MUCH NEEDED changes for Saving Random arena

Alright, no matter what rank you are there always comes a time when you just cant find a team in TA or HA and everyone in your guild is doing something else, So we have the random Arenas. Although Ive noticed that there are a few problems with RA that make it slightly less enjoyable then what it could be.

First off, ZERO elitism will be tolerated in this thread.

Here are the updates I recommend:

Ive seperated them all into I, II, III, and IV. If you want to /sign or /unsign please specifiy which ones.

I) MAPS:

1) Either Remove The kurzick map from play, or fix its glitches. The map has far too many glitches in terms of detecting where spores affect players and "obstruction" glitches were projectiles are obstructed in places where an obvious clear view is present. In its current state its hardly playable.
Note: One possible way of fixing this is to close off the half moon bridge.

2) Change the way flag capturing works In the Ascalon arena map and the Canthan city slums map, so that whichever team can hold the area gets it and not which team puts the flag their second. The current system rewards the team that gets their second ( which is silly ), and it isnt worth it to travel back to base for the flag. All flag capture posts/shrines are basically just a lucky bonus for whatever team happens to put it there. It should work more like Alliance battles.

II) RANDOMNESS.

There is random, and there is intelligent Random. Intelligent random is preventing teams that would obviously cause problems and prevent the game from proceeding, but otherwise random.

Basically, Ban 3 monk teams, Ban 4 rit teams, you get the idea. They cause more problems then the temporary humor is worth.

Many people find this idea to be bad because it takes away the randomness. I call BS on that. I fail to see how banning teams that cant work would destroy RA. If you want to run that, there is always TA.

III) Preventing cheating.

simple rule here. To help prevent sync teams, no more then 2 members of the same alliance may be in the same team.

At the very least, this should force sync cheaters to have to PuG non guildies. It wont totally destroy sync teams, but it should cripple them enough to negate the problem.

IV) Punishing leavers./ AFKrs New idea: hear me out on this one

LOTS of people have suggested RA , Many have /signed and unsigned. Ive thought about the following rules to punish RA leavers in an attempt to compromise.

Rule#1: Those who leave before the match has started UNLESS a player on
any team has died: 15 minute Ban from R A.

Rule#2: Those who leave before the match has reached 3 minutes UNLESS a
player on any team has died: 10 minute ban from R A.

Rule#3: those who suffer from 10 or more bans within 24 hours: banned from
RA for the rest of the day.

Rule#4: those who fail to use a single skill during the entire match:
15 minute Ban from RA

Read those rules carefully.

-Ragequitters are not punished, because if a person dies you can still quit and be ok ( See rule#2 ). THis means if the wammo / ammo / Rammo or whatevere on your teams rushes in with mending and dies, you can still leave without punishment. This also works for those who have a suicider on their team, since the rule of death works even before the match has started.

-People who quit because something comes up IRL and they have to leave are not punished. If you seriously have something that needs to be attended to, a 15 minute ban wont even be noticed.

-Teams where there is too much defense on both sides to score a kill are not punished for leaving a long fight. Punishment is negated after 3 minutes have passed.


The Only People who will be burned by those three rules are gladpoint farmers who constantly leave/rejoin untill they get a "cookie cutter" balanced PuG. A form of quasi-legal Sync cheating.

AFKrs are punished by rule #4. Basically if you do nothing you get banned. Fair and simple.

/signed on the maps
/notsigned on 2, 3, 4. If you want to ban ragequitters, go right ahead. I can just pull out my ethernet cord and e7, oops. The sync thing will also fix nothing, they just need to fix the ID trick.

Just remove glad points completely from RA, and maybe seperate TA and RA. You just fixed most of the problems right there. Agreed on map changes, although fixing obstructions on the Kurz and Jade arenas doesn't seem to be a huge priority.

So I guess..
/signed I + II
III I addressed
IV..Im not sure about. Rage quitting would be less of a problem without the gladpt farming so punishment wouldn't really be necessary. If the filtering system worked well enough, this would be a non issue.

/notsigned

I never had a problem killing 3 monk teams or 4 rit teams. I even had a team from RA move to TA and the second team we where fighting and won at was a rit spike team we thought we would be dead but we destroyed them it was funny.

I had to leave after but I bet we probably could have won a few more rounds. oh well.

I don't like leavers but what really needs to be fixed is all the bots in RA I've had it many times where a bot was AFK the whole time then again I had it one time were a player was only afk because he/she had a very long load and only popped into the game after we either won or lost.

/signed

add anyone who rages in game gets all balth faction taken away lmao

/signed all

what about for people who have reached their 9th or 8th match and then have to go because of something irl?

This is the fix RA needs.

/signed

All your ideas seem extremely relevant to me. At the post above, the OP mentioned that if something IRL came up a 15 minute ban wouldn't hurt.

/signed all except II.
I don't think 3 monk or 4 rit teams occur often and when they do it's just one more quirk that you have to expect in RA, but if you see this as a real problem then I'd propose an alternative solution. The teams must consist of 4 different professions. They can be any 4, but the randomizer must insure that all 4 are different.

