Curse

Zeldawind · Dec 24, 2006, 11:03 PM // 23:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex Weekes

The 30 day period is only a lockout for the tournaments, and has always been in place in tournaments we've run (indeed, in some tournaments it's been longer than 30 days that you need to remain in a single guild for). It *does not* lock you out from ladder play. In this respect, it is no different from previous policy.

I'll try to give a more underbuild critisim over the 30 days thingy.

Yes it worked fine for the "old" way of GvG. But there you held a tournament at the end of the season, but you were first building up your rating/rank voer the whole season in other words playing whit your own guild the whole time.

Now in the new system you want to change to. Here you are scheduling aotomated tournaments on daily basis as far as i could understand here, that is a major change compared to the old system. But your keeping the rules for the old style of the run towards a tournament, now were talking about daily tournaments whit old rules and maybe something in the sense of a big tournament of winners on the different ranks at the end for example every month or something. In here you can't play and build up your rank/rating whit your guild because you have to wait 30 days before your allowed in the daily tournaments. Which you said will be the way to change your rating more effectivly whit 1 match.

Concluding from this your limiting people to build experience whitin their guild for a while (if they join of course). Because the free ladder play can't be taken seriously if you lower the ELO effect and all, which can be compared to the current ladder freeze maybe people running fun bulids to relax a bit or to let some of the people who would otherwise never get to play.

Xanthar · Dec 24, 2006, 11:23 PM // 23:23

Seriously, I find peoples grasp of basic mathematics appallingly bad. Ok, before we proceed, I shall assume that the reader has a basic grasp of the ELO system. If not - get it now.

Now to address peoples concern that the ladder will be irrelevant to low and mid-level players.

Fact: You had no chance of getting into a tournament before the new system was announced.
Conclusion: You were playing for either the enjoyment (go you!) or for ladder rating up until the last season.

If the statement from ANet that free play will still be available, but the rating adjustment will be slower than before, there is no reduced incentive to do GvG as compared to before. In fact, with a persistent ladder, the incentive might be stronger, since you won't have to redo all your work in order to grow back your e-peen after the end of a season.

Aha! I can hear a host of players clawing for their respective bottles of whine even as I speak. Let me crush some arguments right now, so we won't have to be bored to tears...

"But with reduced rating, free play is meaningless!"
No. You fail at mathematics - Free play will put you at your proper strength rating over time. It might take longer to have the correct rating than it would have before, but once there you won't have to do it over every bloody season.

"But the hardcore teams will get rating much faster!"
Yes, this much is true. Guilds that participate in the ATs will reach their correct rating much faster than the ones that do not. Over time (say a few months) it won't matter, since the hardcore teams rating will stagnate around their actual strength. This is when the casual teams will catch up.

"But casual guilds won't get into the tournaments!"
Might be true. Might not be true. I am fairly certain that my casual guild will make it into a couple of ATs the coming season, and we are by no means super-organized. But I digress. The correct answer is that if you are not contending for the championship, you don't need to participate in ATs. If you are in a casual guild, you are not a contender. Feel my lack of sympathy.

Now onto scheduling.

There is some legitimate concern for how the scheduling if the ATs will be done, as there are good guilds that have limited time to play. If I were to implement the scheduling, I'd do two tournaments every day, and they would shift forward by two hours with every rotation. (Put simply: Start tournaments at 00.00 UTC and 12.00 UTC the first day, the second day, tournaments would be at 22.00 UTC and 10.00 UTC etc). This kind of scheme would satisfy all guilds a few times every month, favouring no certain time zone or real-life schedule.

Greedy Gus · Dec 24, 2006, 11:30 PM // 23:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

Anet has said already that the ladder rank/rating is *only* there in the new system for historical and statistical purposes. From this I think it is safe to conclude that ladder rank/rating is now meaningless in its competitive sense. The winners and losers will be decided therefore purely through tournament play

They are saying that ATs will be tied to the ELO ladder just like random play is, just with more benefit (higher K value). Rank and rating are still very necessary to show relative differences in guild power, to determine how much rating to award the winner when two teams face off. And they still need a way to determine which teams to let into the 'playoffs' to qualify for being sent to the next championship, which we can only assume is still based off the top teams on the (matured) ladder at some point.

It is true that as a guild, you could ignore the ladder completely and just compete in ATs. If you do really well in them, then we assume you'll be invited into some sort of 'playoff' swiss tournament. But just because you can ignore rank, rating, and the ladder, doesn't mean that it isn't there in the background deciding how many pts to award to winners of matchups and determining what teams are considered 'top contenders' when playoff time rolls around.

