International District RA abuse: "sync teaming" for glad farming

There's some pretty serious abuse going on in the International RA's at the moment. People are trying to sync enter and get a full TA team of 4 in the RA to farm glad points - the end result is that they quit out of 95% of their matches because they don't have their 3 friends with them.

I've recognized a few well known gvg and ha players doing this to artificially inflate their glad title track, apparently they're not actually good enough at 4v4 to play real teams for glad points.

In the last two hours of solid arena time I played only a handful of matches (maybe 6 or 8), the other 80% of matches ended before they even started.

This is broken and needs fixing.

yes, alot of times, my group quits before my screen even loads. GG

This reminds me of when it happened during the snowball arenas.

syncing can be prevented easily by ensuring that people from different district are mixed, or by adding a pickup randomizer, making teams within a frame of 5-10 seconds rather then instantly. Though I guess such measures will not be implemented.

I wonder what the succes rate is to "sync" in RA?

This has been going on long time, and I guess it will remain for as long as the servers run.

Title Wars FTW rofl

Remove glad points from RA imo.

Remove all home districts from RA.

Make it all international.

That way its always crowded. ^_^

Pretty high, if you're in an empty district.

I agree on the "remove glad points from RA" notion. Sometimes I just want a quick pvp match while my dinner cooks or if I have a few minutes to spare before work. It's just infuriating when I spend that time rolling 4 matches where everyone leaves.



I'd go so far as to say that only 50% of RA matches are 4v4. There are just so many people who will leave if there is no monk in their team, leave if there is 2 people of the same class, leave if someone leaves, leave if someone is using a class they think sucks, leave if someone has a joke name.

It's been bugging me ever since beta. There needs to be some sort of penalty for leaving, if only just a cosmetic one like -5 faction. Giving glad points for RA just made it worse. I do not play RA to farm titles, I play RA for quick random matches.

Leavers are definately my biggest pet peeve about GW.

I like having Gladiator points as a reward, if only because I enjoy RA more than TA. However, people leaving is a BIG annoyance. Even when I play my monk, people will still drop out before the match begins. There needs to be some kind of penalty for it, imo.

Glad points in RA must die. 10 in a row in RA is not any measure of skill anyway.

Hardly any of the titles show skill.

I don't like the idea of taking glad points out of RA, but I do like the idea of actually making it random. The shuffle all entries option mentioned above would be fine. Or they could completely prevent a group from forming with members of the same guild or alliance. And while they are at it, maybe put some kind of "smart teaming" where it will at least try to put in different classes on a team (no more 2 monk groups).

so your wanting to stop an easy way to farm a title?

wonder what FoTM builds do for HA/GvG does then.

they should have made different titles for RA and TA, make RA "random gladiator" with like 2k faction cap for each rank and TA "team gladiator" and have 5k faction cap for each rank

This has always happened. Also, the probability of all 4 people (during regular ID population) getting on one team is practically zero. Two is pretty easy, and 3 will happen about 1/8-10 times. Unfortunately, it has always been this way, and anyone decent goes to TA anyway because they know they can make more glads there... I doubt anet will fix this, and it honestly does not have that big an impact on the game. I've been on plenty of teams so good that people think we synced and yet we didn't. Very, very few people sync enter RA enough to actually affect the title.

Yeah its a ridiculous problem. Ended up in INT RA occassionally by accident from a HA INT dis, and it was plainly stupid. Like the 2nd match will be against 3 rits spiking, all from the same guild.

People who do this are low scum, able to 'win' only when the other team by default lacks all organization and they themselves have build and voice comm worked out.

This is something different than just leaving an RA game because the team has no chance though.

Might as well stop HA during inactive hours, oh yea and FFF farming, oh yea also forgot about inactive TA farming.. which is worse imo 47 consec wins.

This is such a non issue in my opinion. I mean, it happens, but its so rare that the paranoia about it is way worse then the problem.

If you play in Int don't you only get to play against others who entered from international districts? And yeah they should remove Gladiator titles from RA and give TA the title "Gimmick builds make me strong, but sometimes I lose to RA teams that filter in here". Also has anyone noticed that most monks and rits that hang around the arenas have the gladiator title?

arenas are waste of time, so stfu all ya

This has been going on since the dawn of time, and there have been millions of previous threads about it. It's not a "new problem." Surely the devs have been aware of it for as long as it's been out, or if not they would have been made aware during any of the previous million threads on the exact same thing.

