To Anets Live Team: Please Review Dishonor & Report System

Particularly for Random Arenas. Too many players often abuse of the report system simply because.. well, they CAN.

Players bring intentionally inferior builds with the intent of anguishing legitimately competitive players, forcing them to choose between wasting time dieing to the opposing team and facing their ridicule (or) mapping out, incurring penalties and eventually the D-Hex. Automated timeouts is a pretty lazy way of handling things.

My proposal: Either expunge these two systems that have plagued players for September 2007, or simply keep them in place and create a system of BALANCE in RA for the sake of minimizing hostility and rewarding players with the hope for a better match-up 'next time'.

By balance, I mean make it so that all teams come with (1) healer, (1-2) caster(s) of any sort, and (1-2) physical attacker(s) of any sort (detected via programming).

Once in effect, this change will:

Balance the Competition
Reduce premature leaving (drastically)
Minimize Hostility

I firmly believe in our Live Team and sincerely hope that they look into the possibilities of making this positive proposal a reality.

Random arenas is random, you can't balance it with 1 healer, 1/2 casters, and 1-2 physicals, thats just dumb.

The only change I want to see about the Dishonorable system is to make it that you only get the hex if you leave 2 or 3 matches in a row or something, so you can still leave one early if there is a griefer.

If u don't like it play TA and be will make no more huge changes guarnteed cause of gw2

Random (balanced) is random. TA is near-empty for a reason (everyone would rather bypass time wasted grouping). Go check it out for yourself. Also, TA has alot of abusive group team-builds like Smiter/Life-Steal Rt/Healer/Derv|War|Sin|etc.. which is OP'd and lame.

My suggestion stands strongly. If ya'll don't like my suggestions, kindly say so or don't say it at all. No verbal defication will be tolerated on this topic. It is a serious problem in RA currently. If ya'll agree to leave things as they are now, then you simply want this abuse to continue (in my eyes) because this is what happens on the daily.

Players abuse the rest because there's no other alternative. Those that give up because they fully grasp the fact that no healer = no glory get reported abusively (which is wrong). Leeching means that the player stands there with the intent on drawing balthazar faction and glad points without doing anything, not because they're frustrated in the anticipation of another lost match and time wasted; it's not accurate to accuse a player whose experience with groups tells him there's no hope, yet, is forced to lose and swallow his pride. That's why players IDLE and stand there (not to leech, but to submit to their forseen defeat).

RA's in a state of what is called 'imbalance' and I merely suggest that Anet introduce 'balance' to RA. Random = Random still, simply with added 'balance'. Balance is good and will bring forth the good changes indicated in the OP. If ya'll are against it then you simply want things to stay hostile and unpleasant. The purpose of gaming should be to have fun, not cause stress. RA causes alot of stress because of the D-Hex and abusers taking full advantage of it.

I vote to bring balance to RA. It'll most definitely, positively impact player's gaming experiences there.

I got reported in Beetle Racing, because I had to download all the files now I have a dishonorable something or other on my account and I can't play the games. Where is the logic on this!!!

Resigning from beetle races appears to give you dishonorable points. Please fix this.

Good luck getting ANet to do anything about the broken, pointless Dishonor system. Or the broken RA. The topic has been discussed at length both here as well as on the GW Wiki, and nothing is going to happen. What about peeps who get d/c'ed in the middle of matches. They get dishonor points as well which sucks IMHO.

There is NO way for the GW servers to know WHY someone is not on anymore, only the fact that they are not there is known to the servers. So balanced teams or griefers...doesn't matter. Dishonor is FUBAR.

As others have pointed out, random is random. If you don't like getting teams of 3 Mo's and a R, or 4 Me's, or whatever, then don't play RA. Sync teams are also a big factor in RA brokenness that ANet has shown no interest in fixing. So RA is broken, Dishonor is broken. All the QQ in the world ain't gonna change it. Either live with it or don't RA. Sorry but them's the facts, like 'em or not.

RA is broken (indeed) and this thread is to ask them for fixture. I understand that they don't get monthly income from we the community, but I figured there's nothing to be lost in asking them. I like to RA, but I'd rather compete in a sensibly balanced RA rather than an abuse-filled RA. If they created and enforced this balancing system, it'd be for the better of gameplay and fun. Random + Balance = (Better) Random.

