No philosophical discussion here. I'm just interested in collecting some data.
With Arenas starting in less than two weeks, I'm interested in finding out whether you the poster
are in an Arena 5-man team. If not, do you have any plans on forming one? Finally, how many
Arena 5-man teams do you know of that are ready to go and just need to sign a charter?
I've been posting to all the realm forums of the Ruin battlegroup telling them when and where
my guild's teams will be, urging them to queue up at that time. One person replied "there will be
thousands of teams, why are you telling us about yours?" I'm convinced that there will be quite
the opposite. However, neither of us have any data to support it so I thought I'd post here
and ask "Do you have an Arena 5-man team?"
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.
Arena matches can happen between any realm in the battlegroup, and amongst the same faction. I think it will not be an issue. Back in 2.0 days before the expansion, when there was zero reason to do arena matches except checking them out, the queue time for 2v2 was always <1min and for 5v5 <15mins.
Arena matches can happen between any realm in the battlegroup, and amongst the same faction. I think it will not be an issue. Back in 2.0 days before the expansion, when there was zero reason to do arena matches except checking them out, the queue time for 2v2 was always <1min and for 5v5 <15mins.
But are you yourself in a 5-man Arena team or do you have plans to form one? Do you know of any other people
with explicit plans to form an Arena 5-man team?
As to why I think the way I do:
2.0 and beta aren't comparable to what we'll see come February 16th. Yes, there was zero reason to do them.
There were also zero consequences to do them over and over again. Blizzard has designed Arenas to be an
anti-grind. Instead of people spending their lives each week in BGs to attain rank 14, they've designed Arenas
to allow you to stop playing after 10 games. The magic number is 10 because that is the minimum number of
games you have to play to qualify to earn points for that week. Past the number 10, there is no correlation between
time invested and points earned. Once teams have attained their "true score" (post #25 of this thread: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=9545 ), I don't think you'll see any teams queuing up for more than
the minimum required 10 games a week since you can actually do harm to your rating if you queue up in a rated
match and lose. Now people might queue up in so-called practice matches without hesitation. But as they don't
count towards your rating or contribute to your minimum 10 games required to get the points, they're outside the
scope of my query.
I'd also suggest that the 2x2 bracket is a different animal than the 5x5 bracket. In 2x2 bracket, your buddy logs
on, you /invite buddy and then talk to an Arena Battlemaster. No problem at all. Getting 5-people online at the
same time, however, is a more difficult proposition. Add to this the further complication that everyone on your
team has to participate in 30% of your games to qualify for the team's Arena points.
If you run your group too small, the five-person minimum, you have the problem of getting everyone online at the
same time when they don't have prior commitments. If you run your team large, you have the logistical headache
of making sure that everyone gets their 30% of games played. This might seem trivial but the same hardcore
people who are going to be forming 5-mans are probably the same hardcore people who raid four or more times
a week.
Here's another difficulty. It isn't as simple as your 5-man team queuing up at the same time as some other
5-man team. Since the system matches teams up according to rating, you have to be queued up at the same time
other teams of comparable rating are queued up. If you go to Drysc's fourth bullet point here in this thread
( http://blue.cardplace.com/cache/wow-general/9552122.htm ), the system doesn't automatically pair you up
and throw you into the Arena with the team closest to you in rating no matter how distant they may be. Instead,
you queue up and - if there are no other teams of comparable score - you wait. And wait. And over time, it
gradually widens the window to a limit. This is fine for players close to the average since the close to the middle
of the bell-curve there are a lot of teams. But for exceptional teams, which most of us aspire to be, that window
might not be large enough to get us a match on a reasonable time frame. And the time we spent waiting on our
Arena match to pop is time we can't be relied upon to raid.
To recap, I think that 5-man Arena teams will have difficulty finding a matches because of the logistics involved
with fielding an Arena 5-man, the fact that everyone will want to play the minimum number of games possible and
the non-trivial time investment for teams with higher scores.
