Rant About Rank

The new players should learn how to ask. They shouldnt pretend to know what they are doing so they wont be made fun off. A noob wont get any teams because pvp requires alot of skill thinking. You can't just bring your W/Mo and expect to get a group. If i was them i would take the time to go into the forums and start reading and im pretty sure they will get into a good group and maybe soon enough get to R3. If every new player did this then even non rank group will be competetive. It's just a lil bit of research.

I really love the idea of having these LFG things you said celios,

really nice post

I think A.net should put this in the game with some nice adjustments, this is really important for faster learning experience and easier acces to setting up builds, this doesn't only gives a nice opportunity for new players but also for Guilds.

The leader can click on a certan build wich he created, and with a private option or something so that everyone of the guild can see it.

This really sounds promising but I don't think its that easy to make (don't know anything about programming )

After ch2 is out, A.net should do something with this idea

Another problem is that people in general have stopped making as many groups. Instead they just want to join them. That's why there are so many people standing around in tombs groupless. This is because of groups like IWAY, where each person plays one simple role each time and never learns the whole functionality of the group as a whole, so they can't make one themselves.

I am now rank 2, 143 fame, so this problem kind of implies to me.

I got about 80 fame by IWAY, 20 as gale-warrior and the rest ranger/air-spike.

I see a few problems which have been mentioned before and some solutions, which in my opinion don't work.

I have this problem a lot, when I join a team and it fails the first/second round, there are at least 3 people who leave. And most of the time it are those who are hardest to find. Causing an extra half-hour wait for me and my team.
And can I help it that those people leave? I mean I really don't leave if we lose the first few times, but I do have to wait half an hour between every game.

I don't think a LFG-system will work; for me to get into a group it's important that there is no-one with the same role but a higher rank in the same district, cause if we are exactly the same but the rank of the other is higher, they are going to choose the higher-ranked person.
If you implement a LFG-system for the whole place, it will be even more difficult for us new people to get into teams.

I joined my current guild because of friends, and I really do want to learn PvP, but I and many others would no-way consider leaving the guild we are in now.

Thanks for the responses. Very good insight and suggestions! I didn't want anyone to have the impression that I think that we should all link arms and dance down the Yellow Brick Road. PvP being PvP, well... such personal harmony just isn't going to break out on a widescale basis, I agree.

I totally understand that someone thinks "I have three hours to play today, I don't want to waste my time with noobs, I want to win." Winning is the objective, yep. What I was thinking, though, was the guild-based concept of "raising the next generation" sort of thing. The "give me a try, what can it hurt?" Taking a chance may land a guild with a fantastic player from time to time, and I think that if the guild is focused on high-level competition, it's fair to say that next season's Master Player may be joining the game next week or next month, may be looking for a guild, may need a start. (Come on, it could happen!) There's only so much training arenas can give. So how does that potentially-exceptional player get in a good guild, and how does he/she gain the map and competition familiarity to excel? I think it's through experience, and that means having barriers to even getting into the matches is a shame. Understandable, but also limiting.

Certainly we could include more mechanics that support players getting into the game. Some updates to party forming are on the to-do list, I'm sure. But maybe at least a few of the barriers are in players' heads, too, and we might want to take a look at those, too.

Anyway, keep the ideas coming -- it's great to hear your suggestions and get your insight.

I am not currently able to read the thread in its entirety, so I have no idea if someone has suggested this already, but what if an aproach similar to that of the lvl-restricting arenas was taken. There could be an r2 and below area, an r6 and below area, and an open area, all offering the same maps and rewards (ie fame and rank). Only the area open to all ranks would decide the favor of the gods, but the lower areas could offer a way for players to gain rank and learn all of the maps without the grind and impossibility of finding a good group suffered by unranked players today.

well you cant really blame ranked groups for not wanting to waste time with unranked players who are in general alot less experienced than others
I was doing tombs back when rank wasnt that important since i suppose not many back then had rank
but now those same people that were doing unranked groups are now r6-r9+ while iway allowed a more recent crop of people get to r3-r6+

one way to help ease new players in getting into ranked groups is give an alternative method of gaining fame.
maybe allow fame to be gained in 4v4. Every 5 wins you gain 1 fame, ever consecutive 5 scales the same way as in tombs. Once you hit r3 it will take every 10 wins to get 1 fame. Rank 6, every 20 wins, and so on. This will help newer players get to r3 more smoothly while also allowing them to learn some good basics of pvp as I believe 4v4 is where everyone should begin for pvp and then work their way up to tombs/gvg.

I agree that there could and should be alternate methods to gain fame. The method you are proposing would be akin to telling someone how much faction you have. I am not saying its a bad thing, just comparing. Just to say someone has 300k faction isnt quite the same as saying that they are rank 6 or whatever in most people's minds.

Many of the older arguments revolve around wanting to know the experience of the person in the tombs environment. This is the only possible failing of expanding the options of how to gain rank. Again im not trying to discourage the implementation of other methods, just throwing back old arguments used against others.

