Red Resigns: What will Anet do about this?

I would argue this because its a PvE zone, its not a "mission" all PvP gameplay takes place in Mission, in other words you have to press an "Enter" button before you get "matched up" with another team, this defines a match IMO, but since there is no place where it is clearly defined anywhere its just a matter of peoples opinions.

Look at it this way, a match would consist of teams being assigned a color (Blue, Red, Yellow) match manipulation happens during these activities not in a PvE zone.

Sync Dancing could be considered match manipulation, or conga lines, this is grasping at straws to say that organizing events in a PvE zone is considered "match" manipulation, but it doesnt bother me if people feel this way.

You may be right, but that doesn't change the fact that the EULA doesn't state it as otherwise. In it's current form, the rule could EASILY be used to apply to Grenth v. Dwayna. Saying, "No." doesn't make that not true. Sorry *shrugs*

First, all PvP quests are repeatable.

Second of all, that wouldn't fix anything. Because then people could just create a PvP character, get the quest reward. Throw the stuff in storage, delete. New PvP character, repeat.

Npc's are prominent in a large amount of PVP across the game. Ab, JQ, FA, ra and ta to a lesser extent (enemy priest) HA, gvg and, most importantly HERO BATTLES sine we bring 3 npc's with us. So npc=pve is not a good argument.

I'm pretty sure the npcs in question (holiday specific ones) are PvE exclusive. I've yet to have the mad king defeat me in a hero battle because I didn't /kneel whilst trying to spike him.

From the GW Website

http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/pvp/

Also you cant take a PvP ONLY character to LA, etc..

You dont get balthazar faction when Grenth or Dwayna wins

I dont think its worth discussing as a way to "justify" RR being OK

I don't know about you, but I make hundreds of k's on a finale day, several accounts that get gifts in LA and then Spamadan right after because of the delay. Thanks to the manipulation.

@ Fril: like Karate Jesus and Aussie Boy explained...wintersday finale is player versus player, it's PvP in PvE disguise. The fact that NPC's orchestrate the match doesn't matter. The gifts or rewards always come from Anet.

I'm not justifying RR, I just notice double standards.

This situation further illustrates what a shitty title grindfest Guild Wars has become.
ANet seem to be oblivious of trends (not just this one) in their own game, or simply don't care

and the puke bucket is going to overflow right onto GW2. I'm also sure they are aware of the trends because as stated earlier in this very thread "Too many people, too many high-end and involved people at that."

I'm leaning towards the "don't care" side. They obviously know these trends exist or the wouldn't be removing HB and TA. According to the journal entries of Regina and Linsey, they know a lot of stuff is going on....they are apparently either "too busy" or "don't have enough staff" to care.

A good example is the bug list. That thing is ridiculously long now. Even Joe Kimmes made a statement recently about how out-of-hand that has gotten. They need to pick the Live Test Krewe already so the QA team can actually try to address that list (or play Aion...w/e it is they're paid for).

In theory, they should be the practice. In practice the theory doesn't apply.

In other words: rules are not rules.

Seriously: most businesses are not stringent on "rules", or all employees would have to become lawyers.

I fail to see how a person can think they have much rights when involved to a video game besides the basic one (this not being one of them). You would really need to be invested into it to push it on a legal plateau. They have all the records at there finger tips. And if you are the average Joe I am sure if you did this you bragged to somebody about it. With that being said hummmm

I believe this is the only result to any nerf. However, anet could be silly and change the colors to pink and yellow.

I would just completely remove the title altogether, and blame those that used /rolls and colors.
It's only their fault.

it's not like this is the first pvp title to be exploited (bspike for champ points, dtsc etc. for kurz/luxon points) or the first way to get huge amounts of zkeys with no investment at all (xunlai house)

though the sooner the better with anet removing hb, obviously, but I dont really see what the big issue is other than a) the gw economy being affected by it (it's been affected in many other drastic ways already), and b) being mad that people are getting free money/titles and you arent

Too late. It's already in a lot of HoMs. Be a big mess to undo that.

