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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 5 of 5)
Dunwich Jul 14th 2008 12:12PM
Personally, I'd remove the marks altogether, multiply the cost of weapons and armour by ten, multiply the amount of Honour you can carry by ten, and to encourage longer games have an increasing amount of bonus Honour to be reaped by both sides.
I'd leave marks to either be traded in for Honour, or even have them traded in to BG vendors for elixirs and flasks that operate within their specific BG (Like, an AV-specific Flask of Pure Death for three AV Marks).
I think restricting Honour or Arena gear to them alone makes as much sense as restricting gear gained from Raids to instance-only.
Ilnara Jul 14th 2008 12:31PM
Because Blizz has pretty much said that if you PvP your gear should be the best for fighting other players. And so they made it that way, and thus they draw people into more of their carrot on a stick content.
Common people, there is no deeper conspiracy or thinking here.. you people are way over thinking this mechanic.
Ilnara Jul 14th 2008 12:32PM
Say, when can I buy raid gear for PvP'ing??? But I can PvE and buy PvP gear.
Fair?
Balanced?
Nah...
Blizzard.
Ircasha Jul 14th 2008 1:15PM
@JDM
AFKers were around in the old honor system. There were many, many people who ground honor for rank by afking (fargin iceholes).
It has, admittedly, gotten much more prevalent in the current system. Even when I'm farming honor or marks, I am there to have some fun and play to win. Why bother otherwise? I really don't understand people who min/max to the point of completely subverting the game into an MMO version of Barbie's closet (see all my fabulous purples?).
I play BGs because I enjoy PvP. Yes, I do 'farm' for marks, in that I participate in BGs I dislike (WSG) just for the marks so I can purchase better gear. But I play to win in every single BG game I join, because to do otherwise is a waste of my allotted entertainment time.
Butnick Jul 14th 2008 2:01PM
I agree that non participation is an issue but what do you expect when you are going up against max twinked pre-mades? If you can't leave the cave without getting pwned and your graveyard camped what's the point really? I think Blizz needs to make a reating system to keep BGs fun and balanced for everyone. I always try to put in my best effort in a BG but when it becomes obvious that we are up against a pre-made twink group I strip down and dance too, I mean what's the point really?
Killer Jul 14th 2008 3:41PM
BG's seem to suck worse anymore. lol If that's at all possible. I play a 29 nightelf rogue twink on Vengeance battlegroup. I see losing premades and people dancing at the starting point all the time these days. It's frustrating to say the least. I made comment in WSG over the weekend that I wished they would give even alittle rep to the losing team. Someone responded "REP?! Screw rep I just want my mark of honor, hurry up and lose so I can get into another BG." Twinks have always help carry so-so teams to the win but now it seems like we are the only ones out there playing anymore.
Eisengel Jul 15th 2008 2:07PM
I think Fire (page 1) and Ronix (page 2) said it best; the real problem is that PvP gear is better than a lot of PvE gear. So if you want to PvE well, you're almost forced to PvP. Now the best PvP gear requires arena points, so you're forced to run BGs and arena, even if you don't want to, if you want the better gear.
What this does is drag people who don't want to run battlegrounds or arena unwillingly into these 'minigames' to get the gear.
For instance right now the best spellcasting 1-hand a 'casual' player could get in PvE content is the 150-badge Scryer's Blade of Focus. Even casual players that play on off hours can sometimes pick up a heroic PuG, and hopping into a kara PuG isn't unheard of.... however, the S3 and S4 1-hand spellcasting daggers are even more powerful and S2 one is nearly as strong. So now the best gear option for a casual player is honor/point farming. Even if they hate arena and PvP, it is a lot easier to find 1 or 2 people to form a losing 2v2 or 3v3 group every week, disband, rinse & repeat or afk farm marks and trickle honor than sit for hours in the LFG channel hoping you can pick up a few badges... maybe.