I could be way off base. But I don't think people are attributing the difference in difficulty between gathering 5 people
to PvP and gathering the same 5 to 10 people to PvP week after week. We'll see in a few weeks.
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 don't think it will work exactly the way you expect, nor do I think most people will know or care. Yes technically if you do 10 matches and win all 10 then you can stop and get a perfect score. But if some other arena team does 25 matches and win 20, lose 5, won't they get ahead of you? I think the majority of teams will play several times a week, and many hardcore PvPers will be in arenas all the time. I personally plan to be on a 2v2, 3v3 and 5v5 team from the starting point.
Yes technically if you do 10 matches and win all 10 then you can stop and get a perfect score. But if some other arena team does 25 matches and win 20, lose 5, won't they get ahead of you?
in fact, they won't.
maybe there was a sentence missing in there about not winning 10/10, but reading exactly what you wrote, your assumption is incorrect.
if you win 25/25, your rating will indeed be better than 10/10, but if you lose even one in 25 matches, your rating will be lower than 10/10.
Edit: on topic.. my guild intends to do 50/50 PvP/PvE (pve to pvp) and will have at least 2 regular 5 man, i believe
I don't have a 5v5 team set up yet, with everyone leveling and getting keyed up it doesn't seem to be on everyone's radar.
Does anyone know exactly how the points work if you compete in 5v5 and 3v3 in the same week? I read that you'll get more points for 5v5 and that you can do both and get the better of the two, but I'm just wondering on the specifics of how it's calculated.
Looking back at Warcraft 3, which had Random Team (skirmish) and Arranged Team, with 2, 3, and 4 sized team brackets, my ancedotal opinion was that RT preferred larger teams, and AT preferred smaller teams. There was also a general skill trend on this too - the better players tended to play a lot of solo (the most arranged team one can get), with a fair tie on 2v2s (coordination and all of that is more challenging, but you personally are always available when you wish to play, your partner may not be), but 4v4s were practically nonexistent.
Whereas the flipside RT is true, population wise - 4v4 RT was incredibly populous, and 2/3 was practically nonexistant.
2v2 is the most flexible, personwise - you only need to find exactly one person with the same schedule committment and your team can rock and roll. However, given that arenas are intra-battleground and inter-faction, it doesn't take a lot for at least some weekend warrior action.
On immediate point, I'm not even sure 5v5 wil be fun for me. 5 people focus fire on one target, and if that's me, I get to watch a play put on by my friends. I'm more thespian then audience, personally.
Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.
I don't have a 5v5 team set up yet, with everyone leveling and getting keyed up it doesn't seem to be on everyone's radar.
Does anyone know exactly how the points work if you compete in 5v5 and 3v3 in the same week? I read that you'll get more points for 5v5 and that you can do both and get the better of the two, but I'm just wondering on the specifics of how it's calculated.
Poster: Crezax at 2006-10-12 09:34:03
Subject: 12/10 How ranking points are counted
While you can be on one team of each type, at the end of each week you'll only gain points from the team that earned the most points that week.
However, note that given equal rating, 5v5 teams earn more points per week than 3v3, which earn more than 2v2.
To clarify with an example:
- Let's say you're on three teams (one of each format).
- Let's say that at the end of the week, each of the teams you're on ends at a 1500 rating.
- Assume that you were an active player on each team (played in at least 30% of the team's battles)
Results at the end of the week:
- Each active player on the 5v5 team would be eligible to gain 408 arena points
- Each active player on the 3v3 team would be eligible to gain 244 arena points
- Each active player on the 2v2 team would be eligible to gain 163 arena points
So, you'd gain 408 points that week.
Note: in the example we provided above the 1500 refers to the team's rating. The number of points an active player gets from a team is derived from the rating value plotted on a logistic curve.
Also, one of the points we were trying to illustrate above is that active players on that 5v5 team will gain 408 points each. This is the case regardless of whether there are 10 total active players on that team (the max possible), or merely 5 active players (the practical min).
We don't want to "split" points among active players, as that would encourage you to not have alternates on the team, and we don't want to pressure you to minmax the system by always having the min number of players for a team.
