Arena Season 4 - no more welfare epics

[HRose]

It is a system with far more potential for abuse than WoW's. In WoW, the difference is a few % points of passive abilities for the most part. Yeah it sucks, and it is giving an advantage to a player who already has a skill advantage, which is dumb. However...

AoC seems to be setting itself up for a system more like DAOC's realm points (or master levels), where a higher-up person actually can use extra abilities, powers, whatever, that a low RR person can't do at all. *That's* why it sucks, and that's 10 times worse than a system where one guy has slightly better gear but otherwise has the same capabilities. Endgame PVP shouldn't be an additional level grind if they want any kind of parity to exist on the battlefield.

DAoC worked because it was open PvP, so more flexible.

If a powerful group enters the fray, you can fight that with more numbers, and it becomes an epic battle on its own. DAoC wasn't just 1vs1, it was a game with an higher level of strategy so that power and realm abilities weren't everything.

Does AoC limit numbers and still give advantages to one side?

[Ingmar]

It is a system with far more potential for abuse than WoW's. In WoW, the difference is a few % points of passive abilities for the most part. Yeah it sucks, and it is giving an advantage to a player who already has a skill advantage, which is dumb. However...

AoC seems to be setting itself up for a system more like DAOC's realm points (or master levels), where a higher-up person actually can use extra abilities, powers, whatever, that a low RR person can't do at all. *That's* why it sucks, and that's 10 times worse than a system where one guy has slightly better gear but otherwise has the same capabilities. Endgame PVP shouldn't be an additional level grind if they want any kind of parity to exist on the battlefield.

DAoC worked because it was open PvP, so more flexible.

If a powerful group enters the fray, you can fight that with more numbers, and it becomes an epic battle on its own. DAoC wasn't just 1vs1, it was a game with an higher level of strategy so that power and realm abilities weren't everything.

Does AoC limit numbers and still give advantages to one side?

If they don't limit numbers on a given "side" then they're in for a much worse problem. See: Mordred relic status.

[Dren]

No we don't want to spend our days rolling PUG's. My comment reflects that we sit in ques of up to 70 minutes just waiting for a dam match. After two weeks of that, our guild said fuck it and we no longer bother with BG's period.

But you WERE spending your days rolling PUG's.  I'm not saying that is your fault or aim, but was how it was.  One premade would go in and see another premade and drop out.  That not only left a pug to come in and face certain loss, but they come in really really late and by the time the full team was populated, the match was half over.  It was a double whammy for PUG groups and gave the premade an obvious win regardless of any skill or even gear.

Does it suck that premades can't play against premades even when they choose to do it?  Yep.  It is just very telling that now that the previous practice was killed, those premades have decided to go back to PUGs or quit.  If the same number of premades were playing today as they were before, you wouldn't be having a queue issue.  The vast majority of premades were created for the specific task of rolling pugs for marks and honor.

[Gobbeldygook]

Well, I was looking at it from the "person trying to get into pvp" angle. The blue pvp set is not much to begin with, so everyone will have to grind BGs for honor, only to find out that they can't even use their honor to buy the accessories because they need a 1600 rating for that too! So they go into arenas [in blues still] and get completely obliterated by everyone who's been farming arena points since the start of s1 and enters season4 with 3/5 s3, 1/5 s4 (at least).

Yeah, the S1->S3 comparison is also fair to make.  I would still maintain that it's not too big a jump; For example, that's still only about a 2.5% change in crit % chance.  Yes, if you're in full season 1 vs a season 3 team, you've got an uphill battle ahead of you.  It wouldn't be enough to simply be better than them.  You would have to play MUCH better than them.  It's still a winnable fight.  Several friends of mine routinely just screw around on alts in blues and stop in the 1700-1800's.  There are verifiable examples of folks in S1 and blues still hitting 2K rating this season and not, apparently, through win trading (although they did have a druid, which is close).

RE: arPen - Yeah, it's the biggest difference from S1 or S2.  ArPen is amazingly awesome.  Even though my PVE role is prot, I'm still seriously consdering picking up the new melee DPS badge ring.  It's pretty clear that Blizzard regards Armor Pen as a failed experiment.  They probably kept the arena realms at S2 solely so armor pen wouldn't be so prevalent.  None of the new badge plate sports any armor pen.  Instead, they're wasted the budget on haste rating.  My guess is that the stat is going to go *poof* in WOTLK.

[Dren]

Well, I was looking at it from the "person trying to get into pvp" angle. The blue pvp set is not much to begin with, so everyone will have to grind BGs for honor, only to find out that they can't even use their honor to buy the accessories because they need a 1600 rating for that too! ...