In any case RA is not serious anyhow so I'm not sure why people are complaining about losing in RA.

yesh people keep constantly leaving T.T. It makes me soo sad. But then again when you do get a decent game many of the games your in to get your glad points people simple leave. I also had a great RA team that had like 2 rits and me (mesmer) and some other guy...only I was facing against 2 monks, 1 a healer that bonded in a way? another bonder, a sprit rit/healer, and a NECRO that bonds holy wraith and uses signets for dmg... it really pissed me off, every 1/3 games I have leavers...so sad T.T

Yes, I understand that this has been going on for a long time - however, that doesn't make it OK.

What kills me is how incredibly blatant it is now:



I used to play international RA for kicks and sync teaming was never this much of a problem. ID RA is the one place you can go for a reasonable RA team without seeing a lot of "o hai, I'm using dolyak signet and healing hands - I is tanking!"

In other words it used to be fun casual pvp when you weren't doing anything else, now it's being abused and ruined so that a small number of people can farm for what was supposed to be a skill based title.

Exactly the way I feel. All the other title farming "abuses" mentioned are fine by me because they are victimless. RA Int syncing is not - it has taken one of the most enjoyable low time investment forms of pvp and ruined it.

I don't care for sync farming at this time. Babies who can't fight their battles without their monks feeding them... those are the ones that should be looked at.

Uh...this problem is is outdated. People have known about this for ages and nobody really cares. Its RANDOM arena...expect things to be random.

And as for leavers...I personally don't see why anybody would stay on a sure to lose team anyways. Standard procedure...

The whole issue with sync teaming is that it's purpose is to get an organized team into random arena. That's not very random at all.
Like I and others have already mentioned, we play RA to just do a quick random pvp match. Sync teaming and glad titles have really taken a huge chunk of fun away from it.

That depends on what you define as a "sure to lose team". A team with no monk in it? A team with a ranger in it? A team where 2 people left and the 3rd is afk? A team where not everyone has obsidian armor?

You're wasting the time of 3 other people (7 if you assume the opposing team play RA to actually play pvp matches and not farm) by leaving a team you're "sure will lose", just because you might not get your free wins.

How are they wasting anyone's time though, since those who's time they may have been wasting don't mind losing anyhow; considering they don't quit themselves on a losing team? If the people complaining about this don't mind losing, then really their complaint about leavers has no basis. You still get a quick PVP match even if you have leavers.

It could be argued that those who go into RA with really bad builds and gear are wasting the time of good players who go into RA to win. Those who subscribe to the philosophy: "I think RA should only be for people who like playing on every team regardless of how hopeless it is or bad the players are or bad the class mix is" should not have a monopoly on how RA should be, as not every player agrees with that philosophy.

There are still random elements to sync entering too. Syncing with 2 is the easiest and in that case the syncers would get 2 random allies thus it's still just as much a random team as it is an organized team.

Syncing with 3 or 4 would take a really long time to get everyone synced on the same team and is not that viable of a strategy due to how much time it takes.

I think we'll have to ask Anet about that. Personally, I assume they designed RA for people who want a quick, random match. If you want an organized more "skilled" match, you go to TA. It shouldn't be necessary to cater to skilled players who just want to farm titles by "pwning nubs". That's not what GW is about, and that is exactly what syncing in RA is.

That's exactly the point, the chance is so low that every other time these guys rage quit before the match starts. When they're trying they ruin 95% of matches, then steamroll when they get their team assembled.

Most of these jokers can't compete in TA so they abuse RA to farm points, they're easy enough to take out if your team is reasonable.

The part that really gets me is that I see a few people I know doing the same thing. I'm not going to name any names but there are a couple from a top 10 guild that do this on a regular basis - AFAIK they're only doing it for a guaranteed glad point so they can bank more faction before the expansion is released. Seeing this from good players makes me very cranky.

Words of advice: Stay out of International RA until Anet sorts this out. Though I have no idea how they could stop it. The very nature of how RA works allows this to happen. Not sure how you could make sure it doesn't.

