Adjustment to RA Grouping and Points

the last update at the randomarena about a year back that was supposed to prevent syncing didn't really work.

Having a look at the changes of the 'costume brawl' 2010 in which one did get a new team killed syncing.

I had a very good time at this years Costume Brawl didn't like it the years before, because of the syncs. And I can't really enjoy the Random Arena right now as they are so many people syncing into it.

So I wondered if Arenanet would like to change the Random Arena aswell, as playing in a RANDOMarena with random teams versus pvp-pro-power-sync teams is no fun at all.

That's throwing out the baby with the bathwater since it'd make the gladiator title pretty much impossible for everybody, even non-syncers.

On the other hand, whatever.

I will lose faith in PvP completely if I can't get my dose of mindless 4v4 fun in Random Arena.

Syncing is hard to fight against but not impossible to beat. It's especially hard when you've randomly joined a group with a Longbow Ranger, Firestorm Ele and a Wammo, but that's what's so entertaining about RA.

Besides, with the meta of mindless Mesmers, even if you do have a monk and a perfectly ballanced teams, e-surge tards will just drain the monk and let their single damage dealer slowly ruin your fun... I've raged so much about this and even the mesmer agrees lol.

Random Arenas doesn't require much skill, but having skill will always take you that extra step further.

And if your reason these suggestions is actually about the Gladiator title, why do you care? go sync and get some points. If you're trying to fix the problem, scrap the gladiator title completely.

I agree both on RA needing sync counters and the Mesmer issue, yea stopping syncing woulg make glatiator a hard title to earn but its ment to be that way. Also a thought I've been having on Mesmers is nerf the VoR and E surge spam skills to make the point of mesmers being counter based.

honestly, they should just bring Team Arenas back, it was pretty dead but atlease it wasn't full of people just syncing it to get titles like codex... total bull shit if you ask me......

I would be in support of this idea, but anyone who does so has to recognize that the title track can not remain as it is if this idea is put into effect. I never got ten consecutives during my time in Costume Brawl, so there's no way I can expect to get them in Random Arena. With an appropriate shift in numbers for rewards and the track itself, this idea could easily be implemented.

I certainly like the idea of Random Arenas being random, but the title would need a rework, or the title points for an individual win boosted significantly or far fewer consecutive wins needed for bonus points, perhaps removing the whole consecutive wins thing entirely.

Creating the sync deterrent while adjusting the title would seem to work although I would keep the consecutive wins just decrease the amount needed. Just making it any win turns it into more so a cartographer title, No skill just a little luck and a lot of time.

Agree with this. Maybe they could give something like 1 point every 3 consecutive wins? No reason to escalate because it's so difficult to reach a lot of consecutives (10+), no?

Unless you plan on making a similar change, giving increased points per win, instead points for successive victories, it would pretty much make Gladiator slow to get AS HELL.

But if they made such a change, I'll sure be there much more than I usually am. Which is practically only during RA weekend events.

Ewww, the change to Costume Brawl was horrible. Please don't kill RA as well. Instead, fix syncing properly (randomize teams after timer hits zero should do the trick).

/notsigned

That's the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard. I've run my gladiator title without syncing and it's much easier when you DON'T FACE SYNC TEAMS!
Get rid of cheaters Anet make some code if you sync you get dislinked.

+1

With randomised teams every battle, award one glad point after the second consecutive win. Then 1-2 points after the next 2-3 consecs, and so on. Bonus points every battle after getting 15 consecs.

It would also actually reduce the glad grind, making it a bit easier to get on the long run. Getting even 400 points required for HoM is weeks/months of grinding, not to mention maxing the title.

Although months is a long time and I agree with shorting the length needed to earn PvP titles are meant to be hard. I would assume that's why just having one is worth 3 points.

What does it matter? You can just buy your 3 points via the Z-Title. You can also do RA during Z-Bounty days and you would get your z-rank HoM statue before the RA statue so why bother? PvP is broken on all fronts so it's a wash. I have resigned myself to having fun in PvE with friends as opposed to PvP because we haven't had a meaningful skill update in months(that affects RA). Maybe those people that just run builds that are useless in RA are on to something....I saw a Monk in RA using a bow and using all Ranger skills. Before the fight he said, "Let's do some good!". I am thinking adopting his attitude about RA may be the cure for my RA blues.

Getting the occasional good team in RA is the only thing that makes me turn local and team chat on and turn off my DnD. With a team shakeup every round, no more than 2 wins should be required for a glad. Some days, unless you're Monking, it's hard to get even a single win with all the trash people bring.

