I see in-guild teams just like Guild DOTA, some guilds can handle it some cant. It is very atmosphere dependant. I personally would fight my guildies because its all for the fun of the game, who doesnt want to play Smash vs friends in RL. In the end any criticism can be given and make them better I am all down for it. On the otherhand there are the people who WILL take it serious.
We ran inhouse DOTA (TI vs TI) and for awhile it was such a nightmare because of people trying to be grouped with certain people and some people taking the win/losses/kills personally that the Officers called a stop to it. I think they started doing it again or vs different guilds but in any case it really is a test of how strong the guild comradery and "sensitivty" level of people are. I know my friends and I plan on playing anyone we meet even if it is guildies or not because everyone comes to play.
If people are getting bent out of shape over the simple idea of competition, they need to be mocked.
What will complicate the scenario is the rewards that enter the picture. What if two guild teams face off, and one of the two teams has hardcore 24/7 players who also have the best raid gear available at the time, but still enjoy PvP? I could see "come on, not only do you have more DKP than me but then you take the gear you got and use it to stop me from getting adequate substitutes??" as a source of a wee bit of drama.
lotta thought for the (Hopefully) relatively small chance your teams will face horde, they will face each other, -and- that one or both won't be able to be mature in the win and/or loss.
I don't the situation would warrant a guild rule on swapping losses (especially in arena since this is kinda like saying both teams lose in a rated system)
I'm sure if the group of people i played with we encountered that situation we'd try 100x harder to win that match for the sole purpose of trash talking, though not in a mean spirit but standard epeengloat. I don't think we'd fall apart.
Hell, we'd probably institute something ala army-navy where "If you lose every game but beat the other guild team... it was a damn good season"
as for trading wins (old honor system) : the reason was because being the 'best' in pvp didn't mean beating other teams on the other faction in battlegrounds, but beating other teams on your faction by way of honor points.
No honestly I am dumb. Most of the I'm playing smart.
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?).
Path of least resistance. It's more challanging PvP to not actively scout in battlegrounds, but many many teams that are going for top levels do so. There's also some strange stuff that can be done if a team can gurantee a non-challange, such as bringing in alts for 3 matches for the week or selling arena points for gold. The simplest solution to collusion is to only allow teams to play each other once a week or once every other week. Trading wins is still possible, but much less viable.
Originally Posted by Praetorian
Farming for your weekly 100g PvP respec for your required matches every weekend will be just like farming for consumables!
If the team PvPs Monday/Tuesday and PvEs Wednesday through Sunday, it's only one respec a week.
Week 1 - Start in a PvP Spec on Tuesday. Respec Wednesday.
Week 2 - Stay PvE specced through the start of Week 2. Respec Monday and get the week's ratings.
Week 3 - Repeat the loop.
Basicly, the team would only compete in the arena for the two nights surrounding the weekly ratings update every other week.
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?
No, not just that. There are many talents in each tree that have "PvE" and "PvP" written over them. So, say a 41/20/0 build can range from full PvE to full PvP with the same number of points in each tree, and the effectiveness may differ a lot in the two realms (I won't give a worthless estimate because you cannot weigh the usefulness of PvP tools like you can measure stat output in PvE). I'm not saying a healing priest is useless in an Arena group, no. But he's much more useful if he takes Blessed Recovery, Blessed Resilience, Improved Inner Fire, Power infusion and Pain Suppression instead of mana conserving, healing power amplifying and aggro reduction talents.
Add changing whole trees to the table and you can arrive at very upset PvE hardcore players in the end. But yes it's possible to spend the 100g every week, but it might be a strain on the guild lead to force it.
My guild is facing the very problem right now, with the BG explosion many have shifted towards PvP specs and the 1% Loatheb wipes don't make the decicated PvE ppl happy.
Furthermore: will Blizzard screen the top ladder contenders and punish them for repeatet offenses. I don't think that will happen, but I think it would be possible.
If you scroll down to the third paragraph from the bottom of the first post here, you'll see that they will be closely scrutinizing the people who dominate the ladder. Overrated's recent guild ban provides supporting evidence that they do.
