Getting Ready For Guild Wars: Thoughts on the Arena Proposals

I take it there's some wrangling being done about changes to the Arena format so I thought I'd weigh in on the subject.

I think, of the options, I favor #1. #2 and #3 seem more attractive to the TA players but I'm a Random Rat at heart. The TA works fine so, really, the issue is how to fix the RA without breaking the TA. I think you need a bigger bonus for longer streaks, as with #3. But, as I see it, there's a fundamental problem in rewarding streaks and that's the RA is a random place where you don't know what you're going to get. People can drop, your build can run up against something that hammers it. Streaks are much more of an accomplishment in HA or GvG or even TA where you're dealing with sending your known quantity against the unknown. But in the RA they're more a matter of luck. Look at it this way. Say there's two players who enjoy a solid evening in the RA. One racks up 50 wins but they all come in streaks of 6,7, or 8. Another plays the same number of rounds but only manages to get 25 wins. It's just that most of those come from two kismet 10 win runs where everything happens to work. Under the current system and most of the cumulative win rewarding systems, the second player gets rewarded more than the player with more wins and, I think, that's wrong. The 50 win player is arguably better and certainly had the better night but you wouldn't know it from the way the game hands out the cookies. The reward should come just for playing and enjoying yourself, not having to reach arbitrary limits.

As to complaints that giving out a point for every win is going to lead to title grinding, well, yeah. But unskill players are going to be stuck getting a small amount of points towards the new, increased titles while being fodder for the skilled players to rack up streaks. There's always going to be an element of dumb luck to a title like this, even in the TA, because it all depends on whom you're matched up against. You might make up a team that normally would get blown out of the water but, for whatever reason, at the time you begin your run none of the builds that can beat yours are playing and you match up extremely well against everything else. Guess what, that team gets a win streak. Not just because they're lucky, there's some skill involved, but there's a lot of luck there, too. And there's really no way to separate out those flukes from the cases of pure player skill unless you want everyone running around with the same build. You just have to accept the dice rolls here.

And I don't really care that it'll making it easier, that it'll devalue the Glad titles people have sweat blood and tears for. Guess what? It's a game and those titles are electrons in a database and the size of your e-peen doesn't matter. What does matter is having a game that people like to play and having a title that lures in novice players to grind it out, draws them to play in the Arena and get better at it, makes everyone's experience better. Eventually. The high level Glad ranks are still going to be damned hard to get for the average player, they're still going to have prestige. The thing is you'll see a bunch of 1s and 3s running around, just like with the HA. You don't care about keeping those roped off, you care about keeping the 11th and 12th ranks for the in-crowd.

Oh, and linking RA and TA made sense at the time but it's pretty dumb now. They should never have shared the same title track in the first place. But they either need to be decoupled or the rewards from TA have to be commensurately greater than those of the RA. A simple multiplier to the Faction and points being handed out works for me there.

Really, though, what the game needs isn't a band-aid, it's corrective surgery. Starting from scratch or as close to it as possible, what we should have is a ranking system for the Arenas. Something ELO like the guild or hero ratings that gets shifted up or down based on wins to facilitate better matching. You want to pair people of similar skill level with and against people of similar skill level, even in the TA. Players who ranks are similar have a preference to be grouped together but just as with guild battles, the search widens the longer you wait – you shouldn't have to wait too long if you're high ranked and you should still get your ass handed to you by vets even if you're not very good. Create an Arena ladder for the e-peen stroking and give out title points for flat wins to encourage participation from novices. Moves the Arenas closer to the model for GvG and Hero battles while still keeping it a semi-casual form.