[Accepted] Arena rewards revamp

[Roel]

That sure are a lot of suggestions and it must have taken some time to write that down, +1 for that.

Though most of the suggestions are not blizzlike enough for what the players want here...
As for events, that mostly comes down to the excitement and availability from the staff because they need to be organised.

About the anonymous arena queue, is it not anonymous at the moment? I noticed some of my code got deleted with updates so currently there might be some ways to trace the opponents but only after the match has started. I re-implemented that code so even that shouldn't be possible after next update.

[Longi]

well, what does " blizzlike" mean ... it means for me.. if you re trying to keep the game mechanics and settings as closer as possible to that of the retail.

So I dont see problem with add own new ingame events or places where players can have fun, like these I wrote if game mechanics and settings will stay same as on the retail I know it´s not easy to make, but who said you have to do all in a moment, try to make one little project for it, to see if ppl like it, if yes ,you can make new one I m 100% sure if you make new arena for example a lot ppl will play PVP arena more, just too see what you created or you can make it based on type of team, make adds like : " Re you bored with doing arena in these same places ? Get ready, we have for you 2 new types of arenas able in 3vs3 " and people will create teams to see whats new and mby they will like it and stay playing you dont know but why not to try it Blizzard is making new patches and expansions too

On old server before merge there was one project, some developers did it for fun, they created 5 new bosses. Bosses werent drop any gear, they just droped some golds and GC tokens ( same thing as your vote points ) so ppl had a chance to get this points in world there was NPC who ported you to area with these new bosses. We had this for example, or we had one GM/developer (nick Paytheo or something like it), he was from USA, I think if I remember and he was making only fun events like jump events, holidays PVP or PVE. On xmas for example in dungeons tank´s look was changed to santa claus and dps/ healers were reindeers if I remember it good ( all the game mechanics and settings were same only visual was different ), or for PVP ally team was looking like Naga, hordes were looking like murlocks or hordes were naga, hmm dont remember and they did PVP in zangarmarsh lake, but doesnt matter. it was fun and people liked it it was something new, something fresh.

We were blizzlike server too, but we had some own things ingame and it was great, you can act like blizzlike but you re not, we re Truewow. You can take keep the game mechanics and settings as closer as possible to that of the retail, but it doesnt mean you cant create own things which can players like. It can be interesting for players too If they get more playeable types of arena for example or any other thing what will make us diferent from other server

thats my opinion cheers !

[blitzzz]

As the guy who's activly engaged in PvP on this server, i think i should give my thoughts about this.

Im sharing my thoughts exactly with what Boxis, Justice and Keez said.
Since the situation is like this, that we have ''low 3s population'', If you want to make wf shoulders and t2 obtainable from 2s, make sure its not below 2600-2700 rating beacuse it would be so ugly to see lot of nabs going around with these. This will garantee that only best players will be able to get it. Also include tittles and mounts in 2s, which will motivate people to put more effort in this bracket, so this season we can have even 3k teams, not like last one where rank 1 wasn't even 2.7k.

Anyway, you'll never know if something works or not unless you try it. So i suggest giving it a go, this season, and it may result in increasing ''pvp population'' and that would lead that the next season more people will do PvP which can further result in more people q'ng 3v3. On the other side, 3v3 bracket should remained opened and wf shoulders, aswell as t2 weapons, should be obtainable from 3s also.

Cheers,

Conqueror

[Naljs]

..the biggest BS is that not-pvpers are commenting here.

Totally agree with this one. How dare you not-pvpers comment here, on a thread where you obviously aren't clever enough to come up with ideas? That's blasphemy! Not even the deepest circles of Hell are punishment enough for your sins!
^sarcasm (duh)

That being said, all you "pro pvp" folks have got to stop being so narrow minded. No suggestion is bad since it makes us all consider new ideas, as our current ones clearly are not satisfying people.