Update
Bear in mind that the arena point return for your team's rating ins't linear. So to throw out another example...
- Each active player on a 5v5 team with a 1500 rating would receive 408 arena points at the end of the week.
- Each active player on a 3v3 team with a 2000 rating would receive 632 arena points at the end of the week (as compared to 244 at a 1500 rating).
That being said, we are deliberately trying to encourage the most competitive players to participate in the 5v5 battles, as we feel considerably more comfortable with the potential class balance in this environment. 2v2 has far more potential for certain class combinations to be heavily favored, and as such we're being conservative about how strongly we reward the smaller format sizes.
Your team only needs to fight 10 battles per week to be eligible for points. You can fight more if you so choose. However, due to the way the rating system works (and the way points are derived from rating), teams with high ratings are (in theory) increasingly likely to play only the minimum required number of battles.
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.
Looking back at Warcraft 3, which had Random Team (skirmish) and Arranged Team, with 2, 3, and 4 sized team brackets, my ancedotal opinion was that RT preferred larger teams, and AT preferred smaller teams. There was also a general skill trend on this too - the better players tended to play a lot of solo (the most arranged team one can get), with a fair tie on 2v2s (coordination and all of that is more challenging, but you personally are always available when you wish to play, your partner may not be), but 4v4s were practically nonexistent.
Whereas the flipside RT is true, population wise - 4v4 RT was incredibly populous, and 2/3 was practically nonexistant.
2v2 is the most flexible, personwise - you only need to find exactly one person with the same schedule committment and your team can rock and roll. However, given that arenas are intra-battleground and inter-faction, it doesn't take a lot for at least some weekend warrior action.
On immediate point, I'm not even sure 5v5 wil be fun for me. 5 people focus fire on one target, and if that's me, I get to watch a play put on by my friends. I'm more thespian then audience, personally.
Thank you for sharing that experience. In its own way, I feel your anecdote supports my assertion.
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.
Yes technically if you do 10 matches and win all 10 then you can stop and get a perfect score. But if some other arena team does 25 matches and win 20, lose 5, won't they get ahead of you?
in fact, they won't.
maybe there was a sentence missing in there about not winning 10/10, but reading exactly what you wrote, your assumption is incorrect.
if you win 25/25, your rating will indeed be better than 10/10, but if you lose even one in 25 matches, your rating will be lower than 10/10.
Edit: on topic.. my guild intends to do 50/50 PvP/PvE (pve to pvp) and will have at least 2 regular 5 man, i believe
I thought Blizzard was persuing a ranking system much like that of chess. Wherein your win/loss ratio did not matter nearly as much as the opponents you faced.
i.e. (10 total matches each)
Team A wins 9 games against groups of lower ranking and loses 1 against a lower ranked group. Their rank goes DOWN.
Team B wins 3 games against lower ranked groups, loses 5 games against higher ranked groups, and wins 2 games against higher ranked groups. Their rank goes UP.
Your rank compared to others at the end of any week (or whatever period of time Blizzard chooses) would then determine the amount of Arena Points you earned.
maybe there was a sentence missing in there about not winning 10/10, but reading exactly what you wrote, your assumption is incorrect.
if you win 25/25, your rating will indeed be better than 10/10, but if you lose even one in 25 matches, your rating will be lower than 10/10.
Are you sure?
I was under the impression that a win bumped up your rating, whereas a loss knocked it down. With the amount of change depending on the rating of the team you fought - beating a higher rated team being worth more than beating a lower rated one; and losing to a higher rated team being less detrimental than losing to a lower rated team.
Given that you should mostly be fighting teams of roughly the same rank as yourself, I'd have thought that if you won 20 and lost 5, the 5 losses would roughly cancel out 5 of the wins, and you'd be in the position of someone who had played 15 and won them all. Which is better than playing 10 and winning them all.
Or does losing 1 game hurt your rating more than winning 1 helps it? If so, wouldn't that mean that the average rating would tend towards zero or negative?