The community seems to dislike change.. and for the better? What if Random Arenas was balanced from the very beginning? What would the mindset of the community be then? What's not random about instilling balance? Does the community like having a team of 4 monks, rits, necros, mesmers, etc.. vs. a balanced team? Would it not be better to have good balanced teams duking it out? Can you imagine not having bitter players running grieving builds or rushing into the enemy group to die fast simply because there's no balance on their side?

It would be best for the Dev's to have this idea be made alive.

I don't get why random arenas needs to be programmed to form non-random balanced teams.

I may be missing something here, but isn't random arenas supposed to be, you know, random? And also a very casual form of PvP where you're expected to have some good teams and some bad ones?

Want more organization but suck at TA? Go AB.

Are you sure these aren't just people playing RA to pass the time? I mean I remember when it was called "competition arenas" but everyone laughed at anyone considering it 'competitive' rather than 'random.'

If you are that perturbed by 'bad' players in RA, either go TA or sync into RA.

OK... Random != balanced. People should know that by now. Random

Bad idea is bad idea.

/notsigned.

/notsigned
Randomness in random arenas is what makes them random, and so that they can be called random arenas. Ofc, Sync is factor that is destroying the holy randomness, and this should be main Live Team's job, not fixing report system. I understand, that report system is broken in Rollerbeetle racing for example, but games like that are too rare too rare to be taken srsly by Live Team.

Fix Sync
/signed

/notsigned

Dishonor works exactly as intended in RA. RA was a nightmare before dishonor. You'd get a 4 on 4 fight maybe once every 5 fights, because some idiot W/x would always go "NO MONK *ragequit*!" right at the start (even though the other team didn't have a monk either).
Dishonor allows fights to be fair and FUN (it's not fun to be constantly steamrolled in 4v2s because people ragequit). Since dishonor has been implemented, I have never gotten dishonor. If you don't rage quit, it doesn't affect you at all. It only harms the behavior it was designed to stop in the first place.

Believe it or not, you don't "need" the "perfect" build to succeed in RA. I've gotten 15 wins in a row (ie 5 in TA) with a team with 1 EDA dervish, 1 sin, and 2 ineptitude mesmers. No healers, minimal condition and hex removal. Just good old fashioned shutdown and quick use of res sig chains.

RA is designed to teach you basic game mechanics, which it does quite well. Anybody who complains about not getting a healer in RA should play as a healer (because obviously you think a good team needs one). Anybody who wants a balanced team should play in TA/GvG/etc.

I agree with your second and third points, but I have to disagree with your observation that Dishonor works perfectly. It does NOT in one key aspect. Sure, it minimizes ragequitters, but it also punishes players who don't ragequit and, through no fault of their own get d/c'ed in the middle of matches. If it happens in two matches in a row, "BINGO" you get a 10 minute dishonor block. Why should I, or anyone else who is dealing with an ISP problem, or an Internet traffic issue get shat upon by ANet for it? Unless there is a way to distinguish problem disconnects from deliberate ragequitting or griefing (and according to Gaile Gray this is not technologically possible) then the whole Dishonor system should be eliminated.

Pretty much anyone that treats RA this seriously has no idea that it is the weakest form of PvP. In my view TA should always be fixed over RA, because RA is never serious and you can run an empty skillbar and win.

Your suggestion 'stands' amongst all the other ones where people complain about not getting the team they wanted, in a random environment. The reason there is TA is so you can form your own ideal team if you want, so the "go play TA" suggestion still makes more sense than making balanced random teams.

About the leeching problem, it makes perfect sense that someone not doing anything deserves to get DH for leeching, even though their intention might not be to leech, but to just tell the team to give up. If they don't want to contribute but their other three team mates do, they should /resign and then keep playing anyway. Its bad enough people intentionally kill themselves, but its just as annoying when they stand there and do nothing. The DH still helps preventing people from just standing there.

There is no reason your suggestion should be implemented, its a waste of time on the developers part and completely destroys the random aspect of random arenas.

So leave RA and Dishonor systems broken, right? Why have RA then? Why not just expunge it from the game if that's the case? GW is meant to be for fun gaming, not stress induction. Sure, players used to leave and reroll alot back then, but the remaining competitors didn't have to stay and die. They had the option to follow suit and reroll another team and things used to be gravy.

The reasons why people left were because they understood that no monk means no win. Anyone knows that monks are essential to gaming in GW. PvE and PvP both REQUIRE some form of healing to succeed in their objective and anyone caught trying to stray away from this fact will be regarded as either ignorant or lacking common sense by anybody that does have common sense.

