PvP for Dummies

[Gobbeldygook]

There is some pretty good rabble rabble drama happening on various WoW forums atm. Some Arena E-Star got accused of botting with some fairly convincing evidence.

An Arena E-Star botting?  Perish the thought!  I cannot possibly remember the last time I read an Arena Junkies poster openly discussing using Pirox to farm honor or to level an alt.

...wait.

[Fordel]

There is some pretty good rabble rabble drama happening on various WoW forums atm. Some Arena E-Star got accused of botting with some fairly convincing evidence.

An Arena E-Star botting?  Perish the thought!  I cannot possibly remember the last time I read an Arena Junkies poster openly discussing using Pirox to farm honor or to level an alt.

...wait.

Yea, but this time the general populace caught wind to it. 

[Gobbeldygook]

Just in the two afflix threads on AJ:

"kinda sucks and all ive afk'd / bot before glad i didnt get caught lol"
"I farmed full deadly+relentless off pieces on my shaman over the course of two weeks, got banned twice in the process, didn't remove any gear though."
"I support Affix and botting, just because all of "I AM HERE TO SAVE THE DAY" retards that posted in that topic.

<3 pirox <3"
"Everybody bots because the honor grind is dumb. Sucks famous people get called out."
"i will read this entire thread while botting for added irony"
"rogue is almost 80, thx AV"
"zzzzzzzz botted 12 hours a day when i still played, who gives a fuck"
"the amount of characters I've gotten their full honor set or leveled with a bot and never even gotten a warning is sad."
"Botting is almost necessary I'm not going to spend 5 hours a day for a week for 2 pieces of fucking gear. Cut the honor grind in half and make it so 3 marks of one bg = 1k honor and I would do bgs probably and enjoy it."
"Grinding is a part of MMOs (although it doesn't have to be, at all), and botting is a method of grinding. Your point?"
"everyone bots, why waste hours farming hours when a program can do it for you"

Seriously, that's just in TWO THREADS and only the out-right confessions.  I didn't include the people that were attacking the person posting the screenshots that undoubtably bot.  Every single post was done by someone with a link to their WoW account.

[Paelos]

You mean a format where time is a cockblock means people will automate it? Perish the thought!

[Xanthippe]

Too bad Blizzard does do something useful like ban afkers in battlegrounds, or better yet, put all arena fighters into identical arena equipment.  

Rewarding people who do well with better gear so they can beat people faster is kinda silly and backward, isn't it?  But that's the entire system, I suppose.  Handicaps make sense; wow arena is like reverse handicap.

Edited to add:  It really pisses me off to see afkers in battlegrounds leeching off everyone else's efforts.  Particularly the elite who can't be bothered to actually play with the hoi polloi.  What's worse are the morons who tell everyone what to do from the cave, while adding nothing to the effort. 

[Gobbeldygook]

put all arena fighters into identical arena equipment.

Rewarding people who do well with better gear so they can beat people faster is kinda silly and backward, isn't it?  But that's the entire system, I suppose.  Handicaps make sense; wow arena is like reverse handicap.

Remove gear progression and you will see a huge spike in arena participation followed by an even larger decline.  People will start playing arenas because they can finally compete with those catasses who have been carried by their gear all this time.  Then they'll find out they still can't unless they put in the hours it takes to learn to play.  They'll show up, lose 4 matches, and go run Nexus again for more emblems.  You can even see this in the arena ladder; once people get the reward they want (usually a weapon at 1800 but sometimes a safe rating for a title), they stop playing for the rest of the season.

If your answer is,. "Your reward is gear you can use in BGs and highly meaningful WORLD PVP!": Unless it's better than what you can get while 'guarding' flags in AV (aka watching a movie and pressing the jump button every now and then), no one will participate.  If it is, enjoy the screams of "FORCED TO ARENA TO ENJOY BGS AND WORLD PVP".  People always take the path of least resistance to improving their character.

They could put in more PVP mounts or pets (show up and play 20 matches = pet, challenger = small ground mount, rival = huge ground mount, duelist = 280% flyer?), but I'm not sure how much that would motivate people to queue up in the first place.  The real trick is getting people to persevere through the learning process.

[Xanthippe]

So basically what you're saying is that people won't arena for fun, and won't use arena.

I fail to see the problem with that.

[Nebu]

I think the fix for the arena is for it to give only arena-benefitting gear as a reward.  It's sport pvp.  If people want to do it, give them rewards that only pertain to it (i.e. arena gear is only wearable in the arena).  They have a gear manager that would make this easy. 

[Gobbeldygook]

So basically what you're saying is that people won't arena for fun, and won't use arena.

I fail to see the problem with that.

No, I am saying people will, as a general rule, only engage in activities that actually improve their character.  Given a choice of activities they will do whatever is most efficient.  People they show up in the arena, lose their first couple matches, think it's a waste of time that will never get them any gear, and never do them again.  Yet people spend hours wiping in instances in hopes of an epic they want dropping or 310% mounts, but if I ask someone to come wipe in arena's they react like I asked them for a kidney.  The question is how to structure the rewards to get people to queue up and put in the effort to learn to play instead of losing 10 matches a week or not participating at all.

[Xanthippe]

So basically what you're saying is that people won't arena for fun, and won't use arena.

I fail to see the problem with that.

No, I am saying people will, as a general rule, only engage in activities that actually improve their character.  Given a choice of activities they will do whatever is most efficient.  People they show up in the arena, lose their first couple matches, think it's a waste of time that will never get them any gear, and never do them again.  Yet people spend hours wiping in instances in hopes of an epic they want dropping or 310% mounts, but if I ask someone to come wipe in arena's they react like I asked them for a kidney.  The question is how to structure the rewards to get people to queue up and put in the effort to learn to play instead of losing 10 matches a week or not participating at all.