Well, many people have covered it already, but ANet is pretty much solely to blame for the whole HB situation at the moment. What can they do? Well, quite a lot, but whether they WILL is a whole other matter.

For +-2 years now, the HB community have been asking for HB changes / fixes. Izzy promised changes were coming. Nothing came.

What is even more funny, is this thread alone has generated so much attention for HB, the HB forum was never this busy. It is quite something to see and quite ironic.

So, this community-created event has surely sparked a definite increased interest in HB, even if it is for all the wrong reasons - money (free zkeys), easy title grinding (zaishen + commander) and increased BF cap.

The fact that since ANet announced that the arena is going to be removed is just making it worse, since everyone wants to get as much reward as they can, while the opportunities are there - just check what happens at Discount sales in shops on the last day, for a comparison... it is natural human behaviour to get something as easily as possible with as little effort / value as possible.
RR has existed for months, ever since /roll was removed. (See above and below for why we find ourselves in this seemingly 'new' situation.)

The same principle applies to the griefers, who refuse to resign, they have a purpose too - to irritate and in their mind also gain something easily, while justifying the means that they are doing it 'correctly', while in essence also abusing and gaining from the 'fast RR system' - that gives them some satisfaction instead.

Going back to the current HB situation - even more recent, since the beginning of the year... The HB community has tried even harder to get the HB arena sorted out by applying small and easy fixes - one of the members (I hope he won't mind me mentioning him - Draikin) himself has been in direct contact with Izzy and Linsey on several occasions about the issues surrounding HB. He even gathered input from the regular HB players, which had years of experience in playing the format.

This post by Draikin in Gaile's Support section on the GWW, just sums it up beautifully for me:

Source

ANet created this monster, they are fully to blame.
Instead of fixing it, like they said 2 years ago they would do and continuing to say so through this year - even having the HB community doing most of the work on what needed to be fixed, gathering info, etc. - ANet rather decide to remove it completely.

Furthermore, fine... RR is against the EULA, but then so is botting and leeching / afking JQ / FA and AB. What about Bspike in GvG (to a lesser extent), and SC's (8min UW anyone? - UW was never meant to be this fast). So, when will they ban these people?
Taking it further, what will they do to these people that just leave RA matches at start (after skimming the group) without even trying... that is also match manipulation.
Oh, and what about RA syncing?

So, what can Anet do? Not much I think - Remove HB, reduce / remove BF reward, introduce Dishonor, mass ban...???
HB is being removed anyway, as once again, was stated several times before. If they do end up doing something, like banning, they better be prepared for a drastically reduced server usage statistic.

All of this because they didn't do what they said they would, they didn't manage HB, nor did they listen to the community, but then this is nothing new for Anet.
I end this wall of text with this quote, for emphasis

Hero Battles were fundamentally unsalvageable. They would need to pour an enormous effort into rewriting their AI just to make competitive play possible. They could've tried at least, but it would have failed in the end.

I imagine that Red Resign Day ranks rather low on Anet's priority list of issues to fix.

Honestly, I would rather have them working on fixing Xunlai, doing skill balances, bug fixes, content updates, etc...

Red Resign Day is really not that big of a deal, there is no real harm as result of Red Resign Day.

just saying. lol. yeah.

Flubber, what you posted is rude and adds no value whatsoever to this thread. If you want to make disrespectful jibes that are not related to the topic, send me a PM instead of posting them in this thread in a lack-luster attempt to show how witty your are to this game community.

I would value your opinion slightly more if you posted your thoughts on my post rather than link to a video.

Just saying.

ProTip: what your law class told you is irrelevant.

If ArenaNet decides something is against the EULA and decides to do something about it, they can and will.

Flubber hasn't done much in the thread besides make vehement remarks against people's character and HB in general.