Needless to say, if Blizzard says "Don't do this", we won't do it. Period. Hard stop.
Where do we draw the line whether such an agreement beyond the limit of the own team is unfair? If it is extended to your guild, perhaps to your guild alliance...or even to the whole alliance/horde side on your server.
And this is why I bring up the point. It's easy to make a judgement as to what is right and wrong when it's all abstract. When you're immersed in it, immediate circumstances can influence your decision process. So I'm asking now what is ethical so I know what I have on the table to deal with any animosity that might arise within the guild due to Arena matches.
Morality becomes relative if you don't actively stand against it becoming so.
Originally Posted by frmorrison
My opinion on match "fixing" is it would create ill will towards the rest of the server and it is not ethical since it is against the spirit of the game.
The point I missed in thinking about this was thinking the effect was contained within the guild. If this was the case, why then would the server/battlegroup get mad? However, as Gurgthock illustrated above, the effect of one guild group consciously losing to another guild group does have an impact beyond the confines of the guild. So it's pretty safe to say #2 and #3 are coming off the table.
#1 is a lot less deliberate and certainly less orchestrated and I'm a lot more comfortable with it than I am with the other two.
Now if it happened that two G & M Arena teams were against each other, the people involved should be mature enough to handle a loss and not gloat about it.
We'd hope. The one unknowable factor is that I'm designating the teams and how that lack of self-determination will affect people's reactions. Maybe it won't. Perhaps it will. I need to be ready in the worst case scenario.
Originally Posted by Kazanir
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?
All we know about are the Netherdrakes and the Titles which you'll have for the just one season.
Originally Posted by Kazanir
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.
Again, my goal isn't to do well in the system. I'm of the opinion that we'll do well in any case. The concern with regards to the final two proposals was potential guild-breaking animosity that might have formed when two sets of highly competitive people go at it. If there's no guild-breaking animosity, then it's certainly not worth the trouble.
Originally Posted by Keldor
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?
I agree with you and I believe that question is going to be the death of many guilds.
First, guilds may take no role in deciding Arena teams leaving it up to the individual members. This dynamic will play on the factor of who has friends and who doesn't have friends. The guild leader may grab 4 guildies and raid with them. Others in the guild may have trouble finding 4 other people to group with and instead be forced to do Arena-3s or 2s. Will this create drama? Probably.
The other common alternative will be guild leaders forming guild teams in an effort to take advantage of a second source of gear. What they'll find is that just because you're good at PvE does not mean you're good at PvP. This will also lead to drama, stress and strain. No one likes to be on the losing side of the curve but by definition
Originally Posted by Mem
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.
Assuming I understand your post correctly, the problem is that you'd have to be the best X teams in your battlegroup and be in the same guild. How often that 15 to 30 of the battlegroup's best PvPers will just happen to be in the same guild is low at best. Arena season rewards will be handed out based on comparisons to other people on your server. Your Elo rating (which I believe you're referring to in your last paragraph as "arena ranking") will be determined across your battlegroup. This is the case because it is determined by the wins and loses against teams of different ratings and those wins and losses will be against people from your battlegroup.
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.
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.
Your upbeat assessment as well as everyone elses helps assuage my concerns about intra-guild competition. In regards to your specific suggestion, I've been avoiding Arenas aggressively. The reason is because the Arenas played now will be different fundamentally from Arenas played at level 70 due to gear, new spells and new abilities.
Not only was I concerned about animosity between guild members right now, I'm also concerned about people getting prejudiced for or against certain team templates based on inaccurate testing.
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 think GLs making the decision on who X persons arena team will have some heavy reprocussions, mainly because people dont want to be controlled. Most dont mind following instructions in a raid but this is purely OOR time. Some people do arena for fun and others do it for the competition, another (and probably the main) problem it creates is the fact that some people can be very good individually but just cannot player together. Now I am not talking about butting heads but some people instinctively just do not click together. Arena teams are kind of like a matchmaking service, you need to find someone you click with and can live with. I supposed a GL can see who clicks with who but that a lot of times steps into the A group B group situation.