One more time: Random + Balanced = Random still! (just balanced)

Again, if balance were introduced, it would make RA a better place to compete. It would minimize hostility among players and would reduce the amount of players being hexed because this balance system would provide a positive hope for the next match-up to maybe be a bit better. I personally don't see why ya'll are afraid of changing things for the better.

No, RA is not the lowest form of PvP. You can get to rank 9 hero in just one weekend if you play your cards right; just try to get to rank 3 gladiator in a weekend and tell me if you succeed at it. Gladiator points are much harder to come by. In RA, you could be facing a team of 4 healers (which is BS if you ask me). Or you could have 3 monks on your own team (which is also BS).

Balance ought to be implemented to prevent these things. If the D-Hex is here to stay, then the balance system would make it more desirable to stay and game than to watch your 3 monks heal you while you try and take down 4 monks on the other side. These kinds of scenarios is what made people ragequit in the first place. Placing a balanced system in RA would negate any desire to leave because you'll say, "I got a balanced team. Let's do this! xD", each and every match. What's not to desire in that?

Do ya'll really want things to stay imbalanced for the sake of being 'random'? I think leaving things as they are will continue to enable abusers to have a reason to abuse other players in every which way. It'll give players the motive for entering with running builds to run around the arena and waste player's time, making them give up on competing simply because they've been abused by grieved players. This grief is caused by the DCS (D-Hex) as well as wrongful /reports that players all-to-often make. I see it all the time, too.

Player 1: *Runs around with running build*
Player 1: *Reports everyone on his team*
Player 1: *Rinse/Repeats last two line items*

or

Player 1: Lost comms with server
Player 2-4: /report Player 1
Player 1: Sits in lobby d-hexed "Darn dial-up ._."

or

Player 1: "We have no/too many monk(s). This will be going nowhere fast! Time will be wasted.. :/
Player 1: *Rushes in to die quickly and reroll another team*
Player 2-4: /report Player 1 (leeching)
Player 2-4: *Die*

or

Player 1: Warrior *uses Orison and mend ailment*
Players 2-4: *Die one by one*
Player 1: /report Player 2-4 *while taunting them rudely before they leave*
Player 1: Rinse/Repeat

Drama, drama, and more drama... Is it really needed? Do we really have to leave things broken and uncared for?

I vote to change the ways of RA once and for all. I hope the Live Team considers changing things in RA for the greater good.

Not true in RA. Personally I wouldn't mind seeing some changes to RA, but as I said before, I don't expect ANet to do anything about this. Also "balanced" by definition does not = random. End synching, make it so there'd be 4 different professions on a team, but then they'd need to call it "PvP Practice Arena" or some such because it won't be truly random anymore. Someone else already mentioned that no monk also does not = no win in RA as it currently exists. Two days ago, I was on a team with myself as BA/Int Ranger, 2 melee, and one Me. Not a Mo in sight. We all had self-heals, knew how to use the terrain, stuck together, went with called targets, used Res Sigs wisely and quickly, and ran off a ten win streak. In the process we beat FOUR teams with healing Mo's. Three of the wins in the streak were flawless. So Mo healers are absolutely not necessary to have winning streaks in RA, just good sensible teams, which I must admit does not happen often enough.

I'm not a huge player of either, but I find that RA and AB are both vastly improved by the report system. Prior to the report system, both game modes were hopelessly overrun with leechers and "what-no-monk-?-I-quit-!" ragequitters. The report system makes them much more enjoyable.

Now, if I do have an objection to the reporting system, it's the obvious lack of review for offensive names. (See the "ban-a-mate" thread. [Edit: Scratch that. Turns out the ban-a-mate folks may not have been quite so truthful...]) I don't much care if a-net has reporting for offensive names or not, but if they're going to have it, then they need to have real human review for gosh's sake.

I've played RA with dial-up before.

Even then, never got dishonor. Not once.


And people are not that callious/organized to report somebody because they are a W/Mo using mending.

Can you emagine how your suggestion would affect the w8?

No Team Joined. Restarting Clock x100; because of a lack of professions in the outpost.