For me, the fix to RA would be the people there. I'm so sick of ragers, 1337fags, people who intentionally bring crap, people who first log on to GW and go right to RA (newbs I can tolerate, but not total noobs like most are), and other such things. It'd be more tolerable there, if not still frustrating getting 20 bad teams in a row, if people would just play and stop being way too pro for the arena they're in.

I like RA. I'd love to see the progress while playing it even if i can't be lucky enough to get into a random, yet decent team, especially one that knows what to do with their builds.
I'd prefer to keep the current format, but change the rewards completely - one point after 3 consecs, second after five, third after seven, and then a point every win up till 10th; after that, two points every next consec up till 20, with a bonus at 15 wins. Or something along those lines - just make it less grind, more fun and rewarding.
But randomising the format seems more likely to happen.

Random Arena it supposed to be random. I personally consider that sync ra joins is actually bug abusing.
Atm RA is the only random pvp area where you don't receive something if you win a fight (you receive after every 5 consecutive wins).
Codex should remain as it is, it's true that in codex you can't use the skill that you want and you have to chose from the skills available, but, you can chose with who do you party and if you don't like their builds/class you can just not go with that party.

So my idea is this: each time you win in RA you should receive 1 point, the teams should be changed after each win as it happened in last Costume Brawl, the required points to get a title should be multiply by 5 (the fact that you receive 1 point after each win makes it easier to get this title so the requirement for this this title should be higher, changing the teams after each consecutive wins don't make it to hard to get this title cause even if you lost after 1 win you still got 1 point), because this will make this title easier to get the gladiator points that you have should be multiply by 7.

A couple of reasons:
- someone get dc during or before the 5th,10th,15th... game starts, the other team is close to your full team level but because your team actually has 3 players you will lose it
- it will stop sync ra join (if they want to sync join for just 1 point it's their decision)
- i find it not normal to need to win several games in situation where you supposed not to have control on the team you get in and when the game don't even try to balance the team you get it (really nice to end up in a team with 3 healers (monks)...)
- playing as you supposed to play (that means with random people) you can spend 7-8 hours in ra daily and barely get 2 points, at one point this starts to be annoying and a game should not annoy you, it supossed to be fun
- it will attact the people that got tired of not being able to get 5 wins in RA to get 1 point and decide to do something else

By doing this people with more gladiator points will have something to win: they will receive more points from because their points will be multiply (someone with 20000 gladiator points now, that means r10 will have 140000 after this and this means r11).
Now if you win 5 in row u get 1 point, 10 in a row u get a total of 3 points, 15 in a row u get a total of 6 points, 20 in a row u get a total of 10 points, 25 in a tow u get a total of 19 points. With my change if you win 5 in row u get a total 5 points (5x1), 10 in row u get in total 10 points (5x2), 15 in row u get in total 15 points (5x3), 20 in row u get in total 20 points (5x4), 25 in row u get in total 25 points (5x5) (because the each rank req has increase u get less points (this is why i wrote 5x?) then in the actual situation this makes it a bit harder to get the title but you get 1 point for each win this make it easier).

Random Arena is random arena not syncronized arena. If you want syncronized arena then ask them to bring back team arena. I'm sure people that like sync RA will say no to this.

Arguments like this should had been changed long time ago are not valid, same argument could had been used against SF nerf or against any other thing that had been nerfed/changed after it was used for quite some time.
Someone can say this will make RA close to Costume Brawl, Costume Brawl is actualy a random arena with predefined skills.

To implement this is not that hard, the team change code after each round is there cause it has been used in the last costume brawl, the code to add points after each win is there cause it has been used in the last costume brawl (the number of points needs to be change but that should be 1 variable or constant, u can even use that code and divide it by 15 when it add the points ) ), the title points requirements should be some variable/constants so shouldn't be hard to change them, the multiply of points you already have at gladiator title happened in the past so it can be done.

If this has been already discuss please close this, a search for RA gave me to many results and I didn't saw a topic in this forum section about this.

I have seen a few discussions within topics on this subject. People have thought of your idea and similar ideas but there is one problem with it: "Red resigns" (I think this is the phrase anyway). Especially with HoM out people will be wanting to get glad points as quickly as they can. This results in a situation where it is beneficial for both teams if one of them resigns. Hence people would start saying one team, red, resigns, and then they start again. By the time you would have finished a normal length match you could have been in and resigned in 3-4 matches, meaning you could have gained double the number of points.

Syncing can be prevented much easier, without disrupting the possibility of getting a nice team: do one additional reshuffle after the first win, award points starting at second consec.

There are more problems then just randomising teams after every win, which currently plagues the current format, apart from syncers.