-- Z.

No, the way I read it, they can't get the S4 accessories.  They can still get the slightly less optimum accessories just like before.  They can also get the majority of S3 with modest ratings.  They can get all of S2.  They can get all of that just from playing BGs and casually (10 matches/week) playing the arenas.  

I'm still not seeing the increase in the gap that is being talked about here.  What am I missing?

If we are just saying that the basic system WoW has is not very nice to newbs, I'll completely agree with that.  I'm not really seeing where this is worse than before.  In fact, I'd say it might be even better.  The gap between S1 and S3 (now) is bigger than between S2 and S4 (future), I'd wager.  Once S2's are open to be purchased with honor and marks alone, people should be able to become quite competent regardless of Arena shenanigans.

[Koyasha]

One thing that's unclear in this is whether or not the S3 bracer, ring, and boots are still going to be available through honor after S4 comes out.  When S2 gave way to S3, the old bracer and boots disappeared, replaced by the new ones.  I'm not sure if the ring did or not.  If the same applies to S3 gear when S4 comes out, then yes, the person grinding honor without arena rating will lose the ability to obtain a bracer and boots without going to the badge vendor on Quel'danas and shelling out a pretty sizable number of badges for them.

[Nebu]

Arenas would be much better sport pvp if players were all granted the exact same gear on entry.  Then people with high rankings would be able to make a stronger claim that they were indeed better players.  Seems like the most sensible solution... though it will never happen. 

[HRose]

Arenas would be much better sport pvp if players were all granted the exact same gear on entry.  Then people with high rankings would be able to make a stronger claim that they were indeed better players.  Seems like the most sensible solution... though it will never happen. 

Because it would make more sense to make a Warcraft Arena game that does just that without any actual PvP or PvE. Just make a character, pick skills and fight.

A focus on Arenas is simply the antithesis of a mmorpg.

[Musashi]

Arenas would be much better sport pvp if players were all granted the exact same gear on entry.  Then people with high rankings would be able to make a stronger claim that they were indeed better players.  Seems like the most sensible solution... though it will never happen. 

Isn't this how it is on the new tournament realms?

[Ingmar]

Arenas would be much better sport pvp if players were all granted the exact same gear on entry.  Then people with high rankings would be able to make a stronger claim that they were indeed better players.  Seems like the most sensible solution... though it will never happen. 

Isn't this how it is on the new tournament realms?

CoX battlegrounds also force you to a certain matching level, though it is easier to do that in a gear-free game obviously. But there's precedent.

[Threash]

Does it suck that premades can't play against premades even when they choose to do it?  Yep.  It is just very telling that now that the previous practice was killed, those premades have decided to go back to PUGs or quit.  If the same number of premades were playing today as they were before, you wouldn't be having a queue issue.  The vast majority of premades were created for the specific task of rolling pugs for marks and honor.

The change to premades was not announced, most people running premades after the patch had absolutely no clue there was any change at all.  But they noticed the queue times, i don't care how much you want to play another premade you won't sit there for 45 mins for the priviledge.  It wasn't losing the ability to roll pugs that killed premades, the queues were horrible before anyone even knew there was a change.

[Kail]

Arenas would be much better sport pvp if players were all granted the exact same gear on entry.  Then people with high rankings would be able to make a stronger claim that they were indeed better players.  Seems like the most sensible solution... though it will never happen. 

I don't understand why Blizzard isn't pushing battlegrounds as their sport PvP.  Something like AV seems a lot more sport-like than the arena.  The matches are (usually) slower, the action is easier to understand (your team is capturing and defending territory rather than gaming some arcane system of cooldowns and debuffs that only the hardcore are going to grasp).  There's something for every class to do, too, even prot spec warriors and paladins.  Seems like it would be more interesting to watch this little "battle in a bottle" kind of thing than just "WoW Team Deathmatch".

[Righ]

A focus on Arenas is simply the antithesis of a mmorpg.

Incorrect. With very few exceptions, MMORPGs cater heavily to the catass. It doesn't matter if the mechanic is gear or levels or gold, the barrier is time. Playing better or grouping more may reduce the time to accumulate the required asset, but those with the most free time to play have the greatest advantage. The core demographic of PvP players in MMORPGs then are not interested in tests of skill, but tests of time, because they have already excelled in that regard. An arena system that favors those with the best gear and which rewards them with better gear is entirely compatible with the rest of a time->gear game.

