Fast Faction: Kurzick quit on Odd, Luxon's on Even

isnt GW:EotN going to have 50 PvE skills - at least some of which are tied to a faction standing?

LFG dwarvenFFF PST!

Yet these recent changes made it in the game? That is what I do not understand. Anyone could've said that punishing people who remain in a losing effort will just increase leavers and do nothing to stop leechers. Perhaps one solution they've yet to even take an interest in is actually DOING something to these people.

They put effort into stopping trade spam in towns, but they do nothing to something that actually ruins gameplay? I say nothing because these changes were obviously not well-thought out and have amounted to just that: Nothing

I think Anet needs to change the winning circumstances to...

5,000 faction for winning, 10 faction for every kill
2,500 faction for losing, 5 faction for every death (discourage runners)

Did I understand that correct, that working together to get the best result is "cheating"?

How about doing that in the Automated Tournament System?

Discourage runners? Excuse me? Why? And your suggestion is wayyyyyyy too unbalanced. 5k is too much. Way too much. Also, this would make people who know they are going to lose run out and suicide. This would only increase leechers to an EXTREME amount.

Still,

I wonder why people do not do the Lutgardis Run or do the Duel of the Houses, which provides faster faction.

I am for a penalty for leavers. These exist in all kinds of MMO's with "battlegrounds", to give a hint.


No more Faction gain for 15 minutes when you drop out of an Alliance Battle / FA.

Would probably give those people the idea to gain Faction by doing solo Quests where they do not annoy others. But it seems most just want rather to gain Faction than to fight, that is the main issue.

So, basically punish those that find AB and FA fun to play but don't find it fun being at a disadvantage because a portion of their team is leeching nor do they find it fun working hard getting the leechers more faction?

I find the faction reward for the loosing team insulting. It would be bad enough if you were playing on a balanced map all the time. Why the heck should someone stick around and "entertain" the opposition on a heavily biased map when it becomes obvious that the allied team doesn't have the horsepower to get the job done?

With the current system, the best thing you can do to hurt the opposition when the map is biased against you is to go do something else. Let 'em eat "No opposing team joined.. " all day and red engine 235 faction points!

I think a tiered Faction reward system in AB (and FA) would work.

1. In AB, if the losing team scores more than 300 points, the losing team receives double the ending total points in faction at the end of the match.

2. In FA, if the Luxon team loses, you tally the number of times gates are taken plus the number of times the mines are taken. Multiply the sum of those two by 25, and that's the amount of faction the losing team receives.

3. In FA, if the Kurzick team loses, you tally the amount of amber that is returned to the Gatekeepers. Multiply that amount by 50, and that's the amount of faction the losing team receives.

Some quick scenarios based on the above:

1. Your losing team scores 400 in AB. You get 800 faction for losing. Still half the winner's reward, but not a bad reward.

2. You take each of the inner and outer orange/purple gates three times and the mines twice each. 16 x 25 = 400 faction. Half the reward for losing isn't that bad.

3. If you run amber 10 times during the game, thats 10 x 50 = 500 faction. Not too bad for losing.

My math may be off a bit, but I think that this will sufficiently reward people that play to the end. It also doesn't help the leechers, as a team with a sufficient number of players will likely (1) not be able to achieve more than 300 points in AB and (2) won't have the strength to continue to recapture gates/mines/run amber efficiently enough to reward the leechers.

Just an idea for A-Net to chew on...

that's just dumb. Why would you want to turn AB to a contest of dice throwing?

If you are so desperate for factions, just do those repeatable quests, they are made for those who dun't want to AB, like yourself.

AB is Alliance Battle. It is a casual mode of pvp for casual pvpers. You dun't want to take part, dun't take part in it. It is as simple as that. I agree with Gaile on that. It is just cheating or just plain wrong. Would you want to go to a friendly football match and tell your opponent, let's resolve the match with coin throwing or dice? No. You go to a football match to actually play football. So, go to AB to actually play AB. Not throw dices or whatever you think it is.

As for your comment that there is way too much grind, I agree with that part. I think the faction required to make those pve skills useful is insane! Anet should just make the skills unlockable with tier one of the title and make the variables depend on attributes like any other skills. That would make more sense IMO.