Losing a single game most definately hurts more then winning 5 against lesser ranked opponents once you get up there.
Think WC3's ladder system.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.
Or does losing 1 game hurt your rating more than winning 1 helps it? If so, wouldn't that mean that the average rating would tend towards zero or negative?
Essentially it would be a zero-sum sort of system, but they could choose to put any number as the 'average' rating.
Basically, a rating system like this is designed to anticipate losses/wins depending on your rating. Like you said, if you win against a team that is lesser rank then your 'rating' would go up a very minimal amount, if at all. However, if you lose against a team of lesser 'rating' then your rank should fall much more significantly, though perhaps not below the challenging teams 'rating'.
Every time your team wins a match, your rating goes up, and every time you lose a match, your rating goes down. The amount by which your rating changes depends on your team's rating compared to the other team's rating – if you win against a higher ranked team, your rating will improve more than if you steamrolled a weaker team.
Similarly, losing against a weaker team will hurt your rating more than losing against superior enemies. The exact formulae are a bit more complicated than that, but the basic idea is similar to the Elo ranking system used for professional chess.
[18:33] <FalkFalkFalk> did you know that if you zone into Hyjal with both Warglaives of Azzinoth
[18:33] <FalkFalkFalk> Furion Stormrage appears and says "Where did you get that? Did HE send you?"
[18:33] <FalkFalkFalk> optional Mt Hyjal boss
---
[17:59] <JamesVZ> i jerk off to my TPS during evocate
We have our first 5 man team, consisting of 10 people, sketched out. We have enough interest for a second 5 man team as more people hit 70. We are used to having raids and other events scheduled well in advance so I don't anticipate too many problems keeping up with the requirements, including practice skirmishes.
I don't have a 5v5 team set up yet, with everyone leveling and getting keyed up it doesn't seem to be on everyone's radar.
Does anyone know exactly how the points work if you compete in 5v5 and 3v3 in the same week? I read that you'll get more points for 5v5 and that you can do both and get the better of the two, but I'm just wondering on the specifics of how it's calculated.
I didn't really answer your question. Sorry about that.
Ok. After spending all night learning the math behind the ratings and how its updated after each match, I have figured out the minimum true strength you need to get all the arena gear which includes a 2-hander, 5pc set, and ranged. First of all your true strength is the absolute skill level of your team. Since thats an unknown, the ELO system tries to infer it from your wins/loses. A few assumtions I made.
1: Every match you play is against someone whos true strength is their current rating. Unlikely, I know, but on average it should be correct.
2: Your win/lose ratio vs a team of different true strength is a fraction and used to determine your rating. This means I came up with several fractions of ratings and used those fractions to determine the points awarded. This again is based on averages and your results may vary.
3: A season is 13 weeks and you played 130 games during that time.
Heres my results of my calculations:
You need a true strength of 2226 to get everything as a hunter. (the xbow costs 2x as much as all other ranged weapons).
You need a true strength of 2109 to get everything as any other class.
You need a true strength of 2600 to get everything as a hunter and end up with 5k points at the end of the season.(5k is the cap I think)
With 1500 rating the entire season you can buy a 2 hander and the cheapest armor piece.
Things to note:
With 2109 true strength, you reached 2000 rating at week 5. The took the rest of the season to gain 100 more. With 2226 true strength it took 6 weeks to get to 2125 rating and the rest of the season to get 100 more. The last 2 weeks you were only gaining 0.1 - 0.2 rating per game.
More Zeboim goodness from post #25 of the same thread:
Originally Posted by Zeboim
Anyways, after posting my last post I started to figure out the diferentials, integrals, and probobility densities of the curve that Blizzard has predicted and implemented.
First we need a logarthmic function with a min of 0 and a max of 1 with a point of inflection at 1500. I'll save you the rouble of figuring that out and give you this:
P(x) = 1/( 1 + e^(-(1500-x)/400))
P(x) tells you the probability of getting x rating. With x = 2109, you get .82 which means that 18% of the teams should get 2109 rating which has the benifit of allowing them to get all the items. In other words, using the above formula, you can determine how many people are better or worse than you.
