It is definitely a bit different. I would look at it from this angle though: If both teams stand to lose or gain an equal amount, then there is not a lot of advantage to be had in throwing the match either way. Remember, while you gain purchasing points based on your Arena rating, the other team loses them as well, so there is an "even trade," so to speak. Gurg's analogy carries the most weight if there are prizes for winning a season (or placing in it) above and beyond the normal accrual of Arena points from rating. So far the only thing I know of is the armored nether drakes, but I haven't been keeping close tabs. Could someone enlighten me?
In this way, the Arena system Blizzard has designed is actually very resistant to collusion. The two best-known examples of ELO systems in modern gaming are in the Magic: the Gathering and chess tournament systems. In these systems, rating is important, but not as much as winning any given elimination-style tournament. Collusion of the sort Igni is suggesting becomes MUCH more powerful in that kind of a setting, because you can help assure a given team a tournament win, which is the overriding factor. It seems to me that persistence of rating is less vulnerable to this because you can't trade tournament wins with it as you could in Magic or chess competitions. Igni might choose to pursue a course and it wouldn't earn him any good will on the battlegroup, but I doubt he'll see a lot of advantage gained for his guild by such choices anyway.
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
Can you imagine the drama when you put you best healers and Tanks in a single team have all other team lose to then and then have them buy dps items with the points.
While there's no tanking gear available from PvP Arena, there is likely to be healing sets. Thottbot has the PvP Druid Healing set, the beginnings of the PvP Shaman Healing set and placeholders for the Paladinand PriestHealing sets. You can see all the sets here. While it's not definitive, it certainly is consistent with how they're handling the PvE gear.
If it is correct, it would preempt how the rest of your post plays out.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
I have another question about the arena system and guild polotics. I see more inter-guild trouble by people deciding who is on whose team. Do any guilds have any idea how they are going to decide the makeup of their teams?
That's because the old honor system was retarded, and even the people who weren't at the very top stood to benefit. The people dictating the system were usually the super hardcore players who COULD have gotten 1mil CP every week if they wanted to. So you can agree to get #3 for the week and stop at 250k, or you can tell the cap-fixers to go to hell and go all-out, get 700k, and still get #3 for the week, and in so doing, ensure that when you yourself want to get Rank 14, you'll need to hit 1mil+ every week because everyone will be trying to stop you.
It's a bit different from the arena setting, to say the least.
First of all, yes, the old system was really shitty, i am glad its gone for good. Nevertheless: if you are the top team on your server, you can cockblock everybody else. You will have a gear advantage since you will be able to get all upgrades first. Lets develop this idea further: what happens if a guild manages to monopolize the top spots by fielding 3 teams (or even more). Don't you agree that this would a) open the way for manipulation and b) would not result in severe consequences as long as those folks don't start with content that requires outside assistance (and even then, they will probably get them since they also have quite a lot to offer ("want gladiators weapons? join us"). There is a pretty good chance that on some realms gladiatorial honors will be controlled by a kind of arena syndicate.
Remember: the arena ranking is NOT calculated over the whole realmpool but rather for the realm only. Not all servers are so densely populated by competition minded folks as Malganis US seems to be.
I guess I can see the disconnect here. I'm sure a lot of hardcore gamers forget the good ole days when they were young and played sports.
Teams "draft" players. These teams then try their best to win. Often times you'd be playing against Timmy your neighbor for Championship games, but you didn't stop being friends because your team kicked his team's ass. Or having varsity and junior varsity teams within the same school.
You just accepted you weren't as good as other players, or if you felt shafted, you worked your ass off to show that you can move up to the Varsity team.
That's my input. Hold scrimmages NOW while Arena's dont mean anything to determine who will play on your teams for real points later. Operate it like a coach, not like a guild leader. If everyone accepts that they've earned their spot on Varsity, JV and "Freshman" teams, and people are given the opportunity to move up or down based on attendance and performance, then things will work themselves out naturally.
The only thing to block would be the unique arena rewards for being a top-ranked team, which currently is just a different mount look. Due to the rating system and cross-realm battlegrounds, teams will rise or fall to where they should be ranked. Since points are based on the team's rating, and not their standing or ranking, the difference between being 2nd on a low-pop realm with 2000 points and 15th on a high-pop realm with 2000 points is zero.
