If 'their' are 40 people AFK in the cave the first side to get an active tank and a healer will quickly kill the npcs and get a ton of honor. I see that you have 6585 lifetime honorable kills. I really do not think you understand what kind of an annoyance it has been to grind honor again and again and again and again. The novelty of playing PUG PvP via the solo queueing has worn of years ago.
Originally Posted by Yes
Also, I find it really ironic that the writer of that mod has 4969 lifetime honorable kills and is on a 1357 rated arena team.
As a system for evaluating a player, this is just stupid as shit. If you were to look at my main character right now, I'm in a guild where me and my buddy are the only 2 active players, I have one arena team (2v2) that is at a pathetic 1600 or something, and I have under 4000 lifetime kills. This says nothing about my skill in arena, my awareness or dedication to PVP, or how much time/effort I've put in to learning playing my class since day one.
If you can't immediately recognize that the flaws present in using an immediate, day-to-day snapshot of one person's favorite character for the moment and using it to make broad generalizations about that player, you are just making the rest of us suffer with your banality and would do wonders to take a long break from these forums. In the past the mod team may have recommended the WOW General boards in a situation like this but my gut tells me even a number of posters there would be able to see through your Scientific Player Judgment Apparatus.
Last edited by Opioid : 11/10/07 at 7:03 PM.
Reason: Gurgthockian Sovereignty
I've stopped trying that after the 5th time in a row that the warrior essentially just charged in and then ran back throughout the entire match.
Now I just scan the raid during the warmup for any high-profile guildmembers. If there aren't any, I'll just leech.
It could be that said warriors are genuine idiots, or it could be that they are shocked at being healed and /clap and /applaud you when they finally realize it. I certainly enjoy finding a random pocket healer from nowhere, even a poorly geared Warrior with a healer can top meters and KBs in AB, instead of the typical suicide mission hope you get a kill method of doom. It's okay to be selfish in pug ABs and do your own thing, being that the organization is typically horrifying, but there's still things you can do to be "useful" to the team or just to have fun. If you're really bored try to jump across the boxes from LM to BS.
Originally Posted by Opioid
As a system for evaluating a player, this is just stupid as shit. If you were to look at my main character right now, I'm in a guild where me and my buddy are the only 2 active players, I have one arena team (2v2) that is at a pathetic 1600 or something, and I have under 4000 lifetime kills. This says nothing about my skill in arena, my awareness or dedication to PVP, or how much time/effort I've put in to learning playing my class since day one.
If you can't immediately recognize that the flaws present in using an immediate, day-to-day snapshot of one person's favorite character for the moment and using it to make broad generalizations about that player, you are just making the rest of us suffer with your banality and would do wonders to take a long break from these forums. I'd recommend the WOW General boards but my gut tells me even a number of them would be able to see through your Scientific Player Judgment Apparatus.
It did seem to be a WoW-Forums quality post, but only Gurgthock has the right to use that phrase... I didn't figure I had to make the same troll impervious "yes my 3v3 is horrible" sig on these forums though.
I have under 4000 lifetime kills. This says nothing about my skill in arena, my awareness or dedication to PVP, or how much time/effort I've put in to learning playing my class since day one.
You are absolutely correct that lifetime kills are not a measure of skill or much of anything. They are however, not a worthless metric for the amount of grinding a given character has done in BG's. Higher kills do not mean all that much it's true, but if you have say, over 40,000HK's on one character, I'd think it's fair to assume that you have a lot of bg experience with that class.
Originally Posted by Yes
I see that you have 6585 lifetime honorable kills. I really do not think you understand what kind of an annoyance it has been to grind honor again and again and again and again.
His arguement was one of the extreme repitition, and magnified frustrations of Pug groups.
"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali
You are absolutely correct that lifetime kills are not a measure of skill or much of anything. They are however, not a worthless metric for the amount of grinding a given character has done in BG's. Higher kills do not mean all that much it's true, but if you have say, over 40,000HK's on one character, I'd think it's fair to assume that you have a lot of bg experience with that class.
His arguement was one of the extreme repitition, and magnified frustrations of Pug groups.
Once the result is anticipateable such an argument is trite and obvious. You know what's going to happen in Pugs, you can figure it out, you know what's a lie and what isn't. A.E. taking SF does not necessarilly force a turtle, but 10 people defending SP can occur in coincidence and people dying may force them to resurrect there so people repeatedly state "don't take SF" as a result, but even so taking SF does make the game more interesting than 13-20 minutes of success/failure, as it gives the potential for something different occuring, AV has this tendency to repeat itself, but there are just so many end eventualities that one cannot fault the map itself, one can fault the unfamiliarity of the populace with one another as a result of battlegrouping or the tendency to just farm maximal honor regardless of the boredom occuring from this. Yes having 40,000 HKs does say "I've been in BGs a lot," but it doesn't necessarilly prevent you from being an idiot.
