Curse

DreamWind · Nov 12, 2009, 04:21 AM // 04:21

I'm calling it right now. Codex is dead. Right now there are only like 20 or less people in D1. The population is not much greater than HB or TA was. A lot of times after a win it takes several minutes to get another game (keep getting no opposing party). During the last double point weekend the majority of the time it was still only 1 unfilled district.

Oh well, nice try Anet. I think it is a good format with potential, but your previous moves have driven out the community who would have enjoyed this format. A case of too little too late IMO. I would say "I told you so" and point to my posts before codex was released, but I won't for now in case by some miracle the population picks up.

I Jonas I · Nov 12, 2009, 05:50 AM // 05:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

I'm calling it right now. Codex is dead.

I called it hours after it came out. although somewhat self-satisfying, I don't think an "I told you so anet" will cut it in this case. Bring back TA and HB and I'll be happy

IMMORTAlMITCH · Nov 12, 2009, 06:44 AM // 06:44

It's not any more dead than HB and TA were, it's a problem with GW PvP rather than CA.

Chocobo1 · Nov 12, 2009, 06:55 AM // 06:55

Replace Codex with an Arena where you become one random monster from the game and have to duke it out. 4v4 any monster would be sexc.

But srsly, no surprise Codex is dead. Reminds me of TA so much its unbelievable.

DreamWind · Nov 12, 2009, 08:28 AM // 08:28

Only reason it is dead is because Anet drove out the PvP community with the remaining community being mostly farmers and Codex is an unfarmable arena.

Codex Guru · Nov 12, 2009, 01:54 PM // 13:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Only reason it is dead is because Anet drove out the PvP community with the remaining community being mostly farmers and Codex is an unfarmable arena.

There is more to it than this.

PvPers want balance. Well, ones who aren't insane. And the game is designed and balanced for eight people no matter what TA gurus said about balanceway being "balanced." Randomizing the deck would theoretically solve this except that GW is designed for every single skill and and more importantly class to be so interrelated so as to be useless without others. So instead of getting rid of really imbal skills and stale play in reality when even one skill shows up that promotes stale or imbal play, everyone runs either 1. multiple copies of it or 2. bases their entire build around it.

So in sum if ANet wants to "save" CA they need to:

1. ban multiple copies of the same skill

2. recognize power creep and make smaller percentage of NF skills and larger percentage of Proph

And last but not least 3. implement fame type system because you are right there are a lot of farmer. Implementing these three suggestions would at least double the player base.

Krill · Nov 12, 2009, 04:23 PM // 16:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Only reason it is dead is because Anet drove out the PvP community with the remaining community being mostly farmers and Codex is an unfarmable arena.

The farming mentality has been around since the discovery of iway and blood necros at least. I believe it's more that people want instant gratification and can't handle getting their ass kicked over and over until they start to improve. Although to be fair, the skill gap is wider than ever with seasoned players slaughtering the trickle of PvE'ers. For instance last night I dropped into CA and there were 3-4 groups forming, one with Mitch and Edan and the others grab and go pugs...wonder what the result was! Somehow it seems like the disparity is even greater than TA was.

FoxBat · Nov 12, 2009, 04:24 PM // 16:24

Imbalance is really the smallest problem with this arena for the nonexistent casuals.

- The best way for most ppl to win is basically to stay on top of copying the meta. It's exhausting to keep up with a meta changing every day, with long setup times as you make new builds, without rewarding creativity of build innovation (unless you're quite good.)

- Title was already mentioned.... this probably had more to do with TA failing than the crappy balance.

- Most days it still PLAYS like team arena... degen vs layered defense, go... again this is just cramming 4 players into an 8v8 balanced game.

- Casuals can have more fun, play their own crappy builds, and get better rewards doing AB with 4 players. If they are by themselves, they can basically play RA to do the same thing and get lucky glad points.

Like I said before, I don't think Sealed Deck can or should work as a "pickup anytime" format. They should've started with casual ATs (no rating on the line, just generous RPs) as that would better capture the spirit of making your own build and concentrating niche interest (let's face it, most ppl would rather copy builds than make) into one place an time. But since they did it backwards (try the hard way first) this idea is probably dead-ended and they won't invest any more time.