At least this is my understanding. I don't think they are going to attempt to simply track performance in ATs for the next championship. They want to marginalize open ladder play, but not make it have 0 relevance. I could easily be wrong though, the wording on the article is unclear.

Patrograd · Dec 24, 2006, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xanthar

Se

Now to address peoples concern that the ladder will be irrelevant to low and mid-level players.

With respect

What you aren't understanding, and the quotes I highlighted earlier make this perfectly clear is that the ladder is now meaningless. It is there to show the historical win/loss ratio of guilds, not anything else. You can be the number 1 guild permanently and never get anywhere near a tournament

The competition is in the ATs, win those to progress, nothing else matters.

Personally, I think this perfectly fine, as long as entry into these ATs is inclusive to all players

Xanthar · Dec 24, 2006, 11:43 PM // 23:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

What you aren't understanding, and the quotes I highlighted earlier make this perfectly clear is that the ladder is now meaningless. It is there to show the historical win/loss ratio of guilds, not anything else. You can be the number 1 guild permanently and never get anywhere near a tournament

I understand that perfectly, and I have not contested in any way shape or form that in order to play for cash prizes you need to win ATs. But, as stated in my post, for mid and low-level guild ATs are not relevant, since they don't contend for the top positions.

Quote:

The competition is in the ATs, win those to progress, nothing else matters.

This statement is entirely true for a top level guild. Not so much for a mid or low-level guild. For them free play will suffice until they have elevated their play strength and guild organization enough to participate gainfully in ATs.

Quote:

Personally, I think this perfectly fine, as long as entry into these ATs is inclusive to all players

We are in agreement then!

Relambrien · Dec 25, 2006, 12:01 AM // 00:01

Xanthar, think of it this way. With the ladder being the source of guild rank, people run serious builds and play to win. But, when the ladder means almost nothing (as it will, since according to the website it will only be used for historical and statistical purposes), there is no incentive to play serious builds. People will run heroway, go 8 W/Mo's with Mending and Healing Hands, etc, as if it was ladder lock. These are very boring to play against, win or lose, so for guilds like mine, our incentive to play on the ladder when there are hardly any serious builds being run is nil. And we won't be able to get into any tournaments because of player restrictions.

All of this is of course subject to change, based on how the system is actually unveiled. But with the main purpose of the ladder only to show the history of a guild, there is hardly any penalty to run idiotic builds on it. Especially considering that hardly anyone will care about the ladder, and thus people won't care what their win/loss ratio looks like.

I'm just hoping this doesn't turn out the way it sounds.

FoxBat · Dec 25, 2006, 01:33 AM // 01:33

Reduced rating != no rating. Even if the sensible thing to do would be to run healing hands wammos, people will still be just about as afraid to do it because it still reflects poorly on your ladder rating. In fact you should see less wammos over the long run because there's no more ladder locks! Free GvG may not even be the optimal way to improve your ladder rating, but bringing a crap build is still a surefire way to needlessly tank your rating. No guild leader of a even semi-competitive guild is going to tolerate people doing that whether it's a 5 point reduction or 50.

Do you really think guilds running heroway during ladder lock ever cared about the cash prizes anyway, as if they had any chance? Ladder rank was the only thing that stopped them. Guess what, it's still there.

Wasteland Squidget · Dec 25, 2006, 01:47 AM // 01:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Relambrien

Xanthar, think of it this way. With the ladder being the source of guild rank, people run serious builds and play to win. But, when the ladder means almost nothing (as it will, since according to the website it will only be used for historical and statistical purposes), there is no incentive to play serious builds. People will run heroway, go 8 W/Mo's with Mending and Healing Hands, etc, as if it was ladder lock. These are very boring to play against, win or lose, so for guilds like mine, our incentive to play on the ladder when there are hardly any serious builds being run is nil. And we won't be able to get into any tournaments because of player restrictions.

No, they won't.

We've already heard that ladder games under the new ladder will have an ELO rating of 5K (which means they'll be worth 1/6th the points of currently.) It's also easy to guess that most mid-level guilds won't be able to play in that many tournaments, since they require scheduling and consistent membership and other things that mid-level guilds simply don't have a lot of the time.

As a result, mid-level guilds will be gaining a large portion of their rating from the ladder. The fact that you lose rating slower from losses also means you gain rating slower from wins, and a hit of 2 or 3 becomes much more threatening. Any guild that gets the bulk of their rating from the ladder rather than tournament play (most mid-level guilds) will continue to play competitively and struggle to work their way up the ladder.