On another note, I think we should consider things that may not seem Blizzlike as well. At least if you view it from this perspective: the people playing here are just that - people. And the people looking for a good server to play on are also the same thing - people. If the majority of the people on this server votes for a more attractive change, we can assume it would be more attractive for the ones who are looking for a server to play on, as well. So don't reject every idea because it isn't Blizzlike (ofc it should still lie within reasonable limits), but rather see how you can take those ideas, work around them, make them more Blizzlike while keeping the main idea, and see how they can be applied.

[Discarnate]

Sadly, a lot of these comments do repeat one truth; one that is slightly out of our hands. The only true way of increasing the activity in 3v3 is by increasing the population. All of my suggestions are either about policing the quality of the matches or narrowing down the loose activity into a tighter duration. None of my suggestions will actually increase the amount of people being active in 3v3. Of course, modification to the rewards will not help there either. But, that has several other reasons for not making a good cut all of which have been discussed.

Someone asked why it was so important to keep trying to keep 3v3 alive. There's a reason for that.

[hide]General servers like TrueWoW strive to be little copies of what retail WoW used to be during 3.3.5a. In general servers, we have three sides which collectively make up the body; PvE, PvP and auxiliary. PvE includes leveling, raids and dungeons. PvP includes BGs and arena. Auxiliary includes all of the world events, professions and similar matters. As a general server, we try to keep each of these sections moderately active. Sure, still many quests are buggy, but leveling is mostly not very fussy and definitely viable. There are many bugs in many dungeons and raids, but we're capable of marching through almost all of the raids and dungeons from all three expansions. Wintergrasp and Isle of Conquest are shut down, but apart from that we're able to do most of the BGs with very few bugs. A few arena venues are shut down, but several others are open, and they're enough to house all of the brackets which we're already using. A lot of events are buggy, but all of them are doable. All professions are fully working, I think. The server is being able to keep open every section of every side it is required to do so to be general.

The only problem is 3v3. Out of the arena brackets, this is the culprit which is simply not following the rest in terms of activity. So, we MOST DEFINITELY have to try and keep it alive. Without it, we won't be able to claim our server as a general copy. And, the only reason this server is still alive and not anonymously dead somewhere in the gutter is because we remained as close to being traditional as we could. Turning into a fun server doesn't happen overnight. It starts with something. You have to nip it in the bud. Non-Blizzlike changes should only be made for absolutely dire situations, because one non-Blizzlike change encourages another, and unless you wanna see people using our server as a PTR in the future, stay away from those ideas as much as you can, lol. That has been the fate of many other servers. We don't need that.

Anyway, all servers including retail always had considerably lower amount of 3v3 teams than 2v2 teams. Why will we be any exception anyway? We just have to think of that within our population. And, sadly, the numbers aren't great at all. But, in that sense, 2v2 has no problem. 3v3 does. Those suggested changes just gives 2v2 a treat for no apparent reason, and actually causes further harm to 3v3. That is some solution. =S I think the logic has been lost in the Twisting Nether. Also, this isn't our biggest problem.[/hide]

Tl;dr: There is nothing we can do to increase the activity in 3v3 except for increasing the population of the server. We, with the suggestions of many, can only make it a bit tighter. And, the changes once suggested about 2v2 rewards being enriched by moving in 3v3 rewards fix absolutely nothing and more importantly aren't coming out of a dire enough situation for the server to consider a non-Blizzlike approach. We could enhance our existing quality by implementing some of the policing suggestions, but apart from that, we should relax down trying to fix what else we cannot. We need more bodies in the server. We need time. We may or may not get more people. Who knows?

Off-topic: [hide]TrueWoW's biggest problem is, guess what, class bugs. Class bugs are the most important bugs of all. Class bugs are also the biggest problem of this server. Class bugs affect everything you can do in this game, because you do them all with your classes. Class bugs will affect you in leveling, doing dungeons, raiding, PvPing and even other auxiliary matters. You are your class as long as you're in the game. When you have problems in the very existence of you, no other problems matter. We have to be able to play our classes properly, and every time a level 17 quest gets fixed classes sacrifice a kitten. Save the kittens. I'm almost 100% sure that 90%+ of the people commenting in this thread would rather have their talents, pets or abilities fixed than any of what we're trying to do. So, it's just some food for thought. Maybe, 9 pages of discussions should go to more important matters such as class bugs.[/hide]

[Kindzadza]

Discarnate the change in the 2v2 bracket and the shoulders and t2 weapons being obtainable there is only to prevent the abuse of the 3v3 system and how players are using it to get those items. Last season you could just whisper a guildie to queue 3v3 and get yourself easy 10 wins against a comp or players who stand no chance against your team.