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.
Five teams set up so far (Symbul has 2, Elendril, Murgen and Mutagen each have one) with three more potentials (Symbul, Caldrach, Mutagen).
Is the Arena just not on people's radar? Are the PvP epics that useless when it comes to raiding? Especially when you consider that it can be a supplementary source of gear instead of one you have to trade raiding off for.
Also, does anyone disagree with the difficulties of fielding teams I laid out in #5?
Do the big raiding guilds, DnT, Nihilum, Afterlife, EJ, have plans to field Arena 5-mans as a guild? Or will it be based on individual interest?
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 there's a lot of assumptions being made here. I don't agree with the ascertion that there will be little motivation to play more than 10 games per week. I can see 3 outcomes:
In the event that a team does exceptionally well in their first 10 games and wins say 8/10 or 9/10 of them, then yes, they obviously won't be motivated to play any more and risk lowering their rating.
But if a team does moderately well and wins 5/10 or 6/10 games, I think they'll be more motivated to play to try to squeeze out a couple more wins.
If a team does relatively poorly, say only winning 2/10 or 3/10 games, then I think there might be a demoralizing sense of "We're having a bad week here" and they might throw in the towel and wait till next week when their new lower rating would put them up against teams that were more their level. But then again maybe they'd keep playing since there might be an attitude of not having anything to lose.
I guess it just depends on how "risk-averse" most WoW players are, and how seriously most teams take their PvP progression. I mean, if somebody is in a raid guild they might actually be willing to play more often just because if they lose it's not like it's their only avenue for gear upgrades.
Holy Paladin (me)
Feral Druid in partly healing gear
2 x Rogues
MM Hunter
The combination is brutal. While the druid is feral, he focuses on hybrid stats, making him able to support heal, and if he is under attack a change to Bear Form lets him survive almost any beatdown, and if ignored and "unemployed", then i have heard a rumor about Mangle, they say it hurts alot :P
I don't think i need to make an argument for hunters, even post nerf MM hunters got insane long range damage, decent surviveability, crowd control, mana drain. Hunters are also currently the best anti-mage counter a 5 man arena team can have, mages can really only resort to instant or short cast abilities or deadzonekiting vs. a hunter which might work in 1on1 but in group PvP a mage will have huge trouble dealing with a hunter, its the arena anti-mage class.
As for 2 x rogues, with the new Wound Poison its the new mortal strike, best snare in the game, stunlocks, insane damage and insane anti-caster and anti-melee and anti-healer combination. 2 x Blind can also destroy ANY team without a paladin/druid to take care of poisons or similar. They have an indispelable CC (Sap) as well which is very powerful.
Paladin is the PvP healer with druid as support. With correct use of Blessing of Sacrifice you can't crowd control him with Polymorph, Sap, traps or anything similar, not to mention Divine Shield, which with 2 rogues in a group is practically unaffected by Mass Dispel since the priest will be the rogues primary target most likely. Mana burn from a priest is also a minor threat with 2 rogues and a hunter on the team.
In the event that a team does exceptionally well in their first 10 games and wins say 8/10 or 9/10 of them, then yes, they obviously won't be motivated to play any more and risk lowering their rating.
For your first example, the results will be the opposite of what you've said for teams who understand the Elo system. There's a concept of "true strength" inherent to the Elo system. You've reached that point when you're winning half of your games and your losing half of your games. So the team who has won 8 or 9 of 10 games should keep playing because they haven't yet reached their true score yet. They can continue playing games and when they start to lose as many as they win, only then should they stop.
But if you're at a 90% win rate and you stop, you're leaving points on the table. When you queue up, hopefully you'll get paired up against a stronger opponent, you beat them and then your score rises. If you queue up and get opponents who beat you, then you've begun to approach your true score.
The pairings are not random and, in a state of equilibrium, everyone will winning approximately 50% of their games with the possible exceptions of the teams at the very top and the teams at the very bottom.
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.
02/06/07, 3:07 PM
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