People run bullshit run-around-the-map henchway builds during frozen ladder because there isn't any risk. With the new ladder teams will be risking very real rating, and even if the numbers aren't as high the incentive is there to at least put up a good fight.

You'll probably see a fair amount of PuGing, since PUG guilds with good players are usually pretty competitive and you don't stand to lose too much. However, you won't see teleway or heroway on any team that wants to hold its rank - the dynamic is just totally different from ladder lock. The lower rating totals will take some getting used to, but it still forces a fair amount of competition.

Relambrien · Dec 25, 2006, 01:48 AM // 01:48

I will admit, this is based on the assumption that the ladder does not have anything to do with tournament play, which I did not realize I was making up until this point. From what I have gathered from Alex's posts and the info on the website, the ladder will be historical, whereas some new system using ELO ratings will be used to keep track of AT play, and will be used as the determining factor for qualification for more important tournaments.

Provided that this isn't the case, then the whole thing is fine by me ^^

EDIT: Squidget posted while I did. If anything sounds stupid in the paragraphs above, that's why :P

twicky_kid · Dec 25, 2006, 02:48 AM // 02:48

The points are really no different than they are now for rating. They are just smaller numbers but the % is still the same. But in the end it means nothing.

The only use I can see for the ladder system will be for recruiting new players. Even then it may be misleading. Some guilds might drop out of ladder play all together in favor of the tournaments.

The daily tournaments is going to be like PQ (pre-qualifier) for the end of the month tournament. I do not see much difference between this and MTG tournaments except for the 30 day restrictions.

A team is a team. I don't think it matters how long they have been together. Good players should be rewarded no matter how long they have been together.

I do think there should be some type of restriction but not 30 days. I understand the need to block pugs from entering tournaments to tank other guilds or eliminate competition. Even through all this I don't see how you are going to stop players with 2nd accounts that set up a pug guild to tank other people. Yes, they do exist.

I have been thinking this over and I think I have a system that would probably work out for everyone.

Instead of the daily tournaments have them weekly say on the weekends. Most people work Mon-Fri and everyone is out of school on the weekends. The top 5 from each weekend qualify for the end of the month tournament.

What this does is allows your guild to practice all week long for the weekend tournament keeping the existing ladder system robust and hone your skills against real builds. The scheduling would be easier for most people without locking out new comers. Even if you kept the 30 day restriction you can still qualify for the end of the month tournaments. Once you qualify for the end of the month tournament you have much more time to prepare for end of the month tournament on your guild's own schedule.

stueyman2099 · Dec 25, 2006, 03:10 AM // 03:10

I really like the idea here. My only problem is with the 30 day membership requirement. When Tournaments are held at the end of a season, this doesn't pose a problem, but when they're on a daily basis, the time frame just doesn't make sense. I don't think it should be much longer than a few days, maybe a week.

Patccmoi · Dec 25, 2006, 03:12 AM // 03:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by twicky_kid

Instead of the daily tournaments have them weekly say on the weekends. Most people work Mon-Fri and everyone is out of school on the weekends. The top 5 from each weekend qualify for the end of the month tournament.

What this does is allows your guild to practice all week long for the weekend tournament keeping the existing ladder system robust and hone your skills against real builds. The scheduling would be easier for most people without locking out new comers. Even if you kept the 30 day restriction you can still qualify for the end of the month tournaments. Once you qualify for the end of the month tournament you have much more time to prepare for end of the month tournament on your guild's own schedule.

Most people isn't everyone either. Daily at least gives a chance for more or less everyone to fit their schedule sometimes. I know for one that it's much easier for me to play on week nights than on weekends.

If they have the ability to do it every day, i don't see why they should restrict it to weekends where it WILL totally shut out tournaments for a part of the players that just can't play there.

As for ladder being meaningless i don't agree that it will either.

But more importantly, since this is a 'let's get feedback' thread, i'll voice it differently :

ANet, players don't want the ladder to be meaningless and still have good games in open GvG play. Please make sure that your system won't make it so before making it go live!

twicky_kid · Dec 25, 2006, 03:19 AM // 03:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

Most people isn't everyone either. Daily at least gives a chance for more or less everyone to fit their schedule sometimes. I know for one that it's much easier for me to play on week nights than on weekends.

No matter what they do its going to conflict with people's schedules. Most people is better than some or few. The weekend was just an example. The could do staggering days. One weekend one week and one during the middle of the week.

With the system I proposed you only have to be in the top 5 of 1 out of 4 tournaments. So you won't have to grind the tournaments everyday.

