Curse

Kaon · Oct 28, 2009, 01:03 PM // 13:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sankt Hallvard

I will /sign this and sign it again. I'm so fed up with the title system in general and how you get awarded incrementally in particular.

At least give 1 point per win and maybe 1 extra point for every 5-streak. (you could just increase the number required for each rank) This system with 1 pt for 5 wins, 2 for 10 etc means you have to play for 2 hours without losing before you start getting the big points. I don't really plan on playing for much more than 2 hours straight!

Good players are still awarded by just winning more games, they don't really need huge boosts just because they have a long streak without going to the toilet in the meantime.

I know this isn't about CB but it's based on the same incremental system. Here you actually reach the cap after about 3 hours of playing. So after playing for 3 hours straight you are encouraged to stay on to get the most amount of points. CB for 3 hours! CB is something I want to do when I have a 15 minute break, I don't want to keep playing CB for hours with no break.

EDIT: Actually I take back my suggestion for 1 pt for each win. That would just encourage ridiculous offense teams to gamble at winning really fast to farm the stupid title. Maybe 1 point for every 5 wins or every 10 wins, just like old arenas. As long as it's not incremental.

Actually I do think the title should be incremental. Just not has insane as it is now, where you have to reach 20 victories before you meet the maximum points per win. The maximum points per win should just be at 3 or 4 or 5 victories. There needs to be something that extra rewards good players over bad ones that just go in and win 1 match at the time. On the other hand, every single victory needs to be rewarded with at least 1 point. Just like in tombs everyone can farm underworld, only you'll spend about 1500hours getting rank 9. Whereas if you're good and just get winstreaks you'll get it in a few hundred hours.

Jetdoc · Oct 28, 2009, 03:41 PM // 15:41

5) The accesibility Problem:
5b) A lot of players are in this for the title, but it works on consecutive wins, so not-so-good players don't stand a chance at getting it. This drives away a LARGE amount of players.
- Solution: Fix the title so it works just like Fame does, or alliance battle titles. Reward players for their wins, not for their winstreaks. When you beat someone you want to be rewarded. When you win 4 times but lose the 5th game you will be pissed off and quit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sierraa

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Codex_Arena
b) Focus on your faults and improve. Maybe you'll be the next good player.

You do realize that "well, just get better" isn't the standard response to everyone that plays PvP, right? Encouragement goes a long way to developing those that need development. I personally think that the idea for 5b above is a good idea...encouraging people to play Codex Arena will likely improve their skill level over time. Getting over that initial barrier is tough if you're not an experienced PvPer or are not part of a guild that is interested in Codex Arena.

Personally, I don't see a downside to the proposal above, but I might be missing something.

LuckyGiant · Oct 29, 2009, 12:21 AM // 00:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

1) You can't see all the skills at the same time.
- Solution: Add an npc that displays all available skills.

Agree, needs to be a better way to have an overview of the skills.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

2) The skills change every day at a moment where there are only very few players online and many can't play.

It is a problem (I'm NZ GMT+12).
However I don't particularly want to work out which hour the deck changes.
Its even worse for someone who only plays once every couple of days if you change by 1 hour each day.

To be honest 12 hour rotations of decks shouldn't be out of question to solve this problem.
-->You can play guild wars when its possible for you to play guild wars. If thats during Euro hours so be it, if thats during american hour so be it.
If Euros/Americans play with different decks to you who cares , its not affecting you. If they get good decks one day you'll get good decks another. This way most people should get the opportunity to create decks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

3) Balance; Some classes are inherently stronger in CA than others.
Don't give each class the same number of skills.

Agreed, Elites and normal skills should be based on a percentage (or adjusted in some other way) of the total so each skill for each class has an equal chance of appearing.
Always going to be a big problem here though, since giving some classes larger skill pools allows for more synergy within their skills. (ie the reverse of the problem we have with the ele atm)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

4) The ladder/guild problem:
4a) How to integrate guilds and rating in a pug format?
4b) How to work out ATs. Are pugs allowed to compete?

