Curse

Andrew Patrick · Aug 13, 2007, 07:08 PM // 19:08

Within a few weeks we will be implementing a system that takes action against players who continually leave prior to the end of battles in PvP. This has been requested for quite some time, so we hope it addresses the problem. However, we also wish to ensure that when the anti-leaver system is implemented, players are not in a position where they feel we are punishing them for using the “best way” to get points towards the Gladiator title (i.e., continually leaving groups until you get into one that has a reasonable chance to get 10 wins in a row.) The way we hope to accomplish this is to reward players for each win or for smaller winning streaks so players are more concerned about “Can we win this fight?” rather than “Can we win this fight and the next 9 fights?” Our hope is that players would then be more likely to at least finish the battle they are on before returning to the outpost if they decide to join a different team.

The intention of this change is not to make the Gladiator Title easier to achieve, the designers are simply trying to change the way one acquires that title so that the system no longer punishes, or wastes the time of, those who stay on a team that is unlikely to have long winning streaks. The required points-per-rank in the title track would be increased to reflect the increase to the amount of points being given, and current title holder’s number of Gladiator Points would be increased proportionately as well.

Proposal 1
More regular progess:
• Every win gives you 1 point.
• Players get points for streaks. Players get 5 points for each 5 consecutive wins.
Updating Current Title Holders:
• Multiply current player points by 30.
• Multiply each rank by 20

Proposal 2
• Every 5 wins gives you 1 point
• Every additional 5 consecutive wins gives you 2 points.
Updating Current Title Holders:
• Multiply current player points by 4
• Multiply each rank requirement by 3

Proposal 3
• Every 5 wins gives you 1 point
• Every additional 5 wins gives you a bonus point (plus the original 1 for 5 wins). 10 wins = 2 total points, 15 = 3 total points, etc. This would be capped at 3 or 4 for every 5 win streak to keep it from getting out of control.
• Multiply current points by 5
• Multiply each rank by 4

To see the three proposals' associated progression table, please follow this link: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gaile...oposed_Changes

The forums didn't like my tables

Please provide feedback! These ideas are not set in stone, nor are the specific numbers associated with the proposals. Please discuss this, offer suggestions for tweaks to the numbers, or offer alternative ideas. Keep in mind that players who leave battles prematurely will be punished, so we are looking for a system that encourages players to stay in battle, or at least a system that does not reward those who leave until they find a team that suits them.

Wrath Of Dragons · Aug 13, 2007, 07:18 PM // 19:18

I like proposal 3 the most. It gives people more reason to try for more wins, and hopefully less would quit at the first point like they do now.

yesitsrob · Aug 13, 2007, 07:29 PM // 19:29

Originally, I would have never had Glad Points linked to RA - now that they have been, I wouldn't change that either....

I think all ideas are acceptable - I don't think some hardcore TA players will agree - it does make the title easier to get and simply grind out. With that in mind I think 2 or 3 would be the best... But really 1 would make it more similar to say the HA title track.

As far as numbers go:

On proposale 1 it should be at least 40 imo - effectively doubling your Gladiator points, winning 1 match every now and then is easy - if most of your matches were from RA there's a good chance most of your wins never contributed to a glad point - everyone knows you get to the 10th and lose

- especially if you're a pretty tolerable, playing monk often I know I can drag some complete crap to 5 wins and lose...

I'd probably go with Proposal 3, though I honestly don't think I care enough to have an opinion

- whichever you do you're likely going to increase my faction cap without me having to ever enter RA ever again.

I also believe punishing people for leaving is a load of shit, but whatever. If you are going to punish people for leaving you need a SHORT time limit on the matches - I wouldn't want to stay for longer than 3 minutes becase a) my team is so bad they cannot kill anything b) there's a griefing ass hole on my/enemy team.

And TA is a pretty bad format anyway - simple annhialation - no real strategy or goals involved except killing the enemy team.

moko · Aug 13, 2007, 07:31 PM // 19:31

hi Andrew, thanks for posting first of all.

many well known TA players along with myself think that Random Arenas is a pure starting area to have fun, possibly learn something at (which would be the case if glad points were removed and people stopped leaving) and gain faction -- not a place where people are supposed to farm their Gladiator Points.

it's like giving fame for beating the Zaishen, kind of.

instead of adding a completely new (confusing) system, it would be easier to simply fix the issue with Random Arenas and Gladiator Points. this would make TA a lot more popular also and possibly increase the skill level -- more players would come to Team Arenas and make themself new friends and slowly get better for high end PvP.

for RA to be still used, there needs to be a big amount of Balthazar Faction to be gained, so it's worthwile for starting out players and randoms that aren't in the mood to find a party, testing builds, etc.

basically, what i'm saying is to not complicate things and just hit it where it hurts -- RA & points.

if points would remain in RA, i would add penaltys for leaving, such as

- losing a point
- losing balthazar faction
- having a time penalty before being able to join again.

the main reason i don't favor this system is because:

- RA should NOT be for gaining points in ANY way.
- Korean servers would get another bonus out of this, because timing takes very little effort in korean servers and without penalty they easily get into teams
- TA should be promoted (see: HvH ladder & tournies, wtf?)