Draikin · Nov 12, 2009, 07:14 PM // 19:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Codex Guru

So in sum if ANet wants to "save" CA they need to:

This can't help but remind me of all the posts on the TA and HB forums that talked about "saving" their format... If Anet applies the same logic to CA as they did for those formats then CA won't receive any further updates. If that's going to be the case, then they might as well bring back HB (without the ladder/ATs and revert to consecutive win system) and TA since removing them apparently did more harm than good.

FoxBat · Nov 12, 2009, 08:35 PM // 20:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draikin

If that's going to be the case, then they might as well bring back HB (without the ladder/ATs and revert to consecutive win system) and TA since removing them apparently did more harm than good.

Dead format replacing dead formats is a waste of time/effort, but that isn't the same as harm.

CA being a failure does not mean "lets bring back other known failures." At most it means make alliance battles the core 4v4 format or something.

DreamWind · Nov 12, 2009, 10:02 PM // 22:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draikin

This can't help but remind me of all the posts on the TA and HB forums that talked about "saving" their format...

Yea...I feel the same way. I strongly doubt there is anything that can save PvP nowadays, much less CA.

I mean let us think about it for a minute. A large portion of the remaining community (most likely the majority) only plays to farm whether it be for titles, ectos, HoM, whatever. The only way you can get these players to even attempt PvP is if you make it more easily farmable.

But then you get the PvP purists who say PvP shouldn't be farmable and should be a skill game, and they suggest all these fixes on how to "save PvP". What they don't realize is it can no longer be saved without making it farmable. Most of the community who wanted real PvP were driven out due to bad balancing+being alienated by Anet, and are too disgruntled to ever come back regardless of how interesting this format may be. Farmable, while not pure and certainly not the best situation, is sadly the only solution nowadays.

That is my theory.

urania · Nov 13, 2009, 08:07 AM // 08:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Only reason it is dead is because Anet drove out the PvP community with the remaining community being mostly farmers and Codex is an unfarmable arena.

sorry to break it to you, but you are either 1) not very successful at it or 2) don't play there much. with the right build and a certain amount of skill input, its >very< farmable. add dead hours (pretty much most of the time now) to that, and viola.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Yea...I feel the same way. I strongly doubt there is anything that can save PvP nowadays, much less CA.

I mean let us think about it for a minute. A large portion of the remaining community (most likely the majority) only plays to farm whether it be for titles, ectos, HoM, whatever. The only way you can get these players to even attempt PvP is if you make it more easily farmable.

But then you get the PvP purists who say PvP shouldn't be farmable and should be a skill game, and they suggest all these fixes on how to "save PvP". What they don't realize is it can no longer be saved without making it farmable. Most of the community who wanted real PvP were driven out due to bad balancing+being alienated by Anet, and are too disgruntled to ever come back regardless of how interesting this format may be. Farmable, while not pure and certainly not the best situation, is sadly the only solution nowadays.

That is my theory.

CA wasn't meant to be "saved" to start with.

I also disagree about your claim that the farming mentality is only present now, or in other words, with the remains of the former pvp community - that's by far not true, places like HA, HB, gvg (after point system change), TA (especially after point system change) and RA have always been played foremost because of the rewards attainable - be it a shiny emote, money, rps and/or a nice title.

the reason why "farmability" has an even bigger importance now is because that's about all that's left in a 4 yo game that cannot/doesn't receive much attention anymore.

I agree with the rest of what you wrote though.

FoxBat · Nov 13, 2009, 08:26 AM // 08:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

sorry to break it to you, but you are either 1) not very successful at it

That's the point. People below the top 5% can't keep jumping in with lame fast builds hoping for some wins like in underworld. When 95% of your player base has nothing to farm, you aren't going to keep that 95% for very long.

The only problem with that theory is that HA is rather dead too.

Vazze · Nov 13, 2009, 06:18 PM // 18:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

That's the point. People below the top 5% can't keep jumping in with lame fast builds hoping for some wins like in underworld. When 95% of your player base has nothing to farm, you aren't going to keep that 95% for very long.

Not quite 95% but close: it is n/(n+4) where n is the total number of players below the skill level of the best team, mostly that includes the entire CA population of the time. In the rare situations when there is more than one (nearly equally) skilled team in the arena, nobody can farm, because these two will keep meeting each other with proper counters.

Yesterday it was 15/20=75% for a few hours, then it went up to say 85%. When there are lots of ppl in CA, like district is half full (....!!!! lol????), then it goes up 90-95% I guess. A few weeks ago when there more districts, the loser ratio was a little less than n/(n+4) because it was less likely for two skilled team to meat so it was more like n/(n+8) or even +12. So the loser ratio probably does not really go above 95% no matter how many ppl play.

