Duilliath

Just a sidenote, but this does not happen (anymore). Feel free to test it yourself.

Rick Bennet: "In the long run there's no luck [...], but the short run is longer than most people know."

 

• Arentios

After re-reading my post and the replies, yeah, it's definitely fairly pointless and a bit whiny, but I do feel it serves to point out a lot of the randomnesses (like damage ranges) that would need to be addressed, though that seems fairly easy to do in retrospect (you simply use the midpoint of the range). I know roots was changed a bit ago, but that's what I get for posting in the middle of work, mea culpa for including that.

I would put WoW as much closer to Starcraft in terms of complexity and what needs to be explained than Counterstrike. Only it's several degrees higher due to their being many more players involved. I imagine a 3v3 Starcraft tournament as being a similar example of complexity. Indeed, I would say a 3v3 Starcraft tournament would possess many of the attributes that seem to hurt 3v3 arena matches in WoW, too much information to process at a given time, very difficult to make a comeback if someone is taken out unless in being taken out they leave the other team in such a position that things can be evened out quickly.

Still, the things that give Starcraft its mass appeal are similar to those in Counterstrike. It's possible to appreciate excellent micro with very little understanding of the game mechanics involved. Seeing someone take out a mass of marines using zerglings while losing little to nothing of their own is something that can be recognized and applauded with only the most fundamental of background information and commentator assistance. This is your 'highlight' footage of the match that can be understood by anyone.

Compare this to macro oriented concepts such as knowing when to expand or build orders where it takes a good deal more background knowledge to appreciate the skill demonstrated. This gives Starcraft a combination of mass appeal and expert appeal that you find in more established professional sports.

For example, your typical down in American Football can be very boring to a casual fan: Running back runs into the line, gains 3 yards. Someone with more knowledge of the sport might appreciate the blocking that was involved to gain those 3 yards, but a casual fan is much more interested in the 80 pass where the receiver breaks three tackles and somersaults over the goal line. Yet he still enjoys the game, despite the fact that the majority of the plays are of the more mundane variety. So, I would not say that a fan needs to understand everything in a game to appreciate it, or that there can't be non-obvious attributes.

I am a casual fan of 3v3 and 5v5 arena, primarily doing BGs and 2v2 myself, and I've been sitting here scratching my head for the past 10 minutes trying to figure out what would make them more accessible, other than the addition of those highlight portions that have mass appeal. Class/Matrix balance isn't a certainly necessity. Consider the NCAA Basketball tournament where some teams are definite underdogs, and that only makes it all the better when they do manage to pull an upset. Really, having one team at a noticeable disadvantage right from the outset can make it all the more appealing assuming they have an appreciable chance of winning; the idea that everyone loves an underdog.

 

Sydane

In one hole in the playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate, they had almost exactly the same putt, Tiger's was slightly closer, so Rocco shot first. He hit his perfectly, it followed the line, broke where expected, and went in the hole. Tiger made his putt, shot it just as well, went on the same line... and didn't break. For no real reason other than it just didn't. Now it's not truly random, it's obviously caused by the physics of the ball going over the grass and the countless hundreds of millions of interactions that happen to cause it to move. The miss was not caused by the putt not being hit correctly. Stupid comparisons like "what if the ball disappeared" don't apply. And you certainly don't see Tiger crying that he got screwed by the universe.

Everything that happens in the real world is subject to millions of influences that don't exist in the game. A shadowbolt isn't going to get blown a quarter inch to the side. It isn't going to crack, or do any number of other unpredictable things. A sap isn't going to glance off someone's head. You want a real life non-sport, life is freaking random example? In the course of one month, I knew two people that got shot through the neck in Iraq. As in, in one side and out the other, not grazing. One died instantly. The other was walking around a couple days later laughing about it with small patches of gauze on either side. I know countless other similar examples as well. None of that happens in a game where 1 + 1 = 2 always, unless they program it to sometimes not be. Yes, they to choose to implement randomness because you can't just count on "oops, I hit the wrong button" to make things interesting.

If anyone in this discussion is a bona fide, competed in tournaments arena player I'd love to hear it, and hear their opinions out of curiosity, because I'd be willing to bet they are just as split over the issue as us non-rates. But if anything, the lower rated players are who Blizzard designs for. You don't have to keep the fanboys happy, they are always there, and when one leaves, two more step up to take their place. Keeping the masses happy is what pays the bills.

