User talk:Ryan Scott/gladiatorchanges2

Currently System is good.

Please, don't make any changes with gladiator title and stay with currently which is good and shows u spent much time to do this title. If any of above proposition will be added to game then gladiator title will have nosense.

Extra additions?

how about using option 1 as this will encourage new pvpers into the game but with 1 change

if a player does not use any skill or make contact with the enemy, that player LOSES a gladiator point. just to nerf leeches. :)

I don't understand this entirely. Do you feel because in 5-win streaks, since you get more points, Gladiator becomes worthless? We're giving current title holders more points than we're increasing the title by to compensate for the difference. The goal is to both make it more accessible (but not a gimme) to newer players, not punish players for not being on a team that can't take 10 wins in Randoms, and encourage teams that can't win ten to stick together for 5. Do you have any suggestions for making these goals work out? Ryan Scott 01:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, if i will must to choose of all options only number 2 is good. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:89.174.120.180 .

If if you gave current title holders more points to compensate for the difference what about the people who got 5 win streaks in the past? I don't think there is a need to change the point system, 10 wins means something, you can get a lucky run but usually its skill, if you were lucky with your team. Leavers are the big problem now, and deserter penalty should discourage and lessen that problem. By lower the amount of points needed to rewarding 5 or even 1 wins you create a problem similar to aspenwood, leeching. A leecher will be VERY unlikely to get 10 wins as 3 vs 4 is a huge disadvantage. If you reward smaller streaks it becomes more worthwile to leech. 58.110.140.124 10:11, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Uhh GoGo 3

Yawn* Im a scrub that didnt notice Proposal 3 could have an eventual point earnings cap... if thats the case my friends have convinced me its the best choice, for reasons that could be found in Torp's Post. With that in consideration all of the below is now not worth anyones time to read.--Berserk 02:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 2 seems to be the best choice to please actual Gladiator title holders while still heightening the excitement for newcommer's. Unlike Proposal 1 it won't be vulnerable to 'Enter Battle' bots (sadly there were quite a few of these in the Dragon Arenas this past weekend) I really like the idea of the Deserter System! Awesome really... more Monkless Glad Pts ftw! Proposal 3 seems tempting but I'm just not feeling it. We've already shortened the march to glory (and yes it going to save gladiators and new competetor's alike alot of nerve racking frustration...somtimes for hours or days at a time) but lets not decrease the value of the dollar... I'm not quite sure how the TA/RA populations are going to change over time... But I just feel that lack of competetion at a partical times of day shouldn't accelerate Title Builders... Usually when you go for 30-50 wins or more you'll be fighting several of the same teams and players multiple times... and if they aren't a rivaled threat looks like you'll either be feeling bored, lucky, or way too arrogant. So YEP my vote goes to Proposal 2! --Berserk 23:01, 13 August 2007 (UTC)(IGN Berserk Arts)

Number 2 or 3 for me, but DEFINITELY not #1. My grandma can earn a high level Glad title with that one. --arredondo 22:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

"I think that proposal 3 with a progression and cap similar to HA's fame system would be ideal. Players should be rewarded for particularly long streaks, separating the gap between RA/TA grinders who only play for five wins, and guilded/organized groups that seek to play for the long haul." ckjy 18:27, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

ckjy's above statement got me thinking.. As a Subjugating Gladiator who loves TA I wrote that I would prefer proposal 2 over 3 basically because I didn't like the fact some shameless fools could grindout the kind of TA meta we've seen in the past... capable of polishing off random teams, or even considerabily organized teams, within 50-90seconds, sometimes thoughtlessly... All because they choose to play during slower hours... But in turn, I'm now considering all the future implements of what the Arenas are to become. Comparing Propostal 3 to farming fame makes wonder why TA wouldn't have a bracket system as well, if these guys are in there earning extraordinary amounts of gladiator points per win because of their consecutives... Don't they deserve to be aknowledged as well? An observer mode for some of the highest consecutive teams seems ingriuging but I doubt it would be popular...But what are we to expect to see from 4on4 combat in the future?? Hopefully GWEN is offering us a new arena map or two, and then theres GW2... What a party of 4 could see on an all new battleground..Monster NPCs??..4on4on4on4??.. whatever is to come I cant help but wonder if it will merit an observer mode. To be honest I don't know how the Gladiator title is expected to evolve into guild wars 2, but I heard word that GWI Account Titles will be transferable to GW2 (I hope its true so Hardcore Gamers like me won't feel like their 4,000hours spent on GWI goes uncredited).. someway some how, the question is when do us Hardcore Gamers plan on getting that Legendary Gladiator status?--Berserk 22:32, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Consider that proposal 3 would most likely attract more organized/skilled teams to TA, and the "shameless fools" would have less chance to rake up a bunch of points. Also, an increased population in TA would minimize the "slow hours" option 3 ftw imo --Torp 23:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 4