IF points will stay in RA, i would:

- add a maximum limit of points that can be won -- about 100
- adding little increasements to TA only (note: teams that STARTED in TA, not those from RA that took over)
- add the above penalties to RA

guess i'm done..i'll add more later on, i suppose.

(btw, RA seriously is a very very very VERY low form of PvP NOBODY cares about..don't ruin other things for dedicated team arenas players just to "fix" something nobody needs..)

Neo-LD · Aug 13, 2007, 07:44 PM // 19:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by yesitsrob

And TA is a pretty bad format anyway - simple annhialation - no real strategy or goals involved except killing the enemy team.

Hey, nothing wrong with that! At least TA matches dont get decided by NPC farming, ala GvE. :P

Orange Milk · Aug 13, 2007, 07:58 PM // 19:58

Thanks for the Info AP,

But you can burn all that, however I do appriciate us folks in TA getting some attention, even though I think all of this is about 99% geared towards RA.

See Mokone's post above,

It's more in line for those people who take TA/Glad rank seriously and know that RA is not serious. This weekend I fought an guild team in RA, yup all 4 from the same guild, what luck they have. Last weekend I witnessed 27 leavers in 9 matches.

Drop points from RA entierly, just balt faction, OR cap the amount earned there, I would prefer 50 over Mokones 100. A ladder in TA would be awsome. I doubt my guild would win it on a daily basis, if ever at all, but we would have a team or two in one EVERYDAY to be sure.

yesitsrob · Aug 13, 2007, 08:01 PM // 20:01

Alright alright - it's fun, but hard to take seriously competitively in my humble opinion - thus why the lack of tournaments etc based on it make sense to me. Doesn't explain why certain gametype does have that format though.
_

More I think about it the more I think .. the way it is is better - 10 wins is not easy to get, in RA in particular since you can't boon prot yourself to 60 wins like back in the days. There is a certain amount of relying on your team to not be bad.

At 10 wins it does give the title more meaning, yes it's still a grind, and yes there are certain methods of getting it easier or faster - the build Avicara and co use or the SS warrriors build in the past (ok not anymore) - which is why I put it down to the TA format more than anything.

I do like to see that work is being done - because TA does have potential for people who can't get 8 ( >_> - yeah neo... like us) - but I think re-doing the title is probably not the most important thing right now... maybe that's just me.

Zuranthium · Aug 13, 2007, 08:19 PM // 20:19

Well, first of all, congrats to the Guild Wars team for being so productive lately.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Proposal 2
• Every 5 wins gives you 1 point
• Every additional 5 consecutive wins gives you 2 points.
Updating Current Title Holders:
• Multiply current player points by 4
• Multiply each rank requirement by 3

I like this one the most. Multiply the rank requirement by 4, though.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokone

(btw, RA seriously is a very very very VERY low form of PvP NOBODY cares about..

Plenty of people love RA.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mokone

if points would remain in RA, i would add penaltys for leaving, such as

- losing a point
- losing balthazar faction
- having a time penalty before being able to join again.

I definitely agree with this. If you leave before the 30 second mark, all of these things should happen.

-------------------

TA desperately needs to have a ladder. It's a complete joke that HvH gets one and not TA. I also believe that (going along with Proposed plan #2) you should get 1 more point for every 5-win streak in TA than you would get in RA. The competition is stronger there; it should be worth more.

~Z

Longasc · Aug 13, 2007, 08:30 PM // 20:30

I like proposal 1.
It would fix leaving if theres is no monk in team.

The drawback is that it would make Gladiator a pure grind and take away a lot of the respect I have for the skill and work of rank 4/5 gladiators. But I would still prefer it to the other solutions, which would again cause players leaving if the team is too unfavorable.

I think Moko has a point: A 3 point penalty for leaving should be added. Otherwise people will still leave all the time.

lacasner · Aug 13, 2007, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Quote:

- RA should NOT be for gaining points in ANY way.
- Korean servers would get another bonus out of this, because timing takes very little effort in korean servers and without penalty they easily get into teams
- TA should be promoted (see: HvH ladder & tournies, wtf?)