If people want to compete in arenas and be successful at it, good for them. I don't have the least bit of problem with someone being upset when they get screwed by the RNG, nor do I just think they should just get better, because sometimes you do the right thing and still lose. As Shakes said above, people don't like to face the fact that randomness, or at least effective randomness, has huge impacts on life and competition. Humans as a whole don't like the feeling of being out of control, especially rational, "left brain" types who prefer numbers and analysis, as I'm sure most of us on this forum are. If Blizzard released a WoW based FPS I'm sure it would be tremendously successful, and if you want fair, balanced pvp, this certainly isn't the game for you, for countless reasons above and beyond the RNG.

I also contend that there isn't a "large untapped audience" for watching WoW as a Sport, whether pve, arena, pvp, or otherwise. Why? Because people would rather just play the game. This isn't football, where you can't play it alone at midnight but you can watch highlights. Any time you are watching someone else compete, you could be playing yourself. So while you may watch things in passing from time to time, most people aren't going to choose to spend large amounts of their time and emotional energy watching someone else do something they could just be doing themselves. So in reality, the audience for it as an eSport would be non-players, and that audience hasn't really materialized for anything, much less WoW arenas.

To be blunt, does anyone really think arenas will be taken seriously at large, even just in the eSport realm? I certainly don't. Heck, WoW is played by well over 1% of the US population and it isn't even taken seriously, much less a sub-game of it that is only taken seriously by less than 1% of its players. I just hope Blizzard doesn't completely ruin the rest of the game trying to make WoW something it won't ever be.

 

deadlights

Bringing chaos math into the equation of an RNG discussion is severely reaching IMO. Tiger and Rocco did not have their balls in the exact same spot. It may have been a similar lie but it was not the same. Furthermore, they used different clubs, they don't have the same grip their clubs the same or have the same stances. And they definitel didn't hit the ball the exact same way. The reason Tiger's put went in and Rocco's didn't is because Tiger had a better read on the green and he used his abilities and tools at his disposal more efficiently than Rocco. This included the fact that by virtue of being closer to the hole Tiger had the advantage of seeing the break of the green in action and had to compensate less for the break than did Rocco. In otherwords he hit a better shot. It was not the blades of grass lying a different way that determined the outcome of the U.S. Open.

Moreover, even in applying chaos math, extreme as it may be, to prove that randomness does indeed exist in real sports you are neglecting a very important difference. Organized and especially professional sports do all they can to remove the RNG factor from the game, thus Basketball is played inside out of the wind. Baseball Diamonds and Football fields are well manicured cut down and infields raked to remove foreign objects that could result in a bad hop, expectation that you replace your divets in golf and rinks scraped in Hockey. And even when environmental factors are unavoidable. Dead spots on a basketball court, wind... the athelete has the ability to adapt and factor those environmental factors into how they play (longer cleats for more traction in wet conditions, hitting a draw shot to account for unfavorable winds). And on top of that many team sports alternate directions to make sure no one team is put at a disadvantage.

WoW on the other hand builds the RNG into their game purposely and you have no ability to overcompesate or account for the fact that an orc is going to resist a certain % of stuns.

The main problem with WoW as an eSport is and always will be balancing the game around 9 distinct classes that have ever increasing and evolving abilities. And unless you take away racials and force everyone into a 9v9 (10v10 for WotLK) setup where one of each class must be represented on the team it's simply not an even playing field. Either that or the homogenize classes to the point where there really are no longer distinct and it becomes more like a shooter.

It all depends on what Blizzard really wants to achieve with WoW going forward with regards to PvP vs. PvE content.

 

Zeeb

Hmm, I hope I can add something to this issue aswell, big post incoming!


RNG could also generally be seen as a way to smear out performance differences, be it skill based or balancing based. This can allow you to win/loose an otherwise pretty clear game and it may be different in your next game.
While true imbalances are constant factors and RNG a distribution it can be (depending on implementation and sample size) very hard to filter out the RNG. So for the developers RNG overlaps the effects of (fine/weak) imbalances pretty good and therefore balancing may be easier, aswell.

