Curse

Shanaeri Rynale · Oct 18, 2005, 10:18 AM // 10:18

Hi

It’s favour stats time of the week. So without further ado here they are.

A small point to note.
On the 14th there was a bug or glitch that stopped people entering Tombs and doing GvG. Because of this bug it ‘tainted’ the results of Hoh, and since one of the reasons behind me doing this is to see if the favour system is broken or not I cant really count those hours as being a true representation of the WaW system. I’m happy to add those hours back in and re-submit if that was not the case.

America was the big winner this week, up 5.37% from last week, with Korea falling away by 4.5% and Europe by 0.8%

If we were to add up all the hours of favour and turn them into days of the week we would see that

Europe has favour from Midnight Sunday to 00:30 Monday night
Korea has favour from 00:30 Monday to 05:30 Tuesday morning
America has favour from 05:30 Tuesday to Midnight Sunday

Currently the average EU favour is running at around the 15.5% level. Korea favor around the 22% mark with America at 62.5%

There have been a few interesting developments from last week and to keep this post separate from my own thoughts I will post in two separate posts.

First of all in response to the following question
Dear AN please select one of the following options

1. We believe the favour system is fine as it is and won’t be changing it
2. We are looking at changes but will not implement them before chapter two
3. We are looking at changes but will implement them in chapter two
4. This issue is a low priority and will not be changed even after chapter two.
5. This issue is a high priority and will be changed within the next 3 months
6. No changes are planned in the next 3 months.

An AN spokesperson gave the following replies.

"Am I allowed to diverge from your selection of answers?

We're monitoring the situation. And, as you say, we're reading your threads. I look forward to them, personally. We're always open to suggestions on how to improve any part of the game, and change is always possible.

You're putting a lot of time and effort into gathering the data and presenting it. You've obviously got a lot of passion on the topic. We value that. Please rest assurred that the design team have read feedback about the WaW issues your present, and will continue to do so."

When further Clarification was sought the following was posted

"Slight clarification here: It would be more accurate to say that I simply cannot give you any details at the current time, and do not have a prospective time scale to give you. I'd love to be able to give you all some news on this issue. Right now we've got a lot of work to do in preparation for the GWWC, and other much-requested features (observer mode, revised trade mechanics for example).

I just want you to know that I read all of these threads, on all of the forums they are posted on. ArenaNet have seen your feedback, and continued feedback of high quality is valuable for us."

Make of the above what you will. My own personal, separate from the favour stats opinion follows in a separate post.

Shanaeri Rynale · Oct 18, 2005, 10:19 AM // 10:19

First of all I want to thank AN for being so responsive in answering questions. Some people have the impression that AN are like an IBM,HP or EDS in size and access to vast resources and money. Clearly they are not. They have limited time, money and hardware to try and bring us the best gaming experience they can. In order to do this they have to prioritise. As much as many of us would like such and such a feature they often do not have the time or money to do it as quickly as we would like. One thing they do do as seen again and again is listen and learn from their customers(people who play the game). Therefore to spend the time with fans that they do is a huge plus point for them.

I would like to take a short time to look at the above statements from AN.

"Am I allowed to diverge from your selection of answers?

We're monitoring the situation. And, as you say, we're reading your threads. I look forward to them, personally. We're always open to suggestions on how to improve any part of the game, and change is always possible.

You're putting a lot of time and effort into gathering the data and presenting it. You've obviously got a lot of passion on the topic. We value that. Please rest assurred that the design team have read feedback about the WaW issues your present, and will continue to do so."

For me, apart from recognition that AN do read these posts. Two things spring to mind. Firstly, judging by the amount of posts and times these threads get read, and the thousands of posts on the favour matter it’s not just the passion of single player, but of hundreds(probably) thousands of Players across all the GW regions.

Secondly, the Statement mentions WaW issues. I may be being picky but it is nice to have official recognition that there are issues to be addressed with the WaW system.

Therefore we can conclude that the favor issue is a recognised one by AN and that it affects many thousands of players.

I would like to put my main focus is on the second statement.

"Slight clarification here: It would be more accurate to say that I simply cannot give you any details at the current time, and do not have a prospective time scale to give you. I'd love to be able to give you all some news on this issue. Right now we've got a lot of work to do in preparation for the GWWC, and other much-requested features (observer mode, revised trade mechanics for example).

I just want you to know that I read all of these threads, on all of the forums they are posted on. ArenaNet have seen your feedback, and continued feedback of high quality is valuable for us."

Again I hugely appreciate the time AN takes to respond here, esp to such provocative questions. They show a very high degree of professionalism in often difficult and volatile circumstances. I also believe that every word in these statements is the truth and is not intended to deceive or show bias to anyone.

The above statement makes the assumption that a change to the favour system is on the same scale as implementing an auction house, or observer mode. However logically at it’s simplest; that cannot be the case.

AN’s programmers are very good. They develop a state of the art looking game that will run on even low end hardware. That is a major achievement. So therefore an change to the favour system to reduce the number of wins or abolish the Pve/PvP link requires minimal effort(in comparison with say observer mode whch requires many hundreds of lines of code).

For example, changing wins from 5 to 3 is a single digit change. Removing the link altogether could be as simple as removing a single condition statement ( if hoh_wins==FAVOR_CONST then… ). It should, at the most take less than a day to implement. Functional testing would also be a trivial matter. You wouldn’t even need to simulate Hoh wins, just see if the condition test acted the way in which you expected.

Now, of course other solutions such as extra quests will take more time to code and test, but the above statement indicates that AN have no plans on how to address it. If you are planning to resolve it with extra stuff, let us know it helps the waiting and reduces the frustration.

Therefore logically, the reason why there has been no change so far is not a programming/resource issue but a priority one with AN.

Now it could be argued that messing with the favour system would screw up the GW economy/mechanics so it should be left alone as the impact would be unclear. However, I believe that can be refuted in the following ways.

o Changes were made to the traders, the effects on that to the economy were and are far greater than 24X7 favor would bring in and yet the changes were still made After all imagine if Korea had an uber build that held Hoh for a month, what effect would that have? That possibility must have been considered in the planning of the game.

o The other effect it could possibly have is to increase the wealth of Europe players and farmers, which would be a good thing as it encourages people to play.

o Keys and adjustments to drop rates have been implemented. The effects on these on the economy is huge. Yet they were still implemented.
Therefore economic change is not a reason not to do something.

Judging by the sheer number of posts on the issue on all GW BBS I’ve seen(including on some German and French ones) , it would seem that Europe regards the favour issue as of greater importance than say, an observer mode for PvP and Tombs.

A question, have AN asked the European players what they would prefer first, favour system fixes or say observer mode a few days earlier?

Since no release date has been for observer mode, a single day out to resolve a high profile, high priority(to Europe anyway) issue is surely no big request. In business jargon it’s a ‘quick win’ and it’s a win that can only benefit GW in Europe.

So please AN it’s only days work, show us you really care for Europe, give us a day, for us. Just a day… Please…

Kindest Regards

Shan..