It is for this reason that you find that the sociopathic fuckers who obsess over PvP in MMORPGs want a steeper leveling curve, harsh penalties for losing, a smaller percentage of people to get rewards, PvP looting, and any other mechanism that creates further time-based obstacles to overcome. And this is enabled by the subscription model and the desire by publishers to lock players in for as many months as possible on a treadmill to extend revenues.

Arenas, especially in the sense Blizzard has implemented them, are fully compatible with MMORPGs.

[Ragnoros]

A focus on Arenas is simply the antithesis of a mmorpg.

Incorrect. -Stuff-

I believe you might have miss read his point. MMORPGs are supposed to be massive. Arenas are not massive in any way. Except grind 

Or maybe I did.

[Dren]

Does it suck that premades can't play against premades even when they choose to do it?  Yep.  It is just very telling that now that the previous practice was killed, those premades have decided to go back to PUGs or quit.  If the same number of premades were playing today as they were before, you wouldn't be having a queue issue.  The vast majority of premades were created for the specific task of rolling pugs for marks and honor.

The change to premades was not announced, most people running premades after the patch had absolutely no clue there was any change at all.  But they noticed the queue times, i don't care how much you want to play another premade you won't sit there for 45 mins for the priviledge.  It wasn't losing the ability to roll pugs that killed premades, the queues were horrible before anyone even knew there was a change.

We are just going to have to disagree on this because there is no way to prove which came first, longer queue times or premades figuring out they can't get quick PUG rolls.  I still contend that the reason for the long queue times is that there aren't enough premade in the system at any given time to give quick match-ups.  The reason?  The premades that go in each night looking to roll over PUGs over and over immediately found out that this was not going to work anymore and dissolved.  There were plenty of premade before the change to support low queue times IMO.

If you were a premade team that looked for challenging match-ups regardless of who was on the other side of the battelfield, you would never have noticed those other nefarious premade teams.  The reason?  They dropped out of the instance as soon as they saw you coming. 

Running as a PUG, I would see 1 out of 3 matches be ruined by premades that ran this way.  They were there and they were plentiful.  If you ran in premades all the time, you wouldn't see a single one because they were all trying to avoid each other.

The one night I ran in a nefarious premade from my server we spent the whole night avoiding other premades.  Again, this would happen about 1 out of 3 times.  The ONE time the leader decided to stop jumping queues and fight that other premade it was because it was a horde premade from our own server.  We got wtfpwn'ed bad.  Then we had to sit and listen to the leader bitch about never fighting another premade again no matter what we all said.  It was a waste of time to him.  This is about the time I quit the group and never looked back at that <channel>.

The one thing we can agree on is that that kind of practice completely ruined a good thing.  I loved it when our guild would get together and run BG's for a night.  It was fun and we didn't care who it was on the other side.  We queued and played.  That is just not possible anymore because "We can't have nice things."

This area of BG's was ruined to save the fun for the masses.  There are way way more people doing PUGs than premades, thus the change.

[tazelbain]

Great details on how metagaming jacks things up, Dren.

[Xanthippe]

I agree with Dren - I faced so many premades in pugs, yet when I joined premades, the vast majority of the time, the other side's premades would leave the BG when they saw they were facing a premade.

Most people in premades were looking for quick, efficient honor, not even fights - because aren't efficient.

It seems to me that most people playing WoW go for efficiency over fun, which is a sad state of affairs, but it's designed to be that way unfortunately.

[Righ]

I believe you might have miss read his point. MMORPGs are supposed to be massive. Arenas are not massive in any way. Except grind 

Or maybe I did.

Ah well, maybe that. But then WoW is a 5/25/40 person game with a communal mall to hang out in, not massively multiplayer.

[HRose]

Nope, I don't mean massive. I mean persistent. Giving a sense of continuity.

A good arena game doesn't need long character development or an interesting world. This is why there are games that do just that. And do it better.

The idea of progress and character development that are the heart of WoW don't fit with the "eSport" idea.

[Fordel]

I agree with Dren - I faced so many premades in pugs, yet when I joined premades, the vast majority of the time, the other side's premades would leave the BG when they saw they were facing a premade.

Most people in premades were looking for quick, efficient honor, not even fights - because aren't efficient.

It seems to me that most people playing WoW go for efficiency over fun, which is a sad state of affairs, but it's designed to be that way unfortunately.

Part of the issue is some people feel winning is the most fun. Others feel 'progress' is the most fun.

We disagree, but that is the issue. Not everyone has the same idea of fun. Some people are broken.

[slog]

I agree with Dren - I faced so many premades in pugs, yet when I joined premades, the vast majority of the time, the other side's premades would leave the BG when they saw they were facing a premade.

Most people in premades were looking for quick, efficient honor, not even fights - because aren't efficient.