Yes only population can safe the 3v3 bracket, but at the moment either the staff kills the bracket with these changes or the population would. Getting 2k rating takes patience and having some guildmates to top the 3v3 bracket. At least having the items in the 2v2 bracket would mean actually you get to fight with different comps and teams to get the rating required for them.

The 3v3 bracket will be always opened and those who enjoy playing it will still play it, but they would have no reason to abuse the system if I am not mistaken.

[Mnemonic]

TrueWoW's biggest problem is, guess what, class bugs. Class bugs are the most important bugs of all. Class bugs are also the biggest problem of this server. Class bugs affect everything you can do in this game, because you do them all with your classes. Class bugs will affect you in leveling, doing dungeons, raiding, PvPing and even other auxiliary matters. You are your class as long as you're in the game. When you have problems in the very existence of you, no other problems matter. We have to be able to play our classes properly, and every time a level 17 quest gets fixed classes sacrifice a kitten. Save the kittens. I'm almost 100% sure that 90%+ of the people commenting in this thread would rather have their talents, pets or abilities fixed than any of what we're trying to do. So, it's just some food for thought. Maybe, 9 pages of discussions should go to more important matters such as class bugs.

He is totally right here, try and have a true blizzlike server, with working spells and then take action into implementing anything else. Doing ridiculous things like adding 3's rewards into 2's before fixing spells is just absurd.

[Discarnate]

Discarnate the change in the 2v2 bracket and the shoulders and t2 weapons being obtainable there is only to prevent the abuse of the 3v3 system and how players are using it to get those items. Last season you could just whisper a guildie to queue 3v3 and get yourself easy 10 wins against a comp or players who stand no chance against your team.

In case you just arrived to the thread:

[hide]

3. Recruit or delegate 6 or 8 PvP moderators or GMs (depending on the permissions your system allows you to provide), and ask them to monitor arena matches. They needn't monitor every match. They can function as random checkpoints who will randomly monitor matches whenever they have the time or wish. Ask them to be more serious about monitoring the 3v3 and 5v5 matches if possible. They must never express their observations to the community but only to the authority.

Reason:

Spoiler:

The first thing to understand here is that PvPers come and go. PvP teams come and go. A lot of teams are really active in one season and, then, go completely undercover for several others. The point I'm trying to make is that, what you have experienced in the arena last season was quite different from the season before that and so on. What we'll experience in the next few seasons will each be different as well. There are no static problems. Old problems get replaced by new problems. Lemme give you an example. In my days, only one team dodged. There were about 10-12 equally competitive teams. We were successful, of course, but only barely. In today's standards, that probably sounds like heaven to you, and perhaps, it was. But, our problem was, the lack of many teams made it extremely hard to reach higher ratings. We didn't get the chance to farm low rated teams. We only barely made it to 2k, because the competitors were mostly respectable and had sportsmanship (e-sportsmanship?). Due to the second highest rated team not displaying these traits, we simply couldn't reach 2.2k ratings, and we didn't mind. It's all right. But, THAT was our problem. The problem is something entirely different now, isn't it? And, that's how it's gonna be like. It's always gonna be a new problem. So, there's absolutely no reason to make big decisions about one problem in one season. A lot of these faces you see in the ladder won't be seen in the next few most probably. So, dodging and wintrading which seem to be the modern trend now must be our focus. Therefore, by adding PvP watchers, we can ensure that fairness is practiced. They'll monitor as many games as they can -- specially in 3v3 and 5v5 which are often quiet enough for illegal activities to take place in. There's no telling when they'll monitor what, and nobody will know. Therefore, there will always be a sense of fear among PvPers which will prevent them from even trying to pull something. Of course, I'm talking about wintrading. Dodging isn't technically illegal, and while I feel pity for dodgers, I do understand that it's simply clever usage of game mechanics. So, yeah, this is how you handle the wintraders to keep 3v3 and 5v5 under check. I propose an even number so that you can have half Alliance and half Horde watchers. It's just for people's confidence. Horde PvPers may feel threatened when all of the policing is done by the Alliance.