The matching system could have the potential for abuse, depending on how it works. Hopefully, Blizzard has some form of anti-collusion code to prevent two high-ranking teams from playing each other exclusively during off-peak hours. Otherwise, I could see two 2000 point teams set up a session where they trade 5 wins with each other to get their ten matches in without actually playing (gearing up alts or selling slots during that process as well). But that's really idle speculation because the arena matching system hasn't been tested over a massive player base yet.
Could Blizzard introduce a check whereby 2 teams from a guild could not play each other. It would eliminate alot of crying on the server forums about a guild colluding to get all of its members the top spots. It doesn't elimate all the other problems with teams throwing matches because they hate the team that would otherwise win overall and other examples, but i think it would go a long way to eliminating controversy. I don't know how much colluding there will be outside of a server, i was (until very recently) often one of the top PVPing groups on our battlegroup, and i never felt any animosity towards any team outside our server, and didn't really know of any of them except the top horde groups that we occasionally played. It just doesn't seem like the environment where inter-server colluding is prone to occur, but i'm sure there will be many cases of it happening within a guild/server.
Due to how expensive respecs are (although considering gold inflation reports from the beta, respecs will be much cheaper proportionately), i could see alot of guild drama if one team within the guild is constantly PVP specced while another team is forced to spec PVE. Certain classes can get away with it to a certain extent, but many others can't justify their spot in a raid if PVP specced, and vice versa.
Assuming for the moment that all the players in G&M are pretty evenly skilled, then I think the first thing to do is work on team composition and balance in advance, such that you have three teams that are as close to an even keel of skill and class balance as possible.
I am doing this but in developing the team templates I haven't gone the balance route. Keeping in mind that the end goal is to kill the other guys, I loaded up on one or two strengths while leaving potential weaknesses. I did it this way because no one is going to form a team specifically to counter me. And since the goal is "kill the other guy", not "be prepared for everything a PvE fight might through at you" I thought this was a reasonable approach.
The real problem you might be looking at is if you end up with a true A team and B team, where the "A" team consistently thrashes the "B" team. That would indeed be bad for morale, and the only way to avoid it (without gaming the system, which I think would be detrimental to the guild as a whole) is to make sure your teams are as evenly balanced as possible, even against one another. This is hard to do though, without the level 70 spells and talent builds, not to mention the itemization of level 70 gear. Also annoying is the inability to do "exhibition" matches in the Arena where you can select which team to play. The only solution for balancing teams' skill levels is to play them against one another, and your options right now are limited to Dire Maul and the Gurubashi Arena. Good luck, I guess.
This is what I'm looking to avoid. In developing templates, I had to design teams that could include every single class. And because my design philosophy was strength in one or two areas, the teams are fundamentally different from each other. So it is quite possible that, left to their own means, some team could end up reliably beating the snot out of another team reliably simply because one team's strength was another team's weakness. And because I'm assigning guild members to teams - thereby taking the self-determination out of their hands - this is prone to resentment on their part.
Your solution is nigh impossible. We could attempt to parse out exactly what you mean by 'balanced' but there are so many different combinations it will literally make your head hurt. We also can't do it in Dire Maul or StV because it wouldn't be an accurate test since we don't have the level 70 spells and talents nor do we have the itemization we'll see come the expansion.
I do appreciate your thoughtful response and please don't think I'm dismissing it easily. But coming up with a template that is strong, includes specific classes and doesn't overuse rare classes (healers, shaman) is difficult in and of itself. Add on to that the restriction that they must be balanced against each other and it'd boggle the mind.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
That's my input. Hold scrimmages NOW while Arena's dont mean anything to determine who will play on your teams for real points later. Operate it like a coach, not like a guild leader. If everyone accepts that they've earned their spot on Varsity, JV and "Freshman" teams, and people are given the opportunity to move up or down based on attendance and performance, then things will work themselves out naturally.
The goal in the scenario you describe is to field the single strongest team you can; that's not the same as a guild attempting to field several arena teams that are all equally competitive. Additionally, someone frustrated with their team placement in high school isn't likely to leave the school over it - the same person in the game might feel completely justified in leaving their Arena team.
I think it's important to consider the points (as a function of rating) curve posted: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9545
The important thing to get out of that curve, for the non-mathematically inclined, is that the points earned by the top 33% are roughly equal. Unlike the old honor system, it's not devastating to be #2 when you were hoping to be #1. Number 1 earns you perks, which guild members would hopefully concede to eachother out of courtesy and respect - and because it doesn't conflict with the conceding team's self-interest.