What he said. I share his opinion.
When not with a guild team (which was the only condition for myself participating in AB), I will roll.

On a side note, I think I will buy GWEN. And then stop GW. To go to Fury or another game. You (Anet team) slowly switched from a casual-friendly to no-life grind-like game.
That's not what was advertised on the box. Skill over time spent ? lol. Now you have uber skills that requires grind. So Grind iequals now to power.

ANd just to remind you, A-Net:
Making power skills based on grind led to:
_ An increase of leechers.
_ An increase of leavers on the loosing team.
_ An increase of leavers on a leeched team.
Decreasing Factions for loosing led to:
_ Waste of time when you are in a loosing team. Loosing in AB is quite based on luck, as you don't control the other team composition.
_ Leechers.They don't care, they don't waste time.
_ Leavers. Why stay in a loosing battle when you know you will have ridiculous faction?
_ Increased migration flux from the difficult maps to the avantaged ones. Which lead to a imbalance in players pool from both sides, which lead to abnormal wait times.

You know what, A-net? Stop Grind, stick to your first philosophy. Or you will end with only 12 yhrs old leeroy clones as a playerbase.
No titles with a direct impact on the game. PVE skills must be based on difficult quest acomplishment, not grind.

Okay, so expand on the no faction for 15 minutes for leavers. There has to be some way to monitor inactivity. They can catch people they suspect are bots by watching keystrokes (a former guildmate of mine got banned because they thought he was a bot, he was farming the same area over and over the same way and didn't talk to anyone while he was doing it). Maybe there's some way to pick up on leechers and do the same.


Edit: not a friend of mine...holy crap he pulled a gun on a friend of mine when he was drunk... NOT a friend of mine

Effort should be rewarded and motivation should be to keep fighting, even if your side is losing or disadvantaged on the map.

If a battle ends with 500 to 490, the losing team should get some sort of bonus than if the battle ended 500 to 300.

The disadvantaged (mapwise & numberwise thanks to quitters) side should gain a large bonus if they win, and still keep a bonus if they maintain a high score.

A full surrender (one side quitting) would result in very few points for the winning team.

All players who quit in mid battle will receive faction deduction. Players last ping will be checked at the point of surrender, if the ping is acceptable, showing that the surrender was not caused by lag, then players will receive the deduction.

Thats all i can think of for now.

Because they don't care about playing the game, and certainly don't care about damaging other people's playing experiences, they just want their "wins" so they can have slightly better performing PvE skills. In short, they're no better than the leechers they like to bitch about endlessly, screwing over other people for their own benefit and damaging the game in the process.

I think you are on the right track sir. We must reward playing, either win or lose, such that players will want to stick it out regardless of outcome.

As long as there is no reward (or punishment) for playing and losing, then players will not waste their time doing so.

As of right now, once one of the sides gains an advantage, then the other team *poof* vanishes. We'd get the same effect by honoring the OPs suggested dice roll, but with more dignity.

What ANet does not seem to be seeing is that for players to participate, then everyone must benefit. If they follow their usual track, then they will try the punishment angle, which will only cause player anger, from innocent disconnects. Not everyone is a criminal.

At 10 million faction to get to the top, I think that 5000 reward is chump change, for all of you who say that is too generous.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

It seems to me that their are 2 problems here that need solving.

1. What should we do about leeching?
2. How can we make the game more worthwhile for a losing team of legitimate players?


The first is always a tricky subject. It seems that each time the topic comes up there is an outcry from the community against punishing leechers because it will also punish folks with lag or real life emergencies that draw them away from the computer. In order to come up with a workable solution to leeching, Arena Net first needs to answer 3 questions.

1. Define a Leecher: I'll define it as someone who does not contribute to the team. He uses no skills against the enemy and no healing skills for allies. He doesn't move from the start position except possibly for random small movements. The leecher could be a person who intentionally joined the team to leech, someone who had to leave the computer for real life problems or someone with horrible lag. It doesn't matter why he's leeching, he just is.

