Curse

Blame the Monks · May 10, 2007, 02:17 PM // 14:17

By now this scene is familiar:
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/9184/gw002fv8.jpg

Guilds afk farming the ATs. Almost all tourneys now have 1-2 actual matches played each tournament. Its common knowledge that you can get points for just showing up, and who cares about tokens anyhow? Every pvper has faction to waste.

On top of this problem, even under ideal circumstances ATs mean 4 hours waiting to play at max 6 gvgs, of which only a game or two will be against meaningful competition. This is even worse than the ladder in terms of getting quality matches without excessive time spend organizing and waiting. And of course, game balance still sucks.

Honestly, what was anet thinking?

Why did they conclude the community really wanted them to spend months creating a system that makes barriers to playing gvg even higher? Why did they ignore our months of begging for better game balance? Why did they think pvp needs more bells and whistles instead of restoring depth to the game? We want more opportunities to play meaningful, strategic pvp, not more opportunities to sit around and spend an entire day in a meaningless tournament to win some damn item skin.

Many people clung to GW because of the hope of what it could be and was in the past, but with ATs being such a disappointment I just don't know. A glance at the american top 20 tells you a lot about the exodus of pvp talent as interest in this crap fades. Please anet -- stop giving us crap you want to sell (ATs, HvH) and start responding to what we ask for (game balance). A significant portion of your audience is already gone, and with warhammer on the horizon you sure as hell better restore some goodwill to the pvp community.

Frantic-Sheep · May 10, 2007, 02:50 PM // 14:50

I still haven't had the chance to 'test out' AT's, but what I read its not that great. I can't understand it fails so much after so much testing (or at least it took them quite a while).

I still think it has a potentional option, and is a welcomed sight besides ladder play (then again, only in theory since I havent played it so far). Even though I agree with game balance/depth is more imporant, I wouldn't instantly say AT's is a deadborn child.. maybe it has to mature first?

Patrograd · May 10, 2007, 04:47 PM // 16:47

its a shame, as it was clear during last week's test events that teams forfeiting was going to be an issue. There needs to be another "entry layer" between a guild registering (which needs one officer with 5 tokens) and the actual groups being setup and pairings made. Maybe something like 5 mins before the tournament starts the guild has to submit a fully qualified team, and if they subsequently forfeit they take the ratings loss from the defeat? Idk, ehtry just seems very informal at the moment, with there being no penalty on your guild if you forfeit and screw the whole system over for everyone else.

I think that while it is perfectly clear that game balance is a bigger need right now, AT's are a promising idea that deserve better treatment than they are getting right now.

ToxicWasted · May 10, 2007, 04:57 PM // 16:57

I haven't been playing at all lately, I uninstall bad games, but I'd say you should keep in mind that, how lame it may sound, it's still in "testing phase".

Ec]-[oMaN · May 10, 2007, 05:59 PM // 17:59

It's a joke, the idea was pretty much a failure from the start. As you said more restrictions=less players, not to mention when they announced that they were working on a different format for GVG and took away the old ladder. Thats precisely when the GVG community needed the old ladder or AT's+skill updates the most. In the months of down time they just lost most of what was left to begin with.
I also don't see how adding any kind of penalty is going to help the suituation. If you do, it's just another restriction. The main problem is there just isn't any desire to play in the damn AT's, which is caused by a whole shit load of problems. Add a penalty and during some of the AT times 8 teams won't even bother to sign up, so will the AT even start? The times are screwed, the next battle time is lame. Most guilds can only play in one AT a week. So who's gonna stick around?

PS send Memo to Anet, I still think they are unware.

Sol Is Pyrrhus · May 10, 2007, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Bring back 8v8...er... I mean bring back the old ladder system

Zui · May 10, 2007, 08:47 PM // 20:47

I'm using Echo on Blame's post!

Seriously though. I stopped playing because the game was getting dull. I was planning to come back once I heard ATs were here and didn't suck. I'm still waiting. ANET, balance your game, and then make ATs suck less... I'm really hoping you do. Guild Wars is such an amazing game, and I want to play it. I really do. I'm just fed up with the current state of things.

You just got tomahawked · May 10, 2007, 10:29 PM // 22:29

When GW first came out 8 of my friends played it. Now only 2 play it. The 6 friends that stopped playing it have said to me if Anet would only balance the game they would play again. DO YOU GET IT NOW ANET?!?!

