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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsForum post of the day: Winning isn't everything
by Amanda Dean 
Jul 14th 2008 at 3:16AM
I love most of the battlegrounds. Oddly enough, even as Horde,
Aparently not every feels the same as I do. Pigskin of Medivh is unimpressed with mark farming. Even if it's a premade losing team, there are still often folks who get pugged into their groups who can't do much alone when they lack the support of their team. She's hoping for a response from Blizzard.
Throughout the thread Pupster made arguments for why people should be allowed to play the game however they want. If that includes mark farming, let them farm. Most of the other responders disagreed with her, claiming that such behavior is a violation of the spirit of the game. This makes mark farming against the terms of use. It does no good to report players afk, as they can enter battle. They're not really there for honor anyway.
I experienced it for the first time in
Even as the 'benefactor" of three easy marks, it ruffled my feathers some. I agree with Samis of Windrunner, I just don't see the point of working for PvP gear if you don't actually enjoy the PvP.
I've never heard of Blizzard taking action against losing premades. Some of the posters have said that it's happened. We talked about this a bit on the WoW Insider show. It doesn't seem all that different from honor farming afk, which Blizzard has attempted to stop.
Should Blizzard do something about intentional losses?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Forums, Battlegrounds, Forum Post of the Day
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
Dan Jul 14th 2008 9:05AM
That wont solve anything, if you don't get anything for participating in a battleground when your side looses 90% of the time, then people will stop going there, which will increase the timers for the winning side.
It was (maybe still is) bad enough on some battlegroups, the queue could take hours, and that was when you still got a single token for loosing. If you can't even get a single token for loosing, then it would be much worse, you could have queues that took days before you got to do a match.
Thats the main reason even the loosing side gets a token, players will play if its fun and/or if its rewarding, if its neither they won't bother with it. Mobs don't get a choice, so in PvE the loosing side can get nothing and people will still be able to raid.
squeama Jul 15th 2008 6:49AM
Word up.
Ronix Jul 14th 2008 4:49AM
Reform of organized PvP is really necessary. Many people only grind BGs because they want honor equipment for PvE or Arena, and so they feel no obligation to play during that time if they don't have to.
The solution, I think, is two-fold. First, honor gear and arena gear at least need to be separate. People should be able to progress through Arena without having to first start off by grinding for ages in BGs for an honor Gladiator set. Perhaps the sets should have basic attributes but, to encourage their use in individual environments, have attributes that activate only in a BG or Arena. Welfare epics would have less appeal, and from there less would afk grind/bot/intentionally lose for honor.
Of course, in order to not immediately disadvantage the new and ungeared to Arena/BGs, there should be some sorting of games based on your equipment, or perhaps a rating system like the Arena already has. Games would be more evenly matched and it would encourage progression based on effort. Then again, a rating system is hard when your individual effort doesn't always influence the result of a game in battlegrounds.
I know Blizzard likes many alternate ways to earn equipment, but people always look for the easiest way to get equipment. With equipment that crosses from different types of PvP to even PvE, the honor grind becomes the 'easy way'. If welfare epics from honor were less applicable in PvE and Arena, and games didn't have such a drastic range of Geared vs Ungeared, people would be more encouraged to play and less to just do the bare minimum.
I'm not sure, however, how to reconcile this with world PvP. Any suggestions?
Narroweye Jul 14th 2008 5:50AM
Besides the fact that I still don't get the term 'welfare epic' (Cause for me it never was welfare as I worked my *** off for them - no AFK what so ever ...) there are some good points there.
Personally I would love blizz to really separate PVP from PVE completely. Make Arena gear Arena only. 'Normal' PVP gear should only be usable in Battlegrounds and Arena (to make transition to Arena a little easier).
As for world PVP: What is the problem with having people do it in there 'standard' PVE gear (maybe allow PVP focused enchants etc.)? To me it doesnt matter if I get killed by someone in PVP S4 gear or T6 gear - I am dead anyway.
If you make it that battlegrounds only have PVE and 'BG'-PVP gear maybe more people would actually try to win instead of farming 'cheap' by loosing. As I see a lot of people do it because the gear gap between people just entering (battleground) PVP compared to the S3/S4 folks is just devastating.