what about opening 3v3 only at certain times in the week like was done with the PTR at first? Forcing everyone to queue at the same times avoids any wintrading and can make the bracket just as active as 2v2, just not at all times. This also makes sure that players with tons of time to stay in the queue, don't get such a huge advantage. If you really want 3v3 activity then the bracket should be more accessible to casual players instead of only allowing the top tier players.

It seem to me that you understand why my first suggestion was important to maintain. And, that is specifically why I like this suggestion of yours. I think this could really turn a big chunk of this mess around. Corba, above me there, has a good point. So, if we were to evolve this suggestion of yours, let's take a page out of Blizzard's Call to Arms system but not completely.

Keep 3v3 open on the average weekends from all over the world; 48 hours each week; early Fridays to late Saturdays. This can do exactly what your suggestion intended to do while making sure people from all over the world can participate in it. You can switch around the combination of days to your liking, though. What do you think?

And, hey, perhaps, you could implement that monitoring thing yet since monitoring just two days worth of arena matches is a lot easier than all week long.

The additional suggestions seen around here are also useful. I'll input my modifications to them.

1. A tweak done to the MMR script will be good. I propose that we use two MMR scripts for the non-2v2 brackets. For the first 40% of the season's duration, the current MMR script can be used. For the remaining 60% of the season's duration, an alternative script can be used. This can also be automated, I'm sure. But, doing this manually isn't much of a hassle either. The alternative script may hard limit teams to pair up below a certain rating. This can prevent abuse while the beginning script can ensure progress. Since the first portion of the season won't be enough to reach high enough ratings, we can rely on this combination. The 2:3 ratio can be adjusted to your liking. In fact, you can even apply this combination in 2v2 as well if you see fit, but perhaps, that won't be necessary.

2. The suggestion about lowering the points gained from 3v3 flushes has a weakness. Plenty of PvPers don't have the time to invest in both 2v2 and 3v3. Several others focus on brackets separately in seasons. For instance, I focused on 2v2 in one season, and 3v3 in another since I simply didn't have the time to do both all the time. There are plenty like me, and we're NOBODY to dictate what bracket they should play in. If they want to do 2v2 along with 3v3. It's their preference. If they don't feel like doing 2v2 while doing 3v3, it's their preference. They should NOT have to reluctantly do 2v2 simply because of points to spend in 3v3. They may not have points lying around. They may have multiple specs to gear. And, rewards in 3v3 can cost a lot. So, they do need an income there. But, here's an alternative suggestion to this suggestion which serves both purpose. Activate standard non-2v2 points gained upon flushes above 1500 team and personal rating. Nullify points gained upon flushes below 1500. You can keep out "gearing" players that way while making sure the progressive players get the points they need.

[/hide]

There are way more effective solutions in policing the quality of 3v3 without the need of any compromise whatsoever. All of those solutions can easily protect the bracket. In fact, not even all of them need to be implented. Even one can easily protect it. Implementing all will only further improve the quality by policing harder and also making the activity tighter.

Moving special rewards is absolutely unnecessary and potentially harmful.

[marko1984]

TrueWoW's biggest problem is, guess what, class bugs. Class bugs are the most important bugs of all. Class bugs are also the biggest problem of this server. Class bugs affect everything you can do in this game, because you do them all with your classes. Class bugs will affect you in leveling, doing dungeons, raiding, PvPing and even other auxiliary matters. You are your class as long as you're in the game. When you have problems in the very existence of you, no other problems matter. We have to be able to play our classes properly, and every time a level 17 quest gets fixed classes sacrifice a kitten. Save the kittens. I'm almost 100% sure that 90%+ of the people commenting in this thread would rather have their talents, pets or abilities fixed than any of what we're trying to do. So, it's just some food for thought. Maybe, 9 pages of discussions should go to more important matters such as class bugs.