Complaining about pugs is like complaining about the weather where you live. I don't care that you had a bad pug, I've had an endless amount of workable pugs and a few bad pugs, I don't care that you tend to get screwed more often than me just because I'm a tank and I can organize the group effectively. If you're worried about the failures of your fellow BG-mates then try to instruct them, if you get tired of instructing them then go about your business silently, still not an excuse to AFK.
sitting AFK is simply unexceptable to the masses, and no matter how you try to slant it'll still sound like you are trying to justify getting something for nothing.
I'm not denying that I'm trying to get something for nothing. The current system is inexcusable no one should have to spend 100s of hours every new season just to be on even ground in a different part of the game. In my opinion the daily quest needs to be at least 2000 honor to bring honor in line with everything else in the game.
They should also consider removing honor for kills and then rebalancing other parts of the game so the honor gain is overall higher. That way completing the objective of the game is actually the most honor for your time. Honestly I don't even afk in battlegrounds personally. When I'm in ab a good amount of the time its better to just go out for kills then to actually try to win.
As a system for evaluating a player, this is just stupid as shit. If you were to look at my main character right now, I'm in a guild where me and my buddy are the only 2 active players, I have one arena team (2v2) that is at a pathetic 1600 or something, and I have under 4000 lifetime kills. This says nothing about my skill in arena, my awareness or dedication to PVP, or how much time/effort I've put in to learning playing my class since day one.
If I were to meet your current character with you playing it randomly in a battleground I would quickly dismiss your character as a 'newbie'. What's wrong with that? What better system do you propose when you run into hundreds of new players each day? I sure can't think of any.
I was bringing the connection about people concerned over AFKing in battlegrounds because Gurg brought the connection about PvPers breaking the spirit of the game. My argument still is that because the Battleground system forces us to do an incredibly long grind, with random people out of the whole population who to me are not likely to be nowhere as enjoyable as my arena teamates to play with, that it is a flawed system and I have no problems cutting that time. I'm just presenting my point of view and trying to point out that general trends do seem to occur when opinions are compared to character statistics.
If I were to meet your current character with you playing it randomly in a battleground I would quickly dismiss your character as a 'newbie'. What's wrong with that? What better system do you propose when you run into hundreds of new players each day? I sure can't think of any.
I was bringing the connection about people concerned over AFKing in battlegrounds because Gurg brought the connection about PvPers breaking the spirit of the game. My argument still is that because the Battleground system forces us to do an incredibly long grind, with random people out of the whole population who to me are not likely to be nowhere as enjoyable as my arena teamates to play with, that it is a flawed system and I have no problems cutting that time. I'm just presenting my point of view and trying to point out that general trends do seem to occur when opinions are compared to character statistics.
Elitism is okay when you're exalting yourself to some extent, but to dismiss everyone you see because of their gear is to be delusional. "Lawl this guy must suck because I have better gear than him, there is no possible alternative I might as well just write him off right now." Yes, most BGers are tards, but I don't see less tardiness from people in merciless gear than I do from random people in blues in greens, all I see is bigger numbers and about the same number of afkers.
The grind may be long, but the grind is long in virtually every aspect of the game, unless you are abortively lucky you're not going to get every piece of gear you want, and you may miss something for several months, in BGs the loot is guaranteed the only thing you have to spare is time, and time can be dispersed, it does not have to be focused in one short period post patch just because some people think "getting the grind over" is better than taking BG grinds in small doses (which obviously it isn't if the same argument gets repeated endlessly).
Even if people do suck as a result of their gear or are skill-less that doesn't mean you can't help them or that they, en masse, can't help you. Trust in the zerg and help the zerg develop into the Protoss like yourself so that they too can participate in superiority discussions.
You are absolutely correct that lifetime kills are not a measure of skill or much of anything. They are however, not a worthless metric for the amount of grinding a given character has done in BG's. Higher kills do not mean all that much it's true, but if you have say, over 40,000HK's on one character, I'd think it's fair to assume that you have a lot of bg experience with that class.
His arguement was one of the extreme repitition, and magnified frustrations of Pug groups.
I do not argue that a high number of HKs demonstrated almost certainly that a person knows the situation of the BG grind; I argued that a comparatively lower number of HKs does not indicate a player is remarkably less familiar with the situation. They are two different arguments entirely.
For Opioid's under-4000 kills, I have come to the honor cap twice this year and without breaking the WOW EULA. Despite the small number for the one character I enjoy now, someone with 5, 10, or 20 times as many kills on one character does not necessarily have a more valid opinion or experience than I do.
Originally Posted by Yes
If I were to meet your current character with you playing it randomly in a battleground I would quickly dismiss your character as a 'newbie'. What's wrong with that? What better system do you propose when you run into hundreds of new players each day? I sure can't think of any.
You can dismiss Opioid as a newbie, and you would be correct. It was a change of pace to play Horde, and obviously blood elves didn't exist on live servers a year ago.
