Curse

Medion · Dec 22, 2006, 06:43 PM // 18:43

http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...sentfuture.php

Quite some news, I'm curious to see how the tournaments work though, Smurfing and Champion-point farming seem totally useless now too (for which I'm glad).

But this suprises me most of all...
The Hero Battle tournaments seem a bit...weird to me. I've always thought GW to be a PvP game, giving the support to TA/HA would have been better I think.

Can't wait to see the details though.

ump · Dec 22, 2006, 06:44 PM // 18:44

http://www.guildwars.com/competitive...sentfuture.php

Quote:

The Past, Present, and Future of Guild Wars Competitive Play
By Michael Gills, Tournament Coordinator

Guild Wars competitive play has had an exciting history of intense competition, fun seasons, and surprise upsets. From the regionals of the GWWC and the championship run of The Last Pride to the surprise finish of the American teams at the GWFC (though War Machine earned the championship), all the way to the unexpected victory of Peace and Harmony in the recent Winterfest Playoffs, Guild Wars has compiled a rich history of GvG competition.

Now, it is time for ArenaNet to advance Guild Wars competitive play into new areas and to use newer technologies to continue the excitement.

Before I talk about the future, though, I'd like to discuss the past and its culmination in the present state of Guild Wars competition.

Looking Back

The GWWC
When I first started at ArenaNet, the plans for the GWWC (Guild Wars World Championship) were about to go out the door. On my first day I was asked to look over the plans and use my experience in competitive play programs to bring them up to speed.

After addressing several questions about the initial plan, we devised the official rules and jumped right into the regional competition for the GWWC.

In the first regional event, guilds competed against others from the same region with the top 2 finishers from each region earning invitations and trips to Taiwan for the finals. We wanted the top 16 guilds from each region competing to win the trip, but we soon learned that not as many players had or could get passports (a requirement to compete) as we had initially thought.

So instead of 16 for each region, Europe had 10 guilds compete, America had 12, and Korea ran a live competition with their top 6 guilds.

After intense matches and several upsets (Ep and EW anyone?), we had our 6 participants for the championships.

The championship itself was a lot of fun (read Saurus's "IQ Goes to Taipei" posts at the Team IQ Forums for a player's perspective), and we discovered a lot that we could improve for the next event.

The GWFC
After introducing the popular cape trims in our first fun season, we started in on the Guild Wars Factions Championship series.

We wanted to create a longer and more exciting series for this next championship, and with the inclusion of new regions for Guild Wars (Taiwan and Japan), we wanted to provide worldwide opportunities that allowed guilds to qualify for the championship itself.

After three exciting seasons with their own upsets (I Black Widow I over The Last Pride anyone?), the challenging Last Chance 72-hour grinder (Idiot Savants wins!), and the unexpected changes in the end (Sacrament of the Waooru defeats Treacherous Empire and then relinquishes their slot for the GWFC due to scheduling conflicts), we ended up with nearly the same list of guilds for the GWFC that we had for the GWWC (the same two American and Korean guilds, a Finnish guild with many of the same players from the GWWC and the Esoteric Warriors who previously came so close to winning).

Leading up to the GWFC, we also tested out new game play and event styles at several live events such as the E3 Challenge (at the last E3 ever), our sealed play event at Gen Con Indianapolis, and the sealed play and Guild Wars Live events at The Penny Arcade Expo.

The GWFC championship, held in Leipzig, Germany ended up much closer to the type of mega event we had always wanted, with thousands of fans showing up to watch and root for their favorites. We even managed a much cooler booth AND a great day of fan activities held on Sunday to boot!

So once we were getting championships to be the huge exciting events we wanted, it was time to start looking at the systems we used to get there. That is where our recent Autumn and Winterfest seasons came in.

Looking Around

I've written in the past about many of the topics we tested in these recent seasons, such as ladder concerns, Swiss rounds, and tie-breakers as well as expanding the number of participating guilds and a graduated prize scale. By testing these and other ideas (such as a limited skill pool) in recent seasons we learned a lot about our existing tournament systems and how far they can go.

The recent Winterfest playoffs for example, featured 32 participating guilds. This was our largest online tournament yet! However, to run this event we needed eight ArenaNet staff willing to get up at 7 a.m. and sit in the office both Saturday and Sunday morning. Added to this concern, my main office computer went down with the recent wind storms here in Seattle and we had to scramble to recreate the tournament pairings and mailing lists as the event ran.

