Arena For Profit and Power leveling, a growing trend?
The Ruin group seems to have a plethora of teams that are doing one of two things, Selling armored nether drakes by power leveling a team to top 20 in 60 fights or so and then helping the new owner get in their 20% so they are qualified for the rewards. The other half is bringing in a scrub getting his 30% for the week so that he can get points at the 2K+ level.
Last week my team lost 100 points to one of the top 10 teams in their reroll team. They hit us for the first time when they were 1800 or so and we were 1980ish. Then we continually hit them every requeue until we found ourselves down over 100 points. The next week the Exact same thing happened. Rather then play their 2400 team they continual reroll new teams to take points from every other team in the BG.
If your BG isn't as prevalent let me show you some armor links:
The Armory
At the time of posting it they are in their original team. Notice everyone has 10 fights of 250ish fights for this team.
The Armory
Another team that shows this team usially is pulling down ratings of everyone else in another team.
The Armory
These guys reform all the time and took 100 points from us. They fought 60 fights last week at the time of typing this, this is the teams 3rd week in formation.
Do other BGs see this type of activity? Really its two or 3 well geared teams power leveling teams and lowering scores of the legitimate teams in the BG. I have no issue that they are better then us, my issue is instead of loosing 2 points when they beat us I have to loose 22.
They definitely need to have some kind of limit to how often you can switch between arena teams. While it probably isn't possible eliminate this kind of thing completely, it is far too easy to abuse in its current implementation.
That's just user error dude, if you're worried about your rating or ranking...you have to stop queueing after the 2nd or 3rd loss unless you make progress on a team. Obviously you didn't make progress at all since you lost 100 points, so you should probably have stopped after the second loss and played another time.
That's just user error dude, if you're worried about your rating or ranking...you have to stop queueing after the 2nd or 3rd loss unless you make progress on a team. Obviously you didn't make progress at all since you lost 100 points, so you should probably have stopped after the second loss and played another time.
Yes, on your own you have to stop queuing in a situation like this. But that just means some other team is going to undeservedly get burned instead of you.
Before you start to drift, and your soul begins to scream.
I just wanted to tell you, that you're listening to a dream.
Why is it undeserving? They're going to move up in rating and be out of that rating range in short time, and the better team won. The better team deserves to win regardless of rating, there is nothing undeserving about losing to a better team. Blizzard is not going to "glue" someone to a team for an extended period of time, this would only work if it was for an entire season, and obviously there'd be problems because people change teams and quit etc.
Yes, on your own you have to stop queuing in a situation like this. But that just means some other team is going to undeservedly get burned instead of you.
Expect to see a lot more of this if ratings requirements go into effect.
Its manipulating a ladder system. The ladder is meant to be a tournament. Obviously this was an overlooked aspect of the arena, the devs didn't expect this and so there are no barriers to doing so.
Your rating shouldn't be able to be bolstered by team hoppers selling rating... your arena rank should be indication of your own team's skill and ability not of being able to farm up 5k gold so that uber_pvp_d00d's team can get you your points faster.
When the top 25 slots are taken up by 5 teams, will that be enough to add some sort of team switch limit? It's pretty ridiculous to be sitting around 1900 and have what is essentially a 2400 team sandbagging in a 1700 team come through and take 30 points from you
I posted about this a few months ago and, as I predicted, it's becoming a pretty common practice.
Let's suppose a team of Scrub #1-5 are kicking around at 1600 rating and decide they're just not getting gear fast enough. They get together 5k gold and approach Team Uber, the top ranked team on their server. Team Uber decides "Yeah, we'll power level your team". These guys drop their previous team, leaving an alt to hold it for a bit. They join the Scrub team.
Now Team Newb consists of Scrub #1-5 and Uber #1-5. Uber #1-5 play a hundred or so games and end with Team Newb at 2300 rating. The Uber guys take the 5k gold, leave the team and join their original team, play another 30% games before the end of the season and they, too, get their drakes (or, if previous they'd already gotten drakes, they don't even NEED to get 30% because there's no extra benefit and if this is the case they can join 5-6 teams A WEEK to power level those teams each and every week and still keep their high rated team).
Now, what you're saying is that because Team Newb paid 5k gold to another team to power level their ratings to 2300 and that other team left for good that they still deserve it?
