Curse

zwitterion · Jan 28, 2008, 04:57 PM // 16:57

This weekend I got some WoWian friends together and tried to show them the wonders of gws. Due to their slavish addictions to WoW's sadistic grinds, and GWs' lack of the same, I figured the best bet was to jump into some PvP where we could frolic through a large portion of the game's content and mechanics with a minimal time investment.

HAHA!! owned in the face.

Seriously, even after everyone had a basic idea of what was going on and a working build on their bar we were averaging 1 (one) win an hour and donating many a flawless victory to the rest of the gws community in between.

Which gets me to my point. I'd forgotten what it was like to be a new player in GWs PvP. It's a violent and unforgiving experience and those friends left confused and frightened and unlikely to want to come back and try again. Not because the game isn't awesome, it is and everyone clicked immediately with the joy of builds and the fast paced gameplay; it was because our team was matched with an apparently random selection from the TA pool, often groups who were already on a decent winning streak, and this gave the guys no chance to find their feet (often literally) and figure out what was working and what wasn't.

You jump into a Warcraft 3 game on bnet with a bunch of friends and whether your team is made up of Korean government funded prodigies who've been RTS trained from the fricking womb, or a bunch of stoned Ohian college kids who think they're playing counter strike, over time your win/loss ratio will always hover around 50%. Cos battlenet has a matchmaking system, and it makes sure you're going to be playing against people with something like equal (dis)abilities.

Does GWs have anything like this? If it does it fails. Would it be so hard for ANet to keep track of how much a team does or does not suck, and pair them up accordingly? Right now the game's about as welcoming as boot camp, and that can't be good for business, or the community.

Orange Milk · Jan 28, 2008, 05:49 PM // 17:49

GvG and HvH pair up simular ranked guilds/individuals.

However that system is fail due to smurf guilds in GvG and rank tanking in HvH

All new PvPers begin life as cannon fodder, learn from it and get better. Them teams that roll ya, see what skills they are using, figure out why you are getting rolled.

IF you and your wowian friends continue to TA together and learn, you will improve,simple matter of fact. Unfortunatly TA lacks a huge crowd, the addition of "Match Pairing" will only lead to mass amounts "No Opposing Party Joined" chat announcements. These delays will unpopularize an already unpopular form of PvP.

I love TA, I've been fodder, and I've rolld people, somedays I'm both. And I do not wanna see this, I like good, tough matches and I like my "free" wins at times too.

zwitterion · Jan 28, 2008, 08:17 PM // 20:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orange Milk

I love TA, I've been fodder, and I've rolld people, somedays I'm both. And I do not wanna see this, I like good, tough matches and I like my "free" wins at times too.

Playing with GWs friends I get a nice mix of wins and losses, it feels good to be rewarded for bringing good game to a match and when I lose it's just as fun cos I know why, and how to avoid it. This is cos I'm probably a pretty average PvPer.

New PvPers however are faced with a seemingly insurmountable wall of hurt that's not only demoralizing but confusing too. It's very difficult to tell new people about adrenaline spikes for instance if they're always get disrupted before they can pull one off, and if the other team takes it in stride when they do manage to.

Sure if you're invested in the game say in PvE, or you're a very competitive person, you might keep coming back for more pounding and eventually begin to see what's actually happening on the battlefield and gain some familiarity with common builds etc, but banking on people's obsessiveness and masochism to get them over the undeniably steep learning curve doesn't seem like no good way to make a game to me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orange Milk

Unfortunatly TA lacks a huge crowd, the addition of "Match Pairing" will only lead to mass amounts "No Opposing Party Joined" chat announcements. These delays will unpopularize an already unpopular form of PvP.

Matchmaking systems don't need to be strict, it's not like if there are only two teams playing TA they won't get a game cos one's ranked and the other isn't. I don't see how a system that matched teams made of ranked players with other teams made of ranked players, and hopeless newbies with the like could be a bad thing. Everyone gets a better quality of play, and a better learning environment (I know I don't learn anything from steam rolling a bad team for instance). The game as it stands seems very hostile to new players which may mean an early death for the community.

NamelessBeauty · Feb 05, 2008, 09:46 PM // 21:46

Don't get much of your point. How do you know the level of the player? By rank? By time you have played? Not really working out well. Ranked players are noobs sometimes too or sometimes they try to be noob. Remember the more you fail the better you will learn neglect of what situation! Learn a lot or little depend upon you!

JR · Feb 05, 2008, 09:58 PM // 21:58

Implimentation of a TA ladder would both increase population and allow somewhat decent matchmaking. People have been asking for it for a long time.

It's not going to happen.

Div · Feb 06, 2008, 10:47 PM // 22:47

Play alliance battles. You can team up with your friends and fight other clueless people. You'd get the same low quality of players in RA as well, but you lose the ability to team up. Team arena is generally for the more organized group that knows what they're doing.

steel singer · Feb 07, 2008, 10:08 AM // 10:08

If your friends have played guilds wars for less than 200 hours ofcourse you get rolled by nearly every TA team..
They just don't know what the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO is going on and don't even know 1/8th of all the skills out there..

yum · Feb 07, 2008, 06:32 PM // 18:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwitterion

Matchmaking systems don't need to be strict, it's not like if there are only two teams playing TA they won't get a game cos one's ranked and the other isn't. I don't see how a system that matched teams made of ranked players with other teams made of ranked players, and hopeless newbies with the like could be a bad thing. Everyone gets a better quality of play, and a better learning environment (I know I don't learn anything from steam rolling a bad team for instance). The game as it stands seems very hostile to new players which may mean an early death for the community.

No. If 2 good groups clash, the lost would be very likely to comeback with an anti-build, and so forth...

And playing with bad players won't teach you anything. I suggest you guys trying to syc in RA first if you want lower lvl of gameplay ( don't do that in korean RA though)