Disagree, play gvg if you want to tourney.
I just see this as not necessary. You're trying to turn a reasonably casual arena into the new mainstream pvp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

5) The accesibility Problem:
5a) Noob players enter the arena, want to pug, and mostly get mercilessly slaughtered by good players.
5b) A lot of players are in this for the title, but it works on consecutive wins, so not-so-good players don't stand a chance at getting it. This drives away a LARGE amount of players.

This is an enormous problem.
Changes are definitely needed to the title track to encourge a larger player base.

Currently the facts are:
- its not fun playing the same teams over and over due to lack of players
- majority of the player base are casual players
- majority of these players will not be highly skilled
- majority of these players will struggle to make 5 wins
- majority of these players will be playing for nothing
- for the format to succeed you need such playerbase.

I believe
- There needs to be encouragement for such players to play in the form of title changes and/or emotes should be implemented.
- sure emotes are trival to the very small % of the top playerbase who will win regularly and get the satisfaction out of putting together builds/streaks etc, however to a casual player you need to work towards something.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

6) The oberservermode issue: Adding oberserver mode would be fun to watch, but will also give away build, eliminate variety, and take away that 1 thing CA has above GvG and tomz: no observermode to steal builds.

Completely unnecessary in an environment where the skill bars change daily.
Want to learn tips and tricks for a particular profession - watch gvg.

Kaon · Oct 29, 2009, 01:03 AM // 01:03

2) The skills change every day at a moment where there are only very few players online and many can't play

Just straightening this out: I'm still calling for daily skill changes, just on a different hour. Perhaps skill changes should be every 22hours.

Spartanic · Oct 29, 2009, 03:59 AM // 03:59

Bring back HB....Condex is exactly like TA. Anet failed at trying to make a new format, oh wait its Anet. Ya i guess they gave it thier best.

LuckyGiant · Oct 29, 2009, 07:10 AM // 07:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spartanic

Bring back HB....Condex is exactly like TA. Anet failed at trying to make a new format, oh wait its Anet. Ya i guess they gave it thier best.

I think they did really good job implementing it.

The only significant problem is there are no incentives to encourage the casual player to continue to play after the get stomped on their way to 5.

The title system should be different, that sort of player base needs to be there. Its not like they can just roll the overpowered flavour of the month/year and get a couple of points like HA. That is how the title track should be if they want this arena to take off. That and give it an emote.

MMSDome · Oct 29, 2009, 07:17 AM // 07:17

How can people possibly say whether CA has failed or been a success it hasn't even been out longer at all.

People talk about the massive amount of people that have left and are not playing it like they were the first few days. Make any new pvp format you are going to have a bunch of people trying it out because it is something new, obviously not everyone will like it and some will leave.

Give it Codex time people.

Sierraa · Oct 29, 2009, 07:52 AM // 07:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jetdoc

You do realize that "well, just get better" isn't the standard response to everyone that plays PvP, right? Encouragement goes a long way to developing those that need development. I personally think that the idea for 5b above is a good idea...encouraging people to play Codex Arena will likely improve their skill level over time. Getting over that initial barrier is tough if you're not an experienced PvPer or are not part of a guild that is interested in Codex Arena.

Personally, I don't see a downside to the proposal above, but I might be missing something.

You do realize that everyone starts out awful at anything they've never done before, and consequently as they keep playing they will either hit a ceiling of skill level or they will find their faults and ways to improve. Encouragement does nothing. Saying "Good Job" or "You did well" does less than "You messed up here here and here, and this is how you improve".

There's plenty of information avaliable to get over the initial barrier. I wasn't disagreeing with his whole post either. I don't care either way how the points are gained, the title doesn't mean much to me. I don't see a downside to the current system though.

Darth The Xx · Oct 29, 2009, 08:12 AM // 08:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by LuckyGiant

It is a problem (I'm NZ GMT+12).
However I don't particularly want to work out which hour the deck changes.
Its even worse for someone who only plays once every couple of days if you change by 1 hour each day.