This doesn't mean you can dismiss a player as a newbie, or inexperienced, or bad, or their opinions as unwarranted, though. No metric exists to find all of an accounts characters with /played BG time and IP addresses so you know that they weren't being played by someone else.
Once the result is anticipateable such an argument is trite and obvious. You know what's going to happen in Pugs, you can figure it out, you know what's a lie and what isn't. A.E. taking SF does not necessarilly force a turtle, but 10 people defending SP can occur in coincidence and people dying may force them to resurrect there so people repeatedly state "don't take SF" as a result, but even so taking SF does make the game more interesting than 13-20 minutes of success/failure, as it gives the potential for something different occuring, AV has this tendency to repeat itself, but there are just so many end eventualities that one cannot fault the map itself, one can fault the unfamiliarity of the populace with one another as a result of battlegrouping or the tendency to just farm maximal honor regardless of the boredom occuring from this. Yes having 40,000 HKs does say "I've been in BGs a lot," but it doesn't necessarilly prevent you from being an idiot.
Complaining about pugs is like complaining about the weather where you live. I don't care that you had a bad pug, I've had an endless amount of workable pugs and a few bad pugs, I don't care that you tend to get screwed more often than me just because I'm a tank and I can organize the group effectively. If you're worried about the failures of your fellow BG-mates then try to instruct them, if you get tired of instructing them then go about your business silently, still not an excuse to AFK.
Are you advocating SF capping? If you are then I despise you. Alliance have a 10-15 second window to get past SH. After they you're on defence for the rest of the game. If you die and SF isn't capped you're on defence for the rest of the game. Taking SF does nothing more than extend the game and piss off 90% of the BG.
Also the time is very relevant. I grinded out exalted with 2 characters long before less than 4 hour AVs became common. I was present for every game. I was in a 17 hour game for every hour and I played every hour of that game. I used to be up at 2am in the morning telling horde not to give up while defending our last graveyard, that we can still win because the alliance will dwindle in a couple hours and we will push them back. I used to care about winning and losing and I never liked to give up. I was about as far from an AFKer as you can get. That was almost 2 years and almost 100HK over multiple characters ago. Now I really could not stand it. If you haven't done that much AV then you're no different than I was back then. It doesn't mean you suck tro have low HKs, but it does mean you don't understand what it's like to grind out many, many hours in that BG and burn out.
Or you're an alt/reroll, which is the only reason why I don't care how many HKs you have.
Are you advocating SF capping? If you are then I despise you. Alliance have a 10-15 second window to get past SH. After they you're on defence for the rest of the game. If you die and SF isn't capped you're on defence for the rest of the game. Taking SF does nothing more than extend the game and piss off 90% of the BG.
Also the time is very relevant. I grinded out exalted with 2 characters long before less than 4 hour AVs became common. I was present for every game. I was in a 17 hour game for every hour and I played every hour of that game. I used to be up at 2am in the morning telling horde not to give up while defending our last graveyard, that we can still win because the alliance will dwindle in a couple hours and we will push them back. I used to care about winning and losing and I never liked to give up. I was about as far from an AFKer as you can get. That was almost 2 years and almost 100HK over multiple characters ago. Now I really could not stand it. If you haven't done that much AV then you're no different than I was back then. It doesn't mean you suck tro have low HKs, but it does mean you don't understand what it's like to grind out many, many hours in that BG and burn out.
Or you're an alt/reroll, which is the only reason why I don't care how many HKs you have.
? Stop playing AV then. If you're not willing to exercise anything more than the hyper-generic strategy that quick paces your honor gain then yes, you will be bored to holy hell, if you're bored with other results as well, then you're bored in general with the battleground. If you despise it that much, then I can't see why you'd ever bother zoning into the instance at all. Need honor? Do something you enjoy more to get it, AV marks aren't going to exclude you out of more than one or two pieces of gear, which as I said are not mandatory. You may as well advocate deleting that portion of the game if that's the case. If you really really really enjoy arena's then you shouldn't care about your little bit of timesink portion apart from that, its not as though dailies are enjoyable or farming primals is, if not then I can't figure out why you'd continue to play the PvP aspect of the game if you loathe it to that extent.
Another extremely late edit (maybe someone'll notice... better than a useless post): My post wasn't advocating SF in the first place, but yes I do favor turtles to bumrushes.
If snowfall is so important, defend it rather than go AFK heh.
Amazing that we have an AFKer complaining that other people are making the game last longer by actually playing. Wow, just wow.
3 people is enough to hold SF against all but a solid group, and taking SF is a rogue activity () generally only carried about by 1 or 2, if you DON'T hold IB and SF it won't make a bit of difference unless the other side manages to lose 10-15 people to Galvanger. Typically the game doesn't last longer, and if it does it only lasts a short period longer. The impetus of the honor grinders is much too hard to stop without a solid 8 defenders, and even then the SP resolve is very low compared to what it used to be so the turtle doesn't tend to occur for longer than 10 minutes. And yeah its true why complain if you AFK, there's a semi-legitimate reason to complain if you're not AFK and it happens every few games, but it doesn't.