Plus, manually verifying skill compliance for the limited skill event and changing guild halls for participants between each round made running these tournaments harder and harder with more guilds participating. The more guilds, rules, and new formats that we add to a tournament, the more complex each round becomes, and adding more staff to manage this complexity doesn't necessarily help. The feedback we've received from players about larger events has been positive, but if we want to continue holding these large events, we clearly need a new system.

Looking Ahead

Our goal for competitive play has always been simple: to create an easily-understood and user-friendly system that encourages more players to care about, participate in, and earn fame and glory in competitive Guild Wars play.

We understand that the current ladder system has encouraged some "not fun" behaviors such as smurfing or point farming. We know it can be hard to find, let alone schedule, eight players who are available to practice and play at the same time. We've experienced how difficult it is to schedule matches across several international time zones. And we've learned that most players enjoy playing in actual tournaments more than the grinding needed to do well on the current tournament ladder.

So, now it is time to make some real changes in competitive play for Guild Wars.

Finally, the Good Stuff

Daily Automated Tournaments
This is the first big change coming up, most likely in late January. Instead of having to spend hours playing lots of matches to climb the GvG ladder, it will all come down to how your guild does in actual tournament play.

Automated tournaments mean we will be able to schedule and run hundreds, if not thousands, of tournaments at all levels every year. Each of these tournaments will provide participants the opportunity for fame and glory, in-game prizes, and opportunities to participate in global championships.

We will schedule automated tournaments to run two or three times a day starting at beneficial times for players in all times zones. In addition, these tournaments will be able to handle any number of participants, automatically determine match start times (and countdown times until the next round), announce pairings, and report results of each event for publication on our web site.

Free play GvG matches will still exist in their current form BUT the ELO rating on them will be greatly reduced. Guilds can enter free play matches for fun and practice, but for all real purposes, these matches will have little effect on each guild's overall ladder rating or ranking.

One important change you should all be aware of is that you will HAVE to be a member of a guild for 30 days before your account will be allowed to enter an automated tournament for that guild. Just as we required long term membership in a guild for our previous tournaments, it will again be required for the automated tournaments. This means that guests will NOT be allowed for tournament play (thus, the end of smurf and tank guilds)! I recommend creating or joining the guild you want to compete in NOW so you will be eligible for the first automated tournaments when they start in early 2007.

Tournament Ladder to Reset One Last Time
Yes, you read that correct. At the start of 2007, we will reset the tournament ladder, for the very last time. As previously discussed, the main purpose of the ladder and the ELO system was to provide mathematical strength measurements of competitors and their history.

While the ladder will still be around, and players can view the competitive history of each guild, the focus will shift to how well guilds do in individual tournaments as opposed to grinding the ladder.

1v1 Tournament Ladder and Championship Series
This is probably the biggest expansion of all. Given the introduction of Hero Battles with the release of Guild Wars Nightfall, it only makes sense for us to offer this as an additional format for competitive play.

Starting in early 2007, alongside the 2007 Guild Wars GvG World Championship series, we will run a similar series for 1v1 Hero Battles (1 player and 3 Heroes vs. 1 player and 3 Heroes).

This new format will get the same support that GvG has, including its own tournament ladder, automated tournaments, and a world championship event.

And with the advent of this system, we will also track individual account statistics! This means we will be able to call out individual accomplishments as well as accomplishments of competitive guilds.

Details! We want the details!

Those will be coming soon. The rules and prize structure for the 2007 Guild Wars World Championship series (for GvG and 1v1) will be coming out in the next few weeks.

Our programming team and designers are working hard on these competitive system updates and, as they get completed, we will let you know the specifics.

While they are doing that, we will also be working on all sorts of additional competitive play support such as expanding and improving the Xunlai Tournament House, and looking at additional ways of tracking and presenting information for players and fans alike.

The history of competitive Guild Wars has been exciting. Now we look forward to a future that will take the excitement we have all built together and ratchet it up several more notches.

TheOneMephisto · Dec 22, 2006, 07:02 PM // 19:02

-gapes-

Looks... interesting, I'm not sure what to think of it.