While a mostly PvE guild, we've had dedicated pvpers as well, with at least about 10-15 that were ranked 11 or higher before 2.0. Now after pvping for weeks or months with the same groups of people, with the occasional non-pvper guildie that comes in. You get to know who can actually handle / excell at pvp and others who just had more time to play (GG old system).
Our arena teams were player chosen, with no outside influence (GM/officer) and I don't expect any intervention either. PvP is not our main goal, and isn't a concern for them. I'm not seeing this causing alot of drama within our guild.
My guilds teams (so far) are going to be made up of our more 'hardcore' portion (those of us who actually log in to farm/pvp on off nights) as opposed to those who just log 45 minutes before the raid and 15 minutes after the raid.
I'm not thinking my guild is going to run into a bunch of drama, more than likely it will be a epeen match (like we need more of that). I don't expect anyone to just auto-lose to another guildie either, a certain team might choose not to play to let XX team get ahead but not by throwing games, thankfully most of my guild have a decent grasp on ethics / pvp etiquette.
About respec costs, our current MT is on beta and said hes going to play on an arena team on our off-nights but the respec cost doesn't bother him at all unless they scale/change it. Apparently 50g at 70 isn't that big of a deal (personally I'm not on beta so I don't really know).
I know the rankings are done within the realm but is it also divided by faction, or is everyone in the same pool? I'm going to guess the second because we can play either faction.
#1 HordeTeam1
#2 AllianceTeam2
#3 AllianceTeam1
#4 HordeTeam4
I'm going to guess at least 4-5 ranked teams alliance side and 2-3 ranked teams horde side. My servers rankings will be nowhere near as hard as Mal'Ganis though, who happen to be in my battlegroup :D
A little long winded I know.
note: the old pvp system didn't show alot of skill and I'm not trying to say it did, but I hope you get the point
Originally Posted by Sebudai
Addons aren't a crutch, they're tools to be abused by skilled players to increase performance. Like a carpenter using a hammer, a fisherman using a lure, or Xi using curse words.
Question #1: Is it possible that these top-ranked Arena teams fighting each other will cause animosity within the guild? Is it likely? What could be done to prevent it?
Yes, it is almost inevitable. And it's not preventable, except by recruiting people with good attitudes towards competition.
Originally Posted by Igni
Scenario #1: Fast-forward to season 2. Team A of this guild has gotten their Armored Netherdrakes and bought all the epic gear available through the Arena system. They’re still interested in PvPing but don’t see the need to top the charts again, so in a nod to their guildmates they agree to lose whenever they run up against another guild team. Is this ethical? Does this open up the guild to accusations of cheating or win trading?
Scenario #2: In an effort to head off Arena competition from creating animosity within the guild, the guildmaster decides that whenever teams fight each other, they’ll take turns losing, thereby spreading the wins and losses among the guild evenly. Is this ethical?
Scenario #3: In an effort to head off Arena competition, yet maximize the points for various guild teams, the guildmaster decides that whenever guild teams fight each other, Team A will win during the first season, Team B will win during the second season, and Team C will win during the third season. Is this ethical?
#1 - Is it ethical? Irrelevant. If Team A has gotten their rewards (unlikely, the system updates every season), then why not let their guildmates get rewards? Due to the setup of the system, this will not happen, but if Team A has gotten their rewards, who cares about ethics? It's obviously not cheating, there will be no repercussions from Blizzard, so why not do it?
#2 - That's asking for people to quit the guild. As an officer of a guild, I'd never ever force a team to trade wins, I know it's more drama than letting them fight normally.
#3 - It's ethical, but again, as the arena updates seasonally, nobody will be very happy about this. And Team C is getting their rewards in 9 months? Yeah, I'm sure they are ecstatic about that.
Farming for your weekly 100g PvP respec for your required matches every weekend will be just like farming for consumables!