By keeping Arena gear strictly to the Arena (and I mean S1/S2/S3/S4/S... ) Blizz can get there esport plans way more balanced. Heck they could even give 'outdated' season out for free if you can only use in the arena anyways.
Would that mean I will loose gear (my non-welfare-welfare-epics for example)? ... Yeah I would ... but marks and honor points could be refounded and overall the game would get more balanced for all PVP types. At least in my opinion ...
pantear Jul 14th 2008 10:05PM
Sure. As soon as gear gained via Raids stay on Raid instances. You can PvP on those greens you obtained while leveling.
Beastdweller Jul 14th 2008 4:55AM
I know its not supposed to actually be done like this. But I think this post might be of interest for your next forum post of the day article:)
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=4927083313&sid=1
Deusmortis Jul 14th 2008 4:56AM
Well blizz, if you put in a grind, people will find what they feel is the most efficient method of grinding.
If you want competitive WSG, AB and EotS, get rid of the mark system. People do AV for honor, and the other 3 just to get the marks. Lose the marks, and the only people in WSG will be people who want to play WSG.
Me? I hate losing, but what I hate even more is losing a long, drawn out battle. I'd rather find myself on the short end of a 5 minute loss, than the short end of a 45 minute loss. Honestly, I prefer to see people actively trying to lose, than to see them randomly running around, failing to work towards the objective cohesively, and generally delaying the inevitable, as is the case in many Alliance BG pugs.
r_j_millard Jul 14th 2008 5:57AM
The main problem I have with this is that it's symptomatic of what I consider the "Loser Attitude" which seems to be fairly common among Alliance.
The argument goes something like this:
Assume that both sides have a roughly 50/50 chance of winning. However, a proportion of those games are "come from behind" wins - mostly back and forth-type games, some turning around a sizable deficit, and a couple "Holy crap, how did we pull that off?!?!?".
Now imagine that a significant proportion of your team are willing to "throw the game" at one of those points. A large number are willing to give up at "We need a 5-cap" to win, a moderate number willing to give up at "We need a 4-cap to win" and a small number willing to give up at "We need a 3-cap to win".
Once these players give up "We're going to lose, let's just let them win and get out", then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you're essentially gifting the other side that proportion of games. If one side skews more towards giving up *coughAlliancecough*, then it creates a cycle of expectation - one side expects people to give up, so starts giving up themselves, while the other side expects the others to give up so keeps pushing to make sure they do.
Expectation plays a BIG part. Compare AV to other BGs. On the Ruin battlegroup Alliance feel they dominate AV, with my statistical mods saying they win 53% of the time - indicating that Alliance can certainly be competitive when they want to. Eye of the Storm, which is continually the butt of jokes on Trade, has lower than 30% win rate for Alliance.
It gets to the point where a large proportion of Alliance enter non-AV BGs expecting to lose - either explicitly "15 people dancing naked in Trollbane", or implicitly "I'll also queue in AV despite the fact that it will almost certainly pop before an average match finishes". The net result is that people start calling to throw the match before 2 minutes have passed, which results in the match becoming unrecoverable - people start queuing out, hk farming or afking.
The only way to turn this around is to change the Alliance attitude; from expecting to lose to at least expecting to have a fair chance of winning. And the only way to do this is to regularly turn games around - by not giving up.
Balius Jul 14th 2008 5:04AM
With the token reward for a loss and the ability to turn in a set of tokens for even honor, "loss-grinding" requires next to no active effort; effectively, someone out to lose uses the time they AREN'T playing to get gear, so they can make better use of the time they are playing. And it's absolutely harmless...unless there's someone who wants to play in the battleground...
It isn't an issue of you being allowed to play as you like, it's an issue of one player actively negating the efforts of those he's in a team with. With AFKers and people actively helping the other side win, the only way to make use of the Battlegrounds now is to create a premade group. PUGs just fail. Even then, the premade is going to have to deal with the opposite faction rolling over for them in many of the battles, and that's just as little fun as losing because your own faction is grinding for tokens.
