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A challenge to Arena haters!
Azrile
Member Posts: 2,582
This comes from another thread and from comments we see all the time. Blizzard is forcing players to do Arena to get the best pvp gear because they are trying to hype their esport.
The real problem is that Blizzard does not want to reward the best gear for BGs because there is no clear way to destinguish someone who runs along and does nearly nothing, to someone who is the best pvper. Arena has a clear ladder system. Blizzard has stated they are spending a lot of time figuring out a system to distinguish the best players in BGs so they can give gear equivalent of arena gear.
So here is my challange. If 100 pvpers do 100 BGseach in a week. how would you determine who the best 10 are? Please remember that defense and guarding are needed in BGs.
Comments
what?
Just a statistical thing. If over the course of a week, 100 players do 100 BGs each.. how would you determine who the best 10 were.
The system used to determine the best players was called the honor system. The QQ was immense when that system was in play because the casuals could not keep up with the hardcore players. I believe the only way with the current BG system to determine the top players would have to be the amount of damage/healing done and/or the amount of games played/won.
However, if you were to revamp the BG system and make it an arena type system this would be more interesting. Most people argue that BG's are better then Arena's because it's group pvp... well fine.. keep BG's based around group pvp but make rated BG's for groups of friends who want to compete for arena equivalent gear and PuG/Regular Bg's (instead of skirmish) for people who want honor gear.
Using Honor/Tokens is not a valid way to reward the 'best' gear. Even if you don't afk, it's too easy to just run with the pack and get honor/tokens. The devs have already stated that /played is not a viable method of determining the best players (like the old sysem was).
Your second paragraph is exactly what is going to happen. There is going to be some type of system that determines a players 'ability' in BGs.. the quesiton I have posted is to determine what you think that system should entail. There HAS to be a rating system, otherwise Blizzard is not going to reward top end pvp gear for bgs. They don't want a system where you can get the best items just by participating.. you have to excel. but how would you determine who is exceling
maybe I'm not clear
Ratings for BGs IS DEFINITELY going to happen. What isn't determined yet is what criteria they are going to use to determine who the best bg players are. That's what I asked. 100 players doing 100 games in a week, how would you determine the top 10 players?
I just jumped into the question.. I suppose it needs more thought >.>
Hmm.. Well if you were just singling 10 people out of 100 it would have to be based on some sort of stat. Since you mention BG's are about defending and such as well as raw damage/healing you'd have to take a stat like... say the amount of flags capped in AB.. in order for this to work though you'd have to change the capping method to something like "stand in this circle to cap the flag, the more allies in the circle the faster the cap" and the credit for capping the flag would be shared with everyone within that circle. I could imagine there being more stats being used to determine the best players but I think I got my point across.
I personally think the most fair way to determine the best players is to literally take the arena rating system and use it for BG's. Um.. I'll use an example with a few added details to explain the system I'm thinking of.
Ok let's just say each battleground has specific peices that could be earned. I'm going to use WSG as my example because it's easier.
10 team's did 100 games in a week.. at the end of the week the team with the most wins against the opposing teams was considered the best and those 10 players were rewarded an arena equivalent head peice. You could tweak this any way you want.. you can add "BG Points" to spend like arena points or just make it every 2 weeks the 10 players are chosen so it takes longer to get a full set.
If I failed to answer the question again I apologize and I'll quit now lol.
The biggest problem with the Honor system in its initial form was that you were rewarded by how much you participated, rather than the quality of your contribution. So literally, we saw players quitting their jobs and playing WoW 24/7 so they could get "High Warlord" or whatever, even though they weren't doing anything particularly special. They were just doing more of it.
I agree with the second part of your statement though, and I think they could adopt a system like what Mythic used for WAR PQs.
There was a revision with the new patch 3.02 honor vision and ... I am not enthousiastic about it.
As an old wargamer I tend to play very strategical. Hold on to certain points, attack at the weakest points, no useless running around in AB, defend where to defend.
I see that the latest patches award those that do the most kills. Well as a Holy pala and getting the hut very early on can win the fight in AV. But the trick is .... defending that flag, so you are bound to stay on top of the flag and GY. Same with towers. The same with WSG : as a healer you defend the FC. Nice if you can survive wave after wave of attacks, but sometimes you need to support the FC by staying with him for 10 minutes hardly seeing any opposition.
As dps-ers also get more rewards by killing people than healers healing people, the amount of honor can go up to 20% difference.