Are you advocating SF capping? If you are then I despise you. Alliance have a 10-15 second window to get past SH. After they you're on defence for the rest of the game. If you die and SF isn't capped you're on defence for the rest of the game. Taking SF does nothing more than extend the game and piss off 90% of the BG.
Personally I like games where Snowfall gets capped early and it turns into a "turtle" because it guarantees a much more interesting game than the usual zerg, and it's a setup where I can singlehandedly help our side win, on my own, if there isn't an organized group of people who queued together on the other side. I've done over 1mil points of healing in 40min AVs before, with the second person on the charts being at around 200k. That breaks stalemates and keeps us alive and pushing forward. And it's fun.
Also the time is very relevant. I grinded out exalted with 2 characters long before less than 4 hour AVs became common. I was present for every game. I was in a 17 hour game for every hour and I played every hour of that game. I used to be up at 2am in the morning telling horde not to give up while defending our last graveyard, that we can still win because the alliance will dwindle in a couple hours and we will push them back. I used to care about winning and losing and I never liked to give up. I was about as far from an AFKer as you can get. That was almost 2 years and almost 100HK over multiple characters ago. Now I really could not stand it. If you haven't done that much AV then you're no different than I was back then. It doesn't mean you suck tro have low HKs, but it does mean you don't understand what it's like to grind out many, many hours in that BG and burn out.
Or you're an alt/reroll, which is the only reason why I don't care how many HKs you have.
So where does that leave me, who got AV exalted within a month of the BG first coming out and who has played every iteration numerous times, yet still queues primarily out of the deluded hope that it'll turn into a fun game rather than the usual mechanical race? (Note that also, unlike the stereotype of people who report /afk'ers and complain about PvPers, I'd consider myself at least reasonably serious about PvP. I've played ~1000 arena matches this season and have a couple of 2250 teams and a 2k+ team with a "bad" composition. Does that give me credibility too?)
I personally can't bring myself to play for honor, even though I know it's what the game wants me to do on some level -- I just care about "winning" even though I have 100 of every mark banked and all the honor I need for S3 saved up. I come out of a 15 minute AV loss that gave me 375 bonus honor feeling irritated, and out of a 40 minute AV win that gave me 300 bonus honor feeling satisfied. So yes, I resent what AV has become, Blizzard for encouraging that transformation, and also the players who try to abuse the system at the expense of others' enjoyment.
Anyway, this is more of a philosophical discussion at this point. AV is changing in 2.3, and I think all of us agree that the honor grind is terrible. Time will tell how the 2.3 changes play out in practice.
I personally can't bring myself to play for honor, even though I know it's what the game wants me to do on some level -- I just care about "winning" even though I have 100 of every mark banked and all the honor I need for S3 saved up. I come out of a 15 minute AV loss that gave me 375 bonus honor feeling irritated, and out of a 40 minute AV win that gave me 300 bonus honor feeling satisfied. So yes, I resent what AV has become, Blizzard for encouraging that transformation, and also the players who try to abuse the system at the expense of others' enjoyment.
Anyway, this is more of a philosophical discussion at this point. AV is changing in 2.3, and I think all of us agree that the honor grind is terrible. Time will tell how the 2.3 changes play out in practice.
I can't really fault Blizzard for designing AV as it is; the terrain variances, while controlling the game originally and how it was played and enforcing the current negative stigma about "turtles" and "SF," are not terrible conceptually. Yes the honor system does encourage grinding for honor and/or marks and AV is the most efficient, but I think the reason they did this is because:
A: They like the way AV was designed and it took a lot more effort than the other battlegrounds (which are symmetrical and have a simple clear-cut objective instead of multiple small objectives and one final objective)
B: 40 people can participate in AV and only 10 or 15 can participate in AB, WSG, or EotS, if AV wasn't honor-profitable then you might have trouble getting more than 1 or 2 going on a non AV weekend.
So by extension they'd rather you take part in AV to gain honor than the other BGs. Personally I'd do AV regardless of its honor gains, I can enjoy it whether I'm arms or protection or fury, the other BGs I only enjoy if I'm arms or the flag carrier.
The reason the NPCs are so easy to roll over now is because of the player-base complaining about the initial design (epic battles are bad of course), and the strategy to quickly zerg down Vanndar/Drek'thar is a result of said nerf/realization that one does not have to defend stormpike to win. I blame the players for this BG being the way it is, and I also don't think 2.3 will, beyond 2 or 3 weeks, change the way the game is played.
So where does that leave me, who got AV exalted within a month of the BG first coming out and who has played every iteration numerous times, yet still queues primarily out of the deluded hope that it'll turn into a fun game rather than the usual mechanical race?
That makes you an advocate of the super-rational strategy for the Prisoner's Dilemma. Thanks, Wikipedia!