He is totally right here, try and have a true blizzlike server, with working spells and then take action into implementing anything else. Doing ridiculous things like adding 3's rewards into 2's before fixing spells is just absurd.

^ this too...
Hunter dmg on my mages makes it impossible to play any other spec then frost in arena (from personal exp)
yes i'm just QQing it seems but look at top 10-15 teams from last season in 2v2 or 3v3 and find me a mage in them, like i said nearly impossible to play
So maybe we should think about what this guy said too

[Roel]

Fixing class bugs is way harder than any of these changes to arena.

[Boxis]

look at top 10-15 teams from last season in 2v2 or 3v3 and find me a mage in them

-madvayne
-extreme
-me

and look at top 10-15 from last season and find me hunter there:
-me
-noreflection

But this is kinda off-topic

[Discarnate]

Fixing class bugs is way harder than any of these changes to arena.

Undoubtedly. That was only mentioned to put this problem into perspective. It's a lot less important and intrusive than we're giving it credit for by having nearly 10 pages of discussions.

Since Kindzadza already mentioned that this is about reinforcing the qualitiy of 3v3, the summary of the problem is quite simple.

Problem: We need to maintain and rejuvenate the quality and activity in 3v3. In simpler words, we have to make sure that illegal activities aren't taking place, and we have to liven up the bracket while we're at it.

Solution: There are plenty of solutions already provided in this thread which can effectively solve a large part of that problem. MMR tweaks, flush tweaks, reducing the bracket to 48 hours a week, and small bit of monitoring in only those 48 hours can absolutely destroy any possibility of anything illegal being done in the bracket at the same time tightening up the activity. If you don't want to do the same for both 3v3 and 5v5 because of staff limitations, strip 5v5 off of its special rewards. Nobody cares about the bracket instead of just having fun.

That's really it, you know.

[Dropdead]

Open your eyes and see already that 2s is completly fine and active bracket , I'll repeat myself but since 3-4 ppl keep spamming wanting everything in 3s to swap to 2s (which is beyond stupid) I will do it too and quote myself aswell :

- First of all and most important we were blizzlike server right ? This is the most unblizzlike thing you can witness in pvp if this happens .
- Those changes will kill the 3v3 and 5v5 completly
- 2v2 is the most imbalanced bracket
- Achieving 2600 rate in 2v2 is WAY more easier than 3v3 2200 rate
- 2v2 is much easier to wintrade and pull schemes in to get your rating needed for rewards
- And last but not least it will give bad impression to newcomers , because I never saw such changes in a private server .

If you want changes do them to 3s and 5s not to 2s where we have healthy population and competition .

[Torcano]

^ What he said. +1

With our current class bugs 2v2 is more imbalanced than it should be, I personally got no problems with it but some comps are just intensely annoying, like say ele/destro or mm/ret... where they just kill through shield wall + pain sup on a 1.2k resil warr in 1 gcd. Matches end in 5 seconds and their damages are in absurd 30-50k each, yes you might say they could be counter comps but really now, haven't been global'd so hard in my life even on AT where every other 2's team is an aids spriest rogue/mage comp. So unless class bugs and resil's crit damage reduction modifier gets a look at in a solid way any changes you do to the bracket will stay redundant.

And as I pointed out before, it is easier to be 4am wf shoulder pro in 2's than in 3's. Just que against lowbies in a day 20 matches grab 20 per day, in one month you get 600 rating, gg wp shoulders title mount. /golfclap

[Dropdead]

Slightly off topic but 1200 resil aint much when vs ele/destro and they dont got bugged in op way spells , ofc u can get globaled if caugh in stun and ur healer is cc'`ed , thats normal , but then again that is 2vs2 bracket for many teams which can be countered by others , one more reason there shouldnt be 3v3 rewards in 2v2 .