Curse

dag_nefzen · Jun 17, 2006, 01:33 AM // 01:33

There are a few points that I've found interesting in the recent Weapon of Choice broadcasts.

First of these would be the skill unlock issue. While I agree with Wheat, that the optimal solution would be a "tournament edition" with all the skills unlocked this probably isn't going to happen.

I liked what they did at the PvP Extreme weekend, which was to increase the amount of faction gained by PvPing (which later became a permanent change). Personally I didn't think they went far enough with the faction increase and they could've gone a lot further which would've appeased a lot of the people who didn't want to grind. In my opinion, you could multiply the faction gained by 4 or even 8 so people are getting their unlocks a lot quicker.

Or maybe they could give us the core skills unlocked, meaning we only have to unlock the campaign skills for PvP?

One of the other points that has been brought up, and the one I'd like to concentrate on is how GvG is organized and the ladder system. There seems to be some debate as to whether the current ladder and tournament system is effective or not. I think the current system is linked to a problem I think besets a lot a guilds. As the leader of a guild that currently does little PvP, I feel that the problems my guild have, and why the majority have little motivation to do PvP are twofold.

Firstly, the time it takes to get organized. This is party due to skill unlock point above; getting a coherent team build using the available skill unlocks that people have can be quite difficult and time consuming.

Secondly, and this is where it relates to the ladder, is the feeling that it doesn't mean anything whether you win or lose a GvG match when you are one of the "lesser" guilds. For the smaller, less skilled and newer guilds with inexperienced players I think there tends to be the feeling that there is little incentive for them to get more involved in GvG. They realize they will never reach the upper eschelons of the ladder and languishing on any page after the 5th seems to mean very little to the majority of people.

This may not seem like a problem, but I think it helps all levels of competition when there is a flourishing community and a desire to win at all levels of play.

I don't know how you would change this. Maybe splitting the ladder into divisions or leagues would be a possibility, meaning that no matter the level of PvP that your guild has attained you still have a goal to strive for. Being top of your league, no matter what the level would be something that your guild could aim for. Only the guilds in the top division would be eligible for the top tournament event and this would eliminate any feeling that guilds that weren't "best of the best" were being giving an easy ride.

You could still involve the lesser divisions and they could have their own tournaments, meaning they'd feel less out of the loop. Obviously they wouldn't be flown to exotic locations in the world but at least they could feel like they were part of the whole Championship thing.

Potentially I can see some possible problems with this idea. Maybe segregation would become more of an issue and we'd see a lot of division between the different levels of GvG.

Sorry for the long, rambling post but I'd be interested in what anyone else thinks about encouraging the lower guilds to be more competitive and raise the standard of PvP in the game.

Dag

Byron · Jun 17, 2006, 06:09 AM // 06:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by dag_nerfzen

I'd be interested in what anyone else thinks about encouraging the lower guilds to be more competitive and raise the standard of PvP in the game.

There would be the reason why they are lower. Personally, I think giving any further rewards for rank, or extending different "divisions," would only encourage mediocrity. The guilds who work hardest deserve to be ranked highest, IMO, and those who don't (or won't) should accept where they are. And I also think GvG play is interesting enough as it stands now - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Rieselle · Jun 17, 2006, 06:37 AM // 06:37

Whilst I dont disagree with a multiple-league system in principle, I dont think it would work for GW very well since Ladder positions are held by guilds, not teams of real, fixed people. If there was any sort of reward for winning a league, for example, then it's a simple matter for a skilled guild to guest or use alternate accounts to win any lower level league and claim the reward. It would actually be counterproductive to its intended goal.

I get the feeling the only solution will come from ourselves, not "the system". Whilst there are things that can help (improved unlock rate, party formation tools etc), really, you just have to get organised.

Deciding on an set GvG build which you will start getting good at (and then diversifying to a second build later), and allowing people to decide on a couple of roles they want to fulfill. This limits the amount of unlocking they need to do to only 1-3 character's worth. Help out members as a guild to unlock those things quickly, either by helping them TA farm or donating money to let their pve chars buy skills, etc.

Deciding on a set time where people will get together to play. Setting achievable personal goals ("we want to end this season in the top 300", or whatever) and working towards those goals.

Even more extreme, form links between players outside of the game... if you have 7 people on and you're missing your monk players, phone them up or try them on IM and see if they're free to hop on for a game or two.