2. Auto-Identify Leechers: Arena Net now has to write a routine that can run in the background during all AB/JQ/FA battles and pick out the leechers. I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that the design team is capable of doing this. This program needs to be able to distinquish among the 4 types of players in an AB battle.
1. Legitimate Player - someone hurting the enemy and boosting his team score.
2. Legitimate Bad Player - someone who is actively playing yet he doesn't have good playing skills and isn't accomplishing much.
3. Leecher - never moves from start position. never contributes in any way.
4. Bot Leecher - never contributes, yet macros random movements or skill actions.

3. Once #1 and #2 are solved, A-Net needs to decide what to do with the leechers. I recommend kicking Leechers and Bot Leechers from the battle and returning them to the lobby area. If kicked they receive no faction for the battle. Bot Leechers should receive additional penalties in line with what's appropiate for violating the EULA for botting. Leechers could be legitimate players with computer or real life problems so I don't think they should receive any punishment except removal from battle. If you remove the rewards the intentional leechers will leave. This will still leave folks with lag or real life issues, but these are rare compared to the griefers.


Now onto the second problem. If the leecher issue is solved then the recent update to reduce faction rewards for the losing teams can be retracted. I also think the ideas mentioned by others in this thread are great. A team that loses an AB battle 490 - 503 should receive a much much greater reward than one that loses 91 - 502.

Hear! Hear! What you are about to lose is the most profitable segment of your user base -- those who only play a few hours a week, but religiously pay for upgrades, etc. Let's go back to the Grind Free Guild Wars, please.

Leaving is contagious. It kinda goes like this:

[....] Wait till sufficient quantity of players have loaded...

[Chat] Fast Faction: Kurzick quit on Odd, Luxon's on Even
[Emot] Rolls a 4
[Chat] I rolled a 4, that's even, I'm luxon, so I'm leaving.

There are a few possibilities: (a) someone else announces the intent to roll, in which case, you can let them roll, (b) you both announce at the same time, in which case, first roll wins, (c) once a few on the "quitting" team leaves, even those who don't want to play will be hard pressed to stay on.

If you roll such that you're not suppose to quit, you're relying on someone else on the other side of the team to understand the game. It'll take a while for "concensus" to develop, but it will, and rather quickly. It might be that people on the other end don't quit, but, if you always quit when the roll isn't in your favor, it will setup expectations.

Dood, it is only 10 million faction. How can you call that grind?!!?!??!?????!!!!!One!1

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Oh also.....

Kurzick and Luxon skills should be based on TOTAL FACTION EARNED using lower tiers.

Not total faction donated or used.

The reason the Sunspear Skills and Lightbringer skills are much more...useable is because those title tracks are DESIGNED into the natural flow of the game. You gain rank as you progress through the game.

The retroactive addition of making the Friend of Kurzick/Luxon title tracks needed for PvE skills is just dumb.

Every player who beat factions has collected at least 10,000 Luxon or Kurzick points. Thats what it should be based on. Natural progression.

Before I go on let me apologize for the following quote which will probably be overused and misinterperated by myself and many others.

Again before I go on this is all opionion so Anet and lawyers you can put your WOW laywer bots away.

I remember a post a while back which stated that leechers were alright, at least from a user end agreement side (rules of conduct etc) as long as the person was not botting. So technically it would be only one wrong. Additionally, if we extend this logic to "roll for faction" and what was and probably still going in hero battles there should be nothing wrong with this either. Unless of course you would like to make a post explicitly stating what is and what is not a breech of contract. About the only thing that might make "rolling for fame" a breech is found in the rules of conduct which state: "You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars." But again due to the poor definition we have gotten in demonstration from Anet on exactly what a bug is. We could simply hide behind the phrase "We thought it was a game feature". Much like the "features" that did not allow us to max out our sunspear titles, or the other neat "feature" that allowed one to enter 4 man challange missions with 7 people, perhaps the old 20/20 rockmolder, or the non-existance of Domain of Anguish at game release, just to name a few (Do note these "Features" have been removed from the game). What is the difference from a "feature" which adversly effects gameplay and a bug?

However, on a positive note it is nice to hear that something is in the works to be done about this (though probably it will just give a rise to smarter bots). I look fowards to seeing how this problem will be remedied for it is quite a task to do.

