Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Reputation spillover and rBG

It's a random idea that could easily be implemented and would do 2 things that Blizzard exactly wants: give geared players something to do outside progression raids, especially running HCs and to make being in guild "with friends" more desired.

If someone is exalted with a faction and gains more reputation with it (for example doing one more TB daily, winning TB, doing a HC with rep tabard, he currently loses the reputation. My suggestion is that this reputation be distributed among the guildmembers.This way the player has an excuse to get more rep.

Yes, it's not a reason, no one will run a TB daily just to help his guild. They can run it themselves. The person will run the daily because he is bored but rationalize it by "helping friends". It would also lure more tanks to HCs as they would be ashamed to queue up for a bribe, but gladly do it if they can claim they are helping the guild.

Implementing it wouldn't be hard or give serious load to servers. Simply change exalted maximum from 999 to 20000, so the person gathers exalted rep using no new resource, and once every day, the above exalted rep is taken away to a guild pool and then redistributed equally among non-exalted members. "Reputation selling" can be prevented by requiring revered guild reputation to participate (either as giver and receiver).

To give more things to do in a guild to bored players, guild achievements could be given to have 50/100 exalted members with: Wildhammer/Dragonmaw, Hyjal, Earthen Ring, Therazane, Ramkahen and the 5 Home cities. These have dungeon tabards, so such achievements motivates geared people to do dungeons. These are reachable even to small guilds as lvl 1 alts can be invited to be exalted via spillover.

If you find this idea good, place it on a US suggestion forum and comment me the link, I'll place it in the post.


I wrote that the incorrectly implemented rating system makes rated BGs unplayable. Here are some unquestionable evidences about the system's total disaster. No one can say we did not try hard. We spent 3 hours trying to figure out this system. We spent most of the time with:

We never encountered a team which was similar in strength. We got either much higher rated team who devastated us, I mean FC+3 buddies got away against 8 of us:

Or we met 0 resi, 0 skill teams where we did whatever we wanted like bored mage carrying the flag in the middle of the map:

And of course we met with what I predicted: a team that was playing the system:
Their team was a combination of top rated players and "rating tankers", fake noobs who made the average team rating low. Please check out this "noob". They elevated their rating avoiding equally strong teams, 3-5 points every match.

Conclusion: don't waste time with this disaster until Blizzard either fixes it, or somehow lures enough teams in to push the problems below threshold. You'll still be farmed by exploiters and you'll be matched against wrongly rated teams but you meet with "letz play 3 wins 4 fun n guild chalenge lol" teams enough time to have a time-effective conquest/honor farming.

20 comments:

Yaggle said...

What about people who are unguilded? Where does THEIR extra rep spill over to? Otherwise it's just more welfare for guilded characters.

Unknown said...

They could just make the spillover reputation tradeable in for 1k, 2k, 5k, 10k BoE reputation tokens, which could be then sold at the AH. When used, the token would give the reputation to faction, whose tabard you are currently wearing.

Anonymous said...

@Yaggle

You say that like it's a BAD thing. Blizzard wants people in guilds. The proposal makes people stay in guilds.

The fact that is 'welfare' or not is irelevant.

If the goal is to reduce unguilded play, this change is perfectly adequate.

If you want to pose the problem of whether guilded people should have an advantage over unguilded people, then do so. However, know that it is a design philosophy, and is prone to be about as clear as a discussion of utilitarianism vs kantian morality.

Camiel said...

Your plan contains one large flaw: by handing out spillover rep to guildmates, these players will reach their rep caps faster and soon enough everyone in the guild is exalted with all factions and thus noone will have a reason to play anymore.

Anonymous said...

As long as there are no 'fixed teams' like arena teams, the rated bg's will continue like this. If they want to keep the current system, a random rated battleground system might be a better cq. less worse way to deal with it (where individual players queue up and the team is auto formed with equally rated players).

Does the 'no voice communication' - rule applies for rated bg's as well? Whereas it's not really necessary in raid's, it looks almost mandatory to have efficient communication in pvp.

Grim said...