IF points will stay in RA, i would:

- add a maximum limit of points that can be won -- about 100
- adding little increasements to TA only (note: teams that STARTED in TA, not those from RA that took over)
- add the above penalties to RA

I really agree with this and appose those three options you gave andrew, no offense.

kvndoom · Aug 13, 2007, 08:54 PM // 20:54

Here are some of my suggestions, they don't just apply to 4v4 though.

On Gladiator points:

RA: you get a point after 15 wins, then every 10 wins thereafter. Yes, 15. The leavers are there because "Waaah, I need a team that's good enough to win 10 and make it to TA!" So make them not only get to TA, but win in TA to get that point. RA should be about getting faction to unlock skills and learning how to play the game, not getting a title. As a plus, let RA kills and wins provide 50% more faction than standard. Also, at win #15, EVERYONE gets a point, even those who started late. Nothing worse than finding out everyone on your team got a point except you due to, you guessed it, some retard leaver. While some might think this will make the leavers worse, look at my following suggestion for TA first. The goal is to make title chasers more inclined to play TA than RA.

TA: 1st point at 5 wins, then 2 points for every 10 wins thereafter. OR, 2 points for every 10 wins. So people who want to work on their title have a really good incentive to play TA instead of RA. Right now there's no incentive. It's easier to just keep abandoning people in RA until you get a monk on your team.

Faction: give PVP a reward system for titles. Give something to spend faction on even after UAX. Since each rank in certain titles gives a higher faction pool, give rewards based on how much faction you can spend at one time. Here are some examples:

20000 Faction spent will unlock Silver Dye to use on PVP characters. You'll need 2 ranks to get 20k capacity, which isn't too hard.

30000 Faction to unlock White Dye. Little something more to shoot for.

50000 Faction to unlock Black Dye.

50000 to change your default Pet skin. This is different from an unlock, because you're stuck with whatever pet you choose, until you get 50k more faction to change it again. But spend 50k and you can have whatever default pet you want, be it a Black Widow, Lynx (yeah, right!), Phoenix or whatever.

Maybe in the future add unlockable armor skins and weapon skins, but I think the dyes and pet changes are a good start. So many people have absolutely nothing to spend their faction on, and as they get tile ranks, the cap of unspendable faction just keeps rising.

yesitsrob · Aug 13, 2007, 09:05 PM // 21:05

Ooh, interesting ideas on Faction - honestly though I don't think having anything more expensive than 10k faction is a good idea - but Tournament Token stacks are getting ridiculous. And it was funny unlocking Razah with faction when he was 50k just because you could etc

Perhaps 10k for a Sigil.... Really, Sigils need to be attained by other means than HA / PVE - it's really really bad that they aren't. Things like TA contributing to this kind of thing would be good.

urania · Aug 13, 2007, 09:19 PM // 21:19

dear andrew, all of the suggested ideas are complete nonsence IHMO because anet is trying to fix ra issues on the expense of TA - because no one cares about that place anyway, as u have clearly demonstrated with HvH gettign observe mode (lol).

maybe the development team or whoever is reposnsible for such suggestions would actually PLAY the game they're trying to fix things would never turn out like this.

so let me explain my view on ur proposed fix-wanna-be's - that is what they seem to me, at least.

1st option would make the title completely grindable and set it on same line with the holy lightbringer or the HA title, for example. But, and this is really a big BUT that even i doubt about, it would perhaps decrease the number of leavers. (it would increase number of leachers tho, wohoo!)

2nd and 3rd option hardly make any difference, but let me explain how i think things are gonna be if any of those fixes get implemented. It would not change anything when it comes to leavers, its only reward leavers because u could get a point thanks to them FASTER than having to wait to 10. I often had cases of losing to 8 or 9 only because i got that far mostly thanks to leavers and then finally met first decent team that crushed my crappy team-wanna-be. SO what, i didnt get lucky, maybe next time. With that system, howevver, u will enable glad points to be gained on a much easier scale thanks to leaving.

I know of ppl that have gained r6 if not r7 glad title by playing in ra ONLY. Imagine how it will be after u implement one of the proposed changes.

If i had to choose, id go with the last option, but they all fail, imo.

Another crappy way of trying to fix things, i guess.

Divineshadows · Aug 13, 2007, 09:38 PM // 21:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

Proposal 3
• Every 5 wins gives you 1 point
• Every additional 5 wins gives you a bonus point (plus the original 1 for 5 wins). 10 wins = 2 total points, 15 = 3 total points, etc. This would be capped at 3 or 4 for every 5 win streak to keep it from getting out of control.
• Multiply current points by 5
• Multiply each rank by 4

Of the three proposals you listed, this one is the best because it is the only one that offers noticeable incentive to play in TA (streaks longer than 10) instead of RA. Very few RA teams can successfully win 5 more matches once they've entered TA.