Sure, there are various reasons why these things may be difficult or impractical, but the more of them you do, the better the results - it's that simple.

rii · Jun 17, 2006, 09:24 AM // 09:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Byron

There would be the reason why they are lower. Personally, I think giving any further rewards for rank, or extending different "divisions," would only encourage mediocrity. The guilds who work hardest deserve to be ranked highest, IMO, and those who don't (or won't) should accept where they are. And I also think GvG play is interesting enough as it stands now - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

There is always an argument in any form of competitive play to stratify the playerbase into sections. There are many reasons for doing this and they are pretty obvious.

There is no sport I can think of where every team in existence is thrown together and left to scrap it out. Take football. The top 20 teams are taken to form the highest league, and then the next 20 form the second league, and so on. By doing this, competition increases, since targets are more viable to achieve. If you put the top 20 teams with the bottom 20 teams you would get what currently happens in ladder on occasion right now. r1-100 teams simply steamroll over whatever r500-1000+ they come across because it is barely the same level of play. Half of them are running henchway or are a bunch of mates who play pve and occasionally do a gvg quite casually. Compare that to a guild like War Machine, who apparantly play all day and have a predominant focus on ladder games.

However, stratifing Guild Wars isn't guaranteed to work. Unlike every other competitive activity, games are organised off the cuff when people have the time. Some guild will organise set times to play but that is counteracted by the large number of guilds that just turn up when they feel like it. If you were to stratify the ladder, you may be able to get a working system out of the top 250 guilds, but after that the play rate drops dramatically. Comparing the activity level of page 1, they have so far played in the region of 100 games. Take a much lower ranked guild, around 500, they have played between 10-20 games.

Ultimately, if you were to division the ladder, and division it well, competition might get much more interesting. People are going to enjoy playing against a guild of equal skill to them rather than getting rolled by a r3 guild. How you would do it however is hard to explain. How would guilds move up and down divisions? How would play rate issues be solved? For example, if you seperated the top 1000 into leagues of 200, there are potentially long waits for guilds in the 5th league, where activity is lower. Forcing the higher guilds to consistently play against teams of more equal standing would probably increase competitiveness, but making sure everyone can get a game whenever they want is an issue that would have to be kept solved.

One possible idea would be to stratify the ladder by rating. The top 10% of rated guilds all play each other, then the second 10%, and so on. If your rating drops below the required, you drop down a division, and have to work to get back up. Working by percentages might form a consistent division between quality. The only problem is lower down the ladder, where entire pages have only a few rating difference between them, and therefore guilds could move levels of competition for only a couple of wins on the trot.

If I remember correctly this is similar to the current system, in which when you enter a gvg the matching system attempts to match you with a guild of similar rank. I don't know if that is still in operation, but a lot of the time it clearly indicates that either a) activity is too low for divisions, or b) the current system is just crap at matching

The argument is of course strong for leaving the system as it is. However, I would imagine that simply giving UAU to everybody would not instantly solve the issue of competitveness. There are enough recordings of guilds (some pretty skilled ones) copying top builds skill for skill and getting rolled, since they just didn't know how to play them. While UAU would be a great help to many lower guilds, it isn't a quick fix solution.

dag_nefzen · Jun 17, 2006, 11:14 AM // 11:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Byron

There would be the reason why they are lower. Personally, I think giving any further rewards for rank, or extending different "divisions," would only encourage mediocrity. The guilds who work hardest deserve to be ranked highest, IMO, and those who don't (or won't) should accept where they are. And I also think GvG play is interesting enough as it stands now - if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The guilds who worked hardest would still be ranked highest. Guilds who aren't as good won't be any higher up in the food chain, they'd just have something closer to aim for.

Just one example of this system working in a competitive online game is the Enemy Down Counter-Strike Source League (there are many others). I'd argue that this system encourages people to play to the best of their abilities as they wish to go to the top of their league and go up to the next.

If you break something down into achievable goals, people are more likely to be motivated and succeed in improving.

I definitely think there are flaws in this system but it is one that makes people more in touch with what's going on and makes people more interested in the competitive aspect who aren't on the hallowed first page of the ladder.

lord of shadow · Jun 17, 2006, 02:13 PM // 14:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

There is no sport I can think of where every team in existence is thrown together and left to scrap it out.