Affix from Tichondrius is openly advertising his arena selling services on the official boards and even reports his own posts for cheating. The official response he got (if you consider a GM as official) is that its ok. He says he makes several thousand gold a week, and I believe him, having played against his smurf teams before.
Yes it definitely is a growing trend. At one point, Spray and Pray had what, 4 teams in the top 30? And it sucks. Not only does it suck to get steamrolled and losing 20 points to a team you should only have lost 2 to, but it also sucks to wait in queue 5 minutes to face a team that obviously did not get the rating themselves. Just this Tuesday we played against a 2000 rated prot warrior/rogue team. Clearly they got to 2000 with that lineup. Clearly. And it sucks the most getting screwed out of an end-of-season reward because half the ladder is filled with bought teams.
This needs to stop. Now. Before it gets totally out of hand. Otherwise, the top of the ladder will freeze. Why? Say you are facing a team of your own rating. You are expected to win 50% against them. But now they are rated 300 points below you. Now you are expected to win like 98% of the time against them, which you clearly will not pull off. So even if you win 60%, which under normal circumstances would be a gain for you, you will lose points. So the only answer is to not queue as already pointed out. Eventually everyone will make smurf teams with the express purpose of stealing points from the competititon. The whole ladder will be smurfs while the true top teams are not playing because they would be virtually guaranteed to lose points. Clearly, that cannot be what Blizzard has in mind.
I think people figured out these abuses mid to late season one. They have now perfected these shady plays over the course of season two. I expect this to get even blatant/worse with the third, and hopefully Blizz will have some fixes for us come the fourth.
I think people figured out these abuses mid to late season one. They have now perfected these shady plays over the course of season two. I expect this to get even blatant/worse with the third, and hopefully Blizz will have some fixes for us come the fourth.
In that video he covers two topics related to this: 1) For Armored Netherdrakes they look at the % from who played over the last 100 games of the season on your team. 2) They are aware of the power gearing that is happening. He said they do not have an immediate fix for it but that it's something they will address. No time frame was given. The topic is towards the end of the video
Last edited by Birdemani : 08/10/07 at 4:24 PM.
Reason: Fixed direct link to interview
Why wouldn't a team take a substantial point hit by adding a new member? Maybe take average in a 1500 player to the team's score, so higher-ranked, more "serious" teams are encouraged to establish a solid team, whereas lower-ranked players don't suffer much of a penalty for trying out different class combinations.
Alternately, and this is a much bigger change, you could score people individually rather than by team.
In that video he covers two topics related to this: 1) For Armored Netherdrakes they look at the % from who played over the last 100 games of the season on your team. 2) They are aware of the power gearing that is happening. He said they do not have an immediate fix for it but that it's something they will address. No time frame was given. The topic is towards the end of the video
Excellent news. Now why is this not posted on the official PvP boards? That place has one of the worst troll/useful information ratio out there, and could really use some blue love.
As far as stop queuing sometimes that is not an option, Some weeks there is only one day you can get the team together, specially since we all don't raid with the same group so our availabilities don't always overlap. The other issue is you don't get better running away from a team you can't beat. The last time we faced the Drama LLama we had changed the fight from them killing us with all 5 of them standing to only 3 of them alive. It was just taking 22-19 points a game to get a solid strategy.
Why wouldn't a team take a substantial point hit by adding a new member? Maybe take average in a 1500 player to the team's score, so higher-ranked, more "serious" teams are encouraged to establish a solid team, whereas lower-ranked players don't suffer much of a penalty for trying out different class combinations.
Alternately, and this is a much bigger change, you could score people individually rather than by team.
Its fairly easy, specially if you fight 20 fights a week, you take them in for their minimum number of games (for 20 that would be 6 matches) you do those fights first then you do the rest of your matches with your normal team. Since your rating starts down if they brought your team down, you get points faster and by the end of 20 fights are probably up a few points. Meanwhile you have 200 gold for a scub to get 1000 points for the week and he gets his epic weapon in 3 weeks.
Speculation but perhaps Ugly Train bought his spot on the team. Or maybe he is new to team and they had a really bad week. I can't say for sure, but you do see that occasionally.