The ELO system is self-correcting. If Team A with a true skill at 1700 and rating at 1700 goes into a week where they're paired up primarily against guild Team B who forfeits the match to them, they may finish the week with a much better record than their expected 5-5 and have their rating increased to 1800. But the next week, faced with 10 matches against teams better than them, they're likely to lose as many as they won the previous week and drop right back down to where they were.
There are a few things severely limiting the impact of that, though:
- The above situation will result in B dropping further and further behind A, C and D. Team E and onwards will therefore be likely to surpass B in the rankings, resulting in fewer matches between A and B, as A is now facing team E and F instead. The wins A gets versus B also nets fewer and fewer points.
- Absolute ladder position is largely irrelevant, with the exception of the #1 spot, which gets you a new mount look at the end of season. Your rating in numbers is what will decide the amount of arena points you make. If Blizzard implements ELO correctly, B's loss of rating with this method will be comparable to A's gain in rating. With rating giving sinking marginal returns of arena points, the combined arena point earnings of A and B should actually drop.
- Presumably, there will be more than 4 teams in the upper tier of the ladder, further reducing the impact.
Because of this, I don't see match throwing to truly be worth it for the reasons you suggest, except perhaps at the very end of the season, to boost one team to #1.
I think Copernicus' scenario is much more troubling, and I didn't consider that. Two top teams could easily make sure they mostly play eachother each week, keeping their rating at status quo and earning large amounts of arena points. They won't win the ladder, but their returns for time and effort invested will be huge. Hopefully, the system implements some sort of diminishing point return when there are repeated fights between the same teams.
I see PvE guilds putting their Tank, key DPSers and main healers into an Arena team, then instructing all other guild teams to lose to them if they ever get into a fight with them. I think the guild teams will see this as acceptable because when they come out of their individual Arena teams into their PvE group, a) they'll be able to progress further and faster because key individuals - as many as 10 if each person plays four games and a few people play five - are well-geared and b) the guild as a whole will have fewer people to compete for loot with since those key individuals will already have Arena gear in certain slots.
Heh. Heheh. Frankly, I think if any of us saw one of our tanks (Our normal MT, say) in a place where we could, justifiably, kill the heck out of him, I think "team success" would quickly take a back seat as every single one of the opposing team popped every single one of their timers at once simply to make sure he died. A lot. Possibly twice, if we can figure out a way to get a battle rez off. Heck, you should have seen the in-raid carnage the last time we cleared C'thun trash...
I don't think any of us are looking at Arenas as "serious business" in that regard. At least I hope not.
This might require more research on my part, but could you explain a little bit more about the difference between PvP specs and PvE specs? Is it as simple as all Priests going Shadow, all Druids going Feral? Or is there more subtlety than that?
While similar at first glance, you'll note that the arena spec has significantly more survivability, but is lacking extremely important PvE talents like Meditation, Divine Fury, Improved Healing and Clearcasting, making it far worse for healing raids.
The ELO system is self-correcting. If Team A with a true skill at 1700 and rating at 1700 goes into a week where they're paired up primarily against guild Team B who forfeits the match to them, they may finish the week with a much better record than their expected 5-5 and have their rating increased to 1800. But the next week, faced with 10 matches against teams better than them, they're likely to lose as many as they won the previous week and drop right back down to where they were.
This only becomes a problem at the top of the food chain, of course. No one would even notice or care about throwing matches if you're at the median of the curve. But at the high end, there will only be a handful of teams up there, and those teams will offer the only meaningful opportunity for continued advancement. And once you enter that smaller universe, I think that's where the possibility for collusion arises. But we'll see!
Can you imagine the drama when you put you best healers and Tanks in a single team have all other team lose to then and then have them buy dps items with the points.
While there's no tanking gear available from PvP Arena, there is likely to be healing sets. Thottbot has the PvP Druid Healing set, the beginnings of the PvP Shaman Healing set and placeholders for the Paladinand PriestHealing sets. You can see all the sets here. While it's not definitive, it certainly is consistent with how they're handling the PvE gear.
If it is correct, it would preempt how the rest of your post plays out.
I don't think it really Preempts the rest of my post, see the second paragraph from my post you quoted. As I am currently at work I can't check thottbot to see the actual sets you have linked so my rebuttle may be a bit flawed.