I'd like to see a combination of proposals 1 and 3 and a suggestion I saw over at GWOnline of not rewarding points for the first match.

• 1st match gives no points
• Starting from match 2 Every win gives you 1 point.
• Players get points for streaks. Players get 5 points for each 5 consecutive wins.
• Every additional 5 wins gives you a bonus point (plus the original 5 for 5 wins). 10 wins = 6 bonus points, 15 = 7 total points, etc. This would be capped at 10 for every 5 win streak to keep it from getting out of control.
• Multiply current player points by 30.
• Multiply each rank by 20

So, 10 wins would get you 20 points:

Proposal 4: Progression Table

Wins	Points Awarded	Bonus Points
1	0
2	1
3	1
4	1
5	1	+5
6	1
7	1
8	1
9	1
10	1	+6

Players who can sustain longer win streaks, continue to get the 1 point per win, but also get greater gains for their efforts: (numbers listed here are total cumulative points gained at this number of wins)

Proposal 4: Cumulative Points Progression Table

Wins	Total Cumulative Points	Win Streak Bonus
1	0	0
5	9	+5
10	20	+6
15	32	+7
20	45	+8
25	59	+9
30	74	+10

After 30 consecs, the bonus points would be capped at +10

I like the idea of removing the first game from the point system, as it encourages players to stick with their team for at least 2 matches, rather than just winning one, and leaving, winning 1 and leaving etc. Hopefully by the end of match 2, they'll be willing to try and stick it out untill match 5. Then match 10 etc. Greyf0x 23:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I have to say that this seems like the best idea so far, and much better that the "official" proposals. It not only prevents leechers, but also will make people want to stick around for longer runs if you don't get a monk, since it's not uncommon for such a team to get at least 5 wins. --Supertrek32 22:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC) (Fierce Gladiator)

Interesting idea. What do you think of proposals 2 and 3? I feel they solve this problem, since they don't reward points for a single victory, but still allow the no-monk team to get points too. Ryan Scott 22:48, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

My preferences of the existing 3 proposals are: 3, 1 and 2 in that order. I like the concept of cumulative progression for the win streaks, similar to the way you get progressively more Fame in HA. However, at the same time, I do think that the arenas, especially RA, would benefit from having points rewarded per win as well. With my suggestion, I think both styles would be rewarded. As for no-monk teams winning points, in all honesty, I think that's more of a percieved problem, than an actual one. In my experience, a team of 4 good offensive players stands at least some chance against a team with a monk, simply by sheer killing power. The larger problem as I see it, is the fact the people are unwilling to even try for a win. If a new penalty system is introduced to disuade players from leaving mid fight, that should help, but there's not much to stop them leaving after their first win (I'd hope people aren't penalised for leaving after a win...) to try and find a better team (with a monk perhaps). By making them play for at least 2 games, they've interacted with the team for a bit longer, and are hopefully willing to carry on trying for 5 wins. Greyf0x 23:09, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