In that video he covers two topics related to this: 1) For Armored Netherdrakes they look at the % from who played over the last 100 games of the season on your team. 2) They are aware of the power gearing that is happening. He said they do not have an immediate fix for it but that it's something they will address. No time frame was given. The topic is towards the end of the video
Seems like a great guy. Something to keep in mind the next time you get angry at the Developers. It really does seem like in this game, as opposed to others I have played, they really do care.
Why wouldn't a team take a substantial point hit by adding a new member? Maybe take average in a 1500 player to the team's score, so higher-ranked, more "serious" teams are encouraged to establish a solid team, whereas lower-ranked players don't suffer much of a penalty for trying out different class combinations.
Alternately, and this is a much bigger change, you could score people individually rather than by team.
I dont think you should punish a team for brining in a new player to help against a team they are having a hard time with. Or for getting a sub in for a week where they may not be able to play much and want to salvage some points.
I think at a certain rating you should be required to play X amount of games to keep the rating. The S3 gear/weapons will have a certain rating req to equip them. Maybe they should have a certain amount of games played at that rating too. So of Joe blow buys a highly rated team, if he has to play 100 games and keep above that rating, he wont be able too because he'll get wiped out be legit 2100+ teams thus not allowing him to use the gear he wanted to farm.
I think it's great that my guildmates (who run the GMST chapters) are making lots of extra gold by marketing their arena skills to masses, but at the same time, this sort of ingenuity ruins the integrity of the entire arena system. There's a lot more to be said about this particular issue, but I'll skip the discussion and move directly to the fix.
(1) Add a new visible statistic to each arena team: "deserters."
(2) At the start of each week, the deserter count is reset to zero.
(3) Whenever a player who has played games with the team this week or last week leaves the arena team, the deserter counter is incremented.
(4) When the deserter count hits
-4 for a 5v5 team
-2 for a 3v3 team
-2 for a 2v2 team,
the deserter count is set to zero, and if the team's rating is above 1500, the team's rating is set to 1500. Games played per player and total games played for the week are set to zero.
(5) Add a warning message whenever a player leaves a team: "Warning: <team name> can suffer only <#> more desertions this week before its games are declared invalid and its status is reset."
(6) Add a warning message whenever the deserter count hits the appropriate number: "Warning: <team name> has exceeded the maximum allowable number of deserters for the week. The team's past victories are forfeit and its status has been reset."
This is a complete solution. There is absolutely no way for a point-selling team to get around this. This will not have any effect on any legitimate team, unless active players comprising more than a third of their roster all leave during the same week - and if a team loses that many members in that short of a time, shouldn't it get a fresh start in any case? I think so.
Anyway - this mechanic is "in flavor" (the concept of deserters makes sense - right?), easy to understand, and invisible to most players. It simultaneously fixes point-selling teams and mitigates the rating inflation that naturally occurs throughout the season. Unless inhouse development tools involve heavy use of punchcards, this could probably be coded and tested by one guy during his lunch break.
Which begs the question . . . why hasn't something like this been implemented yet? Beats the hell out of me.
Would their be much drawback to dropping teams and going to an individual rating system? You personally start at 1500, and your groups rating is the average of the member ratings. To determine points won/lost, you compare your personal rating against the team rating of the other side.
Pro's:
1) No more joining/leaving/reforming shennanigans. Your rating is your rating.
2) Powerleveling becomes difficult. The levelee needs to be on the field for all games. You can't duck down to 1500, because the leveler's rating is too high. The leveler is risking his own, permanent rating by taking on a scrub. After getting a few games in, pushing the levelee to 1800 or so, the team has a 2000 or so rating, and will probably start to lose games, given that the levelee is a scrub.
Con's
uhh....
1) People like teams?
2) Harder to qualify for tournaments?
3) Something I'm not thinking of?
Last edited by oldmandennis : 08/10/07 at 5:25 PM.
Reason: clarity
I can't see any way to prevent *some* abuse without changing the current system.
If a player has to play a certain number of games or a certain percentage of a team's games to get points/drake/etc, then the purchaser can just play as many games as they like at a 1500 rating, then sit while 2/3/5 people power level the team to the top of the brackets.
But how it plays out from here differs based on what people want:
Drake/title:
Strategy: I think the strategy is to just hold the team where it, playing as little as possible after the PL. Here, counting only the last 100 games is the proposed solution by Mr. Kaplan. But a 1500 team can be PL'd to a 2400 rating in 70 or so games (100-30 starter games played by the purchaser), so I don't see this working perfectly. Additionally, 1500-1800 (and beyond) could simply be played with the purchaser on the team, just contributing as best he can.