Not only is attempting to balance teams in RA to have a preset number of healers, casters, and physicals a poor idea in general, but it is also completely unrealistic. While it might be possible to have a program put together certain professions in various combinations, this would do nothing to guarantee that these professions are actually doing the jobs that have been assigned to them in the original proposal:

Monks: There is this little attribute line called "smiting prayers," is there not? Not every monk is a healer, and ignoring this fact will just cause more problems. Why is a team with a smiter going to keep playing when they could simply die and get a new one with a healer? What is going to keep the other team members for reporting this monk for not doing his/her "job" and healing? Nothing, and this just creates a new mess for the system. Plus there's no guarantee that the monk is any good anyway, and I know I'm not the only one who would rather have 4 good non-monks than 3 good players and a crap monk.

Ritualists: What do we do with these? Sometimes they heal, but sometimes they don't. A rit healer on a team with a monk healer would not fit the proposed guidelines for "balance," but a damage channeling or spirit spammer would. The throw in those ones that are actually Spirit's Strength assassins, and then what?

Necro/Rits: Uh-oh. Yeah, most of these tend to be healers, too, but their primary class would suggest that they would count as casters, leading to "unbalanced" teams. But wait! Maybe they just arbitrarily chose that as a secondary and have no rit skills on their bar. Then what? Or maybe they just have Death Pact Sig. There's too many possible variations.

Ele/Monk: These are pretty rare, but they're out there. Leads to the same problems as N/Rt, does it not?

Dervish/Monk: I've seen this combination monk teams to glad points in TA, and it can be surprising effective in the right hands. Are we then not going to allow D/Mo to be on the same team as a Monk or Rit?

And so on and so forth.

Plus I don't see how rigging RA to not be random anymore solves any of these:

Situation 1 is going to happen regardless of how teams are made up. It's not like people who use these running builds get to change their skills once they enter the battle... they enter with that build fully aware that they could end up on an otherwise capable team that fits that "balanced" example you're after. These people do this simply to tick everyone else off, and rigging it so that every team fits your definition of good (which most of us here would say is flawed anyway) is only going to make this tactic of griefing more effective; as the destructiveness of a running build to the success of the other players is increased, the frequency with which they will appear will also increase. Furthermore, forcing every team to have a monk opens the doors to new types of griefer abuse: anyone want to guess how many of these runners will simply reroll a monk and the practice their 55ing skills in the arenas? My money's on a substantial amount...

Situation 2 is completely irrelevant as far as forcing teams to be balanced. Profession is completely independent from connection availability and strength. That said, reporting the player for leeching in that case could very well be justified. Consider a player that has a connection that causes them to load well after the battle has started (say 30 seconds or more) on a regular basis. While that player is not getting credited the faction for the kills recorded during that time, they are (in most cases) putting their team at a sizable disadvantage. If this occurs regularly (occasionally is excusable, but if you're that late 25% of the time or more that's not) that player is damaging the experience of the rest of the community and should not be attempting to PvP anyway. At times when the number of players is low (either overall or there's just a lack of a particular profession) the same players see each other pretty often and can identify some sort of pattern to justify the reporting of this person.

Situation 3 is probably the most legitimate, but still flawed. Chances are that if one person reaches that conclusion the others will be soon to follow; if they're not capable of seeing that a 3 healer team cannot hope to defeat a team with a substantial amount of caster hate or melee pressure chances are they won't know how to use the /report function in coordination, either, and will actually give themselves dishonor points in the process.

Actually players 2-4 would likely be reporting the warrior in situation 4, not the other way around. When something like this happens it's when the team also has a healer and the warrior (usually new to PvP) uses Mending or Life Attunement. A good team will continue with the battle knowing they can compensate and that the person will learn as they get more experience; a bad team, well, will be bad and probably wouldn't have gotten very far anyway. Plus, since the warrior in that quoted situation is the only one reporting he/she simply gave his/herself dishonor points instead (at least 2, but since 3 reports were made am I right in assuming 6 would be given?) More often, however, this type of scenario would play out like it did in situation 1 where the player is running a build that is generally considered unacceptable (like a straight trap ranger, toucher, or 55). For rigged teams to help fix these there would have to be some mechanism for checking and classifying builds, which is neither realistic or logical.

The dishonorable system is stupid. I report leechers and I get dishonored, only becuase others will not report? Now I know why others won't report they probably don't want to get dishonored thereselves.

So let me get this straight..you treat RA so seriously that you quit if there's not a Monk on the team?? Nice..thanks for screwing the other 3 people who may have won anyway, in spite of not having a Monk. I've done it plenty.. and I'll be the first to admit I suck bad at PvP. I think people like you are exactly the reason DH came about. I thought RA was a learning/testing ground? *shrugs* Maybe I'm wrong, but I just play the game for fun..