My preferences right now are sitting at 3, 2, and then 1, primarily because I feel 1 cheapens the title a lot for the TA players and turns a more "hardcore" title into something that becomes an over-time title, like fame is now. I'd like to maintain some of the challenge in the title to more of a success rate as opposed to a gradual curve over games played. Great feedback though, keep it coming :D Ryan Scott 00:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of points per win, however not for the first couple. Make it so a team has to win say 3 before they start to earn. Then from 4 to 10 they earn a point per win, and then from 10 to 20 they earn 2 per win etc. You see where i'm going. This will eliminate the one single most annoying factor of the gladiator title and that is the "So close! 9 wins! all for nothing!" that can happen. Making the first 3 wins not count would make it so the points had to be earnt not grinded, but it would reward per victory which is better for the player. --ChronicinabilitY 00:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I really like best this hybrid idea, proposal 4, because it addresses most issues. It forces ppl to stand for at least 2 games in order to get a point reward, it gives high enough incentives at 5 and 10 consecutive wins in order to motivate teams to move forward and it probably makes more sense to go for more consecutive wins rather than grind for just a small number of wins with a small number of points but maybe faster time. --Krothal

Proposal 1 was the first idea, but the TA community was extremely concerned that this could cheapen the title, and I think they have a point there. Proposals 2 and 3 are designed to lessen that aspect and retain the skill-based nature of the title, while still easing it up and making progress more fluid. I'm not saying Proposal 1 is out, but I want to let it be known we have two player bases involved here, so I think it's important to examine the impact on both. Ryan Scott 08:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Interesting, but I think this only benefits ta players capable of doing 11+ win streaks, without that it is the same as proposal 1. Do designers want the high tiers be reserved for ta only? Coran Ironclaw 21:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

My preferences are 4, 2, 1, 3. I think 3 is not a solution about leavers.

I see the point, giving points for each win really cheapens the title. but it also is great for people who only play from time to time. you can fix that by making the gap between 1 win and winning streak bigger. just multiply the streak-based score with 5 and give only 1 point for each single win, 2 for flawless. With that every win is rewardet, but to get beyond the first title you need streaks or you´ll play a long long time. With other words: for people having the title, most points come still from streaks, but even single wins are rewarded a bit. I think that would please both sides. Sir Astaroth 08:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The only ones i like are 4 and 1 ,in that order not the 5 wins ones cause most teams can't make it that far.

A slight problem with the increases....

I've noticed a problem with the way the amount of player points and the rank requirement are being multiplied. I'll use Proposal 1 as an example, though this applies to all proposals:

Lets say right now, you have 25 points, which is EXACTLY Rank 1.

Your points are multiplied by 30: 25 * 30 = 750 And the Rank 1 requirement is multiplied by 20: 25 * 20 = 500

You see the problem? It leaves you with more progress towards the next title than you'd have now.

Multiply BOTH the Rank Requirement AND the Player Points by the SAME number, so a person's percentage of progress doesn't change, only the numbers change.

That way, your points would be 750, AND the rank requirement would be 750. No change for the people who have the title.

What do you guys make of this? Sora267 22:11, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

It takes into consideration the individual matches you would have one on the way to get there -elviondale (tahlk) 22:23, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

That's actually the idea. In any of these examples, it is harder to the Gladiator title under the current system than it will be under the new one. To compensate, we're giving current players a boost to reward their "harder earned" points. How many 9-streaks have current players been unrewarded for? :) Ryan Scott 22:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I get it now. My friend and I were sorta unclear on that. Thanks! Sora267 22:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

One other major RA problem needs fixing

PLEASE make a truly random routine for putting teams mates together in RA. There are players who time their entry into RA so they end up on the same team with their well co-ordinated setups. All of these other changes you posted just allows these guys to cheat for Glad points even faster than before. Can anything be done about this at the same time these other ideas are implemented? Thanks! --arredondo 22:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

This is a very good point, and I hope you'll consider this in the implementation of the new RA game mechanics. Too often players go to a international district with a team of 3 or 4 and are able to join a RA match. Having the randomness factor implemented in a proper way should be considered. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 23:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I really agree with this - people have been sync joining to give themselves an advantage since GW was released. Here's another thought, any system where the timer is visible to the player lends itself to sync joining. If you're not on the same timer you just cancel and restart until you're both on the same countdown. I don't know what to do about that, but that's how people game the system. --Tankity Tank 23:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