Between loss grinding and problems with Blizzard's group generator, a good 70% of the time one side or the other is going to have a game effecting lack of players on my battlegroup. It's not fun to crush two alliance in a 10 man premade WSG any more than it is to struggle against 15 Alliance alone in EoTS. If a game isn't fun, that game fails.
A lot of the problem is that getting partially or wholly PVP geared is a fast and easy way to get PVE gear without grinding for random drops. PVP therefore becomes the province of both people who want to play and enjoy the battlegrounds and people who are simply tolerating a grind in order to get to content they actually want.
One possible solution would be to make PVP gear exclusive to Battlegrounds and Arenas (similar to the Legendary items usable only in Tempest Keep), unable to be worn in PVE environments (or heck, just make it statless outside of the BGs, so PVPers still get to flex in town). World PVP would take another hit, but it would weed out most of the people who aren't out to play. Another solution would be a return to the days of old where PVP was ranked and honor wasn't spent, but indicated the level of gear you could purchase.
Aichon Jul 14th 2008 5:13AM
It's definitely an abuse. Perhaps not a punishable one, but certainly one that goes against the spirit of competition and the nature of the game.
I agree with the others here that think that Marks are an inherently broken system, at least as currently implemented. Personally, while I don't know what can be done with the existing battlegrounds, I think that Blizzard has already developed a great system for rewarding people who actually engage in PvP; the only problem with the system is that they don't offer good enough incentive currently. As for what that system is: Halaa PvP marks.
You have to contribute and be close to the kill to get a mark, which encourages people to engage in actual PvP since there's no reward otherwise. The only problem is that it's implemented poorly near Halaa (people run away so the chasers can't get marks) and lacks a decent incentive (you can farm PvP kills and get some mediocre blues that will last you for about 5 minutes before you replace them with Honor gear from the BG).
If they had a battleground that worked on some sort of point system, perhaps akin to EotS or AB, marks could be awarded for kills made, and the winning team might get some bonus and then have their marks doubled or tripled or whatnot. It would be somewhat like a combination of Honor and marks, all in one, since there wouldn't necessarily be a set number you would get, and the marks you received would directly correlate to your efforts to destroy opposing players.
There would still be the need to watch out for some farming tactics (i.e. no one caps nodes, everyone just takes turns killing each other), but such tactics could be discouraged by the battleground design (make it so that faster wins yield higher returns, or so that the game ends itself after awhile, perhaps after a certain number of kills, making "infinite" farming impossible), and they would more accurately reflect efforts made by people, as opposed to the current system, which merely rewards showing up, regardless of the effort made.
Balius Jul 14th 2008 5:30AM
The current battlegrounds have nothing to do with killing each other (which adds to the problem).
In order to reward kills like Halaa, you'd have to change the objectives. Either a timed deathmatch (with kill-count determining victory), or give each player a set amount of deaths and last team standing wins, or a tug of war system to reach a set lead over the opposing team (i.e. you kill two people, your team has two of ten points. They kill one of your teammates, your team drops down to +1.)
If you combine a large amount of "kill tokens" and a smaller amount of "win tokens" for use in purchasing gear, it could be a very viable system of appointing PVP gear, where losing without helping isn't rewarded, people have incentive to try to win, but losing in a close fought match isn't unrewarding (because you'd be accumulating kill tokens in the effort).
Aichon Jul 14th 2008 10:54AM
Exactly. It rewards people that fight close matches, and makes it somewhat unprofitable for both sides if one side just rolls over and gives up a win. One would need to be careful not to separate the "kill tokens" and "win tokens" that you present, since otherwise we'll have a similar problem to the one we have now, where people forego the "kill tokens" (Honor) and instead just for the "win tokens" (BG tokens).
That said, it definitely encourages the type of activity that players and Blizzard want to see, which makes it ideal in that regard, though I do agree with you that you would have to change the objectives of the existing battlegrounds, which is shaky territory. This idea would be best implemented with a new battleground, and then could be grown from there if it works well.