Let's assume that those healing set are the same quality as PvE obtained healing gear. As a guild now you expect that your healers in Team A will get healing gear to help your PvE progression because your other teams are throwing all their games against Team A in the name of faster PvE progression. I know that I wouldn't be happy if my guild told me that not only can I get no alternative spec gear in PvE raids but now I can't get it by PvP either. You obviously know you guild healers better then I so you'll know if this will cause problems or not.
In trying to overcontrol the situation you risk one of two outcomes. Either unhappy people in Team A because they do not have the freedom in PvP that the rest of the guild does or every one not in Team A unhappy because they are sacrificing their Arena points so Team A can get more points without benifiting anyone not in Team A.
An additional point to consider is how this will impact PvE loot distribution. If 10 people get geared in the arena they don't have to spend DKP on PvE sets. In most loot systems that means those 10 people will get all the rare drops and rings and trinkets first, this would be an occasion for drama for the same basic reason people didn't like conspired to keep class set prices low in bidding systems so that they could grab all the rings and trinkets.
All of this is dependant of course on how your guild is run and who your members are but in most cases I'd bet trying to control it that tightly will cause far more drama then it will prevent.
I don't know of any solution, though. If you ban match-fixing, then they'll just make it look close for the sake of appearances, but there's no way to really tell whether a team was throwing the match or just "off" that day.
You also can't make matching decisions based on guild membership because teams are not necessarily formed along guild lines and algorithms would become so much more burdensome since they'd have to go into the details of the group. Because they don't yet have a BG system that can match you based on your gear, though one is in the works, I'm disinclined to think one is currently in place. So that means we'll have to deal with this issue for a while if not forever.
And lest everyone think I'm a big cheater, let me point you to the one time I got a Blue response. And I'll point you to these questions which I'm asking about ahead of time to not only ask the community what they think but also to signal to any devs or CMs that might be surfing these forums how things may play out.
Unlike me, some people might not give the first thought to ethics and simply do what it takes to get the shiny purples.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
[ As a guild now you expect that your healers in Team A will get healing gear to help your PvE progression because your other teams are throwing all their games against Team A in the name of faster PvE progression.
All of this is dependant of course on how your guild is run and who your members are but in most cases I'd bet trying to control it that tightly will cause far more drama then it will prevent.
Just so you know, the OP, Igni is running a PvP guild, so doesn't care about PvE progression much (however, you can't ignore it, the rep rewards are quite useful to fill some slots).
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I think Copernicus' scenario is much more troubling, and I didn't consider that. Two top teams could easily make sure they mostly play eachother each week, keeping their rating at status quo and earning large amounts of arena points. They won't win the ladder, but their returns for time and effort invested will be huge. Hopefully, the system implements some sort of diminishing point return when there are repeated fights between the same teams.
It depends how fast the system differentiates out by skill. It could be that it will take most of the season for a 'top team' to actually acheive its high rating, meaning that the potential impact of Copernicus's scenario is limited to only a couple weeks of no-effort points. That wouldn't be worth anyone's time. The behavior of the system depends on constants in the ratings formula, which Blizzard will hopefully tweak until they have it working as they desire.
That kind of collaboration would be very difficult for them to detect without actually monitoring the matches in question. Two teams with equal rating should go 50-50 against eachother. If they trade wins and end up 50-50, for statistical purposes the system is performing exactly as intended.
The goal of an ELO system is for your rating to be equivalent to your team's actual skill. Since everyone starts out at the same rating, there's a period of radical adjustment where teams move from the initial position to the skill equilibrium. The length of that period based on constants in the equations, number of teams, initial fluctuations in performance, etc, are things I'm poking at in my spare time at work.
Due to the nature that the throwing team will be losing arena points if they were to drop rank I don't see this happening that often. When it does I don't think I would be concerned if a team full of bad rep people saw payback for their previous karma.
Due to the dynamics of the matching system, I think the community at the top of the Arena-5s will become a stable cluster of teams that will get to know each other very well. Because of the rate at which they'll attain gear, it's possible that people will be buying duplicate sets just so they can put different enchants on certain pieces. So I don't see this as being too far-fetched.
However, one thing to consider is that while groups are matched due to ratings across your whole battlegroup, Arena season rewards, such as the Netherdraeke and titles, are handed out on a server basis. There's no recognition of top for the battlegroup aside from rating and since there's no end marker for rating, the idea of groups continuously throwing games for a team that may or may not be on their server becomes a bit more distant.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
Two teams with equal rating should go 50-50 against eachother. If they trade wins and end up 50-50, for statistical purposes the system is performing exactly as intended.