If after every win, you have a random team you are likely at some point to be on a team with 2-3 monks. This would wreck a good run for something that you have no control over.

I suggest two solutions to solve the sync problem that will allow teams to possibly get a good team, without poeple having to leave because you have 2-3 monks, 1 tard who cannot play or thinks its funny to run around with no armor.

1. Randomise the list of players after the timer OR
2. After the 2nd win, your team stays together.

If you also sort out the rewards this will stop people raging, leaving and just getting frustrated with dealing with bad players.

The solution to CB just wrecked it, it was a crap fest and whilst I managed to repeatedly get more than 10 consecs, carrying bad players, dealing with leavers, or players who have no clue about tactical play or following targets, with little or no team work just ruined what was a great format.

Silver

Good idea, I actually like it and it sounds very reasonable to me.

@Pthoms T well if the other team has 4 members and they all resign in the first 30-45 seconds (I don't really have info about the usual match lenght or the fastest win obtained by fighting so not sure if it should be more or less then 30-45s) the team winning cause the other team resigned should not receive points for wining. (The alternative of this will be to check if one full team resigned before actually doing/receiving damage to/from any member of the other team.)
Also not always you find people that resign... Sometimes you see them starting to run (probably in the idea that the other team will lose some members) even when it's clear that it's a lost game if he manage to survive until the end of match time.

They could do this but then you could probably get around it by doing any kind of damage, and then resigning.

Also, I think the idea is flawed. It would be much too easy to get glad points this way. It would be more than 5 times as easy, much more. To get 5 points your team does need to have some sort of skill. To get to 10 or above your team does need to be competent, which is, imo, what makes this title more prestigious. If your idea were true even the worst pvp player in guild wars could get glad points, which isn't how it should be.

PVP titles should be different from PVE. They should require you to be good at it, not to grind it. This is why I don't think zaishen should be a pvp title. Although even if they made the keys customized and only avaliable through balth faction, you could still grind it.

/sign

this is a good idea by OP
this is random arena, make every victory counts as a win and be rewarded.

the last time i gotten 10 consec wins, is by players leaving and new players coming in and leave again, by the time i have gotten 10 wins, none of my team members are those that i had originally began with.

i dun think it will become a red resign arena. if i am red, no way i will resign

sometimes it makes no sense that having spending 3-4 hours in RA with more than 30 wins and yet i gotten no points there wasn't any 5 consec
and having gotten 3 points off 10 consec wins when the other players are those that joins in after someone leaves in the previous match lolz

Why you shouldn't play RA:
1. The gladiator title is extemely pointless. It has no emotes and no tangible/intangible benefits.
2. Instead of bringing the casual people to come and enjoy, it invites the nerds over.
If one player runs his own gimmick, the other 3 nerds will call him a noob and force him to leave. The nerds are ready to battle 2-4 hrs straight if the need be.
3. Suck up to the syncing system that is still exploited by guilds to ease point generation.

When should you play RA:
1. During PvP Zaishen days - at least you can gain some Balthazar faction which can be exchanged for Z-keys and finally GW cash.

/signed OP ideas, but GW1 PvP is already dead, ANET doesn't want to update RA rules or current exploits, and HoM doesn't make RA mandatory. So why care at all?

/signed

It would fix everything , and people wouldn't do red resign, simply because you won't have 4 players that will do it everytime.And , finally we would have a PvP format where you can play and not waste time when dead hour...

However ,every format has solutions that were suggested many times and it probably won't be done because :
- They don't care at all of PvP if not GvG , especially of RA.
- Although they did the same for AB players , it would not be really fair for people who did get their title after 5 years of pain in RA .

/notsigned

Already commented above but I have something else to add. As I said above, this would completely diminish the title. It would not require any skill, and pvp should. It is the only competitive aspect of GW. If you're doing it this way then screw points. Just have the title based on time spent in RA and forget all about it.

Finally, to the person who said they'd gone 3-4 hours without any points, you must be doing something wrong.

Uhm..I don't understand this. Does it mean that you play the first match, win it, party gets randomized, play the second match, win it too, stay with your new teammates? But then your new teammates maybe aren't playing their second consecutive too. Do you keep the team together if just one of them as won at least 2 consecutives?

Start point gain at zero for the first match. Add one for each next consecutive. There is no longer a reliable way to win your points through RR.