Now at the moment I don't care, but with such an honour rating you tend to award just the head banging and not the tactical play. And I've already seen it: a group of hordes killing everything in sight in WSG, they had about triple the number of killing as we did, but they lost by 3-1 in WSG because they never minded the flag. Guess what: the top 3 hordes had hardly 10% less honor than we did.
So until further notice: I am on hold for the new honor rating system in the BG's.
As to being a Holy Paladin I am having the blast of my life though. It must have been ages since I killed 5 times a 1vs1 in just one BG. Rogue, Hunter, 3 warriors (some taken while having half life). Those classes are rather easy now for the new shockadins. PvP at 80, that's where the problem will begin again I am afraid.
As a whole, Warhammer is much better for the instanced PvP aspect.
The open PvP is a bit dead, since the instanced PvP is so damn good to do. =/
Biggest problem with arena and this will come also to rated bgs will be class unbalance , for some classes its piece of cake to get on top for other its just ..hmm.. impossible no matter how good quality of skills show player behind character.
Untill Blizzard will completly balance all classes ( which never gonna happen imo ) systems like that will always favor FoTM classes above others.
How does WAR deferentiate and award players who are better than the rest?
How does WAR deferentiate and award players who are better than the rest?
Players are rewarded based on damage/healing done, and I think there is a small bonus for kills as well. Unfortunately there is currently no bonus for damage taken, which kinda leaves tanks out in the cold.
How does WAR deferentiate and award players who are better than the rest?
Actually Warhammer does a pretty crapy job of it. It's very similar to the honor system we have now in BGs. You don't really have to win, you just participate a lot and build up 'renown' (honor).
But a big difference between warhammer and WOW is that in warhammer the maps are much smaller than BG's. In that way, you aren't penalized for 'defending' because basically everyone is right on top of each other the whole time. I'm not kidding.. imagine playing WSG and both flags being inside one fort. That is how small the maps are in Warhammer. Or imagine playing AB with all 5 caps being on the middle island.
But again, in warhammer, you don't really get penalized for losing.. it's very easy for the losing team and the winning team to get nearly the same 'renown'. So it is basically 'grinding' renown rather than trying to win.
Blizzard doesn't want to give the best pvp rewards in a system where you can 'grind' out rewards. As much as people hate Arena, only the best arena players are getting the 2100 rated armor.
You have to rate contributions towards victory. Figure out what makes teams win and lose in a battleground, then measure how people are doing it.
For instance, WSG. Killing people means almost nothing. Measure:
Number of times you were in flag room, enemies entered flag room, and did not leave/ran away without flag after a fight.
Percent of time spent within 20 feet of flag carrier (guarding him).
Number of personal flag captures.
Number of team flag captures (okay, granted, this rewards the 'me toos' but that's virtually unavoidable, and I think the virtue of it far outweighs the problems with it).
Number of flag carriers killed/flag recoveries.
Victory
Granted, some of these don't really help much if the enemy is super incompetent. For instance the horde on defense in my battlegroup must be constantly surprised that many alliance do not even seem to know where the flag room is (the alliance on my battlegroup are slightly retarded). But still, assuming that level of incompetence, at least you get a fast victory. And frankly how many points do you deserve for defeating an enemy who is a cross between Forrest Gump and Bozo the Clown?
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
Actually - killing people, if done well, can be very effective. Have you ever tried playing a WSG where your team is outgeared or outskilled to such an extent that most of them spend all their time in the GY?
Normally a flag carrier requires help to get through, and that help isn't going to come when the helpers are all dead.
And personal flag captures is also a poor measure of success. Unless you're a druid. In which case it's great!
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As far as I can tell the only thing that should matter for battleground rating is results. Did you win or loose? Just like in any other sport. In football, a team's league position isn't determined by how well they man-to-man marked, or how skillfully their players dribbled. It's wins and losses.
The danger of this is that anyone wanting good rating would be forced to pre-made. And pre-mades would annihilate any casual PvP, and take the fun from the game.
Maybe the rating system could be adjusted to avoid this. E.g. perhaps the rating of other players in your team could be taken into account.
E.g.
you win despite other team mates of low rating = big rating gain for all.
you win as part of a pre-made = small rating gain
you lose as part of a high rated low rating team = small rating loss
you lose as part of a high rated pre-made = big rating loss.
With this system, whether to get a pre-made would be more a matter of a style choice - i.e. do you prefer to play with other people who are well geared and know what they are doing or just jump in with a PuG? Either way you could gain or lose rating depending on results.
The maths might be complex to work out, but Blizzard has money to throw and these things, and I'm sure with effort they could get it right.
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Actually - killing people, if done well, can be very effective. Have you ever tried playing a WSG where your team is outgeared or outskilled to such an extent that most of them spend all their time in the GY?