Self serving and lazy suggestion.
If you are too lazy to AB, farm faction elsewhere.
This will only further ruin AB.

You should be glad you are getting anything for losing. I think it should be winner take all and increase it to 2500 per win. The losers just earn Balthazar faction

The PvE community has shown that it does not care for disorganized, player-competitive, inefficient win/lose situations.

Don't believe me?

Try Wintersday. Districts were agreed upon - Even Dwayna, Odd Grenth IIRC. That was a situation that the community made vastly more efficient for getting the hats. Why should we compete against eachother when we can all agree and win? We spared ourselves the competitive drama for.......what?

....a frickin hat?

So, when ANet gives us a grindfest totally stacked for the winners, that we can double the efficiency with a simple agreement?

That is a no-brainer.

Now, I may be reaching here, but dont you think that 10 million maxxed is a bit extreme? Even you are proposing that the reward be increased. Hmmmmm.

The only way this can be solved by ANet is to alter the reward payoff. Reward everyone. That will make it more efficient to play through the game win or lose, than quit.

Of course when they give us a situation that we can optimize, then you betcha we're gonna optimize. There is no reason to play the game their way. Their way, currently, sucks.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

-1 * -1 = 1

Here's the thing... if I have to wait ten minutes to get into a game I don't give a fried rats arse what anyone rolls. I'm staying for my fun. Winning is nice, the faction is nice, but I AB for a little un-winding type of fun when I don't have a lot of time to burn (for vanquishing, whatever). I don't care how many leave... I'm staying and trying.

Dear Sauce:

Maxed titles are NOT in ANY WAY needed for skills that are... NOT NEEDED, and are JUST FINE at r5 or even r1. Maxed titles should not be easy to get. Maxed titles are made for people who work hard and for many hours to get. You don't need 10 million faction to have fun and PLAY THE GAME.

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Enjoy your extra faction when you're anywhere but Saltspray.

That's the crux of the issue. Everyone has their own threshold. A lot of people load into FA and see an AFK and don't care, at least don't care enough to quit (you can't or you quit the format entirely). That's different when you see 2 or 3 AFKs. A lot more people will decide a match with 5 or 6 people is a waste of time than one with 7, and quit out of the match. At which point you're fighting with 4 people, which is an even lower threshold...etc. After a point it doesn't matter whether you stay or not, as a crushing defeat is pretty much inevitable.

Win trading was actually a single state equilibrium strategy before the updates. However it requires a critical density of players to get going, and the terms of the battle were fair enough that people never really considered it. Now, between a *laughable* faction reward for sticking out a losing match, and an increased (perceived) need to gain faction from the faction grind skills - and the increase in AFK farm teams in response to that - the payoffs have changed, and the idea of mailing in a percentage of your matches for fast wins becomes more appealing.

How many people win trading do you need in a match to make it a real determinant of outcome? I'm sure a single team on each side using the strategy would be sufficient - I don't have a lot of experience winning matches 8v12. Hopefully we won't find out, though, as Arena.net fixes their game before it becomes an issue.

Dear Zeek:

Um, the minimum is 100 thousand. Hmmmm. Lets take an obvious road here.

Battle of the Houses = 400 faction. Doubled with an alliance donation = 800 effective per match.

100,000/800 =125 matches.

Doesnt sound so bad?

Each one takes 5 minutes, at 12 per hour = 10 hours to even get access to the skill.......?

I reference 10 million because its soo insanely crazy. But the song remains the same at 100 thousand to even get the skill.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

The dice suggestion is not one that I find relevent - the concern, as GG mentioned is with leechers and leavers and in some ways, the amount of faction you receive upon losing. A slight alteration in rewards for the losers and a strategy to deal with leechers and AB is right back on top.

Go ANet!

No one complained about this BEFORE faction was doubled making it twice as easy to earn. Two hours for fives days and you have 100k. That's easy.

I think the idea regarding rolling or not is pointless. Even forgetting the discussion about whether or not it's cheating or perfectly ok, in order to work you have to get 24 people to agree to abide by the roll decision for this to work. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!!!

I'm a pure PVE player - I don't like PVP of any type.

But Anet continues to tie them closer together more and more.

WHY!?!