Changes at 8pm for us btw. Took me exactly 12 seconds to look it up.

LuckyGiant · Oct 29, 2009, 08:48 AM // 08:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darth The Xx

Changes at 8pm for us btw.

Cheers Captain obvious, but did you even read what Kaon wrote or what you quoted...

ogre_jd · Oct 29, 2009, 12:28 PM // 12:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by LuckyGiant

Cheers Captain obvious, but did you even read what Kaon wrote or what you quoted...

Obviously Darth the Xx did - and was basically calling you lazy (and I agree with him) for not wanting to take a few seconds to look up (and maybe bookmark) a time zone calculator and then another few seconds to use it once.

And, to other posters here, why do you think casual players are there for the sake of titles? If it takes a title to lure you in and keep you at an Arena, you are not casual. No, casual players are there for fun [yes, it does exist, even in the world of PvP] and, perhaps, as an alternative to RA & AB for gaining Balthazar faction (mainly those who've stumbled onto that method of unlocking skills for their Heroes to use).

zwei2stein · Oct 29, 2009, 01:16 PM // 13:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by ogre_jd

Obviously Darth the Xx did - and was basically calling you lazy (and I agree with him) for not wanting to take a few seconds to look up (and maybe bookmark) a time zone calculator and then another few seconds to use it once.

And, to other posters here, why do you think casual players are there for the sake of titles? If it takes a title to lure you in and keep you at an Arena, you are not casual. No, casual players are there for fun [yes, it does exist, even in the world of PvP] and, perhaps, as an alternative to RA & AB for gaining Balthazar faction (mainly those who've stumbled onto that method of unlocking skills for their Heroes to use).

You have no idea what casual players do and do not want. And bolding casual does not really help to push your idea what casual player is and is not.

Not to mention what actually defines casual player.

Sankt Hallvard · Oct 29, 2009, 04:01 PM // 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Actually I do think the title should be incremental. Just not has insane as it is now, where you have to reach 20 victories before you meet the maximum points per win. The maximum points per win should just be at 3 or 4 or 5 victories. There needs to be something that extra rewards good players over bad ones that just go in and win 1 match at the time.

Seeing as I'm about the only one disagreeing with the incremental system I have a question to ask. To those of you who keep getting long streaks(20+): How long does this take you? Don't you get bored after 3 hours straight? No physical needs? No desire to stretch your legs?

I had a 27 win streak one of the first days, it ended because of "new build available" which was a bit annoying, but tbh I was quite ready for a break at that point anyway. Then I see a guy posting a SS here with a 100 win streak. That's around 10 hours of playing straight! Do you get your mom to spoonfeed you dinner while playing or what? What am I missing here?

Don't give me bullshit about matches being super fast for you. It's a minimum of a minute between matches, 30 secs after your last kill and 30 secs before the match starts. So if the fighting lasts for 5 minutes that totals 6 minutes per win adding up to an hour per 10-streak.

Also I don't really buy the argument that good players need a bigger reward than casual players. If anything I'd say it should be the other way around. I get my satisfaction from winning not the amount of points I accumulate. The good players will win more naturally and that's reward in itself. I'm opposed to everything that promotes a farming mentality. That includes 1 pt per win which will give incentive to builds a la rtl spike(kill fast or lose to save time) and incremental points encouraging players to play for hours at a time. When Anet says you have been playing for 2 hours and you need a break I assume they mean it.

Kaon · Oct 29, 2009, 04:30 PM // 16:30

After 25 wins I don't really enjoy it anymore that much. After 40 wins I get bored out of my mind and stop. That's exactly why I think the rewards for getting 2 win streaks of 10 should be almost as high as one of 20. Not the same, but at least comparable. Now it's 6 points versus 10. I'm not for HUGE advantages for long winstreaks, absolutely not. But just small bonuses that reward the better players. One streak of 10 wins instead of 10 seperate wins should just gain a bit more points.

edit:

One way to make elementalists more usefull is to give them the standard skills flare, ice spear, and stone daggers. Then raise their number of skills slightly.