CRISIS AVERTED

so why do you comment at all, looking through you're input in guru it seems that you're a pver, you appear to only do things that have a "point" seem also that RA players are nerds as far as you're concerned, not like pve players who are....title grind complainers who once in a while lose a godmode, why would you be interested in RA....

i'm g5, all from RA, all in the last two years, with no syncing, and frankly not seeing much evidence of syncing, the odd team yes, but even then it seems to be pvers who seem to have little idea what the "nerds" know, like why having superior fire isn't good, why tactics shields on wars equals leave, why people with one class equal leave, etc etc

RA is irritating most of the time, i mostly practice typing /resign, but syncing isn't the problem

oh, and isn't pve really pointless and stupefyingly dull as well

unsigned

Oh right I see. So you can only get points if you continuously carry your whole team? OP made this suggestion because it's difficult to get continous wins with a nooby team. It would be even more difficult to get continuous wins if when you finally got a good team it was reshuffled.

Seriously, your idea is bad. Getting points would be even more based on luck (of getting good teams consecutively). It might allow you to get points faster but it would make it a complete grindfest. If you want to grind then just do pve and buy your zaishen title, instead of complaining about a format of play that requires skill.

I'm actually quite surprised at my self liking the idea. Don't really see anything wrong with it, it embraces the Random aspect better to be honest!

/signed

One reshuffle after the first match + the first point got after second consec, aka with the new team that stays with you. You get one point for wins 2-7, two points for 8-14, and so on - just a raw example. GW1 isn't dead, but the population is smaller than it used to be; with the HoM update, PvE has some revival and people playing PvE get into RA as 'casual format', making net gain for a dedicated RAer - however it sounds - much harder than it should be.
Syncers killed out, RR not viable, the possibility of getting a decent team preserved, Glad title made easier to achieve (or, at least, advance in).
No need of reshuffling your team every fight, no need to start points gain after the first fight (with the 'prelude team', as it will be reshuffled for a new, stable one).

/signed

I see RA as a starting ground for new pvp players, not as a place where to earn some prestigious title to show off. IMHO, if someone wants to be considered a good pvp player, he should start doing HA or GvG and make himself known among the community: titles say little about someone's skill, in my opinion.

Also, boosting your glad rank is another form of grinding, no matter how you look at it, it boils down to repeating the same thing over and over, so i don't think that it really shows how much a player is skilled. Maybe a better information would be the glad points/hours of RA playing ratio, which would make you understand how fast someone has been able to achieve his title, and thus how many long strikes of victories he managed to make. If you see two people with g6, maybe the second one has obtained it in 4x the time needed by the first one: you can reach g6 (as whatever else) winning no more than 5 consecs each time, you only need a lot more time.

So, i think that the notion of "title" and the notion of "skill" should be kept separated, this is why i see every title only as a mean to attract people, and to give them some little sense of accomplishment, before they realize how good is to play for the fun of playing, or move on after becoming bored.


OT, I think that a change like this will help bringing new people into RA, and maybe some of them will like it and will try to move on to something more complex. This will mean that there will be more "noobs" in RA, yes, but in my opinion this is what RA was made for.


EDIT: i like drkn's suggestion too, maybe it's even better because it allows you to keep playing with a team you are comfortable with.

Exactly. This is what i propose in various topics for a month or two now.
Yep, you keep playing. I had a situation when a necromancer had to leave after 15th consec due to some RL issues. We got an ele in his place, with 0 consecs. The team was still strong enough to get up to 25 consecs, yet the ele had 10 and, after the 'original team' left cause of getting 25, the ele got shuffled into another team.
That is an issue that lies deep in the format's mechanics and, as i see it, nothing can be done to it, at least not without revamping most of the RA coding. Which isn't something we want at this point of the game - we just to get it fair and easier for people interested in their Glad title, so they're not spoiled by random idiots running RoJ that much.

e: To avoid constant changes in one spot, which after a second thought is possible, the party leader's consecs may decide whether any reshuffling takes place or not. Or the reshuffle might be done from the pool of players that won once already.

This is a much better idea.

Would you also keep the 25 victory cap or make it like you go on playing until you lose? There have to be some way of stopping very strong teams, though. If this is the case, however, and you give points only at fixed numbers of wins (being them 5, or 3 or whatever) doesn't the problem you are talking about still exist? When the player with the highest number of wins gets to the cap, everybody is sent back to the outpost even if some party member hasn't reached the threshold for gaining points yet. Maybe you want to give one point for each win after the first, so everybody earns what he deserves?

/notsigned

Remember what that did to costume brawl?

I like this idea much better, there's absolutely no reason to be giving out points after the first win.

I assume the first round is just there to weed out the sucky noobs, IE the no secondary Orison Monks and the Defy Pain/Healing Breeze warrs, who will have a very small chance of surviving past the second round, even if they make it that far. If that's the case the majority of RA suckage will be collecting at round 1.