DP Jul 14th 2008 5:40AM
Listen, PvP (in BGs) is boring and hopeless, prot specs in protecting, rets with spell damage gear, arms who only use sword and board. The only real PvP in WoW is arenas, some people figured out how to shorten time in BGs? Grats for them.
ILikePvPbuthatePvPers Jul 14th 2008 6:08AM
ROFL
I'm just glad you're the minority in your way of thinking.
Kieran Jul 14th 2008 5:23AM
This would cause too much of an ourcry from battlegroups where the factions are highly imbalanced. That said, a minimum requirement - capturing a base and holding it for a while and/or a minimum number of kills - for a single mark would help things at least a bit.
Neglekt Jul 14th 2008 5:28AM
The only thing I hate more than someone who gives up on winnable BGs is someone who goes in with the intention of losing
Phantomwolf Jul 14th 2008 5:29AM
No doubt this is a aggravating and touchy issue. I just hope if and when Blizzard does something about it its done in such a way not to impose more restrictions and prevent people from getting gear.
So far I am not impressed with any of Blizzards choices regarding PVP issues like this that have come up.
The more restrictive and hard it becomes to get good PVP gear, the fewer players that will be able to participate. At least at any decent level of competition.
It should not be easy to get to the top gear, but it should not be out of reach of the majority of the player base.
right now, the pool of well geared characters available for PVP, at the top level is shrinking not growing.
The real problem is not that people are farming now, but why they feel the need to do it this way. It all comes back to the arena and the issues surrounding it.
The only solutions I see that will make the needed impact are to make changes to the gear.
A points rating system on the gear itself, not for acquisition, but to assign a rating based on gear to the player.
If you fall into a given points range you fight people from your points range by default.
If you want to bump higher and go for a harder match you should be able to choose that option.
But the better your gear, the better the opponents you should face. It should scale up with what your wearing.
This way more points can be awarded for matches and lower geared players can participate without being rolled 90% of the time.
A few other tweaks to balance this out and it would IMO have the effect of opening up PVP to more people at earlier opportunity, and reduce the whole farming problem by result. You would have a choice to do BG's for PVP and gear or arena or both.
Danath Jul 14th 2008 5:55AM
I did my work, about 300 AB's ago, now I just want my marks so I can get the hell out and do something else.
Frankly mark farming is because it takes just so dang MANY, I often find myself relieved when I join a 4 or 5 cap eots or AB, get my mark in about 10 seconds, and just go to the next one, get my pvp gear, and then do the only BG I enjoy, AV, or find gankers in world pvp and camp their corpses, which I find extremely satisfying.
You would find less farmers if it wasnt such a grind to get the pvp gear, and forced people to do BG's they dont want to in order to get certain pieces.
Tirion Jul 14th 2008 5:56AM
On my battlegroup, for whatever reason, Horde seems to start EotS 5-7 players down nearly every match. Even if they're complete noobs, the Alliance usually succeeds in capping three towers and the middle before the horde has enough players to do anything about it. Most of the time, the Horde players just say 'screw it' and take a dive. 47 marks into a 50 mark grind, I can't say it bothers me anymore. If Blizzard could fix they're broken queueing mechanism, I might feel differently, but as it stands, the choice is throw the match and lose in 5 minutes, or fight back and lose in 30. Don't get me wrong: I play hard and love it when we win, if only for the fact that's two more torturous matches I won't have to endure.
But what are you going to do? In order to have viable Arena gear, Blizzard requires you to run specific battlegrounds. I honestly don't give a crap about PvE this close to the expansion, so Arena is pretty much the only fun to be had for me in WoW these days. I'd like to see some kind of mark exchange where you could trade, say, 3 AV marks for 2 EotS marks or whatever. But on a lot of Battlegroups, that would cause one BG or another to become completely deserted. But that's the choice - provide some way of opting out or don't be surprised when players bag it on a BG they don't find fun.
Smurk Jul 14th 2008 1:22PM
Hmm, I may be in your battlegroup (Shadowburn?) but anyway I do experience the same problem. EOTS is very difficult for Horde to win, I usually only play it when it is the daily, and in that case I end up with a decent number of marks before I finally get a win to complete the quest.