What do you do when for example 4 monks end up together? Leaving will be punished, not doing anything (leeching) will be punished and with 4 (half) decent monks there is no way they would die. They just have to hold out for 15 minutes when the time limit kicks in?88.159.130.14 23:42, 13 August 2007 (UTC)Berry Hoodlum

IMO, if the entire team /resigns then don't punish them - but don't reward the other team with a win either. --Tankity Tank 23:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

There is always a noob who doesn't resign... --YukoIshii 11:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Ryan can you confirm that RA is truely random? It's not to do with syncro teams but the fact that the game seems to have a preference to who gets certain teammates and who doesn't. This may just be me whining, but only when i play monk do I get 2 or 3 other monks on my team all while a friend of mine (who is not playing monk) gets none (at roughly the same time). It seems to me that say the more points you have made as say an Assassin the less likely you are to get a monk at the same time, again I could be wrong and seeing a conspiracy where there is none... -Crazy

Yep, it's truly random. Rolling a dice 100 times, and getting a 1 60 of those is still random -- just bad luck :) Ryan Scott 21:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Touch leavers, no Title!

If u chose 1st option, i want 100 fame for killing zaishen's in HA. Better make VOTE system (3-4 reported leave's means ban for pvp for 24 hours) for leavers than touching Gladiator title... --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:87.205.54.144 .

Without a title adjustment, we're essentially punishing players for maximizing their points, which is counter-productive. Leavers and leechers are a big problem in RA, AB and FA (to varying degrees). If we leave the title alone, we really can't fix leavers. If you have an issue with the Gladiator numbers or proposals, please provide some explanation as what you don't like, why you don't like it, and what you'd like to see instead. Ryan Scott 00:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 3, thumbs up. Proposal 1 & 2, thumbs down.

Proposal 1 lends itself to title farming (grind a lot of RA and track up faster than TA players). Proposal 2 doesn't reward streaks as much and would slow point acquisition by good teams, it also feels just grind friendly enough that I think you'll have title grinders farming international RA rather than building TA teams. Proposal 3 seems closest to the current system while also rewarding long streaks (ie: a well built/highly skilled team).

It seems like prop2 & prop3 reward skilled players more while prop1 rewards grinding more than skill. Honestly, I'd still be happy with 2 (it's better than the current system IMO) but I'd much prefer 3 and I'd go with 3 given the choice. --Tankity Tank 23:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Option 1, but remove teams from RA.

Option 1 I think is head and shoulders above the rest.

But I do think its a mistake that you get stuck in a team in RA. RA is all about random, why should you stay with the same team. Make it about individual achievement, and randomise the team after every match.

That way if you get 5 in a row, its cos of you. Not because you kept raging till you found a team you like. Sadie2k 01:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Intriguing! If they did that, then the Gladiator title should be reset and apply ONLY to RA play. Give TA another title to work towards. --arredondo 01:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

One thing we're not doing (for a number of reasons) is seperating the Gladiator title. If we did, this would be easy -- proposal 1 with anti-grief would be the way to go. However, we're working to find a solution that works for both RA and TA. Ryan Scott 05:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I like the random team thing, this way it's more "Random", Team Arena's would be no problem because every team makes a balanced sort team, although i think after 10 cons. wins you shouldn't zone to Team but stay in Random that way it stays fair, then option 1 is fun and fair. Tomoko 10:33, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Ryan, this can be done (the random every battle) without a need to separate the title or star over. If you can get the proper data you can get the measure total effort of obtaining points for every rank in ta, that evaluated you can get a proposal for ra that equals the quantities. I dont have time now to explain better. I will be back later. Coran Ironclaw 14:20, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Voting?

Should we create a voting page for the 3 proposals or do you just want verbal feedback? Of course a voting page would only represent the opinion of the GGW Wiki Community but it could still be a valuable source of feedback. --Primeval 00:36, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think game design is a democracy ^_~. This seems more like brainstorming to me. --Tankity Tank 01:21, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I didn't say it was I'm just interested in the general opinion of the GWW Community instead a couple of people who left some ideas about changing the proposals --Primeval 01:23, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

A vote doesn't say the same thing that a constructive post does. A vote says yes/no/maybeso while short opinion pieces state both preference and the reasons behind it. I'm not bashing the idea, it just doesn't seem that helpful compared to what's already happening. Let it go for a while and let the designer call a vote if that's what he wants. --Tankity Tank 03:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting a lot of use out of the open discussion format -- I don't find a lot of value in polls, as numbers are skewed to a small portion of the playerbase. Ryan Scott 21:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Option #1, with changes, reasoning, and math!

