Malakitoo

Except to force teams that you lose to 80% of the time to lose points when they play you in a series, I guess. Let the smurfing being!

 

Amourette

Surely this won't be how Blizzard designs the system. Just think about how retarded that would be: each time you lost it would be for a completely arbitrary amount of points. Some teams would gain major point advantages over others for no other reason than they fought fewer re-roll teams than their opponent. As was mentioned, reroll teams would be created specifically for griefing, etc. It solves the problem of people fighting outside their brackets, but it introduces just as many problems elsewhere if not more.

There is no reason to expect that the system will be designed as you speculate.

 

Copernicus

With the achievement thread being locked, this seems like the right place to post this. I made a list of all the achievements that have a reward (as achievement points are currently not used for anything).


Anything marked with a * is NOT a title reward. When there is an Alliance and a Horde achievement, I listed both - but the Alliance one is first. I'll try to keep this list updated as the beta continues to go forward.

General-
* Higher Learning -- The Schools of Arcane Magic - Mastery and Kirin Tor Familiar
* Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart -- Reeking Pet Carrier
* Twenty-Five Tabards -- Tabard of the Achiever
* Leading the Cavalry -- Albino Drake
Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy! -- Title: Jenkins

Quests and Exploring-
3000 Quests Completed -- Title Reward: The Seeker
* The Loremaster/The Loremaster -- Reward: Title & Loremaster's Colors
World Explorer -- Title Reward: The Explorer
* Explore Northrend -- Tabard of the Explorer

Non-arena PvP-
100000 Honorable Kills -- Title Reward: Of the Horde or Of the Alliance
Battlemaster/Battlemaster -- Title Reward: Battlemaster
* For The Alliance!/For The Horde! -- Black War Bear
The Justicar/The Conqueror -- Title Reward: Justicar or Conqueror

Arenas-
* Brutally Dedicated -- Tabard of Brute Force
Hot Hot Hot Streak -- Title Reward: The Flawless Victor
The Arena Master -- Title Reward: Arena Master

Dungeons and Raiding-
Champion of the Frozen Wastes -- Title Reward: Champion of the Frozen Wastes
* Glory of the Hero -- Red Proto-Drake
* Glory of the Raider -- Plagued Proto-Drake
* Heroic: Glory of the Raider -- Black Proto-Drake
The Undying -- Title Reward: The Undying
The Twilight Zone -- Title Reward: Of the Nightfall
The Immortal -- Title Reward: The Immortal
Heroic: The Twilight Zone -- Title Reward: Twilight Vanquisher

Professions-
Hail to the Chef -- Title Reward: Chef
* The Coin Master -- Titanium Seal of Dalaran
Accomplished Angler -- Title Reward: Salty

Reputations-
40 Exalted Reputations -- Title Reward: The Exalted
Ambassador of the Alliance -- Title Reward: Ambassador
Guardian of Cenarius -- Title Reward: Guardian of Cenarius
The Argent Champion -- Title Reward: The Argent Champion
The Diplomat -- Title Reward: The Diplomat

World Events-
Brewmaster/Brewmaster -- Title Reward: Brewmaster
Fool For Love/Fool For Love -- Title Reward: The Love Fool
For The Children -- Title Reward: Matron/Patron
Hallowed Be Thy Name/Hallowed Be Thy Name -- Title Reward: The Hallowed
Merrymaker/Merrymaker -- Title Reward: Merrymaker
The Flame Warden/The Flame Keeper -- Title Reward: Flame Warden or Flame Keeper
To Honor One's Elders -- Title Reward: Elder
* What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been/What a Long, Strange Trips It's Been -- Violet Proto-Drake


Feats of Strength-
Avast Ye, Admiral! -- Title: Bloodsail Admiral
Realm First! Conqueror of Naxxramas -- Title Reward: Conqueror of Naxxramas
Realm First! Magic Seeker -- Title Reward: The Magic Seeker
Realm First! Obsidian Slayer -- Title Reward: Obsidian Slayer

 

Grayson Carlyle

Of course it's stupid, that's why I'm trying to point it out.