The title was ruined about like the first 2 months it came out, you could zaishen farm them, anyways no pvp title has much merit these days. International RA used to have some very skilled players always playing in them and very little raging, times change as GW dies, just play in your own districts.

just play in home districts, what really pisses my off is those players who just go to RA to make others grief.
a while ago I got in a decent team, we did alright but in the 8th game one of us had to leave. guess what happened?
we got some retarded monk using frenzy who thought he was a comical genius for doing so. it was the killcount arena so we had no chance at all.

a few games later I see the same player but now with a sin: skillbar full of running stances + shadow steps... took forever to kill him.
seriously wtf is wrong with these people.

I know some R9 players still play the fake RA, and they don't think they are wrong. And when I ask them why, they said A.Net didn't stop this issue.
So frustrated.

I understand now why anleecher (in AB) I talked to was a high lvl Gladiator. I laugh..... cause I tried to convince him to stop leechin, explaining that he knew what cooperation is...& so on....

I am more & more disgusted by this "gaming" attitude, those players are focused on their tiny EGO/POWER trip.

This means that cooperative gaming is dying, except if u play with ppl u have confidence in = ppl that u know.

1/- Have u been to FoW? how many leavers did u notice once they have droped a shard? dozens....

2/- Have u been to The Deep? U WARN the ppl before entering mish, saying that 2 hours are needed to meet the end boss & eventually kill him. After 30 minutes u have 2 or 3 leavers......

3/- Do u AB sometimes? even after the last update -to avoid leechers- u now have gangs of 3 leechers who invite u & u lose....

4/-.............

5/-.............

Do u want more facts???....I will not make a list cause its useless. I am angry cause when i started playin GW in 2005 it wasnt like that.

I believe that we all are responsible of our acts. U can leech, leave, be afk or brb or whatever...U will pay for the evil things youve done : this is called KARMA.

FAIRPLAY..........ouch.....what does it mean???? sorry i cant remember.

From WIKI:

"Fair Play or Fairplay usually refers to Sportsmanship.

Sportsmanship can be conceptualized as an enduring and relatively stable characteristic or disposition such that individuals differ in the way they are generally expected to behave in sport situations. In general, sportsmanship refers to virtues such as fairness, self-control, courage and persistence (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995) and has been associated with interpersonal concepts of treating others and being treated fairly, maintaining self-control in dealing with others, and respect for both authority and opponents. Five facets of sportsmanship have been identified:

* Full commitment to participation (e.g., showing up, working hard during all practices and games, acknowledging one’s mistakes and trying to improve)
* Respect and concern for rules and officials
* Respect and concern for social conventions (e.g., shaking hands, recognizing the good performance of an opponent)
* Respect and concern for the opponent (e.g., lending one’s equipment to the opponent, agreeing to play even if the opponent is late, not taking advantage of injured opponents)
* Avoiding poor attitudes toward participation (e.g., not adopting a win-at-all-costs approach, not showing temper after a mistake, and not competing solely for individual prizes)"

Its so easy to act as a retard when u are alone hidden behind your screen folks.

Have fun, be optimistic & have positive thinking. It will increase your chances to win wtf......

There's a very easy fix - anyone who leaves a match can't re-enter for another 4 minutes.

There's another easy fix - datamine the logs for people who leave an extremely high percentage of matches before the countdown is finished, then ban them for a few days. I'd prefer this method to be honest.

Heh, the only time I leave a game is when it takes ages and ages to take eachother down, sometimes teams are too defensive, well, shit happens. Players leaving all the time are a pain in the butt though. I got glad points with monk-less teams anyway, people that get killed all the time when there's no monk around are plain bad, or they took the wrong build. RA is a bit like AB, take enough stuff to make sure you survive AND kill stuff in the process (I've been having quite a bit of success with a melandrus resilience assassin :P).
How can people get good at PvP anyway if they don't get a proper chance to play?

Not a bad idea at all.

That's exactly why this situation bothers me. International RA used to be head and shoulders above most pickup games, and it still can be, but most of the time you're reloading again and again and again until you get a team that doesn't rage quit before the timer stops.