Arena For Profit and Power leveling, a growing trend?

Myonax · 08/10/07, 2:16 PM

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.

The Armory
One of the abandoned teams.

The Armory
This weeks Smurf team

The Armory
Want to buy this one? Its might be for sale.

More:
The Armory
The Armory

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.

Dragooner · 08/10/07, 2:19 PM

Mod delete my post please, not very contributary.

Astrik · 08/10/07, 2:23 PM

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.

gnuoyiy · 08/10/07, 2:27 PM

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.

• Maestroquark · 08/10/07, 2:30 PM

Originally Posted by gnuoyiy

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.

gnuoyiy · 08/10/07, 2:42 PM

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.

Cwealm · 08/10/07, 2:42 PM

Originally Posted by Maestroquark

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.

Malan · 08/10/07, 2:47 PM

Originally Posted by gnuoyiy

Why is it undeserving?.

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.

Solipse · 08/10/07, 2:49 PM

Yeah, this is basically for the birds.

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.

Solipse · 08/10/07, 2:55 PM

Originally Posted by gnuoyiy

Why is it undeserving?

Are you serious? Really? REALLY?

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?

Again, I ask ... are you serious?

Aphyrax · 08/10/07, 3:00 PM

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.

Papabone · 08/10/07, 3:08 PM

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.

♦ Birdemani · 08/10/07, 3:21 PM

Originally Posted by Papabone

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.

Please check this video: Exclusive Interview: Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan | News

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

Melador · 08/10/07, 3:25 PM

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.

Aphyrax · 08/10/07, 3:29 PM

Originally Posted by Birdemani

Please check this video: Exclusive Interview: Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan | News

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.