Mordinm

So if blizzard started awarding arena point by doing a /roll 1000 for everyone you'd be OK with that so long as it the RNG was unbiased? That is a horrible argument.

A good system should be reasonably fair. A fair system is not by definition a good system.

 

Morghulis

I don't like talents that give stun, fear, interrupt and so on resist too and I'd change them from passive talents to active ones with cooldown and the more point you invest in that talent the shorter the cooldown is.

In this way if a warrior wants to root his target he could use his Improved Hamstring, a priest will become immune for X seconds to stuns, fear and silence by using Unbreakable Will and so on.

 

Fwing

It's a horrible argument and nobody but you is making it.
How you reached this conclusion based on what I posted is a mystery to me.

 

◊ Praetorian

Well, the arena ladder season is fair, the way poker is. The idea is that sometimes the RNG fucks you, but if you bet and play correctly for 1000 hands, you'll outperform people who don't play as well. Same deal in WoW. But you need a large number of repetitions for that to work out. The problem may arise when you have a tournament series consisting of 3-5 games, where random factors can play a disproportionate role in the outcome. In other words, randomness without the presence of large numbers to mitigate the role of individual random events.

That said, can someone point out for me a clear example in a 3v3 tournament match where the RNG decided the game? I've watched a lot of 3v3 the last month (all of MLG and WWI) and I can't ever recall thinking "oh man X got so lucky, total RNG win." In almost every case, I could identify clearly why the loss occurred, and it wasn't the RNG! It's because Cherez LoSed his healers, or because Serennia was out of position or got feared, or whatever.

I hear a lot more talk about how terrible randomness is than I do about how randomness specifically screwed someone out of a win in a pro-gaming event.

 

rayijin

For the statistics specialists, I have a problem for you:

It's been ten years, and WoW is the most popular, competitive and balanced eSport in the world. Billions of people are watching the "superbowl" of 2v2 - mage/rogue versus priest/rogue, for a five million dollar prize pot.

Both teams have players with high levels of skill, but the mage/rogue are the favorites due to their godlike reflexes and tiger woods-like mental concentration under pressure. However, even if they outplay to the priest/rogue they still lose if the priest resists at least one of kidney shot or counterspell, both 15% chances.

What are the odds of priest/rogue team defeating the mage/rogue team in this 5-series game and stealing the 5-million dollar prize?

Edit: Beaten to the punch by Gurg, but the point is, it could happen, and it will happen.

 

Sydane

A World Series was won on a broken bat bloop single. A Super Bowl was lost because a player slipped. Countless hundreds of hits every day in baseball go foul because they hit the seam of the ball. You can throw examples like that out until the end of time. The difference is you know the small percent chances in WoW and it annoys you when they happen. You openly admit you win on those 5% as much as you lose. I'll also bring in the "bad calls don't cost you the game" analogy. One particular resist or bad call will never cost you the game. You had to do more than just that one thing to win or lose. It may have been the difference, but if you weren't enough better than the other team to win anyway, it was just going to come down to luck, and you got unlucky.

Let's approach the eSport concept. First, there's the idea that Blizzard wants WoW to be an eSport for the 5% elite. Wrong. No sport exists for the players. Sports exist as entertainment. For WoW to be an eSport, people have to want to watch it. They don't have to worry in the least about if people want to play it, because with 10 million players, there's more than enough people out there that will do it. If you quit in a huff because you don't like the randomness, Blizzard couldn't care in the least, there's a thousand people waiting to fill your spot.

So what is fun to watch? Pillar hugging? Hour long drain battles? It's like the pitcher's duels of WoW. You seem to want to make the game more predictable, more boring to watch. The things that are exciting in sports are the things that are unexpected, or look impressive. Did anyone's pvp videos before arenas consist of hours of chasing someone in a circle in a battle of counterspells? Of course not. They were slaughter and big numbers. People like homeruns, hard hits, and buzzer beaters. Now, if you ask the players, or the "hardcore" fans of the sport, they might be interested in the nuances of pitching, formations, and club selection. But none of those things end up on Sportscenter.