And why would they make HvH tourney's over TA? I JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!

taxed · Dec 22, 2006, 07:29 PM // 19:29

I must admit it does look interesting. For my guild, it's going to suck huge for the first month or two though. You see, we split off those who are interested in high level competition to a new guild in our alliance. We are small at the moment, only 8 members and rely on guesting some members from our main guild to field 8 players. With this system, I fear that it will take some time to build up enough players to GvG on a regular basis. In fact, for at least the first month we won't be able to compete in the mini-tournaments.

I hope A-net takes this into consideration, and makes it so that any player on the roster of an established (more than 30 day old guild)on Jan 1st could particpate.

Patccmoi · Dec 22, 2006, 07:54 PM // 19:54

Wow, that looks interesting but kinda weird at the same time.

One thing i gotta say is that i don't like being unable to have guests for tournaments when it's the only real thing affecting ladder (from what they say anyway). Those statements just seem contradictory:

"We know it can be hard to find, let alone schedule, eight players who are available to practice and play at the same time"

"We will schedule automated tournaments to run two or three times a day starting at beneficial times for players in all times zones [...] you will HAVE to be a member of a guild for 30 days before your account will be allowed to enter an automated tournament for that guild"

So... they're conscious that it can be hard to schedule 8 players at a given time. But THEY set the time and they don't allow guests? I know that it might be hard for a lot of guilds to meet those requirement, and changing guild will also mean 1 month without tournament.

I really don't understand that no guest part. I guess their goal is to prevent smurfing obviously. But guests have helped so many guilds managing to GvG more regularly, taking them out seems like quite a weird idea.

I really like the constant tournaments. I remember when i played WC3 some years ago that was a lot of fun and even if you didn't have time to play enough to get in top 10 you could beat top 10 teams in tournaments. But i'm worried at how much it might limit our ability to GvG too (when it counts anyway).

Will have to wait for more details!

FoxBat · Dec 22, 2006, 07:56 PM // 19:56

HB better get a major facelift if there's going to be any chance of taking it seriously. A series of holding/shrine gank vs holding/shrine gank builds isn't going to be terribly entertaining.

Sounds all good for GvG though, and helps fill the "gap" of an 8v8 tournament for everybody.

Thom · Dec 22, 2006, 08:04 PM // 20:04

So many things right here. Thank you Anet.

No more ladder grinding. Easier game scheduling for gamers with lives. No more ladder resets requiring more grinding. Tournements for all, not only the elite. Less penalty for playing practicing for a weaker squad during a season: no more getting on the smurf when we have a new person monking. Teams will be less able to ride a single gimmick into top level play.

Individual hero ladder is exactly the kind of thing HvH needed to become a serious game type. Guild Wars always needed a track for individual excellence and HvH is interesting enough to create a fun ladder.

Thom Bangalter · Dec 22, 2006, 08:14 PM // 20:14

looks like gladiator's arena should be adding a hero vs hero subfolder, since apparently it's valued more than team arenas.

I'm going to miss pugging and guest membering though

Thomas.knbk · Dec 22, 2006, 08:27 PM // 20:27

I must say I only understand half of it. Will you not be able to GvG the first 30 days you're in a new guild? That'd suck.

Medion · Dec 22, 2006, 08:28 PM // 20:28

Quote:

I really don't understand that no guest part. I guess their goal is to prevent smurfing obviously. But guests have helped so many guilds managing to GvG more regularly, taking them out seems like quite a weird idea

To prevent smurfing they could just have allowed 1 or 2 guests to play with them at a time, because that would make smurfing more difficult, while leaving the option to guest people open (how often do you take 4 guests for serious non-smurfing GvG anyway?)

Mithie · Dec 22, 2006, 09:21 PM // 21:21

GG Anet.
Individual accomplishments in GVGs?
All matches become "free play"?
Nothing means anything in this new system. Everything will be gimmicks to blitzkrieg the tournaments. It will be the mediocre guilds that hit those specific tournaments at specific times that will get the recognition, because everything becomes a measure of individual wins instead of overall season performance.

ANET: THE SYSTEM WASN'T BROKEN. WHY CHANGE IT AT SUCH A CRAZY LEVEL?