I personally can't bring myself to play for honor, even though I know it's what the game wants me to do on some level -- I just care about "winning" even though I have 100 of every mark banked and all the honor I need for S3 saved up.
I agree with Elendril in the other thread that the primary problem is the grind. If everyone in AV shared that desire to win we might even see an element of conscious strategy return, rather than the limited science of controlling the flow of randoms (as in the SF example). Speaking from experience, though, the honor grind seemed a lot less of a burden on my Paladin where I had access to equal iLvl PvE gear, than it does for my Rogue (The World of Warcraft Armory) where I know that every slot I don't spend 20 hours in a BG for will probably be a mid-60s green until the next expansion. Obligatory PvP cred defense - I play that character about 3 hours a week to 2v2 with the Warlock who is my little brother's first character.
Thinking about the honor grind now reminds me of some of the discussion that came up in the TBC Pacing thread. First the point made about the unhealthily high marginal value of time, how an extra raid day to take you from 2-3 progress nights or let you clear an extra farm instance was a very big deal; consider that AV is always there, resetting constantly. Secondly the comments on the mental weight of knowing how far you have to go; the same thing certainly occurs on the Honor grind. BG dailys are a good attempt at addressing the first point by breaking up the linear returns, though I think the values are too low. As to the second, the ideal solution would be more frequent seasons where only 2-3 slots have Honor upgrades introduced.
Personally I like games where Snowfall gets capped early and it turns into a "turtle" because it guarantees a much more interesting game than the usual zerg, and it's a setup where I can singlehandedly help our side win, on my own, if there isn't an organized group of people who queued together on the other side. I've done over 1mil points of healing in 40min AVs before, with the second person on the charts being at around 200k. That breaks stalemates and keeps us alive and pushing forward. And it's fun.
So where does that leave me, who got AV exalted within a month of the BG first coming out and who has played every iteration numerous times, yet still queues primarily out of the deluded hope that it'll turn into a fun game rather than the usual mechanical race? (Note that also, unlike the stereotype of people who report /afk'ers and complain about PvPers, I'd consider myself at least reasonably serious about PvP. I've played ~1000 arena matches this season and have a couple of 2250 teams and a 2k+ team with a "bad" composition. Does that give me credibility too?)
I personally can't bring myself to play for honor, even though I know it's what the game wants me to do on some level -- I just care about "winning" even though I have 100 of every mark banked and all the honor I need for S3 saved up. I come out of a 15 minute AV loss that gave me 375 bonus honor feeling irritated, and out of a 40 minute AV win that gave me 300 bonus honor feeling satisfied. So yes, I resent what AV has become, Blizzard for encouraging that transformation, and also the players who try to abuse the system at the expense of others' enjoyment.
Anyway, this is more of a philosophical discussion at this point. AV is changing in 2.3, and I think all of us agree that the honor grind is terrible. Time will tell how the 2.3 changes play out in practice.
It gives you my experiences with a different mindset. :P I wasn't attacking the low HKs really, just explaining that low HKs can be relevant in that it shows how much PVP experience you have (on that character), and can be seperate from the "lol you suck" use WoW forums commonly use it for.
Philosophically I think the key difference is that we are both playing to win, but define winning differently. You want to actually win the scenario whereas for me I want the most honor. The last time I can recall just going to AV for fun was on a character that was rank 5 and didn't need any of the gear from any BG rep or higher ranks so the only reason to do BGs was for fun. Now it's just the place I go for honor.
On the occasions I play (during the first day of AV weekend I'll play the maybe 3-4 where I'm actually playing) I still don't go for Drekk. Ever. I'll go to lieutenant grommulus and pull him to the group of alliance fighting the lieutenants in front of Galv so that he gets killed. Then I'll cap IB tower and pull that luitenant to outside galv's place so he gets killed by the people leaving after Galv. Then I'll guard IB Tower if nobody is there, or if there is I'll go cap Tower Point and again drag luitenant to be killed and guard. If everything is guarded I'll run down and cap FW towers or I'll try and get back SH Bunker. Etc. Basically winning for me is getting honor. If we lose and we're 500 honor and horde are 400 we've won in my eyes because honor is the objective.
It's not a stretch then to want the best honor/hour because really 1 game's honor is only as relevant as the time spent there. Another step that comes about when you're sick of AV is the effort/honor ratio and getting that low becomes the objective. Take away the grind and probably in a month or 2 I'll feel like playing some AV and play to win. As it is, 2 weeks ago I "played" ~130 AVs over 4 days. I've had my fill of AV fun within the first 3-4 and the rest were a chore.
Also Khalid I do defend SF, that's where I AFK and I've let through maybe one cap a weekend from being AFK, other times I respond in time to stop them or I'm outnumbered and lose regardless. I actually dislike SF and SH capping more than just for the long games. When we used to win because 20 horde were AFK I just didn't see the fairness in capping everything because while it gave us maybe 100 more honor for 5-10 more minutes work (ie it was still decent honor/hour given our queue times) it also robbed the horde of 200-300 honor. Capping doesn't occur in a vaccuum, while it may be fun for you it's not fun for the alliance that just want to go on offence, but instead have to throw themselves into the SH->SP meatgrinder again and again for 200 less honor for more time spent than if you'd left SF alone so they could cap it and some towers.