I understand that it is frustrating when you execute something perfectly and it fails. Every day, pitchers locate pitches perfectly only to see a shoestring homerun from a lucky swing or a broken bat single. The only way to reproduce something like this is to add randomness. Would you rather you had to line up your reticule on the arm of the caster perfectly every time in order to counterspell? If the answer is yes, then you are playing the wrong game, because there are plenty of games out there trying to do just that. That goes back to the myth of "skill" and whether or not the ability to control a mouse well is all skill really is. I very much doubt anyone who plays this game seriously believes that skill is only mouse control.

For Blizzard to make WoW an eSport, they have to make it fun to watch. Dynamic arenas add an element of that, and so does luck. What do you think the highlights of an arena match will be? The well timed counterspell that was barely noticable? The kidney shot resist? Or the one crit that gets through and kills someone at 30% just at the moment they were getting away? "Amazing Bob, did you see that? He was almost behind the waterfall where he could have recovered but that fireball caught him just in time! Let's watch that explosion in slow motion."

 

RootBreaker

I think this would be hilarious, and might even get me to watch sports for entertainment.

But I agree with your point, that it ruins competition, and it would make the participants extremely frustrated.

But there's a difference between RNG in short games and long games. For example, in a match between warrior/druid and a double dps team, having a greater than average number of mace stuns is much more likely to make the difference than in a much longer game where the number of mace stuns is more likely to average out. If you play for 15 minutes or more, eventually a combination of mace stuns and crits and CC resists where you kill someone becomes likely, not some isolated incident of RNG.

 

malthrin

I remember a semifinal match at one of the American WSVG stops with Zecks' team against Insurrection that was basically RNG'd. I don't remember the exact class compositions, but both sides had just lost a man and the remaining 2v2 favored Zecks' team - I think it was SPriest/Rogue/Mage vs Druid/Lock/Mage, and the Druid and SPriest had died, leaving Zecks and Ohnoes up against a lock and an almost OOM mage. The lock, however, got 3 back to back Nightfall procs and they managed to drop Zecks too fast.

There was some minor grumbling and commiseration for losing that one - the series ended 3-2 Insurrection - but it wasn't made a big deal out of, just part of the game.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yeah, I think I remember that too, but that's one of those flukes, and you get those in every "real" sport, really, whether it's a botched call, or a tennis ball that hangs on the net cord and rolls over one way or the other, or a perfect golf drive right down the fairway that lands right in a single deep divot.

 

Adrammelech

In terms of WoW being an "e-sport" all they really need is for people to want to watch and people who want to compete. Removing all randomness is a personal value, not one intrinsic to WoW being viable in that particular market.

While RNG can have a big impact on the outcome of a single game, I don't see how this become as much of an issue at LANs. Tournament play is the best of 5 or the best of 7 as I recall. The chances of RNG determining a series are so small it's hardly worth bitching about when their are fundamentals class balance issues that play a greater roll. For example, their were zero paladins at the San Diego tournament, I don't think RNG is the basis for that.

Further, many abilities that are RNG based are getting internal cooldowns, or being changed to a duration reduction instead of flat resist chance, so some of these issues will be addressed (at least partially) in wotlk.

 

Siddown

I understand that this is likely exaggeration for the sake of effect, but I think you've missed something. Granted, nothing's final yet, but Blizzard has said that they will either have visual ques or that these "events" will be on timers, so it's not like they suddenly happen without the players being aware. Your Ronaldo point for example, if he truly is the best player in the world, he'd notice the light go on over the net that indicated that the wall would shoot up, therefore chipping the wall as opposed to hitting it.

Your baseball example is also off, because the randomness there is a player's bat breaking which is happening at such an alarming rate that MLB is investigating Maple bats.