I would say that objections against RNG are mostly based on individual attitude since it may affect the outcome but not skill itself and if you'd be just interested in maxing skill RNG doesn't do anything.
Ideal gameplay to me is based on the given framework and even though I also freak out sometimes when RNG hits too hard I aim for the best possible result within that given framework. As already pointed out RNG is quite skill independant, it only matters if you choose very RNG-based strategies (if you take strategy choice as part of skill).
If you want to have a competive Tournament mode, on the other hand, you need to priorize the skill aspect, which is the case in the arena system you are just expected to loose aswell and generally play a lot.

There are strategies that rely on one talent to hit to ensure a win, if you can't come up with a better strategy you already have the optimum and if you play perfectly your win% should be above the one the RNG-factor of your key-spell would predict, that's your personal limit and as ideal as winning 100% of the games in a framework that doesn't involve any RNG.

With such a system one basically has to distance oneself from the idea of "being the best means to win all games". While you may have trouble to accept that it's forced upon you by the rules of the game and these are the ones you ultimately have to follow if you want to be successful.
It makes sense however (and that's what this thread is about), to talk about future changes, but don't get sticky with ideals that will never be reached.


I think one should also talk about how to deal with RNG, since even if Blizzard would change anything it will take time for that to happen.
You should rethink your strategies and tune them to have minimum RNG dependency or highest win% (based on RNG) if you want it to be most skill based.
I can imagine, though that particularly these key-talent-based tactics where RNG is noticed the most are actually the most sucessful Yet I don't have evidence for that as for now.

Also while in battle you can do a lot to keep RNG-influence low or make the best out of it by utilizing some maximum likelyhood principle:
If you are a healer with a mace-warrior on you for example, you may keep yourself topped off untill you have the first mace-stun proc since if we say it's an 20% chance per hit (it isn't) the chance to get two in a row is only 4% and you are not likely to encounter that.
If you are in danger to go low on health you may use your recovery talents before that's actually the case to be more independant of lucky dispels/interrupts through stuns.

 

◊ Praetorian

Mishit, should have carried many feet past the hole: YouTube - Chip-In at the 17th hole - Tiger Woods (US Open)

 

Davidson

That isn't random though, he hit the ball too hard, but on the correct line. Since it was still on the right line it hit the pin, and went in.

 

Siddown

That's pushing it a bit. I've hit the 150 yard marker with a perfect drive down the fairway, only to see the ball go 90 degrees into the rough. I'm a long hitter, and when I'm playing regularily I'll stripe it down the fairway as consitently as anyone, but hitting a 2 inch wide stake in the center of a fairway is nothing to do with skill, it's dumb luck (in this case bad dumb luck).

While Tiger's "skill" allowed him to get close to the pin, it's dumb luck that it happened to go right where it did (especially considering the lie), and let's face it Tiger knew it was dumb luck, just look at his reaction. He was practically embarrassed by it.

 

Davidson

I think he was more embarrassed by the shot, than it going in tbh. Unless someone has an interview we're both just guessing. Either way, the % chance of any of these "random" things happening in real spots is far far under 1%, and don't really compare to the randomness that is *intentionally* added to WoW.

 

Shakes

No, what percentage over an infinite series of free throws go in is under your control. You can become a X% free throw shooter through practice. But if you're a 50% free throw shooter, whether a particular free throw goes in is indistinguishable from flipping a coin.

Well, by that standard WoW isn't random either: if you hit your spell key slightly later, the RNG generator would have produced a different number and it wouldn't have been resisted.

Technically both events aren't truly random and are under the player's control, in practice you can't reliably hit a shot to do what Tiger did any more than you can reliably hit a spell at the right time to get the desired RNG result.

 

◊ Kaubel

That is some horrible logic.

 

Prinsesa

While I agree with the concept of completely separating PvE and PvP mechanics, bringing up Priestess Delrissa's room is a lousy example to make.

It's one thing to have Fear causing your target to run out of LOS, making your job harder when it was supposed to make it easier, it's quite another thing to simply clear as many mobs around Delrissa as you need to make sure a bad Fear never aggroes a 2nd pack.

The former is uncontrollable, the latter is not.