I hate the practice myself. When I'm in a battleground I'm in it to win. The problem is Blizzard has made it easier to farm PvP than run instances to get gear upgrades, so people who don't want to PvP but want better gear are likely to AFK farm.
Battlegrounds have gotten so bad these days I've turned off the battleground chat channel since it's usually full of infantile humor, inane babble, QQ and other random crap, and I usually PvP with 1 to 3 other people that I know.
Salty Jul 14th 2008 5:51PM
It’s really such a difficult question balancing BGs and rewards and keeping everyone happy without being exploitable.
You can’t match players against each other by gear. People would have “lowbie” gear sets for queueing. Queues would take forever having to check some insane database. You can use ratings, but then what if you want to queue up with your buddies, who have horrible ratings and yours is great. Can you even get into the same BG with your friends? Is that fair for others to have you with your crazy BG skillz in an entry-level BG?
You can’t reward objectives disproportionally; this opens a whole can of worms for exploitation or simply breaks the incentive to accomplish the objective of the BG. You and a collaborating hordie could cap and back-cap for an entire AV or AB. I can imagine every alliance player racing to snowfall graveyard to get their extra mark for capping it and people bitching about pallies always getting it every time as well as pallies not helping at Galv or towers.
You can’t reward offense disproportionally to defense. Otherwise you have complete turtles, 40 people on D on both sides hoping the other team will cap their towers so they can recap. Or worse! Horde and alliance in some perverted AV where they walk side by side, trading FW East and West back and forth for an hour getting psuedomarks or extra honor. In WSG, you would always get a squishy picking up the flag first and trying to get back to home base rather than letting that feral/resto druid or the T6 prot pally just because they want the flag cap reward. In EotS you would have people capping the flag with one base just for the bonus and abandoning D to cap towers for the bonus… wait… that’s business as usual in EotS anyway. How does the server know when you’ve defended a tower if you don’t let it get assaulted first?
You can’t reward DPS vs healing or top DPS and top healer, because I guarantee you every AV there will be at least one pair of a pally and a hunter from each side go find a quiet spot and farm damage and healing against each other.
Oddly, world PvP is really the worst thing for PvP. It’s fun, natural and the way it should be in the grand storyline, but it’s also the only thread that keeps PvP and PvE from quite possibly being two entirely different video games. If there were no World PvP to balance against you could give people universal armor sets or generic stats at the start of every BG, let them use an alternate spec, etc, which some people think would make PvP more fun and rewarding being less dependent on gear, 100% skill and cooperation and friendlier to PvEers who like to PvP and vice-versa.
You can’t take somebody’s stats away from their easy-to-acquire PvP gear when not in Arenas/BGs so they can’t use it in PvE (or World PvP) and you can’t give people two specs for PvP and PvE since you would have raids bringing only Hybrids.
You can’t use “inactivity” or “activity” as an indication of AFK. I can write an AutoIt macro to press motion keys every 300 ms, buff myself or an NPC for instance. You may lose some of your reward for going to the door to get your pizza or answer a phone call (arguably a good thing, but I swear I was guarding that flag in the reflection of the mirror in my bathroom). Worse yet, you may get half the reward for being that one rogue who does nothing but sit at Dun Baldar stealthed, sapping would-be cappers, making it possible for us to win the race.
You can’t penalize anybody for losses. Even lowering somebody’s rating is demoralizing and breaks peoples’ interest in trying again or ever again for that matter. You have to give them some honor, a mark, and award the victor an appropriately better reward. For many people, PvP is a last strand of interest in WoW, with people jilted by raiding or seing it as the only feasible play time in a busy/unpredictable schedule, Blizzard knows this and has done everything they can to keep PvPing worthwhile for even the most worthless players.
