Hi, many of you will not know me as I'm not an active poster on any of the Guild Wars fan sites, so allow me to introduce myself.
I go by the name of Inter in-game and am part of the Corruption Inc [CiX] Guild. I've been playing Guild Wars for roughly 1,200 hours over the past eight months and currently own two Guild Wars accounts. I enjoy both aspects of the game (PvE and PvP) and have recommended Guild Wars to anyone I know who likes to play games, I believe Guild Wars is one of the best games made, but I don't think it's perfect.
One of the issues that have been constantly been eating away at me is the Guild ladder and ladder rank system. With the current system, a top ten Guild could spend four to five hours accumulating, say thirty ladder points, and then lose maybe one or two matches and finish the day on a negative. If you took a look at the current ladder, you would see [EvIL] at number one with 165 wins and 5 losses, and [WM] at number two with 193 wins and 10 losses. For someone who doesn't understand the rank system, they would immediately be thinking 'wtf?' [WM] have won just under thirty more matches then [EvIL] and have lost only five less, yet their rating difference is almost 80. As many have seen in the last season, because of the way the ladder works, once a Guild had reached a point where points were becoming increasingly difficult to earn due to every opponent being a top ranked Guild, the Guild either smurfed, or stopped GvGing in order to keep their position.
I was thinking about a way that this could be countered and came up with an idea of my own. I would appreciate any feedback on this idea and hopfully some recognition from ArenaNet as to the state of the ladder and whether changes are coming soon.
What I propose is firstly throwing the win and loss status on the ladder out of the window and go only by rating points. And secondly change the rating system altogether. Instead of a win gives you x amount of points and loss gives you y based on your rating and that of your opponent, change it so that if you win or lose no matter what yours or the opponents rating it, you get the same amount of points. I know what you're thinking, but allow me to explain.
If a Guild wins in a rated GvG they should gain 20 overall rating points no matter what their rating is, and no matter what the opponents rating it. These points should be split based on that factor though. There should be two types of points which make up rating points, one, Permanent Points, and two, Ghost Points. Everytime you win, you gain 20 overall rating points consisting of both Permanent Points and Ghost Points. Now, rating can go up or down, but when rating goes down, you can only lose Ghost Points, you cannot lose Permanent Points no matter what.
Let's make a couple of Guilds to explain further.
Guild [A], Guild [B] and Guild [C]
[A] is Rank 1, [B] is Rank 2, and [C] is Rank 3
[A] fights [B] and [A] wins, gains 20 rating points of which 15 are Permanent and 5 are Ghost.
[A] fights [B] again and [A] wins, gains 20 rating points of which 14 are Permanent and 6 are Ghost.
[A] now has a rating of 40 (29p/11g)
[A] fights [C] and [C] wins, [C] gains 20 rating points of which 16 are Permanent and 4 are Ghost. [A] loses 7 Rating points for this loss.
[A] fights [C] again and [C] wins, [C] gains 20 rating points of which 15 are Permanent and 5 are Ghost. [A] loses 7 Rating points for this loss.
[A] had a rating of 40 with 29 Permanent Points and 11 Ghost Points, they then lost two matches and lost 14 points. Because you cannot lose Permanent points, [A] loses 11 Ghost Points and [A]'s rating drops to 29. [A] now has 29 Permanent Points.
[A] lost 14 points for the two losses, but only had 11 Ghost Points to cover those losses. The extra 3 points (call them Tax Points) doesn't affect [A] anymore because you cannot lose permanent points but, the next time [A] GvGs and wins, the Ghost Points they gain from that GvG are used to negate the Tax Points, so if they won and gained 5 Ghost Points, 3 would be used to negate the Tax Points and they would only gain 2 Ghost Points (along with the Permanent Points).
The more you GvG (and win), the more Permanent Points you get, if you lose, you only lose Ghost Points. Guilds that thrive to be the best would play for both Permanent and Ghost Points and if a Guild lost, they wouldn't lose any Permanent Points meaning that the rating loss wouldn't destroy their days' work.
What this means is that Guild can GvG freely knowing that if they lose a few matches, they wouldn't lose as much rating as they would right now, and so would be encouraged to GvG more. What it also does is reward Guilds that GvG a lot, because the more you GvG, the more you win and the more Permanent Points you gain. If you lose, you lose Ghost Points but you still have that 'permanent base' which you cannot drop below because of the new system, and with the win and loss status thrown out of the window, Guilds would be more reluctant to smurf because it would take a lot longer getting their smurf Guild up the ladder.
The system would reward Guilds who GvG a lot without the lingering fact that if they lost one due to a tactical or internet error, they wouldn't lose a hell of a lot of rating, and also top Guilds who don't play for that number one spot but would rather win 35 out of 40 to get into the top 20 would be required to work a lot harder to get there, and with a lot more Guilds GvGing, to maintain your spot in the ladder, you'd need to work harder. It'll encourage a lot more Guilds to GvG and increase the competitiveness of the ladder. It's a system where once you get your spot in the ladder, to maintain that spot is a hell of a lot harder then what it currently is.
Do you guys think that this idea is good, bad? What are your thoughts on it?
My Idea on how the Ladder and GvG System can be Improved
Kira Sassan