#4 I wholeheartedly agree with, but I think it's also been discussed to death in Max Gladius's thread. If you'd like to add an intelligent comment either pro or con, please read Max's thread.

Decided to add the following to IV) RA punishment rules:

Subrule#1) Only the first player to leave a team gets punished. the second player to leave the same team recieves no punishment. This is to prevent players from having to stick around for an uneven match.

Subrule#2) All rules are negated after the first consecutive win. On the second match with the same team, players can leave at any time or AFK without any kind of punishment.


will update later.

/signed to all but IV, just punish people with a 5 minute delay for every 3 times they leave without a disconnect before a person dies, get rid of the time rule, and maybe add on time if it becomes too frequent that the person leaves. Plain, simple, doesn't piss too many people off.

/signed except for the banning parts. The second banning thing is alright, but time should be reduced. Also, it's very seldom you find a person who sacrifices his life to death in the beginning.

Banned from RA for 15 minutes because you left a pointless 4 v 4 match? So when people reach 10 wins and leave, they will be all banned from RA for 15 minutes because they choose not to enter TA?
Hey heres an idea, instead of whining about people leaving, make a monk and don't suck so people stay. Ditto

It has some decent ideas... but its a shame that Anet will never read it.

Doesn't Fort Aspenwood need fixing more than RA?

At least in RA either team has the same chance of winning when you enter the battle. In FA the kurzicks have to hold out for 20 minutes to win (only way) while the luxons are able to win in under 5 if they play it right.

You dont get banned if your on consecutive wins, and you dont get banned if someone has died.

People will still leave if you go in as a monk. If their is a rit on your team as well, a lot of times people will leave.

Weird. Most of my glad points are from teams with a monk and a rit.

/ signed on all apart from rule 4.

what about a "random" groups where every member uses a skill that prevents the casting of spells ... shadow form, mist form, spell breaker ect

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

sorry, yes i do see these as some good ideas but heh ITS RANDOM ARENA so many people are getting up in arms about random arena when well its random arena, it means nothing. its a place to test builds screw around or waste time. if you want glad points go to ta, you dont want rage quitters got to ta, if you want mindless fun with weird and often crappy allies go do RA

i personally LOVE to do RA but its RA its not HA or something, i go to ra to screw around or waste time not for a serious matter and i want it to stay that way, if they make RA serious and ban rage quitters and blah blah blah, ra will lose its charm and it will be just another area that take time and effort and lots of skill to compeate in.

no thank you i want my fun ra to stay as it is. its one of the main reasons i still play GW whenever possible cause HA is often to hard to get agroup for and sometimes not fun, Ta has similar problems and HB just kinda sucks... and after beating pve on all 3 games, ra is where i spend much of my time.

really think about what your talking about

/notsigned......

No glad points from RA = problem fixed.

With all due respect, I believe the OP has presented a very thoughtful list of suggestions.

Please for goodness' sake stop ridiculing people who do actually care about RA. RA, while random and unpredictable, has become unfun to a lot of people because of all of the leavers and bots.

All the reasons you stated: unpredictability, place to test new builds, quick start, screw around, waste time... they are all perfectly legitimate reasons for people to want to play RA over TA or HA or AB or GvG. And it's perfectly legitimate to wish to make it better. Isn't it?

If you read what the OP posts, yes it does sound like a long list of policy-procedure-caveat-addenda-craziness, but at the same time, how much of it actually would affect your gameplay, unless you are a bot or habitual leaver?

Your turn to think. How does this affect the charm of RA, really? The OP requested specific responses, yours is quite vague, "don't change anything." This forum is for discussion, discuss why it should not change, if you choose to participate in the thread.

***

To the OP:

It's very rare, but I think it's happened when I've monked and not really had to use a skill and our team still won. Also, I've seen bots that use skills (compulsive one-spot trapper, anyone?). So that would be difficult to regulate possibly.

I am not sure how the randomness generator can work in the last analysis. You are allowed 4 eles on a team, but not 4 rits? What if one's a channeler, one's a rit lord, one's restoration, one's a rt/a with daggers? That may be difficult to implement. Just m'2 cents.

/signed for one and 3-- sounds good ^^

not sure about 2, wont really make a diffrence imo

/notsigned for 4, good ideas but ive just never found leaving that much of a problem that this kind of thing need to happen.


no

/notsigned.

Afaik the problem with obstruction is to do with GW not having a Z-axis and so usually occurs on bridges. I remember reading that this is going to be looked at while developing GW2's graphics engine.

The shrines and altars work in the same way as GvG flagstands. Just wait for the other team to cap first if you find it too much effort to flag run, or fight further away from it. Problem solved.

As for "intelligent random", you're basically banning any teams with smiters and healers, or whatever. I've had plenty of glad points from teams with 2 monks in. If you want to get around that, there is always TA.