If it isn't favor then it's now Faction. WAKE UP ANET!

I had no problem getting LB/SS points and getting skills related to them - because they're part of PVE

Faction is more PVP based (PVE faction earning is a joke) and your reward for doing tons of it - a PVE skill!?!

I have finished factions mulitple times on my many toons and each and every one has the absolute bare minimum of faction in order to progess the plot.

Double weekend of faction - woot - I didn't play a single game of AB/FA/JQ or anything PVP related.

I'm sick and tired of PVE dependant on PVP.....sigh

PS I applaud the OP for trying to cheat a fundamentally flawed system.

10 mil aren't there to be achieved in a day you know.

Zeek, your rosy portrayal of easy living for faction farming to the hundreds of thousands (or millions) is slightly at odds with what is happening in the community and the game.

You are talking to the wrong audience. I think your time would be better spent educating players in the game as to why their leeching and/or quitting strategies are not optimal, in your opinion of course.

That is - if and only if - you can get them to pay attention to you because they are too busy leeching and/or quitting.

If you want to portray the situation as rosy, then you need to go online and see the situation firsthand - it is not rosy.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

I think the roll is a brilliant idea. I'm all for it until there is a leecher fix.

After playing the jade arena numerous times till i thought I would go mad this weekend, I played on a favored map and kept winning although I lost a few times. The faction reward was greater for winning in AB than the repeatable quests. Don't give me "there are quests to give you faction" crap. I spent all weekend trying different solutions and AB is the best gain. You can't blame people for coming up with these solutions, Anet. I used to AB for fun. It's no longer fun because it's an obligation to make a skill stronger and you must do it to get the fastest faction. This means putting up with a bunch of people who are ruthless to win and immature people who cheat or leech. I'd rather do the suggestion above and I'm sure I'm not alone when I say the grind to enhance these skills is totally unnecessary.

You don't need 24 people to agree. Lets say 4 people agree to it and leave. That's 12 vs 8. The 8 people can either put up a fight for a few minutes and lose, or just accept that they should leave. If you want to be the hero and go 1 on 12 because you refuse to leave on a roll... GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!!!

some people play for fun, others for reward

too bad we all can't get along

I hate the idea of rolling an AB game, I'd much rather the format be repaired, but a question:

Which of the 24 gets to roll?

these are some ideas people have posted a number of times. i will post them again so the devs get the idea that these are popular (and somewhat simple) changes to introduce...

LEAVERS
i will ignore leavers because if the leechers get sorted out there are still legitimate reasons to leave and they should not be punished. although i read someone say that a 15 minute ban on faction gain would be helpful; however, what if you err 007 or something? what if a whole server crashes? seems like a shitty idea ultimately.

LEECHERS
detecting a player that does nothing for the match (i.e. does not move or use a skill) that individual player should gain NO REWARD regardless of what the rest of his team gains. fantastic idea! even if it encourages leechers to move into using bots because bot use is explicitly cheating and can justifiably lead to the banning of your account. at the same time, if you legitimately lagged for an entire match, lol, and were unable to do anything to help your alliance, you should gain NO REWARD!

even if someone has a bot program continually joining 4 leechers to your alliance, Anet should eventually ban those accounts that use any sort of bot in AB and let those assholes who try to farm afk try to levy a pathetic petition to have their account reinstated. banning them permanently will cause them to lose all the shit towards the title they thought they would gain by cheating. and by forcing either legitimate play or the use of a spam-bot you will either have a reasonably full team or else players who will risk getting banned.

FOR NOW
for the time being if you have a leecher in your group, kick the bastard after the match and carry on. they will gain a very small amount of faction for their effort (or lack there of) but then will not be a problem for people for the rest of the matches you participate in. try something as simple as talking to your party in between matches and/or watching if someone is standing still at the rez shrine in your particular group. that would ease a lot of the burden on Anet.

ORIGINAL POST
i think trying to convince people to rig AB by uniformly leaving as an alliance is a stupid idea. sure its convenient for faction farming, but really most people play AB because it is fun. just joining and leaving is not fun. go do a solo quest if you think AB is beyond repair. don't try to ruin it for everyone else who enjoys the battle-type.