Defeatism and AFK are here to stay as a feasible means of acquiring PvP gear. For now, the only solution I have found is belittling the scumbag in bg chat and telling them they can have their mark and go home over my dead body. If they want to loose, I’ll spoil their 5-minute-per-mark average by holding out as long as possible and farming some kills in the process. It’s one thing to realize you’re up against an S3 pre-made and let them roll you, it’s another to decide you’re going to lose before you queue. I may just post a screenshot of your cowardly ass on your realm forum.
Salty Jul 14th 2008 6:23PM
Regarding BG ratings, which I think is the closest possible solution to defeatism, there are mortal flaws that would bury the idea. So maybe it doesn’t filter you from lower level BGs, it just makes use of it for picking randomized people from the battlegroup when there’s an abundance of ungrouped people in queue. The purpose of the rating would be to determine the honor awarded to you from battlegrounds and honor-based quest rewards and the rating would be affected by BG wins and losses as well as whether you had AFK status and were docked honor. With a good rating you could get 50% more honor or 50% less honor from the BG. Of course, the biggest problem is assigning you a permanent statistic which you have very little control over. With bad luck on a bad battlegroup, you could be stuck in the dirges as far as honor costs go for a long time. Maybe have it so that it gradually settles back down to the beginner rating with time so you really have to be active one way or another to benefit from the system or be punished by it.
It’s very arena-esque and whatever aspect of Arena ratings appeals or does not appeal to you would come to affect BGs, which Blizzard may not really want. The Arenas may be something of an experiment against the firm foundations of battlegrounds for PvP in WoW. And it could spoil it for “beginner’s luck” with you winning your first 3 games, but getting trounced back into the dust for the next 6 because you were temporarily elevated to a higher sphere of skill. The entry level may be more intimidating and keep you from even trying, knowing that you may very well be pushing the object you desire further away before it gets closer, or causing you to play only pre-mades.
But it would certainly do away with AFKers and premade losses. That abysmal honor you’re getting from the loss amplified by your career toilet bowl rating would make the behavior one of complete desperation rather than a feasible alternative to fair play. I don’t think it would bite casuals or get in the way of hardcores, and I think it would make premades a lot more attractive as winning streaks generate more honor and premades get matched against premades for their ratings.
Arcanthor Jul 14th 2008 8:18PM
ok i flicked through the first page of comments so forgive me if this has been brought up before.
I have noticed that most people are posting from the perspective of the horde, who, atleast in my battle group win 70-80% of their games in AB, WSG and EotS. Try being alliance in this situation and getting your asses handed to you time and time again. It gets old very quickly. I get most of my honor from AV which we win most the time but marks of other battlegrounds are very hard to get hold of. So its not people who dont like pvp its people who have got tired of loosing taking 30mins rather than 5.
Warbaine Jul 17th 2008 12:50PM
In all honesty blizzard's pretty much ignored the PvP community and degraded it to being just another grind. You'd think blizzard would realize its better to have 10 hardcore player then 50 "play for a month and quit" casuals.
Jonathan Jul 15th 2008 10:02AM
I don't think that would be fair to you no, but I doubt I could do as well in Kara with my pvp gear as you with your gear and visa versa.
PVP gear is already inferior for instances especially the tougher ones, I would have high dps but not much staying power. In battlegrounds, depending on your class you would be fine in your epic PVE gear, just not as well as if you had dedicated pvp gear once they focused on you. No probably not in arenas but Im not a huge fan of those anyway.
I sincerely doubt I could walk into kara "with no questions asked" but Im not sure why not, the hours spent are probably comparable to the time you also spent in dungeons.
but I digress, I wasn't saying I should be able to run endgame with my pvp gear but I SHOULD be able to do daily's and stuff in the outside world just as you can. If you nerf me from doing pve it doesn't just nerf me in instances (some people advocated making it display only outside of pvp)
To speak for myself I am main tank for my group and so anything I do in the "outside world" as it were takes forever, dailies are a nightmare. My PVP character is a break from that, he can bash horde and help my main pay for repairs, I don't see anything wrong with that.