Sure there are smurfs, and pugs, but for every pug and smurf you play, you also play 10 real teams, and your rating is still an accurate gauge of your guild's skill. Now, instead of a gimmick dominated metagame, the entire metagame itself is going to be a gimmick.

I don't like it. Not one bit.

FoxBat · Dec 22, 2006, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mithie

GG Anet.
Nothing means anything in this new system. Everything will be gimmicks to blitzkrieg the tournaments. It will be the mediocre guilds that hit those specific tournaments at specific times that will get the recognition, because everything becomes a measure of individual wins instead of overall season performance.

Depends on the tournament structure. If it's pure swiss, then yes this is very possible. OTOH if its swiss followed by elimination for the top 4 or 8, any tournament with a few good guilds enrolled should place in the finals and steamroll the gimmicks.

Unless it's a fresh and totally awesome gimmick like BRB, which went to 3rd place in the old ladder system anyway.

Also exciting about this system is they could offer tournaments in different formats for variety. Tournaments that limit skill selection to a chapter like the "fun season" tournies. Tournaments limited to a specific map so people build for that. Testing out fun things like new NPCs or environmental conditions. Maybe even sealed deck.

Patccmoi · Dec 22, 2006, 10:38 PM // 22:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mithie

GG Anet.
Individual accomplishments in GVGs?
All matches become "free play"?
Nothing means anything in this new system. Everything will be gimmicks to blitzkrieg the tournaments. It will be the mediocre guilds that hit those specific tournaments at specific times that will get the recognition, because everything becomes a measure of individual wins instead of overall season performance.

ANET: THE SYSTEM WASN'T BROKEN. WHY CHANGE IT AT SUCH A CRAZY LEVEL?

Sure there are smurfs, and pugs, but for every pug and smurf you play, you also play 10 real teams, and your rating is still an accurate gauge of your guild's skill. Now, instead of a gimmick dominated metagame, the entire metagame itself is going to be a gimmick.

I don't like it. Not one bit.

Individual accomplishment is for the Hero Battles tournaments. Unless you wanna give credit to the heroes (and in many cases you should =p) i guess it's individual accomplishment for the player there.

I don't see how you can say that gimmicks will own this system more. Tournament play means you know who you will be fighting on what map. Both teams can prepare for it. If you know guild X is known for running Y gimmick, you can basically make a counter build. Imo it prevents a LOT of gimmick from controlling the metagame and a guild only running 1 build all the time that is gimmicky (and there was tons of that, like guilds running OFlame spike all season, etc.) will be disadvantaged because their opponent knowing they'll face them will be able to include counters in their build. So either they'll learn to run more balanced stuff or at least alternate between a couple of different gimmicks or they'll just lose in tournament every time they face a decent guild knowing who they are.

I can't really see how it would be a tournament without end bracket, and i can't see how the best guilds won't get there and dish it out. Unless they're ALL out at tourney time, 'newbs coming in at the good time' shouldn't actually win any more than in season.

The other type of continuous online tournament i know was from WC3, and the way it worked there was that everyone could start entering games for the tournament at say 7pm. Until 9 pm, you could click a button 'play tournament game' and you'd face a random opponent that had the same record as you in the tourney (so if you win, you'll face someone at 1-0. If you win again, you'll face a team at 2-0. Etc.). There was a maximum of 8 games you could play (in GW i figure it'd be less) so that people winning games really fast didn't have much of an advantage. To be fair in GW it'd likely have to be like max game = 'time for tourney / 25-30 min' so that teams going to VoD aren't too penalized. In the end, 16 teams with the best score (which was based on record first and ties were split depending on opponent record, like in the swiss tournament) were put in brackets and there was a final to know who won the full tournament.

The bad thing i see with a system like that in GW is mostly the amount of time that would possibly be required to go through a full tournament. Keeping 8 people from guild WITHOUT GUESTS for 3-5 hours straight might be really hard for any non-hardcore guild. Then again, nothing says it would follow the same tournament structure yet.

The Silver Star · Dec 22, 2006, 10:54 PM // 22:54

Seems interesting but like the changes they made to HA cant they leave it how it is? the way many many people know it and love it?

Oh and another thing they should have "trails" for such big updates eg put it inplace for 2 weeks and see what happens, i dont like it how we get "thrown" such big updates and changes and just have to put up with it or stop playing.

skillsbas8 · Dec 22, 2006, 11:00 PM // 23:00

The thing that bothers me the most is that HvH is getting more pvp attention than TA. That is a flat out joke.

