Curse

Vital · Jan 25, 2007, 11:10 PM // 23:10

The past was last examined on December 22nd 2006. The Present is like polishing brass on the Titanic. Can the community please get some solid information on the future?

One month of no news is not good news in this case.

What is the status of the Daily Automated Tournaments? When are the final skill balances due? Why does it seem that PvP is in Beta testing after almost two years?

I picked today to rant, its a one time deal...I just can't deal with the lack of customer service from ANet anymore.

/Venting

master_of_puppets · Jan 25, 2007, 11:41 PM // 23:41

I too am sick of Anet thinking they can treat their customers like crap, just cuz we dont pay monthly payments. We still paid money for the game and the expansions. THREE RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOING MONTHS for a skill update that WASNT even permanent and total garbage anyhow is absolutely unacceptable. Not even gonna start with what they did to HA, PvP in general.

phasola · Jan 26, 2007, 12:18 AM // 00:18

They saved HA !
The GvG matchup is completely ridiculous. Why on earth would they do that ?
To prevent eF from getting 10k rating from +25 wins ? Who care about that... In the past seasons you didn't see #3 vs #3000 except in the first days...
Oh well maybe the tournament system will save GW, but judging from the past, i seriously doubt it. GW is getting crappier by the minute.
I joked saying that after they killed HA GvG will be next. Guess it wasn't a good joke

.
And why do we have to wait for half a year for skill balances ?

kitiara · Jan 26, 2007, 01:01 AM // 01:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by phasola

And why do we have to wait for half a year for skill balances ?

it would be nice if we only had to wait that long but i think it will be alot longer

gasmaskman · Jan 26, 2007, 05:19 AM // 05:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by kitiara

it would be nice if we only had to wait that long but i think it will be alot longer

Not only that but the skill-balance was horrible

Xanthar · Jan 26, 2007, 07:51 AM // 07:51

Now, I don't usually rage about stuff on forums, but knowing that ANet representatives occasionally read this stuff I'll actually 'fess up. This is a letter of... well, malcontent.

ANet, I can understand why you don't want to give us deadlines - Feature deadlines tend to get busted, and then you end up having to manage a lot of customer rage. I can relate to that, and especially since you really do have a game without a monthly fee one might reason that you are under no obligation to ever fix stuff between chapters.

On the other hand, when you declare that "changes are coming" without a deadline, without a feature list and with only a vague declaration of intent to hold in ones trembling little hand, both hope and fear is stirred. Then you introduce half of the changes (in this case, the ladder reset and change to rating in open ladder play) and the community goes - "Wow, this means the ATs are right around the corner" and it turns out, they aren't. What the avid GvG players are left with is a dysfunctional ladder and no idea of how or when it's going to get put to rights. Surely you can realize that this enrages a great many people?

I still enjoy the game, and I like the challenge that GvG gives me. I am, however, annoyed at how ANet is managing the flow of information. There is little to lose and much to win by keeping the community in the know - You need to state no deadlines, just declare how the ATs are going to work (surely you know by now!) and how far along the implementation of them has come. This will keep people happy for a time. If implementation takes a long time, just state what the holdup is. We gamers (well, some of us

) are reasonable people. If given a plausible explanation, we'll be content with it.

I'm still hoping for the ATs, because I think it's a good idea in general but I have no idea of how you are going to implement it. I'm also hoping that ANet puts this upcoming "community day" to good use, and release information on how all this is going to go down.

Phew! Glad to have that off my chest

Patrograd · Jan 26, 2007, 09:14 AM // 09:14

/signed

the current ladder is worse than meaningless

lets either revert to the old system or put the new one in place and get these skills balanced a tad better than the beta wekeend indicated as a matter of some urgency please.

Yichi · Jan 26, 2007, 02:37 PM // 14:37

yeah the state of GW gvg is a complete joke. no news, bad ladder matches, maybe 1/4 of the top 100 teams that played in the last seasons arent playing at the moment...

looks like WoW might go on my computer afterall...

LionZero · Jan 26, 2007, 03:21 PM // 15:21

I must say that gvg's are getting better lately though for us at least, we only had top 50 teams yesterday i think, and although such things as more play = higher on the ladder will work at first, but as you progress the win loss ratio won't be that great anymore either.

As for (good) teams that have less time to play they will just gain there rating anyway it will only take a bit longer before they establish on the desired postion,

The ladder system is pretty much the same, it's just a bit slower and takes more time before it starts to establish, though if guilds like tact would stop playing after the necro stuff get's nerfed in it's current form it would take some time before other teams would catch up, and we'll just have to wait what the ''tournaments'' will bring anyway.

Xanthar · Jan 26, 2007, 03:48 PM // 15:48

LionZero, I have been preaching what you are saying and it is true. But the problem is that currently, when I check the ladder history of the top 20 guilds, it looks like they are playing less. This means that the time it will take for the ladder to reach equilibrium is like to be very long indeed. My guess is that the #1 guild will top out at at least 1600 rating. A bit of math says that without tournaments, that will take at least three months.

The true problem lies not with how well the system works over time (it'll be fine) the problem lies with how it works now, and how long it will take until it starts working as intended. All I request is information on how the system will work when fully implemented (to verify that it'll right itself before summer) and some kind of very rough time estimate ("some days", "some weeks", "some months" or "some years").