I'd still love to see the concept of "BG tokens for re-specs" get some traction.
For those of you who keep an eye on blue tracker, are you aware of any alternative re-spec methods being proposed (besides gold)?
As far as arena teams go, I'd expect it would just naturally sort itself out. Given that we're not going to be able to form teams until lvl70 - I'd expect the best of the best to emerge by that time - and if guildmates are going to have a problem with being excluded from that A list - they should probably begin to give that some thought *now*, and work towards sealing their position as "best of my class".
Actually, BG tokens for respecs makes a lot of sense to me; since the idea behind gold for respecs is to limit the number of respecs you can do by requiring some investment of time to respec, BG tokens would serve the same purpose.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
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?).
Path of least resistance. It's more challanging PvP to not actively scout in battlegrounds, but many many teams that are going for top levels do so. There's also some strange stuff that can be done if a team can gurantee a non-challange, such as bringing in alts for 3 matches for the week or selling arena points for gold. The simplest solution to collusion is to only allow teams to play each other once a week or once every other week. Trading wins is still possible, but much less viable.
I find the concept of scouting to avoid organized groups amusing, because my guild sometimes scouts to find organized groups. Of course, the organized groups on BG6 are terrible so it's still not much of a challenge. However, I do see your point though, but those people will never be on the top, just somewhere in the middle. Pretty much all the good PvPers I know frown upon win trading and farming pugs all day, so that's where I got my viewpoint from.
Did Blizzard change their stance regarding intrafaction arenas? I remember it is possible to fight same faction but you wouldn't be ranked on those matches, only AvH stuff. Poplation balance might have forced them to change however.
I can somewhat imagine the highest end groups would bring like two paladins plus another healerish and damage people for their 5 man teams leading to a very strong alliance dominance of arenas as paladins seem to be the very strongest of PvP healers and Horde won't have access to them for quite a while. Might just be frustrations or so though based on numerous AB games with one (1!) paladin able to defend a flag long enough for backup to arrive :/
For collusion, I somewhat doubt it will occur as once people throw one match they realize how much they just lost and continue on saying "no way, you gotta earn it if you want to win" with respect to intraguild Arena battles.
I see intentionally losing (not that that is going to be easy to do) as akin to cheating in say Halo online. Ok so you cheat and get this huge ranking. Then every time you go against highly ranked non guildies, you get destroyed and quickly lose your rank. This is pretty much a non issue for so many reasons.
]\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. \
Well, I don't particularly see how collusion works in an elimination tournament. No matter what, exactly one person will advance, and you will still have to beat the enemy to eliminate him. About the best you can do is ensure that your strongest colluder always advances, but that would tend to happen anyway. The strongest player will still tend to win the tournament, no matter what.
However, chess tournaments are NOT elimination (in 99% of cases), but instead swiss systems (essentially play people with the same score) or round robins. In that situation (especially round robins), collusion is a possibility. For example, the Soviets would all throw their games to a certain person to ensure that he would beat Fischer (or Keres, even though he was Russian himself, since he was a Jew). Since the default result in chess is a draw, that provides a large boost.
More importantly: There is DEFINITELY possible net benefit from collusion. Assume two teams have strengths of 2200. Let's say, by throwing games, team A can get to 2100, while team B gets to 2300. Then Team B can stop at 2300. Team A continues playing against random other team, and eventually returns to their true strength of 2200, which shouldn't be hard given the correcting nature of the system. This process could be repeated indefinitely i.e. the team A throws matches until they are 2100 and the team B is 2400, then team A plays until they reach their true strength again etc. Of course, the randomness of pairings makes this difficult, but the point is that collusion has possible mutual gain, so concerted efforts to arrange matches (both queuing at the same instant in the middle of the night) have large possible payoffs.