If you're upset about HB, that's one thing. But coming here and disrespecting people is another.

the truth hurts. always.

The difference is the lack of an externality. The trouble is that when the community creates a rule for organizing LA/Kamadan during Wintersday, there are no losers. All players present are positively impacted; no players absent are negatively impacted. RR is different, because the players that don't play RR lose ground in the economy to those that do RR.

Wintersday is an example where simple communication can avoid coordination failure. The Dwayna and Grenth people self-segregating is similar to people agreeing to drive on one side of the road or the other. Both sides are made better off if they avoid colliding with one another in the same district, so creating a simple rule that everyone understands resolves the risk of not getting the hat you want. The rule itself doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether Dwayna districts are odd or even, just that there are known Dwayna and Grenth districts.

For grinders, PvP is like a Prisoner's Dilemma. Both grinders are better off if they can agree to some quick means of resolving the match, but both want to avoid getting suckered and conceding the match without receiving some sort of payoff for doing so. The RR rule is a way of getting around this problem. If all grinders agree to RR, then it becomes rational to concede this match with the expectation of getting a match someone else will concede to you.

The difference is that on RR day, what the RR players do affects others. The players that participate benefit, and the players that don't participate lose. Wealth is relative in an environment like GW. When currency is being dumped into the system through a glitch/exploit, this creates winners AND losers. Since the amount of shinies you can buy is finite (and usually doesn't vary as a result of the exploit), players that don't take advantage of the exploit become poorer.

People get upset when there's a widespread, profitable activity that's against the rules because it presents an uncomfortable choice. Either you join the herd and accept some risk of getting banned to keep up with the Joneses, or you sit on the sidelines and accept being left behind unless ANet whips out the ban stick. Nobody wants to get banned, and nobody really wants to be put in the position of cheerleading for mass bans either.

Long story short - in a virtual economy, everything is interconnected and what other people does affects you. If you can't see that, maybe you should take a look around and see how what others do affects you. Then maybe you can see how what you do affects others.

RR is reallllllly smacking up the in game economy. I put in a few hours every week doing it, but to be honest, I feel like I'm getting poorer. Prices of everything are going up, except zkeys.

Well you are correct, but I think you understated the problem. Anet is solely to blame for every single problem in their game. HB is just the tip of the iceberg.

Nothing. They already opened the can of worms and there is no going back. Titles are obviously the problem. The exact moment they were introduced was the exact moment the majority of the community was turned into title farmers and the game changed forever. When your game becomes all about farming, your game becomes nothing but a bottomfeeding abusive exploitfest, where the best abusers are the most successful players. Thank you for titles Anet. You may now remove entire formats from the game instead of the core problem.

I'm sure the causal link between the two events has been rigorously determined right?

What precedent has anet set for such cases in the past? It would be reasonable to follow such precedent and I think its reasonable to think that is what they will do again.

Who knows though, maybe anet won't disappoint the frothing witch hunters looking for bannings. I'm still not sure why they want this or think its a reasonable response after god knows how many pages...

People who play along with D/G districts get the mask they want. People who don't will not. Anyone that wanted to actually have an exciting close "battle" is screwed.

While there is a difference in magnitude of economic effect with one-shot customized masks vs tradeable plat+zkeys, and actually playing HB is (probably) more enjoyable than DvG trying to out-luck each other, the basic principles are really the same.

But how many of these people exist?

We could make the same argument you put forward about driving on one side of the road or the other. 99.9% or so of people would prefer to take the risk of getting killed out of driving, and the other 0.1% are like Heath Ledger's Joker and would love to see the carnage, irrespective of the risk of death.

Hate to say it, but the number of people that care about having a close "battle" is very small. If it weren't, we'd have three types of district on Wintersday (Dwayna, Grenth, Fight) instead of two.