I like your ideas on "punishing" leechers, but I think it would be too harsh on anyone who err7s due to a serverside problems. I guess I'm not in RA often enough to see the point of joining a match only to suicide yourself or leave immediately.

Edited to correct my terrible grammar.

There's a difference between leaving and loosing connection- for example... if you're on random arenas, you open map and go to GToB game isn't 'offering' you a reconnect- when you have err7 it does

For err7's

-normally not counted.

-3 or more error 7's in an hour = bans start happening

If error 7 doesnt count for something, then the leavers would abuse it.
My intentions for the RA bannings are to have rules that would ONLY affect gladpoint farmers, AKA n00bs who leave and rejoin untill they get a cookie cutter balanced team because they are too unskilled to win in TA -they dont deserve a glad title and cheapen the worth of glad titles by existing. They deserve B&'s.

/neutral

IV rule #4 needs a change tho. "If X minutes have passed and has either not moved or has not used skill"

Otherwise people will get banned if the entire enemy team ragequits and they just sat there. And spirit spamming bots who sit at start and spam will get through.

/signed to the most
/notsigned to no sync enter - reason = it's fun

Say you enter a match, then disconnect due to an ISP blip. You reconnect a few minutes later, only to find that your party has wiped your noobsauce opponents and you've been slapped with a 15minute ban for supposedly being a leecher. Either have it affect them, and risk people getting pissy at Anet for being banned from content they paid for for no apparent reason, or "n00b gladpoint farmers" will "abuse" it.

Sure, if you want a balanced team and don't have the social capabilities to get together 3 other people for TA then you're gonna turn to RA. The whole "quit if you see no/too many monks" idea has been happening for as long as glad points have been in-game, but if it's getting to you I'd suggest that you just move on to TA or some form of skilled play.

Retarded idea like usual.

so i.e. "/unsigned" or breaking the newly established rules that can prolly get you banned?

ANet is desperately pushing the Hero battles, since apparently they feel it's worthwhile. Play those? Of course they are dull as anything, but it is an option.

I disagree with the removing randomness, the punish quitters bit isn't bad, but needs an additional "if your team has already had a quitter" statement. I feel justified leaving when 1 or 2 have already left, and I don't want to wait 3 minutes to be allowed to quit a lava map for example.

I'm glad to see you haven't suggested that the lava map (kill count) get removed - I like that and have won it in a 4 vs 2 setup thanks to keeping away and a spike kill after sudden death. It's a map that can really reward tactics, knowing when to wait 2 second for the kill, to pull back because you have the edge and so on.

I) /signed (but they shouldnt close the bridge)
II) /signed (with a lot of thought on wht taems to prevent and wht not)
III) /signed
IV) /signed (but with a lot of thought on how long the bans should be and wht not)

Want to stop RA leavers? Randomize teams after a win.

I have to admit, ever since the gladiator title was introduced the amount of leavers has gone through the roof.

I remember the good ol' days of Competition Arenas however, where people just played for the fun of it regardless of team.

riiiiiight.....

Sigh.

That^^is not ridiculing? "riiiiiiight......"

Everything in the game means nothing, really.

Please do me and everyone else the honor of either discussing the suggestions, or alternatively, answering my own question, which is, how would any of these changes would affect the charm of RA as you know it.

*Please note that I myself did have issues with some of the OP's ideas, but was able to discuss why without LOL'ing at him, and all the other folks who posted, in all caps.*

Im noticing alot of replies sateing things about rules i posted later, so ill update when i get home from work.

Just thought I would say that I also /agree to removing gladpoints from RA. If its a good enough team, you can always go on to 20 wins in a row in TA to earn it, which Ive done plenty of times.

No the cure is to give double glad points from RA, so that people would actually put some effort into playing a viable role. Would cut down on the mending wammos and dagger-wielding rangers.

Leaving is acceptable IMO, I don't mind when players leave if the team is obviously without any chance to win consistently. Some people take this too far, some stick around no matter what; normal variance. What I would like to see is a replacement function, where someone else joins if a player is missing before the match starts. One could have a small delay timer even (if just once before each match) to allow a fresh connect.
Also cut people who fail to load in a reasonable amount of time... or relegate them to a bunch of their slow-loading friends so they can have a lag-party together.

Well, my "problem" in RA are not the leavers indeed, but it is a cause of the leavers. I explain: When someone leave and the team still win, they move to the 2nd fight, and the game will add someone to complete the team, sometimes that one is ME, so when they reach the 10th fight everybody leave and I have only NINE wins, so I lose my time even if I wait for enter TA because RA teams normally lose there. I remember a particular nine fights round of more than one hour what I lose completely.

The RA leavers also produce a chain reaction of more leavers, when you are forced to leave too; So, you end being a leaver too!

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3095214#post3095214

Locking this thread, and all the other "Fix Leavers" threads in Sardelac, for the time being. When the new system is revealed, we'll look at it, look at these threads, and see if they need reopened or not. Until then, let's all be patient and see what we get.