Curse

Falconer · Oct 16, 2007, 12:05 AM // 00:05

What if you earned more points for winning a fight quickly as opposed to the slow but sure method of dragging it out to VoD? If so, what's the correct reward discrepancy? (twice as much faction won/lost?)

I wanted to throw this as an idea to the community because my thought experiments say this could be a good idea, but I'd like to hear what others see as benefits/drawbacks.

Right now, most builds are designed to go to VoD. The fights are almost aways a long time of prep and skirmishes, then a few minutes of fury where the fight is finally decided as the VoD shout gives offenses a bit more oomph and things like NPC advantages come into play. There's almost no reason not to as it's the most surefire way to win, there isn't quite so much reward for a fast win. I'm not inherently hostile to this, as strategy is strategy, you play the game they give you to the best of your ability.

I think this also has some overall strategy elements in it. The more defensive your build, the better you can hold at the stand. Allowing you to free up 2 or 3 people to raid the other sides base, whereas a more offensive build might only allow 1 or 2 people to break off for flag running/raiding. Also there's an element in where you put your defense... a single defensive monk back in the base relaying the flag out, but otherwise, keeping himself and NPC's alive? Or a more offensive char less suited to keeping NPC's alive but actually able to chase off a cripshot or sin on his own.

Generally, you also don't see attrition type games of the sort of... our goal is to trade casualties at a better rate than them. 1 death per 1.2 kills.. we have stronger rezzing giving us an advantage. If we can deny flag boosts to both sides, then their side can/will DP out faster than ours. I attribute this to most people have in recent times accepted a zero casualty approach as a baseline giving a psychological preference for defensive play. (as opposed to say WW1, WW2, Korea eras where casualties were both anticipated and more accepted as a cost of fighting).

I'm sure at the highest levels that the slow but sure method would be more popular (because they have more to lose). Then again, it's harder to build up rating once you're at the top too.

But on the flipside, this could also encourage more aggressive builds as opposed to what I'd term defensive builds flying around. I know things like IWAY GVG and thumper/smite had their day and definately shook things up. But they were run basically because they were a fast way to farm faction when faction was the end all and be all of tourney entry. (Eurofarming and the like...). I'm not advocating these, simply stating them as examples which came out of this gamestyle.

twicky_kid · Oct 16, 2007, 01:49 AM // 01:49

The ladder doesn't matter anymore. When you can win ATs and get the credit instead of grinding the ladder why should I?

Players will use what ever has the highest win %.

Greedy Gus · Oct 16, 2007, 07:01 AM // 07:01

No matter whether it's a good idea or not, faction doesn't matter at all anymore. There would have to be a more compelling direct result, or an indirect reason to promote faster matches (like the old 'grindy' ladder system with 1 month resets with a premium on winning more matches per time playing to stay competitive). Sorry to pick out something relatively unimportant from your main point.

Servant of Kali · Oct 16, 2007, 07:23 AM // 07:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Falconer

What if you earned more points for winning a fight quickly as opposed to the slow but sure method of dragging it out to VoD?

No thanks, I'd rather not.

Quick fights = spike builds. Not fun for me, if I wanted that, I would have played HA all the time but surprisingly I never did.

Long fights = FUN. Yes, you heard that right. Long fights are fun. 2 min fights where one team bashes another is not fun. Unless you're in 4v4 then it's OK. The most fun battles to watch and play are long battles where opponents keep outplaying one another and advantage shifts all the time. The most boring battles are those where for 20min nothing happens, and those who end up in 2min. Instead of picking any of these two extremes I'd rather think of a middle solution. And lastly, if battles should be so short, who on earth is going to spend more time waiting for GvG to start than actually spend time playing the battle?

ps: Instead of wasting more time on dreaming about GW PvP fixed, let's rather go to www.burningsea.com and see how PvP in that game turns out. If nothing else, at least there your voice is heard and game devs reply sometimes in 1 min time, and do make changes requested. Unlike here where you can keep voicing out your superiorly argumented opinions to no avail. For years. Sure, you have PR guy who is a connection between playerbase and devs, but of what use is that when it serves no practical purpose other than "hey we have PR guy isn't that cool".

pps: On another note, Idiocracy is awesome movie, at least in the beginning. I recommend it wholeheartedly

Div · Oct 16, 2007, 07:34 AM // 07:34

Long fights are not the problem. The problem is how the long fights are played out. Back in the glorious days of GvG, long fights were exciting, as teams pushed each other and/or split to get tactical advantage over each other.

Builds that end games quickly remind me of eE and PvE's ritspike during double weekend. They either roll someone in 4 minutes or resign. That's not the gameplay we want to see.