===================

If we take a look at a resilience and the oft-coined "World of Arenacraft", why not take a cue from the implications and one of Blizzard's other great game? Diablo 2

In D2, every character was built to be able to deal thousands and thousands of damage per second, because they were asked to solo dozens mobs with hitpoints in the multiple hundred-thousands each.

Given that a player's hitpoints barely crawled past 3,000-4,000 at the high-end, and it becomes apparent that everyone woud just oneshot everyone else if the game played by the same PvP rules.

So it didn't.

Players only did 17%, or one-sixth of their damage towards other players. Minions only did half that, and reflective damage (more powerful in D2 since it was percentage-based) only did a tenth of that.

Resilience is already akin to this effect: a damage reduction that only applies to critical strikes and DOTs, which only really comes from players. They also have special rules for CC effects that apply only within PvP. Why not go for the whole 9 yards and apply a different set of rules whenever a player is shooting another player?

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Shakes

One of the reasons the WoW combat system is mostly the same in PvE and PvP is because a lot of people didn't like the fact you had two rule sets in D2. I hardly think they're going to do a 180 at this stage on that, although anything is possible.

 

Prinsesa

While I never really PvPed in D2 enough to ever hear that sentiment, I'm not sure a lot of people are liking the fact that you only have one rule set in WoW either.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

deadlights

This is really a silly post. You have the same chance to hit the same exact number on the RNG no matter when you push a spell button. It's not at all in your control. People can't do what Tiger did because they aren't Tiger and they didn't play golf since they could walk. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

Your freethrow explanation is still as bad as it was before. FT% is a stat which is a loose indicator of player performance but it doesn't tell the whole story, nor does it have any effect on the outcome. People use the same faulty logic when trying to predict coinflips, or gambling. If you flip a coin 500 times it's possible for it to land on heads every time... and the chance it lands on tails the next time is still 50%. It's a basic rule of statistics. They can be used to show a correlation but there is no cause and effect relationship with statistics. Therefore your next free throw exists entirely on it's own and to be technical the chance that you'll hit it has absolutely nothing to do with what happended in the past. This is horrible horrible junk logic you're using.

It's not even comparable to an RNG.

 

◊ Praetorian

This thread is a bit silly and I'm always very, very leery of comparisons between WoW and RL sports and such, but my point is simply this:

There are a large number of very successful mainstream sports and competitive events that have random or pseudorandom elements and succeed in attracting viewers and fans despite that. And saying "it's all controllable physics" is a cop-out. The difference between a home run and a foul ball, or a home run and a warning-track catch, can be and usually is a simple matter of a gust of wind, and yes, if you want to nit-pick the wind isn't "random" either but come on. The motion of a shot in basketball that hits the rim, bounces 4 feet straight up, glances off the backboard, and drops back through the hoop can be explained by physics, but that doesn't mean that it isn't pretty much completely luck, and that no player can intentionally cause that result nor do they expect it. At the far end of the spectrum, as noted, you have card games that revolve entirely around randomness and yet attract tens of millions of dollars in prize money and lucrative sponsorships these days.

When you come down to a World Series of Poker final table and there are 2 people left with equal chip stacks, and one goes all-in with Q8 against AA, and then flops Q88 or something, and wins the whole thing right there, the RNG determined the outcome. It took skilled and steady play (along with luck) for both of those players to make it through hours and hours of play to reach that final point, but a roll of the dice ends up determining the victor. Does that invalidate the whole event? Is it any different from WoW arena finals where both teams clearly deserve to be there by virtue of their steady victories over many top opponents, but something like a PS dispel on the first try tips the outcome of one particular match at the end?

I don't think it is. So I'd suggest stopping the arguments about how any sort of RNG element at all is unacceptable. It's a misplaced argument. WoW faces two obstacles as an eSport:

1) Viewability -- the competition needs to be as viewer-friendly as possible. This is the main area in which improvements can take place, and already have -- the current spectator UI is miles ahead of what we had at WSVG a year ago.
2) Accessibility -- I can watch a tournament and go buy Counterstrike or Starcraft and play them online right away, even though I'd be terrible. I can't just say "wow, that looks fun, I want to play a level 70 rogue in arena" and just go do it without first spending weeks leveling and gearing my character (though the TR theoretically lowers this barrier somewhat).