Jedbacca · May 11, 2007, 01:07 AM // 01:07

I liked the older system as well. I think that the majority are just stubborn and like our same old ladder system that we see in every game. I'm always up for change, so I hope that this could get sorted or just revert back to our older system. Seeing the +23 on wins and such was always a feeling of an accomplishment after a win. Things just seemed more balanced on how the pairings went.

minor · May 11, 2007, 01:45 AM // 01:45

Talking to anet throught these boards( or in any way) is a waste of time it seems.
If you stop and think about it for 5 sec anyone would realize that making ppl GvG at set times( if they want to get decent points for their wins) is going to exclude ppl who can't make their life fit around GW.
And WTB skill balance as always.

Div · May 11, 2007, 07:53 AM // 07:53

Lack of game balance
Lack of guilds that can play the entire 4 or so hours
Too many guilds signing up for tourney but can't actually show
Crappy system with little penalty for not showing
Very high rewards for little work done

All that results in this horrible AT system. Thank you anet for screwing up a highly anticipated system that everyone's waited half a year for. Unless something gets fixed about this AT fast, I'm sure people are more likely to just want the old system back. Every time anet tries to step in and fix pvp, they make it worse. Seriously, kill count in HA? Forfeit tournaments? Run-around hero arena?

Anet itself is contributing to the eliteness of the pvp system, despite trying to promote casual pvp through AB and fort aspenwood (lol). Unless you're a hardcore guild, you won't stick around for the whole tournament, and who can actually compete every day of the week in that?
All this results in is
- casual gvg guilds not being able to participate in AT anyways, so it's just regular gvgs for them
- hardcore gvg guilds rising higher up because they can play in a lot of AT's, and win by default when they show up.

Frantic-Sheep · May 11, 2007, 08:24 AM // 08:24

One of the funny things is that they wanted to discourage ladder farming. And as I said before when rumours where about with the new system: A guild that farms tournaments (which might actually be easier) will STILL be farming the ladder, because ATs affect ladder rating :\

Zabe · May 11, 2007, 08:50 AM // 08:50

Too true. Our guild was really happy to see we get some decent times to play. First day (Wednesday 9th) when AT's were announced, system got bugged. There were 2 tournaments running, we signed up for A. Well, we got BdV (Bruderschaft thingy, can't rememeber whole name) and we were ok, we might need to play great game to win them but it won't be impossible. So we clicked join. 4 minutes later we get forfeit, well, we just thought it was great so we got free points. We went for ladder match and easily beat a rank 6k guild. Well, time to wait another match, we got some rank 400 frenchie guild against us and they showed up, in 22 mins played 2 of them rage because of lag (strangely we just had sweeped their full npc's on flag having half of our npc's still alive).

So, back to guild hall and timer says like 7 minutes to show our next opponent. Well, its the same rank 400 guild again, we were like "cool, easy rating again". Of course we got forfeit, then we didnt get opponent for rated in time so we just waited for a forfeit. Now to speed things up I say that we got the last 2 times Bye's but we weren't clear about it so we just idled at our guildhall. Finally at 22:00 GMT +3 we won the tournament and got 8 QP, but feelings was kinda lame. We wasted nearly 4 hours to idle 3 of them and we got only 1 decent game and 1 easy +2 ladder match.

This wasn't all the story of the bugged tournaments. As I closed my computer we had 8 Qualifier Points and 69 reward points. Well, school starts late at thursday so I open my computer and Guild Wars after reading some forums just to see we have 16 Qualifier Points and 138 reward points. I were like WTF? Asking in IRC about this I had an answer that thursday nights tournament A was bugged. Well, we had signed up for tournament A in wednesday when it was time to play C. All the top teams (eF, vD etc..) played tournament C, we idled our way to victory in tournament A.

So, maybe we will someday get some real info about these. And yes, I truly hope they do something to those afkers.

One way to resolve it would be that if 2 teams (or more) get forfeit, the system would pair them against each other so there would be something to play.

DutchSmurf · May 11, 2007, 09:55 AM // 09:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Lack of game balance
Lack of guilds that can play the entire 4 or so hours
Too many guilds signing up for tourney but can't actually show
Crappy system with little penalty for not showing
Very high rewards for little work done

All that results in this horrible AT system. Thank you anet for screwing up a highly anticipated system that everyone's waited half a year for.