First, changes:

a) Make the first match of an RA attempt not count towards the title

b) Increase the existing point conversion from 30 to 45

c) TA wins give 2 points for a single match win instead of 1.

Next, reasoning:

a) To discourage leechers and prevent the title from being easy-ish to farm with simply re-joining and hoping you get lucky. It's the easiest solution and requires no moderation.

b) See the math.

c) While I don't play in TA, I know there are tons of folks who do and would like a little extra reward for it. A little, but not too much. While TA is definitely more organized, there is something to be said about "thinking on your feet" and coming out victorious that can only happen in RA.

Last, Math!

I currently have 68 glad points, and earned every one of them. By the new system, one Glad Point is proven worth 10 wins + 2 five-win streaks. That's 20 points, and they are giving 30.

Let's say one person who plays well, and always wins 80% of the time.

Let's say he presses "Enter Match" 100 times. In each round, he'll win a set amount that will go onto the next round, and lose a set amount that gets discarded.

Number of wins/losses at that round level:

(1) 80.0 / 20.0 (2) 64.0 / 16.0 (3) 51.2 / 12.8 (4) 41.0 / 10.2 (5) 32.8 / 8.2 (6) 26.2 / 6.6 (7) 21.0 / 5.2 (8) 16.8 / 4.2 (9) 13.4 / 3.4 (10) 10.7 / 2.7

So, for his 100 attempts, he got a grad total of 10.7 Gladiator points, which we'll round up to 11. In total, he played 446.4 matches... 357.1 wins, and the rest losses. For reference, at 5 minutes a match (a conservative estimate), that's about 37 hours of time invested.

By the old system, he got just under 11 points. By system #1, he would have earned:

357.1 + (5)x(32.8) + (5)x(10.7) = 574.6 points

This means that, for people who win 80% of the time, the conversion rate would be about 10.7:574.6, or 1:54.

And if you win less than 80% of the time, that number goes up. Way up. If the first round of an RA attempt doesn't give any points, then 45 is about the equivalent number to use. The conversion will only happen once, and this new title will be around forever.--Skye Marin 00:53, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

This will take me more than the time I have right this second to analyze and digest all this, thanks for the feedback, I'll get back on this. Ryan Scott 08:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Start interval

Proposal 1 is going to kill the place. First it will be flooded with grinders, then when the value of the title sank below lightbringer, nobody will bother going there. The other two are relatively ok, but their efficiency against leavers is questionable.

• Idea: why don't you increase start interval time from 30s to 2-3mins? No point leaving when you cant start a new run and leavers will pay dearly with their time if they want a balanced team (or even better: increase start interval only for ppl waiting to enter in districts and keep it 30s for the winners). (EDIT: the heading above the proposals are different on your talk page and on your user page, so I did not notice that you are planning a "deserter" system that targets directly the leavers with the time penalty. Great.--Brainless Thought 16:01, 14 August 2007 (UTC))
• Another (small) idea: giving some value to Balthazar faction may also help keeping players in their team (currently it is useless after UAX).--Brainless Thought 01:43, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

IF they give some value to balty points, i want back my like 1 million points i couldn't store nor spend. --YukoIshii 11:41, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I would gladly sacrifice my own lost 1 million if I could use the next one million... --Brainless Thought 04:28, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

opinion

I am so glad to see a discussion on this.

- Leavers: if a player leaves a RA battle prematurely due to anything other than a victory, loss, or resignation, that player has a 2 minute "penalty" before being able to re-enter RA. Not too harsh of a penatly, but enough to discourage perfect-team hunters, or at least slow them down to a pace comparable to the honest random players.