I agree with others that have replied in this thread that feel that RA should not offer gladiator points at all and should merely reward high amounts of balthazar faction.

Andrew Patrick · Aug 13, 2007, 09:39 PM // 21:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by lacasner

I really agree with this and appose those three options you gave andrew, no offense.

No offense taken, that's why we are asking.

I do have one question for the people saying "no one cares about RA." I may be mistaken, but through casual observation there seems to be a whole lot more players in RA than TA most of the time. Am I mistaken? I am not making a statement about which is more important, or which is "better" or anything like that...I am just saying there is quite a large number of players who enjoy RA, and play it daily. I just think dismissing RA players by saying "no one cares about RA" when there are, in fact, more players in RA than TA is an odd statement. Could you clarify what you mean please?

neoflame · Aug 13, 2007, 09:51 PM // 21:51

Proposal 3, but with Gladiator points removed altogether from RA (once an RA team reaches TA they can earn Gladiator points normally.) Farming poorly composed random teams of bad players for Gladiator points is why leaving exists in RA.

BlackSephir · Aug 13, 2007, 09:53 PM // 21:53

I think the current system is good, at least, better than proposed systems.
Anyway, way to deal with leavers? Pure awesomeness and epic win!

Just yesterday some retard told me that AN won't do anything about leavers... Hah ;d

Btw, where will those changes will be in GW?

martialis · Aug 13, 2007, 09:57 PM // 21:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Patrick

However, we also wish to ensure that when the anti-leaver system is implemented, players are not in a position where they feel we are punishing them for using the “best way” to get points towards the Gladiator title (i.e., continually leaving groups until you get into one that has a reasonable chance to get 10 wins in a row.) The way we hope to accomplish this is to reward players for each win or for smaller winning streaks so players are more concerned about “Can we win this fight?” rather than “Can we win this fight and the next 9 fights?” Our hope is that players would then be more likely to at least finish the battle they are on before returning to the outpost if they decide to join a different team.

The intention of this change is not to make the Gladiator Title easier to achieve, the designers are simply trying to change the way one acquires that title so that the system no longer punishes, or wastes the time of, those who stay on a team that is unlikely to have long winning streaks.

It won't work. The best way to get the title will still be to achieve winning streaks, but you want to reward people for staying on teams, and you want people to feel that they're not being punished for leaving. These are not compatible.

You must have a very low opinion of your players. As long as there is a title to farm, people will pursue it in the most efficient way possible. You can't simply convince them to stay on a team with no potential for gaining points. There is absolutely no reason to do that. Adding mini-bans might work, but people will still leave after every match, as long as it gets them closer to a point. Changing the length of the winning streaks is the worst of both worlds and won't fix the problem.

The Gladiator title should be based on skill, in some way or other, and that will never be compatible with RA. So remove it.

Zuranthium · Aug 13, 2007, 10:13 PM // 22:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by martialis

The Gladiator title should be based on skill, in some way or other, and that will never be compatible with RA. So remove it.

There is definitely skill involved with RA. It's not always "hey my team is better than yours, I win". Often you meet other teams who are equally matched or better than you. And it's a great joy when you're skillful enough to beat decent teams, even when yours sucks.

There is more skill involved in TA and as such it should be giving more points per 5 wins than RA, but that doesn't mean RA is for new players only.

Still, the BIGGEST change that needs to happen is punishing RA leavers...not changing the entire system (although that would be fine). Taking away points from leavers and causing it to take longer for them to enter another match is absolutely critical. That would fix most of the problems (although TA itself certainly still needs more incentives to get people to play).

~Z

Orange Milk · Aug 13, 2007, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Ap

On the topic of why RA has more people:

1. Easier to get Glad points in RA than TA.

2. Practicing builds or testing them while waiting on other guildies/freinds to log on.

3. Easier to get Glad points in RA than TA.

4. People new to PvP are there. (ie trying to get those 5 consec wins despite all the leavers)

5. Syncing with guildies and friends because its easier to get Glads in RA than TA.

So the flat out plain as day answer is that "RA is easier than TA to get Glads" Its like this, I'm no PvE guy now mind you though, If I need to get something done in PvE that is not a for the HM mission title or Farming, I'm going to do it NM. (ie capping a skill) Why? Easier and faster and hero/henchable, so just me, just like RA.

I'll tell you this too, In Basketball they don't say "Man 3 pointers are hard to make, lets move the line up" The players go out and practice to get better and make the shots. Don't make the title easier to get, that just shames everyone, let everyone get out there and practice and earn the title.