 

deadlights

I get what you're saying praetorian but I really want to get away from this whole random thing in sports because a homerun vs. foulball/fly ball out in certain cases can be attributed to environmental randomness. In Most cases however it has more to do with the torque the batter is able to generate, his ability to recognize the pitch and time his swing and where on the bat he hit the ball.

For a freethrow that bounces off the rim, goes straight up and comes back through or rolls around the rim and falls in or off the backboard it is not random at all. It is completely physics and it's why you are taught to make sure you get good rotation on your shot because then when it lands on the rim it will be more forgiving. Shooter's touch is a REAL thing and it not based on a random roll of the dice.

So while you can't eliminate randomness completely from "real" sports. It's not a cop out whatsoever. It's not like a ball is landing on the rim at the exact same place, at the exact same angle, at the exact same velocity, with the exact same spin and some outside influence comes along and says well your stat sheet says you are an 85% FT shooter and this is one of those 15% times where you miss. If you can duplicate precisely every factor that went into a made freethrow it would go in every single time. People are just imperfect and can't do that. This is different from WoW where you can easily duplicate the exact same action with no variation, standing in one spot in netherstorm casting shadobolt at doctor boom for instance, and an internal mechanism will come along and say "this shadowbolt is going to be resisted fully, this shadowbolt will be partially resisted and the third shadowbolt won't be resisted at all". None of that is even theoretically in your control.

I do agree that poker is probably the best comparison. You can even draw the correlation that until they were able to impliment hole cameras so you could see everyone's cards that it suffered from the same sort of viewability issues that WoW does, in that a lot of drama was lost in the past because you didn't get to see when people were bluffing and whatnot.

Accessibility is also a good point but I still believe a lot has to do with the balancing issue. It gets real old seeing an endless parade of Druids Rogues and Warriors in arena and too many people end up feeling forced to reroll as one of the flavor of the month classes in order to compete. As they add new abilities and new classes it will only get more difficult and whether or not the uneven playing field belief is exaggerated or not the fact that the belief exists at all will be a roadblock.

This is something that starcraft players and warcraft players didn't have to deal with as much because if one race was considered superior you could just play that race and even the playing field without dealing with the accessibility point you mentioned.

 

Whistles

Everyone arguing that sports are deterministic and that players can change whether they hit the seam of the fastball or whether the ball falls in off hitting the flag aren't really saying anything. WoW is completely deterministic as well. RNG isn't really random and is just an algorithm based on an aspect of the server time when the number is calculated. By waiting a fraction of a second later you could technically "control" what got seeded into the RNG and never see a resist again. The problem is that in practice neither of these are possible so the whole "I just want it to be in my control like it is in real sports" argument is moot.

You put your shot on the right line to the hole and hope that the little factors don't add up wrong and you press 2 for a Shadowbolt and hope the little factors don't add up wrong. The best players know how to minimize the risk of things going wrong in both situations.

I'm also not really sure that Blizzard needs to address the viewability issues with Arena to make it successful as an eSport. Just from my personal experience with Counter-strike very few people will sit down and watch entire matches, they'd rather be competing themselves. Plenty of folks love highlight reels but the number of people that sat down and watched the CAL-I or CPL finals was pretty small. Accessibility is a huge deal though and really needs to be worked on if they want Arena to be a legitimate eSport and not just something tacked onto WoW. Open and free (if you have a subscription) tournament realms would do a lot for that. It'd even let you tweak things like having tournament realms for each season and creating a sort of progression through them as people get better.

 

Sydane

I think a spectator with controlled replay mode could make me interested. What it would be is the match is "recorded" by the servers. Not just a video recording, but every single aspect of it, every roll, every move, everything. Then you could load up the match into your client. You would have absolute control to move around, pause, rewind, adjust camera angles, and see the match right in your face. Watch it from each player's pov. Watch it from third person. You don't need commentary (though that could be optional), because you're the one with the telestrator. You could even have people record their own versions of the fight replay, with commentary, and publish them like machinima. You could truly see and experience the fight. This would be great not just for arenas, but battlegrounds and PvE encounters as well. It would be truly unique and different from watching a sport on TV, and take advantage of the technology we have.

 

Adrammelech