Wait, you mean you didn't expect this? The game is lacking balance since the first beta, GvGs have taken 25+ minutes since beta, people have been farming since beta, there has been no penalty in pvp since beta. So you can't blame ATs for those problems, they have been around for a long, long time. The ATs just show what is wrong with the game.
I never understood how you combine casual with a 30 minutes match. With a GvG easily lasting 30+ minutes, if you want to run a tournament, you need to allow time for that. So if you have 5 matches, you end with 5*30=2.5 hours easily. Of course you need time to switch builds between matches, so add another 4*15=1 hour. End result is a tournament that can take almost 4 hours easily. Ats aren't the problem here, GvG itself is.

So everyone should have expected these problems months ago. Or even years ago if they would have said something about ATs then.

Frantic-Sheep · May 11, 2007, 10:08 AM // 10:08

Quote:

With a GvG easily lasting 30+ minutes

Thats pretty exceptional, dont know what you run, 5 monks?

And I dont know if you ever played other competitive games, but as far as I know clanwars in FPS's for example take around the same time or even more.

Sophitia Leafblade · May 11, 2007, 10:12 AM // 10:12

AFk farming in PvP has been around for ages, see Fort Aspenwood, RA etc. the problem isnt so much the system but the players abusing the system.

ideologue · May 11, 2007, 01:07 PM // 13:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zui

I'm using Echo on Blame's post!

Seriously though. I stopped playing because the game was getting dull. I was planning to come back once I heard ATs were here and didn't suck. I'm still waiting. ANET, balance your game, and then make ATs suck less... I'm really hoping you do. Guild Wars is such an amazing game, and I want to play it. I really do. I'm just fed up with the current state of things.

Ohhh Nooooo Zui! don't quit!

but think this way, if guilds can get points by forfeiting, then the guilds that win through their opponent's forfeits will get more points and easy points too. Isn't that enough of an incentive for most guilds to show up?
I think right now it's just the beginning of DT, most guilds probably aren't even organize for this, but time will tell us everything

horta · May 11, 2007, 01:34 PM // 13:34

Well i think one big issue for this, is the time schedule that Anet implemented... I know they tried to widen the playable hours, so that every one can get a chance to go for it. But imo, its not working...

I think that they should get more Prime Time starting AT's, rather than putting them scalling in the midle morning or afternoon's... Im in GMT - 0 and my guild can only play 2 times a week...

One AT every night at Prime Time (22:00 local time) for each timezone would be very nice to have, and would assure some nice competive GvG's and less forfeits....

Edit: and how about making more AT's at the same time with less teams...puting a limit to the number of teams for each group would allow for tornaments to be quite shorter...Guilds should then be agreggated in groups by rating!

Oink The Pig · May 11, 2007, 03:09 PM // 15:09

Well, yesterday's update might have stealth-fixed the AFK farming. I tested it out last night; we forfeited first round and ended up in 8th place, but we didn't get any qualifier points for it.

Div · May 11, 2007, 03:49 PM // 15:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

people have been farming since beta, there has been no penalty in pvp since beta.

I never said people weren't farming since beta. And yes, if you go into a gvg match being afk, you are going to be penalized -15 rating on average in the previous system. Learn your facts before you say stupid stuff like that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

I never understood how you combine casual with a 30 minutes match.

How do you define casual then? Something that only lasts 10 minutes? A typical "casual" pvper plays 1-2 hours at a time, maybe 3-4 times a week. That's enough to set up and play a respectable amount of gvgs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

With a GvG easily lasting 30+ minutes, if you want to run a tournament, you need to allow time for that. So if you have 5 matches, you end with 5*30=2.5 hours easily. Of course you need time to switch builds between matches, so add another 4*15=1 hour. End result is a tournament that can take almost 4 hours easily. Ats aren't the problem here, GvG itself is.

How is it not AT's problem if it's forcing players to stick around for 4 straight hours? The whole tournament system is flawed, and the only reason why they were good in the past were because those were the top teams playing in seasonal playoffs, where they only have to set aside that block of time once every 1-2 months, and most of those players are more hardcore anyways. The tournament should not have been designed for public use like this, because it just turns to public abuse. This actually promotes an even stupider kind of ladder farming in reality.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DutchSmurf

So everyone should have expected these problems months ago. Or even years ago if they would have said something about ATs then.

Oh aren't you the brilliant prophet. Why can't the rest of us pvpers be as wise as you? Maybe because if we were, the pvp community would be full of snobs like you who think they know it all.

Seriously, what's the point of your post? To defend the AT system or to make yourself look smart or something by saying that stuff?