Proposed Solution: Penalize teams for lying dormant. This can be done in many different ways, such as charging 100 points if the team doesn't play the minimum number of games (which could be less than 10). There is collateral damage with this solution though. Legit teams that just can't get all 5 people on for the final weeks of the season could lose their mounts. In the end there may be no fair way to avoid people buying nether drakes. But really, I'm not sure I see a huge problem here both in terms of competitive impact and number of occurrences.
Points/gear:
Strategy: I think the strategy is to get PL'd to a very high level and then put in 3 games a week during peak times when you know you won't lose 30 points in a game, then queue leave for the next 7 games.
Proposed solution: Have the team have to actually *play* a full 10 games a week to get points, which should cost about 150 points a week, and likely more. Seems like an easy fix, am I misunderstanding something?
Basic math: You purchase a 2200 team -- You'd have a week at 2200, then 2050, 1900, 1750. Say you could have sustained 1500 on your own. 1202+1070+894+692+432 - (376*5) = 2410 net points "earned" from purchasing a team, which isn't a game breaking amount in my opinion.
Under the current system you'd earn about 4800 points net in the first 5 weeks of purchase, and about 6000 over the lifetime of the investment.
Would their be much drawback to dropping teams going to an individual rating system? You personally start at 1500, and your groups rating is the average of the member ratings. To determine points won/lost, you compare your personal rating against the team rating of the other side.
Pro's:
1) No more joining/leaving/reforming shennanigans. Your rating is your rating.
2) Powerleveling becomes difficult. The levelee needs to be on the field for all games. You can't duck down to 1500, because the leveler's rating is too high. The leveler is risking his own, permanent rating by taking on a scrub. After getting a few games in, pushing the levelee to 1800 or so, the team has a 2000 or so rating, and will probably start to lose games, given that the levelee is a scrub.
Con's
uhh....
1) People like teams?
2) Harder to qualify for tournaments?
3) Something I'm not thinking of?
There are some potentially debilitating problems with individual ratings. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple:
*With no ability to leave losses behind, people will lose the freedom to join a team just for some fun games early in the week. Given the emphasis WoW's developers put on the fun factor, this is damning.
*Players who play bench, subbing in versus highly unfavorable matchups (to make them only moderately unfavorable), get screwed royally under an individual system.
*Teams might sub in a low ranked (but pretty good) player to drag their collective rating down, allowing them to win more games against lower competition. An 1800 team could powerlevel one of their players to be the top ranked person in the world, simply by having 4 people drop to 1300, then sub the lucky devil in for games until they start to be challenging again, only to sub him out for another loss streak.
heel: Cool idea, and it totally makes sense, but you could still sell 3/2/1 spot(s) on the team every week, right? Why not have it be a longer term, like 10 member changes per season?
I'm going to add in my own experience here. I played on a bad team, we didn't have he right classes, we didn't have the right specs(PvE), and we did it for the fun and for the items(see caster weapon itemization). This last week an Arena team from my guild lost a rogue due to RL travel issues(he's gone for a month), they asked if I would join the team, but I'd have to change my spec to Frost for when we're focusing on Arena.
Long story short, we start at mid 1,500 rating since the team hadn't been too active(one member leveled a MS warrior), we make it to mid 1,600 when we simply get our asses handed to us, we're talking about the game being over in under a minute with the massive amount of incoming damage on the priest, then on myself. A few of the members of the team were really wondering because the names were very familiar to them, as it turns out that all of the members of the team we had just fought were currently in the #24 ranked team in our bracket, 2,100+ rating. They'd done exactly what everyone in this thread was complaining about. We lose twice, decide to stop for a good hour for dinner hoping that they've progressed out of our rating level...nope, as soon as we get our second match...you guessed it, we're toast again, we called the night.
It's just not fun trying to progress in your bracket when you come up against a team that you really shouldn't be up against with their full S2 Gladiator's set with their S2 Gladiator weapon and they do a hard bloodlust DPS burn. We lost a good ~40-50 rating points from this team over 3 matches.
08/10/07, 3:30 PM
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