Is this a complicated math? Or which part of "95% is total loser 24/7 and will leave" was difficult to foresee? ...? I mean that kind of setup was perfectly ok in 2005, when pvp pop was not differentiated by exp, but today...sigh.

Winning strategies for
-top5%: play at new deck, when skill pays off most.
-top10%: avoid top5% (ie don't play when they re on).
-rest: none

IMMORTAlMITCH · Nov 13, 2009, 10:01 PM // 22:01

Whatever happened to playing for fun? People played TA and GvG before titles (besides fame) existed period and (at least speaking from my own experience) enjoyed it a lot more.

Getting rewards for PvP is good but they should be rewards like Faction/ZKeys/ZCoins rather than a farmable/grindable title.

If you want (somewhat) meaningful PvP titles you're gonna have to hand out points for winning (m)ATs or winning halls or whatever, and leave them out of HoM so the carebear squad doesn't complain about the unattainability of the title for 'casual gamers' (read: PvE scrubs).

DreamWind · Nov 14, 2009, 03:02 AM // 03:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

sorry to break it to you, but you are either 1) not very successful at it or 2) don't play there much. with the right build and a certain amount of skill input, its >very< farmable. add dead hours (pretty much most of the time now) to that, and viola.

I don't think you understood what I wrote.

I am explaining why the population in this area is so low. It has nothing to do with whether the format is fun/unfun or how balanced/inbalanced it is or how good/bad people are. It has to do with if people win 4 games then get beat they get nothing and don't play there anymore. Not to mention since its mostly only PvP players there this is more likely to happen. Its as simple as that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by urania

I also disagree about your claim that the farming mentality is only present now, or in other words, with the remains of the former pvp community - that's by far not true, places like HA, HB, gvg (after point system change), TA (especially after point system change) and RA have always been played foremost because of the rewards attainable - be it a shiny emote, money, rps and/or a nice title.

Populated PvP areas have always been filled with farmers. HA has always been probably half PvP players and half PvE farmers. Its just a fact of life. So if we want codex population to improve we have to cater to these types of players while still allowing for a solid PvP arena.

As for the former PvP community, well I hate to break it to you but that community is almost down to nothing. Sure there is some left but not much. If we make an area like codex that only the remaining PvP community will enjoy, we are going to end up with what we have now...a ridiculously low population.

urania · Nov 14, 2009, 10:57 AM // 10:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

I don't think you understood what I wrote.

I am explaining why the population in this area is so low. It has nothing to do with whether the format is fun/unfun or how balanced/inbalanced it is or how good/bad people are. It has to do with if people win 4 games then get beat they get nothing and don't play there anymore. Not to mention since its mostly only PvP players there this is more likely to happen. Its as simple as that.

I merely replied to the part of your post saying the arena was unfarmable.
I suppose you didn't quite understand what I was commenting on.
If you wanted your original post to be more accurate, you should've written something like "the arena is not farmable for everyone".

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Populated PvP areas have always been filled with farmers. HA has always been probably half PvP players and half PvE farmers. Its just a fact of life. So if we want codex population to improve we have to cater to these types of players while still allowing for a solid PvP arena.

As for the former PvP community, well I hate to break it to you but that community is almost down to nothing. Sure there is some left but not much. If we make an area like codex that only the remaining PvP community will enjoy, we are going to end up with what we have now...a ridiculously low population.

true enough.

don't have to "break it to me", i'm very much awared of that

.

emuking · Nov 14, 2009, 01:00 PM // 13:00

why not put some sort of a ladder system or AT system in codex? (sign up your team or something or guild based idk) with emote!

HB Fails Now · Nov 14, 2009, 08:13 PM // 20:13

Uh well it is hard to have a ladder system when you have different people that can be on your team. I don't see any problems with an AT but I don't think anet will do that just because they seem to not care about guild wars 1 much at all anymore and they are focusing on guild wars 2.

Draikin · Nov 14, 2009, 08:49 PM // 20:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by emuking

why not put some sort of a ladder system or AT system in codex? (sign up your team or something or guild based idk) with emote!

Read Linsey's wiki journal:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Linsey

If the new format is successful, we’ll consider investing the development time to build a ladder and tournament system for it.