On the flip side, there have been a few times when I was in a CM and the countdown timer before a match is 1:10 or something like that, so, just for giggles, even though I loaded around 1:04, I just waited for the timer to get to about 0:08 before running to the portal to transport you. While waiting for the timer to get down to mere seconds left, I got reported for leeching. The match hasn't even started yet!

Dishonor and report works 10 times better then not having it at all, where you will get rage quitters every single fight 5 seconds into a match.

And frankly, I have never seen a suggestion on this forum by people who complain about dishonor that would be better (without destroying the meaning of the word "random" and also completely ignore that there is no way a computer could actually set up "balanced" teams when people are allowed to run unconventional builds like a monk with smiting [which a computer might just think is a healer] or a N/R with a pet and bow).

People complain about the existence of dishonor, but never have any constructive idea on what to replace it with. It's fine as is. It's not perfect, but its better then the ideas people on guru come up with.

Edit: Didn't realize this was a thread necro. Recognized the OP's avatar too late. @Copenhagen Master, if you want to res an old thread about dishonor, do so with something constructive besides "dishonor sucks." Post constructively or don't post at all. Keep your raging quiet.

I absolutely disagree with this change, reasons being:

Wrong. You don't NEED Monks to win. Yes a good Monk is a strong advantage, but to say they are necessary is just wrong. I just earned a 10-win streak from RA with me on blindbot, two Rangers and a Necro with Flare (yes the three of us carried him in the wins). We beat teams with Monks and beat teams with two healers. What's your point? A strong advantage in skill can compensate for not having a Monk. I will stick my neck out here and say that whenever I click enter battle and I'm not a Monk, I would rather have 3 competent players than a single competent Monk + 2 randoms.

If you're saying that teams with healers should be preferentially matched against other teams with healers, I'm positive such code is already in place. That's why you could go many matches with no Monk, switch to Monk and then voila, find yourself in a party with 3 Monks.

When situation one happens, player 1 naturally gets dishonor. Have you ever done it? I bet not. If you report more than one ally and nobody else does it with you you get dishonor (I didn't know that either until I actually did it), so in fact I've not seen the first situation happen.

Situation two is rare. Again I've not seen it happen actually. There are few enough people who /report, and I don't report someone who loses connection with the server. Plus you don't get instant dishonor for getting reported. You can leave games once every hour, remember?

Situation three happens quite a bit and is entirely fair. Player 1 deserves to be reported, and with three people reporting him he might as well have left the game and earned the dishonor points anyway. My only problem with this is that there might not be enough people who report him, which lets him do it again. In any case whenever this happens I add the guy to my friend's with a silent promise never to Monk for him again.

Situation four is similar to situation 1.

Having to deal with bad players is a fact of life in RA. The changes you're proposing kills a lot of the distinctive style that is RA. If you're guaranteed a healer every time you hit enter, self-heals would be a lot less meaningful. If you're guaranteed a physical character, melee hate would skyrocket because you'll always have a target. So would caster hate. What gives?

Summary: absolutely disagree with your suggestions. You say GW is suppose to be fun, well let me tell you: I find RA to be fun right now. If you find it stressful, by all means, don't play RA.

random arena is random. if u don't want the chance of randomly getting a bad player, do not play in random arena. if u purposely abandon teams, u should be punished, no matter what the team composition is. part of playing in random arena is knowing that u could end up playing with a team that has "random" idiots. it's part of the game. go away.

As for TA being filled with abusers, bah. Taking advantage of skill combinations that are better than others is not abuse. it's called intelligence. find a way to counter it or run the same thing only better. stop QQ'ing

Uh..you want Random Arena's reomoved and Balanced Arena's implemented? If you want balanced teams go to Team Arena's, that's what it's there for after all, if you play Random Arena's and get an unbalanced team suck it up and take your chances instead of QQing, it's random and always will be after all it's called Random Arena's it's supposed to be random!

RA is not serious, therefore it can have no serious problems.

If you take RA seriously and fram it for Glad points for hours a day you are seriously doing PvP wrong.

The report system is kinda, meh.

The dishonorable Hex however I feel works rather well, sure it bugs sometimes, but the point of it was to reduce leavers in AB and RA and that is what has happened.

God forbid you have to wait out an entire 8 minutes because of a griefer.

Get a life.