If anything, id be for something that discourages using rank as the guage for experience, but anything to cause that to occur will not change people's minds on how or when the experience was gained. For example, if rank just stopped and people kept their emotes, anyone claiming experience under a new system would still be considered a "noob" and "vets" would just continue to shun them if they didnt know the individual personally.

As for the guild learning suggestion made by others, sure its nice, but its not like the top end guilds just pickup anyone off the street really. Even so, being in the guild and playing with the guild, you are not playing in or learning with different people. Essentially it is just forming a different kind of exclusion that rank simulates between individuals forming pick up groups. Trying to rely on the community to correct this i belive is a mistake as it would have happened already. A new player in would have a better shot at getting into the groups formed by the new japanese/chineese/X new country soon to be included in GW distribution, than they would under most situations with the existing rank issue. That is of course if they could speak the language.

I think the overal goal should be to try to recreate the same experience for new people gaining rank that the old people had when they were first starting up as much as possible.

If this was working i would be rank 12 by now



im assuming that fame means famous, so why do people in guilds like iQ and EvIL get no fame for winning GvG, they are alot more famous then ****'s Team, almost everyone knows who iQ is and thats what "fame" is.

i wont say something like wammo suxk :P it will be to banal

simple if you dont want be adaptive and change your build you wont win

nah the system i proposed wont allow players to easily farm rank forever, it will only be feasible to use until you are rank 3 then it becomes vastly inefficient compared to doing tombs.

TY for the kind comments folks <3

The problem is in the way I phrased it; rank is only an estimate of competence/experience. I've seen r2 players who's awareness and smart play put a good number of r6+ players to shame. Besides, wouldn't a group benefit more from a r2 trapper who knows to bring mantra of resolve than a r6 trapper who's trying to rely on serpant's quickness to get his traps down?

What you're saying is only a half-truth. Any person here, incredibly patient or not, would likely get frustrated by waiting around for an hour for the sake of winning no more than one or two maps. True, some people will stick it out, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be thinking "eff this" in the back of their head at that point (and I'm very patient with groups/people). Because of how the system works, long organizing times reap little to no benefits, and that's what gets people.

I have no retort for that, as it is completely true. The system I have suggested is by no means perfect, it's simply - in my estimation - a large step up. The best I can suggest is that virtually anyone in GW, once given the correct build down to every last detail, can put it together and have a reasonably firm grip on what to do. As I'm sure a lot of people have stated already, many "experienced" players are hampering their team's effectiveness by using inferior builds, even as we speak. Meanwhile, some newer players who have a firm grasp on PvP are designing their own builds that will give the team an edge, and are simply unable to find a group based on numbers which, again, do not give an altogether accurate representation of competence or skill. Keep in mind that the system I am suggesting would not eliminate rank - I'm sure people will continue to resort to checking that for a broad idea of that person's experience-level; this would simply reduce rank's meaningfulness, not eliminate it.

True, but it gives you a great basis for easy improvement. Just having a list of skills will give you an idea of how those skills are applied. Having the correct build will likewise make it easier for your team to give you a quick pointer or two that will teach you how best to play it. The reason new players are shunned from competent groups right now is very simple: when faced with an inexperienced player, groups have the choice between a) kicking and replacing them, or b) spending 15 minutes explaining how to reroll their build before even being able to give them those one or two pointers that would increase their effectiveness exponentially.

A lot of people will tell you that, especially in today's fame-farming world, rank means very little. The people who are new to PvP aren't stupid, aren't new to Guild Wars and aren't unable to learn from experience. The problem is that GW fosters an environment that gives you a choice between playing or helping that person out - it simply doesn't allow you to do both at once.

Most of you have played with a Guild or a set of friends and have been in a situation where they've given you a very precise build you've never played before. I challenge you to honestly tell me that, once you had that build made, a few quick comments and suggestions over the course of your match didn't allow you to play that position as if you had been hammering away at it for a week. Hell, I myself was recently in a position where I was playing a very specific build in GvG I hadn't seen before - but just knowing what to bring let me play that position competently. Within minutes of our first match starting, our group's leader had dropped one or two quick comments on when I should be emphasizing what skill and I was already making clutch plays that were saving the team when healing was an issue, shutting down spikes virtually on my own, ensuring that adren spikes were getting kills instead of just damaging players and generally playing the build as if I had been researching and experimenting with it on my own for far longer than 15 minutes.

The point is that PvP's little specifics are very easy to teach and to learn once you have a solid basis (i.e. the appropriate build) to allow that type of quick help without having to teach the essentials.

Please don't take this the wrong way Gaile, but what's being discussed here has been a problem that smart and high-level PvP players have been seeing and complaining about with few results since GW was first released. The position that it's a problem with the people is naive at best, a justification for ignoring the problem at worst.