Winstar · Oct 29, 2009, 05:28 PM // 17:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

One way to make elementalists more usefull is to give them the standard skills flare, ice spear, and stone daggers. Then raise their number of skills slightly.

I was thinking the about something like this for ele. Perhaps attunements should be standard as well. Maybe its too much, but they get no play.

I Angra I · Oct 29, 2009, 05:41 PM // 17:41

I agree with everything in the OP.

I think that winstreaks still need to be rewarded though, but I agree that more casual players need the incentive to keep playing also.

I especially agree with the fact that physical characters (specifically dervishes and paragons) are way too powerful the way they are right now. There are only 15 elites for each of those classes, almost all of them being good, which means things like flesh wound, cruel spear, EDA, wounding strike, etc are going to be present 33% of the time, which is a ton. Prophecies characters get crap skills every day because there are so many skills in general for them. It makes the meta every single day turn into a "stack as many physicals you can in your team and kill the other team's monk" with no variety at all, because physical damage is just so good when casters have so few good options relative to paragons/dervishes.

I made a suggestion thread to fix this, but a lot of PvE'ers or something shot it down for some reason. The amount of skills per day, especially in the prophecies classes, NEEDS to be increased to give alternative metas to physical pressure every day.

Sankt Hallvard · Oct 29, 2009, 08:27 PM // 20:27

I agree with above post in theory. On the other hand I vastly enjoy a physical meta with no hex overload crap to worry about. When you buff casters hexers will be the first to benefit(hex mesmers and necros).

Fleeting · Oct 29, 2009, 09:13 PM // 21:13

I'd most like to see some better overall coding in the randomness of the CA skills- monks should get a hex removal and a condition removal every deck (cannot both be elite skills) as a preventive measure against condition / hex overload.

I agree that the five-win point system can be discouraging to less-skilled players or just those who are stuck in a pug. However, CA hasn't had any time at all for testing when compared to the RA and HA scoring systems, wait for something more conclusive than the initial surge and inevitable crash of population that's common with a new introduction.

dr love · Oct 30, 2009, 12:46 PM // 12:46

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, but if you get a d/c or leaver the other team mates don't even get to continue.

Also the codex title promotes long win streaks, but as someone pointed out before, you pretty much have to ignore eating, sleeping, etc to rack up good points. Possibly your team could be sent to a holding arena every 5 matches, where they could choose to reenter immediately or take a break but keep their consecutive streak.

CrypticFear · Oct 30, 2009, 04:55 PM // 16:55

Sealed deck has so much potential but anet has made so little out of it.
Atm CA is nothing more than a 2nd RA. But what the GW-PvP needs is not another RA but a good new competitive format, in which the team that has more individual player skill as well as tactical skill will win. As HB has been killed, HA is dead and GvG also has had it's days, the time for it has come.
I know that making a perfect format is not easy at all but sealed deck is the ultimate chance to get one. It balances itself and requires creativity making good builds.

So to get away from a 2nd RA to a great competitive PvP format these are my suggestions:

1) Ladder:
The thread opener has already noticed that often unexperienced players play against good PvPers which ends in no fun for both. So I'd make a ladder like the one in HB.
Every single player has his/her own rating and the average of the team's ratings is relevant for what opponent you get.

2) (m)ATs:
Teams of four people can sign in at Tolkano and after some days they can enter ATs. I'd allow one guest so that it's pretty easy to get your people together. With 20 quali points you can enter mATs like in GvG.
But I don't want a pug without vent on #1, so...

3) maps:
Atm CA has no tactical aspect at all, which makes it pretty boring imo.
So the RA/TA-maps need to get replaced by the HB maps.
That's actually the solution to every problem CA has. It's not "I've got the most blinding, I win" anymore. We'd have a format that needs coordination and in which the better team wins.
And the tactical element of HB has always been great, only the four skills recall, meld, soh and shadow walk, which you can simply remove from the skill pool for CA, have abused it.

These simple three things would make a competitive arena that's a lot of fun out of a boring RA-Copy.