The only solution would be to lose/gain points based on your "secret rating". The only side-effect that has is that if you ever reroll, then you can no longer reach the same outliers at a team rating as you might have possibly without rerolling. So everyone below 1500 should reroll, everyone above should never. That will cause overall team scores to increase.

But at this point, if they actually make it work like that, then why have a team and personal rating at all anymore?

 

Lysara

Didn't Blizzard say that there was only limited space for titles or that having too many was hard to code or something? I guess they managed a way around that, because that's a hell of a lot of titles you can get there.



And an unrelated question: are there any old-world factions in Northrend? More specifically, are there ways to get more rep with your faction groups (Ironforge, Stormwind, etc)? When I make a new character it's easy to get Exalted with the Alliance factions, but with my main I did most quests before they had the rep boosted, and now I'm stuck with Exodar/Gnomeregan on Revered and the only way to increase it is with tons of Runecloth or the occasional Seasonal quest. Can I boost my rep in Northrend or am I out of luck like with TBC?

 

PSGarak

Copernicus, minor nitpick: Justicar (Exalted with all BG factions) is the Alliance version. The horde version is Conqueror, both for the title and the name of the achievement.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Fiola

An alternative way to boost faction rep that you haven't mentioned is to do AV turn ins. It spills over after you hit exalted with the dwarves (and I assume orcs). Storm Crystals in particular give the best rep per turn in- 1 stack of 100 crystals => 20 turnins @75 IF rep each = 1500 IF rep => Alliance rep after IF exalted (not sure of the exact amount, but it's something like 1500 rep split between 4 factions)


It's how I personally boosted my faction rep to exalted. (And I had to redo it after the Exodar faction was added to the game) If you're not into PvP though, that's probably much more painful than runecloth turnins.

 

Amourette

Well what if the system was no longer zero sum for purposes of rating gain? Say you fight in the 2000 bracket and you just rerolled; you get the max allotment of points for the match if you win (27 or whatever it is) and the other team only loses 15 points. That leads to inflation because points are coming from nowhere, but ultimately that's the only solution I can think of that allows players an easy way to get to their "true" rating instead of just fighting out harsh and equally matched battles in the 1500 bracket.

 

Jagiya

I see two positive sides here:

- I'm sick of being matched against 2200+ reroll teams in a 1750-1850 bracket.
- Selling PR is now alot more difficult. The "seller" needs to lose a shitload of games to bring their "hidden" rating down to their customers' level; otherwise they're going to struggle against +2000 teams from the get-go.

I wonder if this "hidden" rating is relative to games played, opponents beaten, or gear obtained. As unlikely as it would be, there would be some amusing results if your "hidden" rating was determined by the calculated iLvL/gear you were wearing when you queued.

 

• alcaras

It still angers me that I can't play with _all_ my friends in arena, and have to pick and choose between them because I can only put so many on a team charter.

I made a post to this extent on the Beta forums:
WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> [Suggestion] Arranged Teams, Not Charters

 

Jagiya

I always wondered why they didn't adopt the WC3 Battle.net ladder system for Arena. They took the AMM and left out all the other good bits.

edit: I loved that I could have a level 20 team with my AT partner, and a muckaround level 2 team with my housemate whenever we wanted to get drunk and do stupid tinker + tower rushes and shit; without affecting my "displayed" level. The only thing that was influenced as a result of our "fun, non-competitive" games was my profile win/loss ratio.

If I want to do the same thing in WoW Arena, I have to either abandon my partner completely and start from scratch with him later; or invite my mate to the team and drag our rating down a few hundred points whilst we hopelessly lose to teams we have no chance of beating. (We've actually done that alot this season; dragging the rating down to 1400 from 1800 - my partner wasn't too pleased at having to do it all over again every week!)

 

sylveni

I've always wondered the same. They already have a team ladder ranking system, yet they chose to reinvent the wheel.