The only reason we're seeing PvP polarizing the way it has been so quickly and drastically (only 1-2 builds being played, people relying so heavily on rank) is because this problem with the game's framework has remained unchecked for so long. Unless you folks choose to face rather than explain away the problem, PvP will only become more unbalanced as time goes on. There are possible fixes out there and, while it will cost you time and effort, addressing the issue is the only way to stop and eventually reverse the game's current downslide.

Don't believe me? Ask any of the top-rated guilds you guys interview about what they think about PvP's current woes. I guarantee you they will tell you it's not just a problem with people being in the wrong mindset when trying to put together a quick build to just have some fun.

nono, keep rank and fame out of 4v4.

the simple fact that it is just too unpredictable would screw things over.

ive seen way too many low damage dealing rangers with cripple shot and apply posoin make those matches last hours.

no fame for 4v4
signed superj24

they don't seem to give a care when my unranked monk joins a team. i get lots of invites EVEN THOUGH i say i'm unranked...IWAY is overrated, over exploited, and under intelligised.

Forget IWAY. Go monk.

Rank is the visualization of "Idiots Whipping All You" (Hence, IWAY)

Rank, really is WAY overrated. people use it to show how, "UBER l33t" they are, when they really suck. Rank, itself isn't bad, it's the visualization and "uber l33tn3ss" people think they have when they are ranked, hence, they won't let unranked in a team, unless they are a needed team player.

An great example is when a guildie started a PuG in Hero's, all unranked, and held the HoH for over 3 hrs. Nobody in that group except a monk, had ANY rank.

To encourage people to take newer players, I'd say,
Idea #1: People get better drops from the chest when they have a low ranked person in the group.
Idea #2: Lower Ranked persons in the group give more fame per battle and more faction.

I (and the frog) am Morally opposed to IWAY.

P.S. About the rank/IWAY part, i'm kidding...

I'm sorry but this just isn't the case. The grand majority only care about the goddamn rank. It doesn't matter how well you play your game, if you don't have rank, you will get kicked, mocked, called a noob, and get all sorts of crap. Don't try to explain, they don't care, they don't want to hear it. They only want your rank. If you can't come up with the animal they want, then just keep on walking brother, you are only wasting everybodys time. High ranked players who will give rankless players a chance are practicaly non-existant.

I know this from personal experience, since I have 2 accounts, and only one of them has considerable rank. If I want to PvP in HA with one of my second account characters I usually cannot get a group, regardless of wether or not I explain myself. I once had to log in with my other account, /rank, and then change back again, because I was so fed up with the elitist crap I was getting. Yeah, they eventually let me in, but not before saying that I should "raise rank on this one too".

That's the kind of elitist garbage that made me swear off PvP for a while. And though I go back to it from time to time, I doubt I'll be participating as much as I used to until things are fixed. With all the fame-farming going on, to me rank has become little more than another virtual e-penis for jerks to flaunt.

Except it really is a problem with a vast majority of the people in Guild Wars, the cause of which you have already explained so I'm not going to be redundant.

You're right, most people do think in terms of rank, but it would be downright ignorant to say that it's just some random social phenomenon where people won't give anyone a chance. It's become that way because of the game's structure.

Unless I missed something, I don't think anyone has said that was that cause.

Point taken. But for everyone rank 2 player who is from a top tier GvG guild, there are several thousand whose experience befits their rank. Builds are a poor indicator of experience as anyone can copy a build, but is a decent metric if used to weed out those who are over-ranked.

You have to keep in mind that for groups that are filled with more than 1 or 2 pickups, it will take multiple games for people to become accustomed to one another's style of play.

In group PvP, it is ultimately up to the group leader or build creator to designate skills and builds not the individual players, regardless how much "better" the other player(s) may believe their own builds to be. Players who will not comply with the group leader or build creator have no place in competitive PvP regardless of experience.

Depends on the role that the player has to play, e.g. simply handing the players a trapping build won't teach them how to effectively trap offensively, and being able to takes experience. "Pointers" may help but in no way a substitute for several hundred hours of experience.

If a Guild is willing to take in a player, they can provide a player with a "learning environment", even in competitive PvP if the guild is sufficently skilled and prepared enough.

I have a simple build, Boon Prot - simply knowing the skills and attributes won't teach you healing priority, how to kite and still heal effectively, or how to management your energy (which is simply more than hitting OoB). I can say the same for most builds for other classes. There is a good deal more to playing your class and role than simply understanding why you have those 8 particular skills on your bar.

Anyone remember Myth and Myth II where rank was dropped every 3 to 6 months? Yes, that's what this game needs to do also at least for HOH. GvG is a different story, but, HOH is much like Myth in that people gain rank they become leet for awhile and then all rank is cleared and everyone starts over fresh and new again. When always a known to happen this was easily acceptable in Myth and Myth II. I'd like to see it happen in at least the HOH type arena and then that would stop the elitism for at least a time during those 3 and 6 month periods. Everyone back to zero and then there's no "have to be rank ?" involved in creating groups.