@Zenga
Fixed teams would fix the rating tankers but little else. The only thing that can help the real problem (that you get either /2 noobs or godlike players and little else) is more players using the system.

Fixed teams won't fix that. And I have no idea what could, because its a vicious loop - few players mean long queue times, long queue times discourage players.

Inquisitor said...

2v2 arena seems a convenient way to CP cap, especially if you pick a time when there are lots of mismatched and badly coordinated double-DPS teams just doing it for the points, and expecting a series of quick losses in exchange for a their 5 quick wins.

Given which, why would I go to the organisational faff of 'serious' RBGs? They appear to be the worst of all possible worlds.

Ihodael said...

"And I have no idea what could, because its a vicious loop - few players mean long queue times, long queue times discourage players."

Most likely bigger incentives to getting in, at least for now. Whenever you want to enact a change in an economy you usually move forward with some kind of subsidy to make it more attractive. In this specific case they would most likely need to have some bigger incentive to get people in and then reduce the incentive for people already "hooked".

So they should probably work on fixing the system inbalance and then work on getting more people in (regardless of quality).

Gevlon said...

I would completely get rid of 2v2 and limit the conquest point gain from arena win to rating/10. It wouldn't bother top players, as on 2000 rating you could get 200 rating/win, so could cap your CP in 8 wins, which a serious player would surely play more.

However it would get rid of 300 rating "just for points" team and drive them to RBGs.

Anonymous said...

No thanks, gearing up for PvP is a goddamn hassle at it is. Being forced to run 20-30 min RBGs will merely drive more people away from it, and the pool is limited enough as it is.

Anonymous said...

the first team you got is from my server seems like those jerks farmed you hard...
back to topic, i like your idea witrh rep-spillover to guildmates cause i hate going heroics for nothing but the vp

Unknown said...

Why get rid of 2v2 its a bracket to get points with and why do you think 2k players are good there not.

Grim said...

@Insanity
What does "why do you think 2k players are good there not" even mean?

Was that supposed to be "Why do you think 2k players are good? They're not." ?

In that case You are flat-out wrong. 2k+ players are among the top ~5% of arena players (who are better than everyone else at PvP, bar a few BG-exclusive masters).

Also, if "Why get rid of 2v2 its a bracket to get points with" was meant to be "Why get rid of 2v2? Its a bracket to get points with.", then that is exactly the reason why getting rid of it is a good idea - its almost only use is getting points, while serious PvPers snub it and play 3v3.

Anonymous said...

I'm still curious how 4 people managed to get past 8 of you guys. From the logs I see you team is seriously lacking Fears and possibly in need of another healer.

Also remember Pugnacious Priest's blog on the Demoralizing Defeat. Flanking the enemy coming with some aoe fears always messes things up. Then if you have a voice chat or some sort of addon to help you mark/call out the healers.

As for all your hunters remember a well placed trapped launched can get you in a way better situation if you have entrapment from surv.

Grim said...

If spotting opposing healers is a problem in RBGs, then the "Healers Have To Die" addon is the solution - it displays a red cross (not the raid marker - an ambulance-like cross) above the heads of enemy healers and then its just a matter of having enough sense to do something about them.

Trelocke said...

I have found your disdain for RBGs interesting. EU servers seem to suffer from a worse queue time than ours (US) as we rarely wait more than 5 minutes, so I can understand your frustration there.

However the rest of it is mostly uninformed RNG whining. The quantity of teams that have no/very low rating have to be extremely low at this point. To get paired up against teams with similar strength must be almost impossible. Until you build a rating you're going to get paired against a wide variety of opponents. I actually think this is a good thing because it affords teams the opportunity to "watch and learn" from both the bad to see what not to do and the good to see what needs to be done.

Voice communication is nearly essential in my opinion if you want to succeed in RBGs. You have to be able to call out hard target switches and CCs on offense and if you are being focused, movement and CCs on defense. In PvP, voice communication is simply that...timely communication for your team. You have to be able to force the other team to use their cool downs which is next to impossible without calling out hard target switches. You may be able to do a fair simulation of voice chat by creating raid and/or yell macros, but then you're just doing it for simply for sake of not using voice chat.