Dzan · Dec 25, 2006, 06:27 AM // 06:27

I wonder if this will encourage high level guilds to recruit, say, a core 12 rather than a core 8 or 10 like they do now. I mean, if you can recruit one or two more people and play in twice as many tournaments without sacrificing much, you'd do it right?

On the other hand, at the very top of the echelon you will have guilds with a 90%+ win ratio who dont need to be very active to maintain their status compared to a guild witha 75% win ratio who has to play 4 nights a week to maintain the same place.

Thom · Dec 25, 2006, 08:49 AM // 08:49

My positive input.

-5k sounds painfully low. How about 15k if tournements are at 30-40k as to not kill ladder play.

-Two weeks seems reasonable for participation time limits, especially if ladder play will be useless. A month would be fine if you allowed some guesting which included waiting guild members.

-A two guest limit seems fair. My guild has played guests in serious play while players consider joining the guild. I see the potential abuse for making ladder runs based on the guests skill, but the more likely use is plugging holes with worse players so a team can compete. Heros should be guests.

-Simple tournement system. Anet posts a tournement length and time (example: 5 game swiss, 5 hours, 8EST start 1EST end) along with map rotation and prizes. Signup goes until 15 minutes before start through the guild battle menu. The tournement is divided into sub-tournements by rank: top 32 teams signed up are division A, next 32 are division B. If there are insufficient teams to fill out a bracket, the last two divisions are split evenly. That is to say if 29 people sign up for a 16 person tournement, divide it with the top 14 and bottom 15 (one bye). This way tournements should provide some self selections.

-Tournements that you are currently involved in should be fully visible on observer mode with priority given to teams you will likely see in further rounds.

-The number and size tournements should be balanced to the relative participation expected at different times of day. If a system like the one above is used, aim to have 2-3 divisions in each tournement. Something like a 4 game Swiss should be going on continuously (6 start times a day) where longer formats could occur only on weekends.

-Have a required participation to be listed on the ladder: Tournement participation in the last three months and gvg participation in the last month. Guilds will keep their rating if they go inactive, but won't be counted in the rank.

Everyone: Don't worry about the ladder in a long-term tournement format. Eventually racing will become useless. Emerging teams won't take long to climb the ladder: they'll show there stuff against top level teams far sooner in tournements. Once your a top level team, farming a higher position won't be as easy. Regardless of the tournement you play, you'll see the hottest team in that tournement; it will almost be more risky to play off hour tournements as you'll have rank 300 guilds scoping and gunning for you. Gimmick build ladder racing will die hard in a tourney format. After the initial bit, the ladder will be a much more reasonable representation of tournement ability-- player skill.

manaleak34 · Dec 25, 2006, 09:25 AM // 09:25

Heres what I think should occur.

Ladder for the most part stays the same.

Have the AT as they are being planned including the ELO rating gained from them. I'm sure they'll have them at many different times and have them online way beforehand so you and your Guild can plan accordingly.

The 30 day wait thing is fine however I do think you could have maybe people from your alliance in case not everyone shows up.

So then once a monthly AT comes around. All the Guilds that won one of the daily AT's can participate in this monthly AT.

Now when say a world championship thingy comes around. BOTH the Guilds on the higher tops of the ladder (say top 16 or 32?) and the guilds that had won any of the monthly AT's would get to participate in any big championship thing.

This way you have multiple ways to get to the higher competitive PVP stuff and you can still have guilds that can't get a 8-man team at certain times being able to have fun and get ladder rating.

Patrograd · Dec 25, 2006, 12:41 PM // 12:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

Ladder rank was the only thing that stopped them. Guess what, it's still there.

So what?

the reason that ladder rank was important to mid ranked (50-500) guilds wasnt becasue they had a chance of qualifying for the prize tournaments, but because it reflected their ability more or less, or at least did in a season of reasonable length like the first WC season. It gave them a measurement, from rating gained and lost in serious competitive play. The teams they were playing against were all taking it seriously, all trying their very best to win these games whther they were rank 10 or rank 1000. There is this feeling I get from speaking to elite players that these sorts of teams are basically playing "for fun". Nothing could be further from the truth in my experience. Every single team I have played for in this sort of rank range takes their GvG extremely seriously. Just because they aren't very good doesnt mean they arent genuinely playing to win and giving each ladder game 100%.