My argument still is that because the Battleground system forces us to do an incredibly long grind, with random people out of the whole population who to me are not likely to be nowhere as enjoyable as my arena teamates to play with, that it is a flawed system and I have no problems cutting that time.
Originally Posted by Praetorian
I personally can't bring myself to play for honor, even though I know it's what the game wants me to do on some level -- I just care about "winning" even though I have 100 of every mark banked and all the honor I need for S3 saved up.
At the risk of point out the obvious, this is a difference of opinion between someone who's driven by reward and someone who's driven out of the desire to succeed. When the goal is not to win AV but to simply collect honor at any cost, then the entire point of the battleground is erased.
Is this really any different than letting someone who's terrible attend your raids and produce no real results but still earn an equal share of the rewards? If there was someone on your arena team soaking 30% of your matches and driving your rating in to the ground, would you tolerate that? Why does the fact that it's in a battleground change it and make it okay for you to ride the coattails of others?
Originally Posted by CheshireCat
Eh, my nostalgia goggles aren't as good as they used to be.
I have over the past few weeks been playing about as much AV as i can stand to start to accumlate some gear so that I can take part in PVP, was sick of getting destoryed in world PVP by people in arena gears.
I was happy that they changed the BGs so that non participants could be stopped from getting honor. I would like to see the system extended to give players who recieve multiple afk debuffs<the after 1 min afk tags> some sort of esculating punishment.
1 day all BG ban after 5 debuffs
1 week all BG ban after 10 debuffs
1 month all BG ban after 20 debuffs
This would force you to stay at your screen and take part. I think that a random 1 or 2 min warning debuff applied by the game though out the period of the BG to all players would also be helpful, from my recent AV and AB experience a lot of people just dont care that people are afk even though it can really hamper your team.
It may not stop the stupid people from ignoring what is accepted as sensible play in terms of objectives for BGs but at least you know your team is going to be fully playing , so you have a higher chance of getting someone who will help you win.
I can't really fault Blizzard for designing AV as it is; the terrain variances, while controlling the game originally and how it was played and enforcing the current negative stigma about "turtles" and "SF," are not terrible conceptually. Yes the honor system does encourage grinding for honor and/or marks and AV is the most efficient, but I think the reason they did this is because:
A: They like the way AV was designed and it took a lot more effort than the other battlegrounds (which are symmetrical and have a simple clear-cut objective instead of multiple small objectives and one final objective)
B: 40 people can participate in AV and only 10 or 15 can participate in AB, WSG, or EotS, if AV wasn't honor-profitable then you might have trouble getting more than 1 or 2 going on a non AV weekend.
So by extension they'd rather you take part in AV to gain honor than the other BGs.
I don't think sentimentality has anything to do with it. Take poor Azshara Crater. As far back as February 2005, they said "it wasn't that far behind Alterac in its development." Since AV debuted in early June, 4 months later, that would give 4-6 months of development or so left. Now its 32 months later and we still don't have anything. The terrain is complete, the map is set, the non-mobile entities (bases/points) are in place (the untextured stuff here: YouTube - Azshara Crater) Theres bases and flavor areas (sprawling furbolg caves, for one) one can see by extracting things from the MPQ. It has basically been present in a 90% finished state and in the data since 1.11 (the Naxxramas patch.)
If there was really some sort of sentimentality then something as beautiful and epic looking as the Crater would not be in vaporware limbo to this day. Seeing what they did give us (endless minor AV bugfixes, Eye of the Storm) I think there are really two conclusions:
1. The cliche "they only care about the bottom line and thus aren't shaking things up" response, or
2. They just aren't all that concerned with battleground development/real progress at all, being occupied with the rest of the new content (which I personally feel is correct, not attributing to malice what is explainable by simpler means.)
Basically I don't think there is a lot of "reason" behind the way things turned out. "Nothing new is coming until the current BGs are fixed" is just a permanent smokescreen because they'll never be perfect. There are always another few tweaks and conditions you can account for in a new patch. Honestly, if they just did a quick-finish rush job on the Crater at this point, placing the mobile entities, not coming up with quests or a loot vendor or anything, but actually giving us a new 40-man map with bosses and objectives do you think anyone would genuinely have a problem with that (yes people on the WOW boards will always bitch. Being realistic though, just the sheer newness of it would inject life into the game, and even if it was bugged to the extent of some of the worst days of AV, it'd still be a better battleground than EOTS, thats for sure)
I have over the past few weeks been playing about as much AV as i can stand to start to accumlate some gear so that I can take part in PVP, was sick of getting destoryed in world PVP by people in arena gears.