 

Pheus

At the moment on bloodlust literally 50% of teams I see at 1550 in 2's currently have at least s3 weapons and about 50% of those teams 1 of the two have s3 shoulders. Its really difficult for a player in honor epics (s2) to get to even 1600 or 1700 for a few pieces of brutal gear that is pretty much required to be competitive. This is because a significant chunk of their opponents have gear which the legitimate 1500 players simply cannot access, and are playing at a much lower rating than their skill.

This change has been due since they put personal rating on chest, legs and helm, these slots are the biggest stat upgrades and its not an equal playing field against lower rated players. Real world competitive sports have divisions and in this vien of thought players with ~2k rating gear should be playing ~2k matches against similarly geared ~2k players, not stomping 1500 players who don't have the experience or ability to overcome the gear discrepancy.

 

rayijin

QFT. It's not that high rated players enjoy playing at 1500 with a reroll and watching the other team just give up because of s4 shoulders and a gladiator title, it's that people want to play with other people who may not as be as good as them just for fun or to help them out.

The AT system for battle.net is about as close to perfect as you can get in terms of both fairness and fun.

Just to point out the negatives:

1) You could have one player with half a dozen teams in the top 10 or 20, and the best players would most likely take even more points from average players - imagine if the 6 best players on the battle group all played with each other in 2's (that's 5*6 team comps - or 30 teams). There would be less room at the top in terms of point gain.

2) Bad players couldn't reset their rating to 1500 except by finding a new partner, resulting in slower point gain for them. This is the worst downside but a mitigation would be a "reset team rating" button that can be used once a week (reset it when points are calculated and have it also reset games played for the week to 0).

3) Calculating Gladiator/Rival/Challenger titles would be much more difficult / cpu intensive. I would propose that you sort it by players rather than teams, but since you only have to do this once a season it's not a big deal to do this sort. Plus you could put in a limit to the number of teams a player can have at once so that it's not possible for the number of teams to grow exponentially (ie, you're still limited to 10 arranged teams per bracket - this would make it easier to build the database for the additional data and fix the cost of this).

This solution is about as perfect as you can get, in my opinion.

Edit: Math on possible team comps

 

Douglas

I have been looking for them, and have not yet found them. My dwarf engineer is still trying to get exalted with Gnomeregan in order to get a mechanostrider mount. If the chopper mounts were engineering-only, I'd focus on those instead, but everyone and their cousin is going to have one, so I still want the mechanostrider.

What I did find was... D.E.H.T.A. quests give Cenarion Expedition rep. So all my alts will eventually be able to get hippogryphs if they want them. It's odd. Haven't found any other pre-Wrath reps being given out in Northrend yet, but I'm not very far in yet (for characters in Northrend, two each starting in the two zones, and barely started in Dragonblight on two of those characters).

 

Feorthas

Actually, it wouldn't be all that hard to determine anyone's "true" team rating at any given point; all you do is iterate through their ratings on each team and keep the maximum. Personal rating would update with each individual match anyway so it would technically arrive at the "correct" value even more quickly than in the current system simply because they play more matches (if we consider their partner(s) to each be average).

 

Harwin

Speaking as a mediocre player, I personally hated the Battle.Net system because every time two really good players who hadn't played together on exactly that size team teamed up, they had a low rating and I was forced to play them again. I understand that you can't just take the average rating, because that pair might be a bad matchup (double holy priest?) even though they're individually skilled, but I know it's very frustrating as a player in the 1600s to be playing teams against which we have no chance.

 

rayijin

While I understand your frustration, moving to an AT system would most likely alleviate this.

I'll use my main 2's partner as an example (our top ranking before his last hop was 14th in the battlegroup, so he's better than most players):

He's been a constant team hopper, playing with 7 different players for 2's alone. Most of those players he's played with on multiple seperate occassions - meaning multiple level ups.

In the AT scenario, it'd be something like this:

Team/Partner 1 - Get to 2200. Always play at 2200 whenever playing with this partner.
Team/Partner 2 - Get to 2050. Always play at 2050 whenever playing this this partner.
Team/Partner 3 - Get to 1900. Always play at 1900 whenever playing this this partner.