And anyone who wants to play to get better or play for the sake of having fun and playing won't care about the rewards (more rating, faction, etc.). They will play builds to get better at them, not because it will farm them the most ____ in the shortest time. Unfortunately, that player base is declining, and the new wave of PvPers (if you even call it a wave) are mostly farmers.

keast kannegaard · Oct 16, 2007, 05:58 PM // 17:58

Actuly i think it would be a lot better just to remove VoD or atleast make it 25+ mins before it startes, so you actuly have some time to do stuff like ganking. Atm i really dont see ganking as an option if you dont run a dedicated gank build, couse you simply dont have the time to set up a gank.

Normaly it takes around 10 min before you get to the point there you have tested the defence of the other team to see if it has a weak link, and by that time its basicly to late to set up a split as you if you lucky only get 1-3 archers before VoD, as it takes around 1:30 min to set up a split and get into the base.

So adding more time to VoD would make it more about strategy and less about build imo.

Sadly it seems like that ANet thinks its better to shorten the time for strategy in the game and then make a big VoD final. Wich in the end just ends up with who have the most defensive build with most block in it, as Archers, footmen Knigths and Guild Lord all is physical dmg than can be blocked.
My bet is VoD within the next 6 months will be at 15 min...

Div · Oct 16, 2007, 07:12 PM // 19:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by keast kannegaard

Normaly it takes around 10 min before you get to the point there you have tested the defence of the other team to see if it has a weak link, and by that time its basicly to late to set up a split as you if you lucky only get 1-3 archers before VoD, as it takes around 1:30 min to set up a split and get into the base.

Ideally, you should be able to tell whether or not you need to run a gank before 10 minutes. In the case that you do only split once it hits 10 minutes, you still have a good 6-7 minutes to do a lot of split attempts and collapses. Done right, you'll be able to get a few archers, maybe a kill or two at the stand/split, and most importantly get a boost. If the two teams' skill level is truly that equal, those seemingly small differences will be huge at VoD. If the skill level is different, you should be able to tell whether or not to split before 10 minutes anyways.

xhappy feetx · Oct 16, 2007, 08:39 PM // 20:39

Lengthening the matches again is the way to go, it allows more time to change strategies, tactics, etc. encouraging shorter battles is a terrible idea, VoD at 25:00 with staggered NPC's, and guild lord at 30:00, with this 18/20 system if you wish to gank the lord you have to leave at 18, while a old school 25/30 would allow flag stand play as well as a split, etc.

Neo-LD · Oct 16, 2007, 10:33 PM // 22:33

VoD was clearly designed to be a tiebreaking mechanism for close games. Thus, VoD games would ideally be the exception, not the norm.

The game would be more active (and hence better) if teams felt they could reliably end the game before VoD. However, this is clearly not the case, and teams are compelled to play strategies that favor 18 minutes of non-action manueverings to set themselves up for less than 5 minutes of actual playing (or, far too often, letting their NPCs play for them). I havent given much thought as to how to fix this, but the fact that its a problem that needs adressing is clear.

EDIT - Imo the primary reason for the defensive focus in recent times has been how easy the modern defensive tools are to use, compared to offense. Excellent offense requires (or at least used to require) individual talent, team-wide coordination, tons of experience and practice. Chaining Aegis/DA/Ward back to back to back and spamming LoD, on the other hand, is a piece of cake which weaker players (the majority of the ones remaining) can use just fine.

erk · Oct 16, 2007, 11:33 PM // 23:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

The ladder doesn't matter anymore. When you can win ATs and get the credit instead of grinding the ladder why should I?

Players will use what ever has the highest win %.

That's sort of true, but I have noticed that the AT's are mainly full of top 500 teams, teams with lesser rating will find it very hard to get wins, so they probably wont enjoy AT's and just stick with the regular ladder.

If VoD was ever designed as a tie breaker, it never really went that way, I see many teams just play for VoD now to use the NPC advantage, and the easier spikes as part of their overall strategy, gank teams are an obvious example slowly picking of the NPC's. The other night when we were playing against Reno in the AT's, they kept a second LoD monk back in their base doing nothing unless there was a gank, then he came out at VoD with the NPC's, fully charged with energy, ready to give a huge boost at the stand. It's very hard to out pressure a double LoD when your own Monks are drained from the extra pressure at VoD.

In the AT's playing until VoD is not so bad because you have a long wait between games anyway so you might as well make the most of it. The normal ladder is a different story, you want to get in as many games as you can before people have to leave, so any strategy that can shorten a game could be helpful.

Perhaps if the VoD monster skill didn't have such a dramatic effect people wouldn't wait to spike at VoD so much and get on with it a bit earlier?