More importantly: There is DEFINITELY possible net benefit from collusion. Assume two teams have strengths of 2200. Let's say, by throwing games, team A can get to 2100, while team B gets to 2300. Then Team B can stop at 2300. Team A continues playing against random other team, and eventually returns to their true strength of 2200, which shouldn't be hard given the correcting nature of the system. This process could be repeated indefinitely i.e. the team A throws matches until they are 2100 and the team B is 2400, then team A plays until they reach their true strength again etc. Of course, the randomness of pairings makes this difficult, but the point is that collusion has possible mutual gain, so concerted efforts to arrange matches (both queuing at the same instant in the middle of the night) have large possible payoffs.
If you don't play matches in a given week, I don't believe you receive any points for that week at all.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
More importantly: There is DEFINITELY possible net benefit from collusion. Assume two teams have strengths of 2200. Let's say, by throwing games, team A can get to 2100, while team B gets to 2300. Then Team B can stop at 2300. Team A continues playing against random other team, and eventually returns to their true strength of 2200, which shouldn't be hard given the correcting nature of the system. This process could be repeated indefinitely i.e. the team A throws matches until they are 2100 and the team B is 2400, then team A plays until they reach their true strength again etc. Of course, the randomness of pairings makes this difficult, but the point is that collusion has possible mutual gain, so concerted efforts to arrange matches (both queuing at the same instant in the middle of the night) have large possible payoffs.
If you don't play matches in a given week, I don't believe you receive any points for that week at all.
While that's perfectly true, I hardly see the relevance. This plan relates not to how many games you play, but who you play against. If you can assure a desired opponent, you can play as many as you want, 10 or 50 or 100 per week. It relies on one team sucking points out of the system in general, then transferring them to another team that never plays competitive matches, for safe keeping. It would be really easy to detect, and I don't imagine it will be a real practical problem, but my point is just that being zero sum doesn't necessarily mean there is no net gain possible.
If two teams that wanted to do this queued for the arena simultaneously at 6am on a Thursday, would the pairing still be "random"?
I imagine blizzard will institute some sort of one match per week rule, where you can only play any other team once per each week. This would certainly eliminate the potential abuse from trading games, but will result in slightly longer queues for the teams at the top end of the rating system. I certainly don't think the top ranked teams will stop playing simply because they have to wait a few minutes for their games.
More importantly: There is DEFINITELY possible net benefit from collusion. Assume two teams have strengths of 2200. Let's say, by throwing games, team A can get to 2100, while team B gets to 2300. Then Team B can stop at 2300. Team A continues playing against random other team, and eventually returns to their true strength of 2200, which shouldn't be hard given the correcting nature of the system. This process could be repeated indefinitely i.e. the team A throws matches until they are 2100 and the team B is 2400, then team A plays until they reach their true strength again etc. Of course, the randomness of pairings makes this difficult, but the point is that collusion has possible mutual gain, so concerted efforts to arrange matches (both queuing at the same instant in the middle of the night) have large possible payoffs.
If you don't play matches in a given week, I don't believe you receive any points for that week at all.
While that's perfectly true, I hardly see the relevance. This plan relates not to how many games you play, but who you play against. If you can assure a desired opponent, you can play as many as you want, 10 or 50 or 100 per week. It relies on one team sucking points out of the system in general, then transferring them to another team that never plays competitive matches, for safe keeping. It would be really easy to detect, and I don't imagine it will be a real practical problem, but my point is just that being zero sum doesn't necessarily mean there is no net gain possible.
If that team never wins, they'll drop in ranking, and you won't be able to move up (significantly) by beating them.
Collusion isn't impossible to benefit from, but the effort:reward ratio is such that it's simply not worthwhile.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
Another thing to consider is that it's not zero-sum. If a team dips below the initial rating, where is their incentive to not reform under a new name? Or consider the teams that founder mid-season. I understand that the chess rating system reduces the weight of games played by new players (for the sake of their opponent as well; a loss to a skilled player new to the system could severely impact his opponent's rating). Does Blizz have a similar system in place? Or could one force Battlegroup-wide ratings inflation by forming and reforming as many 0-10 teams as possible?
The simplest solution would be for a team not to receive any points until they've played N weeks under the system.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
12/15/06, 2:09 PM
Similar Threads