In the AT case, he's only in the 1500's bracket once with each partner.

In the current scenario, its more like this:

Create Team 1, level to 2050. Team hop, then disband this team due to not being able to rejoin and keep PR.
Create Team 2, level to 1900. Team hop, then disband this team due to not being able to rejoin and keep PR.
Create Team 1 again, level to 2200. Team hop, then disband this team due to not being able to rejoin and keep PR.
Create Team 3, level to 2050. Team hop, then disband this team due to not being able to rejoin and keep PR.
Create Team 1, level to 2300. Sit on team for gladiator title.

In the current situation, I don't even know how many times he's been in the 1500's bracket, and the number keeps going up.

AT scenario: Team hopping player crushes 1500-2k bracket players 3 times.

Current scenario: Team hopping player crushes 1500-2k bracket players 5 or more times, even with the same number of partners due to team hopping and resetting PR.

If blizz is going to introduce yet another personal rating to try to solve the problem - why not go all the way and simply make the team ratings and personal ratings inexorably linked, and permanent?

 

Harwin

Oh yes, I agree that the current system, on Live, causes more of that than the battle.net system when people are legitimately changing teams with a few team members.

The AT system does introduce the possibility of griefing low level teams (for as long as you can continue to find new partners to help you grief - maybe that's enough of a restriction) without costing you personal rating (since you get points from your highest team). It removes the penalty for deliberately playing in a lower bracket, although maybe with the time taken to get people to 70 etc this will mostly be a non-issue.

 

Gerya

The easiest way to get exalted with the 5 main factions is doing the repeatable quest in AV to bring in blood/flesh/scraps/... that drops from enemy corpses.

And I haven't seen any old factions in northrend either. But Blizzard has said before that they want to give new players an equal chance, and thus don't give oldtime players an advantage of already having factions exalted that will give you something extra, it's all about new factions.

 

Sydane

It is surprising that none of these large chains like the Wrath Gate give baseline Alliance/Horde faction. I'm actually happy to see that D.E.H.T.A. is giving Cenarian Expedition rep, there's no reason to have to create new factions if they aren't needed for gearing reasons, it wouldn't hurt anything at all if they allowed people to get Keepers of Time rep from CoT: Stra, plus it would make grinding those reps easier for new characters. Some things like that can be used to connect old and new content, and don't need to be tied to a reward.

I understand the need for creating new factions, but it doesn't have to mean abandoning old ones. Retrofitting new factions to old content would be nice as well, the Chromie quest chain in the plaguelands would have definitely been a great place to introduce KoT rep without really changing anything about the game at all. Small tweaks like that make the change from expansion to expansion and area to area seem less abrupt and more tied together.

On the arena ranking topic, I'd encourage someone to make a new thread on the pvp forum as I'm sure some exceptional ideas are floating around out there to improve it and having a focused topic on the matter is much more likely to get noticed by Blizzard than this discussion buried in a 300+ page generic thread.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

• alcaras

Done: http://elitistjerks.com/f38/t33164-a...play_together/

 

Mideci

Can someone on PTR tell us what these things cost in terms of honor and/or marks?

 

Addled

Right now, I'm thinking about dual boxing warrior/resto shaman for WotLK leveling. How would people characterize WotLK quests: lots of kill quests ("Go Kill 30 Talbuks") or are they mostly collection quests ("Collect 30 Bear Heads"), or an even mixture of both?

Also, can any multiboxers comment on how fast it is to level? If there's lots of collection quests, I don't want to dualbox, as "Collect 30 Bear Heads" turns into "collect 60 heads" due to the 2 characters, and slows down my leveling. I want to get to 80 in a reasonable time.

 

Jebraltar

It's still a pretty even mixture of both, and when there's collection quests, it tends to be "collect 5 items at a high drop rate" or "collect 10 at a 100% drop rate." The tendency is toward kill quests, though.