I was happy that they changed the BGs so that non participants could be stopped from getting honor. I would like to see the system extended to give players who recieve multiple afk debuffs<the after 1 min afk tags> some sort of esculating punishment.
1 day all BG ban after 5 debuffs
1 week all BG ban after 10 debuffs
1 month all BG ban after 20 debuffs
This would force you to stay at your screen and take part. I think that a random 1 or 2 min warning debuff applied by the game though out the period of the BG to all players would also be helpful, from my recent AV and AB experience a lot of people just dont care that people are afk even though it can really hamper your team.
It may not stop the stupid people from ignoring what is accepted as sensible play in terms of objectives for BGs but at least you know your team is going to be fully playing , so you have a higher chance of getting someone who will help you win.
You do realize the griefing potential, right? And lets not forget that it further discourages defending.
I don't think Blizzard will ever *ban* someone for not being at their keyboard (else, better not have a weak bladder). That would be a police state, and even worse, a police state in the hands of the players.
Also, what is sensible play? As has been brought up, what constitutes winning is up for debate. Is a 20 minute AV loss netting 1500 honor/hour really worse than a 60 minute AV win netting 1000 honor/hour? Reasonable people can disagree on that one.
The solution is simple. Change BGs so that a) it is in your best interest to always participate (who AFKs in arena?) and b) they are so much fun that you want to always participate. Anything else is just a bandaid, and honestly I would rather not have them spend time on bandaids. I don't want them to think that BGs are "good enough" because people participate due to the risk of penalties. This is a game, after all. The worse it gets the more likely they are to fix it.
I'd say it's pretty bad already. Note that these games were taken in seperate, back-to-back AVs. That's a large number of people who have decided they don't want to play AV but are doing it because they feel they have to.
The solution is not to force these people to play. The solution is not to tell people to wait for upgrades or skip them entirely. You can't just expect people to not get things they want or to take a longer path to them. One of the big names in MMO theorycraft, it may have been Bartle but I'm not sure, said that you have to expect players to take the path of least resisitance regardless of how boring it may be. You have to make this path of least resistance fun or else players will bore themselves going down this path and their view of your game will suffer for it. Even though there may be more fun options, even if there are other things they could be doing with their time, they will grow bored of your game doing this boring thing that gains them the most advancement. Or they will exploit the system.
You do realize the griefing potential, right? And lets not forget that it further discourages defending.
I don't think Blizzard will ever *ban* someone for not being at their keyboard (else, better not have a weak bladder). That would be a police state, and even worse, a police state in the hands of the players.
Also, what is sensible play? As has been brought up, what constitutes winning is up for debate. Is a 20 minute AV loss netting 1500 honor/hour really worse than a 60 minute AV win netting 1000 honor/hour? Reasonable people can disagree on that one.
Zero chance of griefing potential really , all you have to do is take part in teh game and you never have to worry about getting more than the warning bebuff, it you think you carnt lose the buff in 60 seconds , possible i guess but really not that hard just increase time to 90-120 seconds
And Blizzard is addressing what can be considered resonable play , making you try and hold objectives in AV if you want to net a resonable honor gain instead of just rushing to the end. I was mearly implying that with more ppl not afk you stand a higher chance of finding someone of like mind playing.
At the risk of point out the obvious, this is a difference of opinion between someone who's driven by reward and someone who's driven out of the desire to succeed. When the goal is not to win AV but to simply collect honor at any cost, then the entire point of the battleground is erased.
Is this really any different than letting someone who's terrible attend your raids and produce no real results but still earn an equal share of the rewards? If there was someone on your arena team soaking 30% of your matches and driving your rating in to the ground, would you tolerate that? Why does the fact that it's in a battleground change it and make it okay for you to ride the coattails of others?
I wonder if Gurg can say that he did indeed enjoy participating in a ten hour AV grind on a weekend. The key point here is when someone zones into a raid or an arena (Generally, and if they are successful) they know they will be going with Moe, Cathy and Billy. There isn't a gear, (level), spec or participation requirement to join an AV unlike a raid or arena. And this is irrelevant to the philosophical discussion but if someone averaged my results in every AV I've done including the ones I've afk'd in I am certain I would end up in a very top percentile. Battlegrounds aren't preorganized, added on that the sheer amount one has to do (I've probably done over a thousand AV's by now) and the requirement to do them to enjoy other parts of the game will yield players doing what they do now.
I grinded alterac reputation on my first char on a RPPVP server and back in those days basically everyone participated in the battle. If you wouldn't lots of people would put you on their ignore lists and you'd be harassed in and out of game (realm forums), be called a coward and even guildkicked in some extreme cases. So basically this was a situation with working rules against AFKers.
The problem with everyone participating was, however, that the average game took around 6-10 hours, some games seemed close to a whole weekend, so you would hardly ever play a full game and you couldn't really hope to ever max out your reputation.