1. That assumes the collaborating teams have the "correct" rating. Both teams could have achieved higher than expected ratings through lucky matches/pairings, and are well aware of that. By only fighting eachother, they can maintain a rating that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
2. Even if they have the correct rating, throwing games 5/5 will allow them to do the necessary weekly battles to retain their rating in 20 carefree minutes, instead of 90 gruelling, exhausting minutes.
As a matter of social norms, I do not think you would be making very many friends at all if you did this. Remember how people who did arranged AVs against each other and took turns throwing the matches were treated, back in the day? If you do it, expect to see posts on the realm forums and WoW General calling for bans. Whether Blizzard does anything is anyone's guess, but it wouldn't go over well with other players.
I was the person throwing tantrums on the forums at the people who traded WSGs back in the day so I'm keenly aware of the perception. However, unlike trading WSGs, Elo scores are persistant and one team's win is another team's loss.
Putting that aside, my plan isn't to out and out do this. I don't even have PvE as a primary goal so I'm not going to the tremendous effort and drama for no good reason. By fielding this question, I wanted to assess the likelihood of mature people getting angry at each other over Arena fights. And if that was likely, what is a good way to avoid it. Whatever my feeling is, the community appears to feel that #2 and #3 are not those ways. And now I know that.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
I really think blizzard needs to implement something to allow people to be competitive in both pvp and pve without having to spend 100g each day they raid to spec pve then spec back.
I also would hope that it doesn't create any animosity among guilds, I think some people will probably be upset if they're constantly getting stomped by another in guild team, but I think that a good part of the people I play with at least will understand that that's just how it goes, and if they want to win they should play better.
The PvP and PvE spec is something for another thread. I doubt the money issue is getting fixed, but at least Prot has some talents that are useful in PvP (imp Shield bash for silence, Last Stand, imp Def Stance for more protection vs. magic damage, -3 reduced rage cost, 5% more stamina, and an instant attack).
Issues with the rest of the server are important, but at remains to be seen if the real affect of game fixing.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
I would expect that people who take arena very seriously (i.e. want top standing) are just hardcore PvPers and will gladly take any challenging fight. Really, the only time you can get angry at someone in 5v5 PvP is if someone does something stupid. If both teams were running at 100% and no one screwed up anything major, it's really hard to get mad because you don't have fights like that every day.
At least, you don't get any evenly matched (gear/skill) fights on my battlegroup.
Of course, not everyone is the same and not everyone is rational. Which I suppose why the concept of trading wins in arenas is so hard for me to grasp (why trade wins when you're supposed to PvP to be the best?).
Be careful with your guild's reputation, as your reputation eventually controls your progress. Players constantly leave the game for a wide variety of reasons, and your guild will need replacements. Your guild's reputation will impact the quality of your guild's applicants.
I've seen it happen with a handful of guilds on my server. A guild gets near the top and starts thinking it can do no wrong. It uses boss kills, PvP ranking, or loot drops to rationalize ethically questionable behavior, and while the server doesn't like it, they can't really do anything about it. However, eventually the guild hits a roadblock like Naxx or AQ, and has to do some recruiting. Unfortunately, all the best recruits join friendlier guilds with similar progression, and the guild with the bad rep is stuck with the players who couldn't get in anywhere else. Naturally, this hurts their progression, and once other guilds get 2-3 bosses ahead of them, people stop trying to join the guild entirely. I saw two guilds on aggramar die because of this, and a third was crippled by it for about two months.
If you're looking at it from a Guild Leader perspective, don't ask if Blizzard objects to it, because generally Blizzard doesn't act on these issues. For that matter, it's not terribly important whether or not there's a legitimate breach of propriety. The real issue is whether it's percieved to be unethical, because the Court of Public Opinion is going to have the biggest impact on your guild in ethical matters. The CPO doesn't act fast, and it will take months before you feel the effect of a bad rep, but it will happen.
I can't see how throwing a match can be considered ethical at all. Now it may not be outlawed, and a lot of non-ethical things are legal to do, but it doesn't suddenly mean that it's ethical.
My guess is there will be some spotty cases of collusion, but by and large it'll be fought tooth and nail. Getting #1 isn't so much about the gear for those kinds of players, it's about the epeen and ability to trash talk.
12/15/06, 11:38 AM
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