Your football one isn't as easy to "disprove", but I guess your WR could get his legs tangled up with a DB and it's let go due to it being "Incidental Contact". Different sport, but think of Derrick Fishers "foul" on Brent Barry at the end of Spurs/Lakers series that was let go.

Again, this might change because they are still developing the Arenas but until we've actually seen them and understand the impact, getting worked up on either side of the arguement isn't very prudent.

 

Kit Engel

Morghulis mentioned above an idea where the appropriate passive proc or stun talents would be changed to active skills with appropriate cooldowns and activations, and that may actually be a good way to go about this. I mainly used to PVP in Guild Wars, in that was basically how such things were dealt with. For example, all attacks you use will connect and take effect *unless* the opponent specifically uses something to counter it. Spells will not be resisted unless they LOS or dodge the projectile, or use some skill that directly prevents it from happening.

With that said, they still introduced a given amount of randomness, but those tended to be within controlled ranges (ie, weapon damage, occasional crits), and nothing that would, on its own, cause something on the scale of a stun proc.

 

Fwing

There's clearly scope for discussing the extent to which the RNG should factor into these situations. And also maybe the quality of the RNG in use which is the point I all ready made: The performance of an RNG required to make a DPS spreadsheet model work is one thing. An RNG as a factor in a potential multi-thousand dollar outcome is another entirely.

I just don't think the extremes of "no RNG at all" and "/rand 1000 for points" are useful postions to consider.

Skill in the long term, and the metagame, will outweigh RNG factors unless it is TOO LARGE a factor. I guess that is the point of the OP I just think his suggestion for complete removal is unworkable.

 

doogless

The problem with a lot of the examples people are citing as examples of "randomness" in sports is that they aren't random, they're player controlled.

- A wide receiver drops a pass that he should have caught? Not random. He screwed up. 100% player error, if he was a better player he would have caught it. No relation to WoW, where you press the button for a spell and then the server decides if you hit it or not. I can't go train in the offseason so that my Fears are resisted less.

- A ball hits the net in tennis and bounces in one player's favor? Not random. If the player had made a better shot the ball wouldn't have hit the net. How the ball landed after hitting the net was determined by how the player hit the ball - he/she controlled its spin, speed, direction, and angle - that it happened to hit the net was part of the shot that they made, and anything resulting from that was entirely determined by the player, not randomness.

The only example in sports that I think can be related to WoW is referee error, and every sport works to minimize that as much as possible either through use of multiple referees or video recording.

 

rehtonAesoohC

I agree completely. There's no challenging the play when my fear gets resisted or when I get mace stunned 3 times in a row.

 

Siddown

Yet, it still happens all the time. Ask any Spurs fan what they feel about Derrick Fisher's play to end their season, ask a Patriots fan about the phantom time the the time keepers gave the NY Giants in the Superbowl, or any baseball fan who watched the Marlins win their first World Series.

I'd say that Referees/Umpires/Officials in "real" sports have a much larger impact on their respective sports than the RNG does in WoW Arenas.

 

Searix

Siddown, those respective sports do as much as possible to reduce RNG. I'd imagine if at all possible the higher ups would switch to a system where there's 0 bias by the officials at all. Explain to me why there's so much being spent on reducing RNG (instant replay) if they want to keep it in?

The difference is that in WoW they CHOOSE to include bad RNG, it can all be fixed in one tweak of the scripting.

 

Sydane

Countless examples are being given over and over of random things in sports, and you can pick and choose ones that you think are or aren't random, but the random factor is far more prevalent than most fans really want to admit. If anything, referee error is a non-random, purely human error aspect of sports. No baseball player intentionally hits a homerun 3 inches from the pole just to make it exciting. The way a ball hits a bat, hits your hands, hits the rim, breaks on a green, is all impacted by a random factor. It isn't just a matter of "human error," most of the time the ball goes in a somewhat predictable way, sometimes it doesn't.