It seems to me that most people playing WoW go for efficiency over fun, which is a sad state of affairs, but it's designed to be that way unfortunately.

Part of the issue is some people feel winning is the most fun. Others feel 'progress' is the most fun.

We disagree, but that is the issue. Not everyone has the same idea of fun. Some people are broken.

The #1 reason people did this is the ridiculous amount of honor it required to get the shittiest PvP gear available.  250,000 + honor AND  all those goddamn badges (WSG, BLECH).  This has been slightly mitigated since by the addition of the shitty blue PvP gear placed on the rep vendors.

However, when you out a MASSSIVE GRIND infront of an MMORPG player, it's only natural that a percentage of the player base will seek out ways to minimize the parts that are not fun.

[Hellinar]

Better players get better gear so that they can wtfpwn noobs even more easily and the gear disparity continues making it ever harder for freshly minted 70s to be anything but fodder.

What's wrong with this picture?

How about this - Blizzard gives everyone one pvp purple/month just because they pay Blizzard a subscription fee. 

Or how about naked arenas.

Or how about less disparity in gear.

What I want is to be able to curse the players that kill me. Say on a timer that renews every few days, so it is something you have to think about. Make the curse a nasty debuff that lasts days. But the probability of the curse working is tied to how much more powerful the opposing player is. So owning a real newb would become dangerous to a powerful player. If the newbs  have their curse power up, the result could get nasty.

Remove the zero risk to owning lower level players, and I think you would see more people playing PvP. Implementation of a system thats hard to game might be tough though.

[Zetor]

UO-style noto griefing, mmmm. You'd see level 1s suiciding on mages trying to farm stuff and getting stuck in the frost nova radius on purpose (or consecrate if it's a paladin... or whirlwind if it's a warrior.. etc), killing themselves on reactive abilities (most classes have one), a bunch of lower level characters zerging a lv70 so he'd either have to take the humiliating death, or fight back and get cursed.

If you don't think these things'd happen (people making level1 characters / using low level alts to grief 70s, they could also have a throwaway 70 with no armor and perma-res sickness, especially if it's a warlock so they could lifetap to 1 hp every time), you have a much higher opinion of the WOW playerbase than I do. ;p


-- Z.

[K9]

Hello 

[Kail]

UO-style noto griefing, mmmm. You'd see level 1s suiciding on mages trying to farm stuff and getting stuck in the frost nova radius on purpose (or consecrate if it's a paladin... or whirlwind if it's a warrior.. etc), killing themselves on reactive abilities (most classes have one), a bunch of lower level characters zerging a lv70 so he'd either have to take the humiliating death, or fight back and get cursed.

If you don't think these things'd happen (people making level1 characters / using low level alts to grief 70s, they could also have a throwaway 70 with no armor and perma-res sickness, especially if it's a warlock so they could lifetap to 1 hp every time), you have a much higher opinion of the WOW playerbase than I do. ;p

I'm not sure exactly how level ones griefing level seventies is supposed to be a hideous abomination against nature while level seventies griefing level ones is A-OK.  A level seventy can do a lot of different stuff in a lot of different places; a lower or mid level character can only do one thing (level) and they have to do it in a very specific area.  So yes, if a level seventy decides to start rolling around throwing AOEs in Ashenvale or something, he might possibly get smacked for it.  So what?

Not that I think this is an ideal solution, or anything.  Migrating to a PvE server would solve this too, and wouldn't require any weird "Curse of Guilt" rules or anything.  Being able to gank lowbies with impunity seems to be the main draw of a PvP server; why mess with it?

[Zetor]

The difference between level 70s griefing lowbies and lowbies griefing level 70s is: in the former case, the lowbie can call in / switch to a 70 to fight back, but the 70 can't, unless he wants to get "cursed". That 'curse' idea is just way too exploitable (and I'm not referring to 70s farming in lowbie areas.. I was more thinking lowbies getting to outlands / isle of queldanas with assistance and then abusing the system to grief certain 70s doing their daily quests or whatever; all you'd need to do is find a paladin killing stuff and stand in the consecrate until death)...

In fact, if the system takes gear into account (which it should, as a lv70 in full season3 can easily take 2-3 lv70s in greens) they don't even need to be lowbies, they'd just drop all gear in the bank (or get on an alt that doesn't have anything better than greens), get rez sickness, and punch/annoy people trying to farm until they finally got killed (or until they got a kill because the 'victim' wouldn't fight back), at which point they could curse 'em.