Yes. That's my battleground. However, I've seen that be virtually meaningless. If 8 players are dead, and two are capturing the flag, wasn't the best strategy, amright? Basically killing in WSG SHOULD BE totally incidental to capturing the flag, like it is in FPS games with CTF. Instead there's a group of people who make killing people in WSG their MO, and basically do nothing to advance the goals of their team (a bit like the snipers in TF2 who, instead of covering key areas and using the class to the best of their ability, sit in weird corners and occasionally bump people off).
Normally a flag carrier requires help to get through, and that help isn't going to come when the helpers are all dead.
And personal flag captures is also a poor measure of success. Unless you're a druid. In which case it's great!
I think personal flag capture assists is at least as important. My suggested method would be anyone who either carried the flag or remained within 30 yards of a flag carrier while actively doing stuff for a good period of time (that would have to be balanced obviously, I don't have the data bliz does to determine times and radius and stuff) would get credit on a capture that would scale with how much they contributed. Flag capture would also give credit, obviously, which would be good for druids, but if a druid gets 3 captures bam, bam, bam, he probably deserves credit as a damn good WSGer.
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As far as I can tell the only thing that should matter for battleground rating is results. Did you win or loose? Just like in any other sport. In football, a team's league position isn't determined by how well they man-to-man marked, or how skillfully their players dribbled. It's wins and losses.
The danger of this is that anyone wanting good rating would be forced to pre-made. And pre-mades would annihilate any casual PvP, and take the fun from the game.
Yes, that's the danger. I thought of that system, but I discarded it because of two things. One, it simply punishes good players for having a craptacular team, which obviously leads to the premade problem. Two, if you have two excellent premade teams against eachother, who have capture stops, intercept the flag runner, etc. etc. etc. for an epic WSG battle of skill and experience (something I basically never see, thanks Failliance) I think there needs to be a way to reward the participants over the players who join a group of idiotic WSG players and manage to lose within two minutes. Granulated accomplishments is the only way. And the only way to do that is to identify what makes a team win, and reward that.
Maybe the rating system could be adjusted to avoid this. E.g. perhaps the rating of other players in your team could be taken into account.
E.g.
you win despite other team mates of low rating = big rating gain for all.
you win as part of a pre-made = small rating gain
you lose as part of a high rated low rating team = small rating loss
you lose as part of a high rated pre-made = big rating loss.
With this system, whether to get a pre-made would be more a matter of a style choice - i.e. do you prefer to play with other people who are well geared and know what they are doing or just jump in with a PuG? Either way you could gain or lose rating depending on results.
The maths might be complex to work out, but Blizzard has money to throw and these things, and I'm sure with effort they could get it right.
This is a winner-take-all system. And that's a goal, and a great way to make it a team sport, but it's not a team sport. It's an MMO. A system that rewards people for doing 'useful' things is infinitely better than one that rewards them for winning, because it gives people the incentive to improve. In Real Life, that incentive is cash. People have an incentive for playing (their salary) and an incentive for winning (bonuses). In an MMO, the salary can't be based on showing up, because then we get AFKing for Honor (that doesn't work in real life - you can't go watch a movie while hitting the spacebar with your foot (don't even get me started on the 'hit the spacebar every 30 seconds for an hour' programs).
So it has to be based on doing things that make your team win. Kills is okay, heals is okay, but I think granulated based on things that actually help out your team is better. Scale it on how successful you are (if you stay close to the flag runner and he dies, you get 1/5th the honor of if its a successful capture or something). Sure, you can stay close and still be a moron and have other people keep him alive for you, but frankly if you keep doing things that are useful poorly, you'll eventually improve. And if you keep being a dumbass, your honor will be based on other peoples work, which is pretty much random. Sure we will get some people who are bad PvPers but are still coattailed by better players, but that can happen in any system (do you think the New York Giants is a team entirely made up of 100% the best football players in the NFL? And yet they won a superbowl...).
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson
Nice ideas however it would be nice for Blizzard to remove the AFK players without notice so that BGs are more involved and not see it as a free express to the top. There should be a penalty system as well to make it more challenging to affect your ranking or not being involved in the warfare. I think a good way to see that is to have some statistics by taking a random sample of players in a BG and see how they perform and use the low percentile to make the borderline for people to recieve minimum points or gaining nothing due to inactivity. This will force players to play and make it more involved. Of course, there will be flaws. Just trying hard to make BGs and world pvp more active again. I do believe Blizzard need to step outside a little and see what they can do to increase bg and outdoor pvp more involving and rewarding.
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