There are several things one might do to quick-fix the ladder:
Recalculate rating - Easily done by "replaying" all results with a higher K-factor. Provided there is a record of who played with whom, which there is probably not.
Raise the K-factor temporarily - Easy fix, but will make people that have invested a lot of time in "grinding" the ladder very unhappy.
Temporarily narrow the match selection interval - Right now the matching engine selects +-200 rating teams from the beginning. This could be decreased to +-50 rating until the ladder is more diverse in order to get better matches.

The best solution, however, would be to get the ATs going. Which I hope ANet does. Soon.

RotteN · Jan 26, 2007, 11:34 PM // 23:34

of course top guilds are playing less : there's no actual season goin', rating gain is very slow and everyone expects those daily tournaments will be the biggest part of your rating gain anyway...

i'm quite disappointed that we still haven't heard ANYTHING since they announced their new omfgPWN system ... they could at least release some info, and hopefully an expected date of release aswell...

Alleji · Jan 29, 2007, 03:35 PM // 15:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by LionZero

I must say that gvg's are getting better lately though for us at least, we only had top 50 teams yesterday i think, and although such things as more play = higher on the ladder will work at first, but as you progress the win loss ratio won't be that great anymore either.

That system is broken, currently. GvG matches guilds against other guilds with similar rating and since the rating difference is so small, that means cow vs anyone in top 500. Obviously, cow can roll over the vast majority of guilds in top 500 and get their +1. Grind ftw.

Suppose in 3 months the top will be 1500 and rank 1000 will be 1100. The situation improves somewhat and now matchmaker works on the basis of number of games played (since that's the only way to grind points). So instead of cow vs top 500, it'll be cow vs anyone who played more than 200 GvGs.

In other news, champ title becomes as meaningful as commander and friend of the luxons.

Thomas.knbk · Jan 29, 2007, 03:47 PM // 15:47

Does anyone have any info on when the AT's actually start?

pah01 · Jan 29, 2007, 04:23 PM // 16:23

that just depends on how the automated tournaments are implemented Aleji.

LionZero · Jan 29, 2007, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Quote:

That system is broken, currently. GvG matches guilds against other guilds with similar rating and since the rating difference is so small, that means cow vs anyone in top 500. Obviously, cow can roll over the vast majority of guilds in top 500 and get their +1. Grind ftw.

Suppose in 3 months the top will be 1500 and rank 1000 will be 1100. The situation improves somewhat and now matchmaker works on the basis of number of games played (since that's the only way to grind points). So instead of cow vs top 500, it'll be cow vs anyone who played more than 200 GvGs.

In other news, champ title becomes as meaningful as commander and friend of the luxons.

Cow plays on times when there aren't many teams outside of the top 100 playing in the first place, this has always already been this way this means they mainly get +1's and when they lose they have to compensate nevertheless, in 3 months it might be even more balanced but right now it's actually already fairly nice and champ title never ment much anyway when they changed it to 1200 rating and held a double weekend,

as for us it's been quite a while now since we faced a team outside of top 100, but that's partly because we play in the euro timezone which is ofc more fun to play ^^

Nadine · Jan 31, 2007, 12:16 AM // 00:16

aNet, hear me well!!! I soooo love to beat hell out of those Dunkoros, Koss's and Shed Shadowoofs! This is our competitive PvP! THX!!!! THX for hero thingies, they really make gvg exiting and hard to win! (nice, 5h a day, faced one guild under rank 100)

Guillaume De Sonoma · Jan 31, 2007, 02:57 AM // 02:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas.knbk

Does anyone have any info on when the AT's actually start?

MARCH EL OH EL

Thomas.knbk · Jan 31, 2007, 08:52 AM // 08:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guillaume De Sonoma

MARCH EL OH EL

YOUVE GOT TO BE KIDDING EL OH EL

Clamatius · Jan 31, 2007, 07:57 PM // 19:57

Given the slight *cough* delay in tournaments it seems wise to implement something relatively simple in the meantime to make the ladder less horked.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xanthar

There are several things one might do to quick-fix the ladder:
Recalculate rating - Easily done by "replaying" all results with a higher K-factor. Provided there is a record of who played with whom, which there is probably not.

Actually, there may well be a result log. This is probably the best solution, assuming the data is there, but I'm guessing it would require dev time.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xanthar

Raise the K-factor temporarily - Easy fix, but will make people that have invested a lot of time in "grinding" the ladder very unhappy.

I'd be surprised if this isn't the easiest quick fix but as you note it may not go down terribly well with the ladder grinders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xanthar

Temporarily narrow the match selection interval - Right now the matching engine selects +-200 rating teams from the beginning. This could be decreased to +-50 rating until the ladder is more diverse in order to get better matches.

Don't think this will work terribly well because the ratings are already kinda meaningless for the majority of guilds - and I believe they already narrowed the matching bands to some extent last weekend.

sir lockt · Feb 01, 2007, 10:35 AM // 10:35

Maybe a moderator can merge the different threads on this subject...

It may be just me.. but my current brain-cell capacity can operate only 1 thread in a time...its a waste to say everything two times