build it. So with my bad 1* fleet I'm paired with 4* or more enemies.
Similar problem as with squad arena is with galactic battle. I'm getting wiped a lot of times in first three nodes.
Pyro2266
8 years ago
One of the solutions may be to buff somehow players that were longer inactive. For example if you was inactive for at least 6 months, then you will receive double multipliers to (nearly) everything in game for let's say two weeks. Something like the 2x event that's happening right now. It will make it much easier to catch up with other players in your shard.
emvedebe
8 years ago
"Pyro2266;c-1558464" wrote:
"leef;c-1558440" wrote:

It's just squad arena though, maybe fleet if you had that unlocked before you took a break.

It's not only for squad arena. Bad thing about fleet arena is that it was introduced after I stopped playing and I have no ships nor credits/materials to build it. So with my bad 1* fleet I'm paired with 4* or more enemies.
Similar problem as with squad arena is with galactic battle. I'm getting wiped a lot of times in first three nodes.

You're placed on a new fleet leaderboard, not based on the time you started playing, but based on the time you unlocked fleet (wich apparantly was when you started playing again). This may very well work in your favour actually.
galactic war is not based on the time you started playing either, but on your current roster.