I didn't say 70s griefing lowbies was "fine" (I occasionally travel to lowbie alliance lands on my lv70 alliance character to kill high-level horde PKs).. but this solution would make things worse, while not really solving the original problem (you could still be killed by a fully twinked level 39 in STV... he might be lower level than you, but he has twice the hitpoints and three times the damage). The solution, as you said, is moving to a PVE server. People suck, etc.


-- Z.

[WindupAtheist]

This isn't ten years ago and we aren't trying to balance PK in UO.  Speaking as someone who's leveled on both PVP and PVE servers in WoW, if you can't take getting squashed by higher-level players, get the hell off the PVP server and STFU.

[Hellinar]

UO-style noto griefing, mmmm. You'd see level 1s suiciding on mages trying to farm stuff and getting stuck in the frost nova radius on purpose (or consecrate if it's a paladin... or whirlwind if it's a warrior.. etc), killing themselves on reactive abilities (most classes have one), a bunch of lower level characters zerging a lv70 so he'd either have to take the humiliating death, or fight back and get cursed.

-- Z.

AoE could be dealt with by making it not effect low levels unless you choose to turn on an option. Zerging might be more of a problem, but the high level would be pretty safe from in in areas with high level agressive mobs.

[Lantyssa]

I doubt there will be hordes of sub-58 characters in the Outlands.  If they somehow make it there, aggro radii will take care of them rather quickly.

[Zetor]

Well, the 'level 1' was an exaggerated example, of course. But even a level 58+ character should suffice for griefing purposes, and you could always use a level 70 with purposely gimped gear and perhaps resurrection sickness. Not to mention twinked-to-the-gills level 29/39/49 characters camping out in a particular zone in their range and effortlessly 2-shotting anyone (even higher levels, possibly) without repercussion. So you get your level 70 main to take care of-- oh wait, can't do that!

Basically, any system that allows the 'victim' to put the 'killer' at a disadvantage simply because of a level/gear difference is exploitable, and there is no way for the game to detect griefing like that. (they wouldn't even need to attack first, if that was a criterion... just walk into an AOE with 1 hp, etc.) Sure, you can add convoluted systems on top of this like "only allow cursing a player if they did x% damage", but that either means the naked rez-sick 70 still dying in one hit at x% hp, or if x is high enough, a group of gankers can escape ever getting marked by spreading the damage around (not to mention the ever-so-popular 'rogue 1-shot kill at 10% hp' situation) or training mobs on the players to kill them and/or killing the players indirectly (MC them off a cliff, MC them underwater so they drown when it breaks, fear them into mobs, heal/buff the mobs they are fighting, etc).

Edit: It's WOW. People are broken. :P


-- Z.

[WindupAtheist]

Everyone can take their beatings and STFU.  It's not like you drop your gear or anything.  And this is WUA talking, the guy with a fucking carebear avatar.

[Lantyssa]

I don't play on PvP servers so I have to ask:  Exactly how many low-levels ganking a high-level problems have there been to date?  I'm just not seeing this as an issue to get worked up over.

[Valmorian]

I don't play on PvP servers so I have to ask:  Exactly how many low-levels ganking a high-level problems have there been to date?  I'm just not seeing this as an issue to get worked up over.

I play pretty much exclusively on Frostmane and have a variety of Horde characters.  Ganking does happen, but it's not nearly as rife on my server as some people seem to think it is on PvP servers in general.  Sometimes you'll get a group of 70's clearing out a lowbie town line Tarren Mill, but they almost always get bored in 5 minutes and leave. 

Last night my 42 paladin was attacked 3 times in Tanaris.  Once by a stupid night elf druid that was constantly trying to trick me into attacking her in Gadgetzan, once by a 70 shaman, and once by a 44 rogue who was with a high level warrior.  I died twice and it was a little annoying since all I was doing was just grinding mobs.

On the other hand, I brought my 70 rogue there once I had dinged and got revenge on two of them.

[Hellinar]

Zetor,

 I don't think any of the scenarios you are mentioned would be happening under the system I am proposing. I am talking being able to cast curse a once every few days, with a fairly low probability of it landing. The idea is not that a gang of low level griefers can reliably wipe out a high level player. But that occasionally the low level player would have the satisfaction of saying "Got you, you *****" when the curse landed. A curse you could use once a week would probably be good enough for that. It just to take the feeling of complete helplessness away, if you don't have a level 70 to log on and take revenge.

[Ingmar]

Nope, I don't mean massive. I mean persistent. Giving a sense of continuity.

A good arena game doesn't need long character development or an interesting world. This is why there are games that do just that. And do it better.

The idea of progress and character development that are the heart of WoW don't fit with the "eSport" idea.

The game is big and has room for more than one kind of play.