Things changed massively when the cross-server BGs were introduced and I was quite happy to finally be able to get my reputation rewards in a reasonable timeframe (including some AFKing, which did give me some trouble but I really felt I deserved "easy rewards" after the crazy amount of time I had already spent in AV).
After I had my reputation rewards I was quite happy to queue up again in AV just to have some fun, and people going afk in such a situation obviously sucks. But I can't really blame them.
Being at a point now, where new 70s will want to grind enough honor for their whole s1 set and even more to be prepared for Arenas, I can see some similarities with the old situation where the grind never seemed to end.
While there is some fun to be gained from AV with everyone participating the fun will be *long* gone once you have grinded the whole season 1 set and still have some slots to upgrade from honor. This is just way too much and it will frustrate you to no end knowing how much you have to keep grinding. And it's even worse for players who want to level up another character to play in the arena.
Punishing players for AFKing in this kind of situation might even be unreasonable. Do they really have an acceptable choice if they want to do Arena?
I don't think you could really improve the BGs to a point where you wouldn't care about the crazy grind, unless the time spent on it would be *massively* lowered (which might have undesired effects on PvE, like people not being interested in 5-mans at all).
I was happy that they changed the BGs so that non participants could be stopped from getting honor. I would like to see the system extended to give players who recieve multiple afk debuffs<the after 1 min afk tags> some sort of esculating punishment.
1 day all BG ban after 5 debuffs
1 week all BG ban after 10 debuffs
1 month all BG ban after 20 debuffs
I think this would function if you made it just AV as the BG that they were banned from. Of course as long as a solid number of people are afkaving, Blizzard won't introduce anything more significant than the current system. Personally I think they should just toss a debuff on everyone at the start of the game, and remove the first 5 minutes of ~160 honor.
Originally Posted by Calantus
It gives you my experiences with a different mindset. :P I wasn't attacking the low HKs really, just explaining that low HKs can be relevant in that it shows how much PVP experience you have (on that character), and can be seperate from the "lol you suck" use WoW forums commonly use it for.
Is the result different? I'm ignoring you because I don't know you and you seem to be inexperienced, thus any point you bring up is by default invalid. What's the difference between that and saying "lol you suck?" Oh noes you weren't quite as rude to me or Opioid as some imbecile on the WoW forums, but on those forums I expect my posts to be lost in a mass of blunder and randomness, such is the effect of popular appeal.
Originally Posted by Calantus
I'd say it's pretty bad already. Note that these games were taken in seperate, back-to-back AVs. That's a large number of people who have decided they don't want to play AV but are doing it because they feel they have to.
The solution is not to force these people to play. The solution is not to tell people to wait for upgrades or skip them entirely. You can't just expect people to not get things they want or to take a longer path to them. One of the big names in MMO theorycraft, it may have been Bartle but I'm not sure, said that you have to expect players to take the path of least resisitance regardless of how boring it may be. You have to make this path of least resistance fun or else players will bore themselves going down this path and their view of your game will suffer for it. Even though there may be more fun options, even if there are other things they could be doing with their time, they will grow bored of your game doing this boring thing that gains them the most advancement. Or they will exploit the system.
This is a business strategy, not a method to make the game fun. The path of least resistance is not going to be the most fun except for those with the most simple minds and longest boredom thresholds, unless you take enjoyment out of low-challenge things just because they include high rewards. Its virtually impossible to implement something that doesn't take much effort and gives you a decent reward without it being monotonous and disinteresting. I'm betting the reason people are AFKing (as they always have) is because its the easiest way to get relatively good rewards, not because they feel they have to do it.
Originally Posted by Furion
I don't think you could really improve the BGs to a point where you wouldn't care about the crazy grind, unless the time spent on it would be *massively* lowered (which might have undesired effects on PvE, like people not being interested in 5-mans at all).
Well, it's kind of already to this point, except for a few select drops in both heroics and non-heroics, there isn't much reason not to just grind out an S1 set to PvE with except for tanks. You're getting mostly better rewards that are guaranteed and more versatile. In addition you don't have to deal with 5 man groups/pugs to get there. Unless the Sunwell 5 man is particularly difficult or the loot there is impressive I don't think there'll be much interest there either.
Edit: Gear for tanks isn't that bad either: WoW Forums -> Never do a Blue instance again! Albeit it'd be S1 and not S2, but you're still getting significant armor gains/crit immunity and losing avoidance to do very very easy bosses in early raid content.
11/10/07, 5:34 PM
) generally only carried about by 1 or 2, if you DON'T hold IB and SF it won't make a bit of difference unless the other side manages to lose 10-15 people to Galvanger. Typically the game doesn't last longer, and if it does it only lasts a short period longer. The impetus of the honor grinders is much too hard to stop without a solid 8 defenders, and even then the SP resolve is very low compared to what it used to be so the turtle doesn't tend to occur for longer than 10 minutes. And yeah its true why complain if you AFK, there's a semi-legitimate reason to complain if you're not AFK and it happens every few games, but it doesn't.
in EJBSG 17 (soundtrack)
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