Another thing the random factor of WoW reproduces is the margins of human error. If a tennis player hits a 120 mph serve, some percent of the time it doesn't fall into the box, whether due to the chance spot it hit the racket, or just a mistake in execution. When you press the shadowbolt button, it always casts a shadowbolt at the target. Some of the variance is accounted for in spell damage ranges, some in crits, and some in resists. Again, everything binary is either on or off. You can't partially counterspell. You either counterspell or you don't.

Lets spell this out in another way. People like chance. People play the lottery in spite of insane odds. People play roulette. People inherently enjoy things that give great reward from a small chance. People like the idea of the underdog winning thanks to long odds. If you think removing that from the game will make it more popular, you're wrong. They choose to reproduce that in the game because it's impossible otherwise to make a digital character "make a mistake." Sometimes, you should do everything right, and have it still not go your way. That's life. That's SPORT.

Oh, and last I checked, there is no instant replay in baseball, and it is extremely limited in other sports.

 

doogless

MLB is planning to start testing it towards the end of this season.

Also, saying that randomness is good because people like Roulette is exactly why people bring up the argument "so why don't you just use /random 1000 to determine arena matches." Something like Roulette is basically the last thing you want to favorably compare WoW RNG to, in addition to it being NOT a sport.

 

Siddown

I agree that real sports wants to reduce or even eliminate randomness, especially those caused by human error. But the thing is, these are games played by human beings. I hit or miss a baesball based on skill (and skill of the pitcher), you don't hit or miss a Fire Blast or an Auto Shot based on skill. So unless you want to radically change the game and turn it into Quake or Counter Strike where players actually aim, or make it that people hit with 100% certainty with no crits, I really can't see that "one tweak of the scripting" will fix the problems. At it's heart, this game was built around a dice roll, that dice roll can be modified by varying outside sources (Resiliance, +Crit, Agility, Distance from target, buffs, debuffs, etc.) but it's still just a dice roll none-the-less.

I read your previous posts in the thread and didn't see where you revealed the "tweak", but I'd like to see it. I'm curious how a small change could fundimentally change the way the game functions, yet be so easy to implement.

 

berg

Serious question. If every suggestion in the initial post was implemented do you honestly think WoW arena would make for a good esport and people would seek out arena matches and watch them?

Personally I think a much larger problem is that aside from the avid arena players there is no audience for these games.

It is very difficult for observers who are not very familiar with arena to get any fun out of watching arena. The general audience does not see well orchestrated turn 'n burns. They do not see earth shock and purge of feldom after you blowup a felhound. They dont see the 0.5 second iceblock due to great anticipation from your priest. They see a bunch of goofy looking players run in, wiggle around and then one dies and the rest of the team drops out. If you cut out the announcing I think casual observers would have a difficulty distinguishing between top end and low end arena play.


Furthermore the tools for broadcasting arena are not acceptable. They need a way with default ui to view the entirety of both teams and all meaningful buffs/debuffs/cooldowns. Replays and observer mode are obviously very important and need to be added as well.

I also believe there is a fundamental flaw with the whole 'controlled burst' system of PVP. (I mean this from an observer standpoint, it is fine for the players.) The first half of many matches serve as nothing other than an attempt to get the other team to blow their defensive cooldowns. Then the real match begins. Controlled burst does not lend itself to good broadcasting. Your audience needs to know enough to anticipate when the important moment is at hand. The other problem with 'controlled burst' pvp is that in most cases the winning team loses nobody. Watching teams win with all 3 left standing round after round kills some suspense that a 'last man standing' format is supposed to have.

So I agree with you that RNG is a problem but at the same time I think there is much more that they can be working on right now to improve arena and actually get people to watch it more actively. For the short term Arena kind of gets a free pass for esports because the popularity of the game can overcome how the matches are generally received. A few years down the road though if arenahas not improved dramatically I have difficulty believing that any gaming tournaments would go out of their way to host these events.

The bottom line is that for any eSport to thrive there has to be a large and dedicated community of fans. If people choose to watch competing games instead then the independent tournies will have no reason to stick with Arena.

 

◊ Kytrarewn