As long as you're aware of the well-publicized rule (community forums established it and people will yell at you in local if you violate it), you only lose under the existing rule if you want to see half of your district upset at the end of the event. If that's the case, as far as I'm concerned you can take your griefing elsewhere.

Go play some PvP?

The money and, to a lesser extent, the impossible to max PvP titles I agree are a problem. Skill capturing, vanquishing and the like, sure they're tedious but at least achieving those titles actually feels like you're playing a game.

Make the game engine always show your own team as blue and the enemy team as red, problem solved. I don't know if it's just me but changing team colors randomly between matches really hampers my ability to stay on top of the tactical situation as seen on the radar.

/rock
/paper
/scissors

The problems are more fundamental than you realize. If players can find a quick, reliable mechanism to resolve these matches...they will. Why? Because they have strong (farming) incentives to do so.

Um, that was uncalled for. I analyze and model systems for living.

I only addressed the particular exploit because that was specifically discussed in this thread. There was an implicit assumption that other loopholes would be similarly closed. Specifically, the game must not provide a way to create random objective asymmetry. Thus

• the map must be symmetric
• team colors must be subjective (everybody sees the enemy as red)
• emotes must be disabled
• local channel must be disabled
• private channel to members of opposite team must be disabled

These from the top of my head, it's not rocket science. If you want to be really sure about it, disable resigning and map traveling as well, and treat logging out as a disconnect while the game is on so that both sides are tied to the instance for the duration of the match.

Good analysis, I never thought of it this way. PvP like this, although not completely impervious to manipulation (nothing ever is), would certainly have saved ANet and us a lot of headaches.


P.S. flubber ownz.

..Eeasiest to do is make Zaishen Combats unrepeatable, doable once per acc.

There really is no need for any complex measures such as these. All that would need to be done to stop rr is to remove HB from the z combat rotation.

I think people misunderstand the reason for red resign since many people are stating that pvp titles are too difficult. I doubt there are many people playing RR (excuse me, 'playing' ) for commander points or even for the increased balth caps, these are simply an added bonus. The z combat (and subsequent zkeys) , I'm sure everyone would agree, is both the reason rr day is so popular and the reason so many people are against it.

Since the Zaishen title is not strictly a pvp title (since it is possible to gain points without doing any pvp at all) I believe it's incorrect to blame pvp titles altogether for this problem. Please don't misunderstand, I am in no way saying that pvp titles don't need to be addressed, nor am I saying that they do not. I'm simply being objective in this debate.

I would also like to point out what I believe to be a fatal flaw in this argument. As you have mentioned, wealth is indeed relative in guild wars, particularly with such a strong supply and demand economy. My first point is that the amount of valuable items in the game are, for the most part, INfinate. No matter how rare some of the items are, they can be obtained endlessly. The only items in this game that are truely finite are limited edition items, such as one time only minipets. Back to the point of relative wealth, if a sudden influx of cash appears in the economy, it is rarely impacted for very long unless this extra cash is sustainable. Since zaishen keys are mostly sold to players who intend to use them and will rarely get anything that they could sell on. Therefore they will lose out in the monetary sense in favour of gaining title points. The only way I see this having a real effect on the econmy is the influx of zaishen keys were to last for any considerable amount of time, which as we know, it will not. For these reasons I believe that this will not make anybody poorer, but may in fact make some people who have high end items able to sell their items at a premium since many of those who participated in rr would have extra cash from selling their zkeys, supply and demand at work once again.

Although red resign has been around for months, the impact has only been seen these last 2 or 3 times. This pales in comparison to the difference the xunlai tournement house made to the economy for the vast length of it's duration.

The main thing to take away from this is that once HB is removed (or the z combat for hb is removed) it will not take long for the economy to stabilise and before long, the issue will be forgotten by the vast majority, regardless of which side of the argument they were on.

holy crap, I didn't realise I typed so much! Sorry folks, case of diarrhea of the fingers i suppose...

Or just remove HB zquest from the rotation / remove the BF reward.