I thought the question was how to make it fun.

[pxib]

Indeed.

Since fun in WoW is almost entirely based on character gear and ability progression rather than player skill progression, the only thing that convinces players to do much of anything is the promise of improved gear or skills. Without something to aspire to, there's very little reason to play at all.

Worse yet, wiping in an arena not only hurts.. it helps the jerk who just beat you. That smirking rogue, immortal druid, and drooling death knight just got one step closer to gear. In an instance your inability to play may get you kicked out of the group... but probably not. In battlegrounds there are enough players that you can convince yourself you're helping in your own quadrant of the map somehow. In the Arenas, your inability to play wins gear (pretty much the entire point of the game) the people who kick your ass.

Finally, in an instance once you figure the game out you can play it over and over again and get it right. In the arenas you may still be screwed because you've chosen the wrong spec or you're wearing the wrong gear or you're playing the wrong class combination. Oops. You get to die this time. Gear balancing would fix some of this, but not the fact that World of Warcraft has never been and shall never be truly class-balanced around group PvP capability.

The fix for the arena is for it to be removed entirely.

[Ingmar]

I don't think it should be, or needs to be removed. That's just "I don't enjoy this, everyone who does is having badwrongfun" talk.

The "fix" for arenas is providing a better weapon upgrade path for BG pvpers.

[K9]

2v2 arena is sort of fun; although now they have made 2v2 arena serve next to no useful purpose I'm back wondering what the point of arenas are.

[Gobbeldygook]

2v2 arena is sort of fun; although now they have made 2v2 arena serve next to no useful purpose I'm back wondering what the point of arenas are.

For 95% of players, nothing has changed.  You can get everything from 2's except for the tier 2 weapons, the relentlentless shoulders, and the Gladiator title(ie the 310% mount).  You can still get the tier 1, ilevel 245 weapons at 1800.  Blizzard's just no longer going to care about balance in 2s.

[K9]

Ah my bad, I thought they had changed it so that 2's rating meant absolutely fuck all.

[Simond]

Blizzard did change it to that until people whinged incessantly about it.

[Soulflame]

Arena just isn't fun.  It's the least fun when you encounter a counter-comp for your composition, or worse yet, face a mirror comp.  I've suffered through games like that, which lasted up to half an hour.  I don't even care at that point whether I win or lose, the match itself has already taken entirely too long.

Sometimes the mirror comp works out in your favor.  At one point we fought a mirror comp 2x, took forever for us to win, and the next two times we came up against them, they simply quit out and let us have our points.

Sometimes I think about going back into the arena, but then I remember all the miserable garbage that goes on in the arenas, the re-gearing requirement which will stick me in BGs for the next 2-3 weeks, plus my hatred for DALARAN SEWERS oh god that one is just horrible.


-edit:  also, I forgot to mention, but I would be way behind something like "turn in 3 marks of a particular BG and get 1k honor".  Being forced into Isle of Conquest in order to do For Great Honor turnins (or whatever it's called) is damned annoying.  Yes, you think your new BG is very clever.  I don't.  Please let me just AV or AB.

[dd0029]

Being forced into Isle of Conquest in order to do For Great Honor turnins (or whatever it's called) is damned annoying.  Yes, you think your new BG is very clever.  I don't.  Please let me just AV or AB.

Good lord is this true.  Did my first Isle last night.  There are so many things to do that its worse than AB for uncoordination.  And fuck that castle.  Having to actually defend it from people that can get in makes the AFK just that much more appealing.

I want a murderball game.  Get the guy, with the thing.  It concentrates people.  No dumbass rambos wandering around. "But I am helping by stealthing into the house at the farm."  Everyone concentrates in on spot.  Wholesale slaughter.

Or another control the flag game with fewer closer points.  Heck, I just want Mourkain Temple, Gates of Erklund and Nordenwatch from War.

[K9]

I'd rather do IoC all day than do another Strand.

[Nebu]

Or another control the flag game with fewer closer points.  Heck, I just want Mourkain Temple, Gates of Erklund and Nordenwatch from War.

Nordenwatch would be something I'd love to have emulated in WoW.  That was possibly my favorite pvp scenario in any game to date.  Three control points in a tight space with enough geographic relief to add a small tactical element. 

[Ingmar]

I'd rather do IoC all day than do another Strand.

Not me, I  Strand. It is my favorite one of all.

[Fordel]

I hate trying to kill siege vehicles in strand.


Cast, run run run run run, Cast.

[Ingmar]

I hate trying to kill siege vehicles in strand.


Cast, run run run run run, Cast.

Why are you behind them! 

[Fordel]

Who says I am?

[Hawkbit]

Now that mounts are allowed at 20, AB level cap needs dropped.  AV is permanently broken, but I've hit exalted with 3 toons and I still play it over and over.  IoC I like for it's size, but it may never get coordianted. 

WSG, EotS and Strand need to die.  They're going to reach point where players are spread too thin across the amount of BGs they have if they keep introducing new ones. 

[Ingmar]

I like Eye too! Why do you people hate my BGs. 

[K9]

They could reinvigorate each BG with new maps using the same rules and terrain templates. I mean, you'd hardly be thrilled if a FPS only came with 6 maps.

[Nebu]

Very few people play the BG's for fun.  It's an honor/token machine.  Blizzard designed it this way.  I think the way to increase participation would be to give huge xp/honor bonuses to the people that contribute to the progress within the BG's.  If you enter a BG and do nothing, you get almost no honor and your 1 token. 

[Merusk]

I play for fun, but I'm an admitted freak.

Of course, since i play for fun I'm always insanely frustrated because Alliance on my BG can't even manage to win AB after 4 capping for the first 3 mins.  Losing time and again to stupid fucks farming HKs isn't fun.