Seikhor · Dec 22, 2006, 11:08 PM // 23:08

Yea, Team Arena should get more considération.

Sinful Doom · Dec 22, 2006, 11:23 PM // 23:23

When Anet lowered champ points from 1500+ to 1200+ IMO they created most of the problems with people PUG farming/ganking to get higher titles. Another worthless title had been created much like letting IWAY ruin tombs for as long as it did.

I really dont understand why in the world a person will be required to wait a month to participate in "real" gvg. As we all know there is alot of drama that occurs in this game and within guilds. Therefore a person leaving or getting kicked by a guild might just say "I'm not going to wait a month to play in meaningfull gvg again, I'll just see you in the next game I go play." In this case the quality of PvP gameplay will continue to go down in Guildwars. I think a week is more than enough trial time for a player to wait in a new guild.

I really dont see this tournement type thing working either from reading it initially. I think it will be extreemly difficult getting 8 members on each day and with enough time to donate to a whole tournement. Espcially now that you wont be able to guest people for the tournements to fill a position or two.

/concerned

Redfeather1975 · Dec 22, 2006, 11:30 PM // 23:30

I think the good thing about hero tournaments is that it'll get more players into thinking how to create team builds.
At least I hope it does! I'm sure people will go in with team builds they get off wiki or some other place, but I'm really hoping it causes more of the players to sit down and think about how professions can play off of each other in team builds.

Bankai · Dec 22, 2006, 11:43 PM // 23:43

Alright. We were talking about this for a bit on #gwp. At some point, we started talking about the 1 month requirement for Automated Tourneys (AT). The 1 month requirement and no guests has one huge consequence: If you are missing 1 player, you can't play at all. Kthxbai. This is obviously to annihilate ladder farming, smurfs and Pugs dominating ATs. However, this also means that if a normal, competitive guild can't field 1 player, they can't play either.

Argument 1:
Because competitive guilds will always want to be able to field a gvg team during ATs, and guests and sudden memberers are a no-no, top guilds will invite more people into their guild, so they always have back-up players.

Especially since the ATs will take some time, and you can't quickly invite a guest if someone has to leave, guilds will automatically become bigger.

However, ATs bring more consequences. Since most of your rating (if not all) will come from ATs, you need to be able to attend them. And there will be 3 a day, different timezones.

Now, let's do some math. WM fights in one AT, and gets 25 rating (hypothetical). Guild [TEA] fights in all 3 ATs, and get 10 rating each time. Since 3 times 10 is more than 25, TEA is the overal winner, even though WM is clearly superior. So what does this mean? Quantity>Quality.

Argument 2:
People will start to make multi-cultural guilds, so they can attend the ATs in all 3 timezones. Since Quantity will overrule Quality, guilds will join up and form big ones, and they can all happily attend the ATs.

That's fine and all. But what about Pugging. Pugging is a very popular activity of top-players. There's quite some high-ranked players who are just guildless, and member for pug-guilds and guest for high-ranked guilds to boost their rating. However, with the no-guest rule and the 1 month till AT rule, they will almost be forced to join a normal guild, to be able to play both for fun and competitively.

Argument 3:
Since pugging will die, people are more likely to join big high-ranked guilds. Why? Since they always have people ready. If you're in a guild with 40 active pvpers, even if 1/3rd is of every timezone, there are probably 10 other people online. This means you can always Pug (Not really Pug anymore) whatever you want.

Conclusion:
Big guilds will join up to get massive rating, always be able to GvG.

The consequences:
Since guilds will join up and absorb other guilds, the ladder will move up a lot. Teams that used to be in top 100 are now suddenly in top 50. At the same time, the big guilds will always want a healthy chunk of players, and since quantity>quality, they'll care somewhat less about the skill of a player, and will eventually accept somewhat lower-skilled players. This means that somewhat newer and non-elite players have a much bigger chance of joining a high-ranked guild and becoming skilled at GvG.

phoenixtech · Dec 23, 2006, 12:04 AM // 00:04

Yeah that 30-day limit thing is really something they need to get feedback from the community from. There's always alot of guild drama and 30 day turnover seems like pretty long time.