Hmm.. chess?

the rating system which guild wars uses is based on one developed for chess tornaments. In short it can be summarised by: The more likely you are to win a match based on starting rating, the less rating you gain at the end of it (and vice-versa). this means if WM steamrolled a rank 1000 guild they wouldnt barely get a rating change, wheras if the r1000 guild won they would recieve a dramatic boost (and WM's rating would drop).

this system works very well for the most part and is suited to the playstle issues mentioned earlier.

rii · Jun 17, 2006, 02:46 PM // 14:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord of shadow

Hmm.. chess?

the rating system which guild wars uses is based on one developed for chess tornaments. In short it can be summarised by: The more likely you are to win a match based on starting rating, the less rating you gain at the end of it (and vice-versa). this means if WM steamrolled a rank 1000 guild they wouldnt barely get a rating change, wheras if the r1000 guild won they would recieve a dramatic boost (and WM's rating would drop).

this system works very well for the most part and is suited to the playstle issues mentioned earlier.

Now that I think about it there are a few that use a free-for-all ranking system. Snooker, Tennis, other solo sports (I think). The system is currently very effective at guaging skill level, it's more or less foolproof in the long run, the issue I and I think the OP were addressing was that the r1000 guild doesn't enjoy playing WM, and by getting rolled it stifles competition at that end of the ladder with no visible target in sight, with guilds like WM being better them almost by definition, due to time restrictions and all other factors mentioned.

Byron · Jun 18, 2006, 06:47 AM // 06:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by rii

There is no sport I can think of where every team in existence is thrown together and left to scrap it out.

Very true, but no sport has such a throwtogether system as Guild Wars. Everyday, new guilds are made and disbanded; everyday, thousands of people join and leave guilds at a whim. If Anet wanted to make divisions, as there are in soccer(football, haha), it would require an exhaustive amount of registration, rostering, etc. I see no need to make a bureaucracy of Guild Wars.

Dzan · Jun 18, 2006, 09:22 AM // 09:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord of shadow

Hmm.. chess?

the rating system which guild wars uses is based on one developed for chess tornaments. In short it can be summarised by: The more likely you are to win a match based on starting rating, the less rating you gain at the end of it (and vice-versa). this means if WM steamrolled a rank 1000 guild they wouldnt barely get a rating change, wheras if the r1000 guild won they would recieve a dramatic boost (and WM's rating would drop).

this system works very well for the most part and is suited to the playstle issues mentioned earlier.

The only real issue with the system is it rewards active but mediocre guilds more than slightly inactive better guilds.

A guild whose record is 70-30 is likely to be much higher ranked than a guild who is 20-1, though obviously there are factors involved that could skew it either way. Still, the system rewards who can get the most matches in per session and most sessions per season. For instance, looking at the ladder now...

The number 29 guild is 66-16. The number 28 guild is 102 - 43. I think it's fair to say that from a statistical standpoint #29 would be well favored to beat #28 if they played head to head, yet they are still outranked.

All that said, I don't know of a better system, so this really only stands as a warning that judging by rank/rating without acknowledging the record is a mistake.

XxForgexX · Jun 18, 2006, 09:38 AM // 09:38

in points-based pick-up-game ladders, that's how it'll always be. i played in MW4VL for all 15 seasons, and with the exception of the last season, the top team was never the best team, they were just the most active halfway decent team. GW's method of blind challenges curbs favoritism and avoidance that plagued VL for so long, but to have only the top 16 eligable for the playoffs is pretty lame. now, if it were the top 100, i'd say the system was near perfect

art_ · Jun 18, 2006, 10:45 AM // 10:45

Even though this post is only partly related to the subject in the OP I would totally agree that skill unlocking grind is unacceptable for a game that wants to attract decent pvpers. To be competitive in this game if you dislike pve you will have a *very* long grind in RA or in HA playing boring farming builds until you have enough skills to be considered by a decent group. For a lot of people who are new to the game this is excessive and can be a big turn-off from getting involved in pvp play.

Faster unlocks plz <3

Legendary Battousai · Jun 21, 2006, 08:20 AM // 08:20

Since the betas, we've been barking up this tree of easy unlocking of skills... I still doubt that Anet will budge.

Lando Griffen · Jun 21, 2006, 03:32 PM // 15:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord of shadow

Hmm.. chess?

the rating system which guild wars uses is based on one developed for chess tornaments. In short it can be summarised by: The more likely you are to win a match based on starting rating, the less rating you gain at the end of it (and vice-versa). this means if WM steamrolled a rank 1000 guild they wouldnt barely get a rating change, wheras if the r1000 guild won they would recieve a dramatic boost (and WM's rating would drop).

this system works very well for the most part and is suited to the playstle issues mentioned earlier.

Chess isn't a sport