Now we are basically having to come to terms with ladder rank being to all intents and purposes meaningless. There isnt really any way, with a ladder which never resets, of using ladder rank as a qualification for prize tournaments, as there are far too many issues with that. As a result, ladder matches have no purpose other than to show your Guild's win/loss ratio in competitive play. While this makes such games different to typical ladder lock matches, they are still essentially going to be "fun" games with nothing really at stake, perhaps a little bit like HA plus. The reason why people like me dont play HA as a rule is because there is no real reward for winning, and no real penalty for losing, making it a pure "fun" format. Its not what we are looking for. We may not ever have a chance of qualifying for a prize tournament, but what we enjoy is measuring ourselves against the best, and for that matter the rest, and seeing how we shape up. This new ladder will not give us that, because the matches are unimportant in a competitive sense. Anet even makes it clear that these games arent important, becasue the qualification for members is so much looser. It is, to all intents and purposes, random unrated.

So we are left with ATs as the real "meat" of GvG, where the serious teams play serious competitive GvG. these are the games that matter, where winning and losing carry real rewards and penalties. Now I can see how the top teams will measure their performance in these, becasue they will either qualify or not for the prize tournaments and place accordingly. How about the rest of us - all those hundreds of teams that play GvG seriously but never have any chance of winning any prizes? What, exactly, are we playing for? How can we measure our performance, our improvement?

Xanthar · Dec 25, 2006, 01:44 PM // 13:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrograd

the reason that ladder rank was important to mid ranked (50-500) guilds wasnt becasue they had a chance of qualifying for the prize tournaments, but because it reflected their ability more or less, or at least did in a season of reasonable length like the first WC season.

Indeed, an ELO system is designed to work over time, and in fact over entire careers as is the case in Chess and Go. The longer the "season" the more correct a team/person rating will become.

Quote:

As a result, ladder matches have no purpose other than to show your Guild's win/loss ratio in competitive play.

This is pretty much the exact definition of what the ELO system is designed to do.

Quote:

We may not ever have a chance of qualifying for a prize tournament, but what we enjoy is measuring ourselves against the best, and for that matter the rest, and seeing how we shape up. This new ladder will not give us that, because the matches are unimportant in a competitive sense.

Why would they be unimportant? You have yourself stated that you were competing for raising your strength rating before, why would this change? The teams participating in ATs with the purpose of being seeded into a cash prize tournament will be spending most of their effort there, but the remaining teams on the ladder (say 950 guilds) are still there claw their way up the ladder.

Quote:

How about the rest of us - all those hundreds of teams that play GvG seriously but never have any chance of winning any prizes? What, exactly, are we playing for? How can we measure our performance, our improvement?

See the above. Why would the ladder play degenerate as you describe it? I just can't seem to follow your logic - A permanent ladder will rate your real play strength far better than any seasonal ladder has before, and your stated goal is to measure your performance.

In my opinion, I really like a long-standing ladder. It will track your fluctuations in strength over time in a much better way than before. Sure, the teams that participate in the ATs will float to the top faster as they will meet the cream of the crop all the time, but this is nothing that can't be done by free play over time. Besides, playing matches whilst underrated will bolster your confidence quite a bit as you'll get huge streaks of wins before you reach your true rating

Wasteland Squidget · Dec 25, 2006, 07:46 PM // 19:46

There will be some teams that will take the new ladder seriously, and some teams that do not. The teams that don't take it seriously will tank their rating running henchway and end up low ranked, while the teams that take it seriously will end up in the rating Patro is talking about. It doesn't make any sense that a team would be serious enough to play into the high ranks, then randomly decide to tank it all running henchway.

The only real issue is that the ladder currently chooses opponents by rating, not rank. Every 2 minutes of wait time allows you face opponents 200 rating further apart than the previous 2 minutes. However, 200 rating is a lot more under this new ladder system, so you'll see a lot more matches where the rank 50 team is against the rank 2000 team. Changing the rating increment through which ladder opponents are chosen seems like a good idea under this system.

Patrograd · Dec 25, 2006, 09:19 PM // 21:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xanthar

See the above. Why would the ladder play degenerate as you describe it? I just can't seem to follow your logic - A permanent ladder will rate your real play strength far better than any seasonal ladder has before, and your stated goal is to measure your performance.

I think the point I am trying to make, and I could well be very wrong, we will see, is that if the top teams arent playing for ladder rank, then the whole concept of ladder rank is vastly devalued as a result. The ladder only matters, in my opinion, if the top spot on the ladder is worth having, is fought over, heavily contested and above all coveted. If the top spot is contested in this way, then as a result so is every rank from there on down. My opinion is that the opposite is also true - if the top spot on the ladder is essentially as worthless as winning HoH, then every spot on the ladder from there on down is equally worthless

"I'm a member of a top 50 guild"
"Nice, how did you do in the ATs?"
"We dont play AT's, we're a ladder team"
"Oh, right....."

We will see I guess.