Did you have someone leading your offense? We require our DDs to have an assist macro assisting our offensive leader to make these hard switches as seamless and quick as possible. And your DDs were mostly terrible. As a healer I typically do more damage in an RBG than most of your DDs. We require our DDs to consistently put up a minimum of 1 million overall damage per RBG. That is of course in a BG that runs full time.

Do you run with four healers? Looks to me like you're only running three which will be a huge problem against any good team. And your healers were mostly terrible. In a typical RBG even your worst healer should be doing over a million in total healing. That is of course in a BG that runs full time.

None of your BGs ran full time it looks like (10 min, 12 min, 3rd was taken mid BG) so it's hard to know exactly where you all are but even if you double everyone's number they're still not good.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not calling you a bunch of baddies and saying you should go back to doing the easy thing: killing bosses. I was terrible the first few RBGs I did too. I was lucky enough to be with a bunch of people that knew what they were doing and were willing to teach me (assuming I *was* teachable). RBGs, like most other end game aspects of this game, require a certain learned skill set. It takes practice and it takes team work.

Anonymous said...

Better idea...reward tanks with a BOA consumable that advances a character by 30 min in the queue. This would be a real, repeatable reward.

Trelocke said...

One more point I forgot in my last comment about rating. To claim 2200+ rated players are abusing the system by pairing with low/no rating players to drive their team rating down is both short-sighted and contradictory. If the system doesn't try to pair you against similar strength teams as you claim, why would anyone rating tank their team?

Secondly your rating gains and losses are individually based on where your are as opposed to where the other team is. For every win against a team like yours those 2200+ players are gaining 4-5 points but risk losing 50-60. The gain for them is minuscule. My guess is they like playing RBGs, pug people of a certain gear level, make them get in Vent and lead them.

Our guild typically has 3-4 2000+ players with the rest anywhere from fresh 0 rated "noobs" to 1400 players depending on what we want for comp/who's available. I personally barely have 1K rating and am considered one of the veterans and our guild runs RBGs every day from 6pm-midnight (I can only run twice a week so I don't get many chances to up my rating). So even in an environment that does little else besides RBGs it's not easy to have full teams of 2200+ players.

Saying high rated players play with low rated players so they can play low rated teams is just a way of making yourself feel better about getting beat by these teams when in fact you were beaten pretty easily by a fairly mediocre team anyway.

You can blame the system, the gear, the RNG, whatever; the truth is you guys just aren't very good at the moment. Start beating some of the 1K rated teams and you'll see the 0 rated teams less and less and start getting paired against more and more similar strength teams.

Anonymous said...

Interesting rep suggestion; a bit of unease but I think I like it.

I am not sure I am in favor of the get rid of 2v2. Getting rid of the points farmers might backfire for people wanting better PvP. I just don't see many people who do 2v2 and not rBG going to a "get ten people to do a premade" bg. Not a large percentage of players do PvP now; running some of them off does not help. PvP already gets disproportionately more developer resources than the PvP participation would suggest.

My belief is that Blizzard insisting on 10 premade, in spite of clear preference not to, is the main handicap of rBGs.

Because of Blizzard not addressing the premade, they are having to up the payoffs for rBG and will continue to do so. After their tanking success, can a Sack of Play our Failed PvP Experiment be far behind? But the big step would be providing rewards, allbeit less than winning, for losing a rBG. Combined that with double purchase power and Maelstrom crystals being sold, the bot software manufacturers will hopefully step up and allow one to run a ten bot team. That will dramatically increase "participation" or at least improve queue times.

Inquisitor said...

Get rid of 2v2 for points, and I'd play 3v3 for points...

Sure, the top end is more balanced, but at the bottom, basic competence will win out.

That said, I *like* the way anyone competent has the same gear, and surely you should too. After all, it means that people fighting on the road in AB can no longer kid themselves that it was a gear disadvantage that led to them sucking.