BioWare’s Mike Bradley – associate producer for SWTOR – has shared a recap of the now completed Season 11 of Ranked PvP matches and revealed a few interesting changes coming with Season 12 and patch 6.0.2.
From time to time the SWTOR dev team shares reports of actions taken against cheating players for illegal in-game actions and activities they have participated in.
For Season 11 the team reports to have taken action against 163 player accounts caught cheating in PvP, hacking or win-trading.
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Each account has been given a proper punishment based on the type and number of the rules they have broken. 18 accounts have been permanently banned.
“[…] even with regular, harsher punishments, it felt like it was still too easy for people to cheat their way to the top or to just ruin the PvP experience for others. As a result, we created a new email for reporting this kind of behavior directly to our Live Production team, and in many cases the reports we’ve received have been very helpful. We also took all of that feedback and worked with our designers to come up with some changes for ranked PvP specifically that we are hoping will do more to discourage or deter cheating across the board. “
With the start of the new Season 12 and as listed in the Update 6.0.2 Patch Notes (released last week), here is what the dev team came up with:
- Made adjustments to matchmaking which previously allowed a single tank or healer in the Ranked queue to be able to lock up the queue from making any future Ranked PvP matches.
- Players who decline a queue pop or who leave a match early for a Ranked Warzone will now be unable to queue again for 15 minutes.
- Increased the Rating penalty received for declining a Ranked PvP queue or leaving a match early to 25 rating (up from 15 rating).
There are new requirements for Ranked PvP Rank now. To gain any rank from silver to top 96 you need to have earned a certain amount of wins before you can qualify.
- For Bronze – 25 wins
- For Silver – 50 wins
- For Gold – 100 wins
- For Top 96 – 200 wins
For all who are still wondering, the “Top 96” rewards will be delivered shortly. Starting today and by December 20th (Friday).
A pleasant surprise came up in the final paragraph of Mike’s Season 11 recap:
“Starting with this season, we will also have the ability to remove cheating players from the Ranked PvP environment altogether. So in addition to all our previous actions, if an account is caught win trading, cheating, or exploiting in PvP, they will be removed from and unable to queue, join, or play ranked PvP for the rest of the season. If an account continues to be disruptive and problematic in other areas of the game, we absolutely reserve the right to permanently ban those accounts and we will do so if we feel it is warranted. “
While the changes from Patch 6.0.2 are not enough, and Mike confirmed it to be so himself, he made sure to remind us that the team is still collecting data and feedback and continues to seek ways to improve both communication with the community and actions towards cheating players.
“I realize that these changes may not be all the ones you were hoping for from the new season. When we took a step back and looked at the trends of season 11 (and even earlier seasons), we consistently saw the sentiment that cheating felt rampant, that our punishments did not feel terribly effective, thus Top 96 placements felt like they had lost all meaning, and that few believed we could or would do anything about it. I do want to reiterate that we are by no means finished gathering your feedback or done iterating on ideas to make PvP a better experience for everyone, these are just the changes we were able to make before the new season.”
Here is a short list that Mike decided to share – a compilation of ideas and thoughts the PvP devs are considering and brainstorming for future patches and seasons:
- Mixing up seasonal variety
- More Matchmaking improvements
- More choice in picking or excluding certain maps or game types
- Re-examining Group Ranked
- Balance Issues
- Vote kicking abuses
Mike Bradley doesn’t post frequently on the SWTOR forums. He did not end his message with a wish for happy holidays. I assume he simply forgot or perhaps he plans to address more of the currently present issues related to the PvP aspect of SWTOR before 2019 rolls out?