- Leechers: anyone who does not move an inch (regardless of skill usage) for an entire battle, is removed from the team without a victory and sent back to the lobby. It's still fair even to unfortunate slow loaders, since they still did not earn that victory.

- Changing titles: there needs to be some sort of minor bonus for TA play. My guildmates never bother because their chances are just as good by going at it in RA.

Prop 3 looks good to me. It caters more to the interests of TA players looking to be rewarded more for longer streaks. Whereas prop 1 seems to deal solely with the issue of leavers, and 2 I don't really see the validity of.

I'd like to see 3 with a slight difference though. If the reward increment was given at every 10 wins, instead of every 5, it would require a bit more effort that i think should be there.

5 wins = 1 point 10 wins = 2 15 wins = 2 20 wins = 3 25 wins = 3

etc.. My suggestion would be to have the reward cap at 40 wins, making each additional 5 wins past 40 be worth 5 points each.

10 and even 20 win streaks are too often the result of no competition, or making use of a simple farming build that's strong in the meta at the time without anyone getting a good chance to retaliate with a counter build or different tactics. During the length of a 40 win streak, there's almost always strong competition somewhere in the mix that takes solid play and coordination to overcome. The extra points at that point are much better earned, in my opinion. As far as the leaver situation goes in RA.. The people looking to be rewarded might have more motivation to seek out the greater reward potential in TA, and RA will revert more back to the casual practice area that it should be.

Also, I'd like to thank you for you efforts in this, no matter what the outcome. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:70.252.134.10 .

Leech fix that would not only be handy in RA or PVP alone

A very easy way to fix leeching not only in RA but everywhere would be a /votekick system. Give everyone in the group the option to start such a /votekick [name] and if everyone but [name] himself votekicks him to, remove the player from the group. This would kill leechers both in PVP and PVE. 134.130.183.235 04:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Big problem with that is /votekick Joe Bob Joe pm to Joe Bob Joe, haha noob, I just kicked you from my party now you can restart 'X' mission from the start!66.227.230.154 05:46, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

It screams for an opportunity in griefing, and has obvious flaws. What if there are two leechers? The best solution is to deny rewarding abusive behaviour, like leeching and quitting. Simply not giving points for winning the first match in RA would go a long way at both conserving the title and preventing quitters and leechers. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Skye Marin .

Two problems there; you never see two leechers in one group (it's... extremely rare) and RA already doesn't give rewards until you win 10 consec. AB gives much better rewards for leeching one round (one battle), but a leecher in RA will cause the team to lose somewhere along the line. -Auron 06:03, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Leaver Penalty

None of the 3 Proposals really hurts leavers, Number 1 is just the best to get all others not completely pissed off. Here one thing i would do:

• Add an "Leave" button to RA Matches wich allows to regularly leave the match at the next good moment (This is most likely the end of the current match when a new player can be assigned to the group).
• Reconnecting should always work (even if you are just kicked off after you reconnect), reconnecting makes a connection-loss not count as irregular leaving (Everyone may have a problem with his pc sometimes, reconnecting shows the will to stay).
• All Accounts get an counter of wins wich is not resetted by losses, only irregular leaving a match resets the counter.
• Multiply all points by (Counter/5)rounded up with a cap of 5.
• Use the scores from Proposal 1
• give 1 extra score for "flawless" victorys

What should that do? You need to have 25 wins to have your counter at maximum, then its all the same as Proposal 1, only the numbers are 5 times bigger. It just really hurts if you irregularly leave matches as the counter is reset, then you only score 1 point where all others score 5, making it a really bad strategey to leave matches in any other way then loosing or clicking the regular "leave" button. "Everlasting Matches" with overheal on both sides can be left regularly by using /resign wich causes a regular loss. Leeching to fill this counter does not really help, as it takes much too long if one irregular leave resets it. Leeching Points also isnt really going to work, as team with one afk are likely to loose. If an leecher-Problem comes up, remove the score from the first match or add /votekick to RandomArenas. Its also an nice idea to reward flawless victorys, that doubles your base score rewarding active players. Sir Astaroth 09:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Just changing the title won't work for leavers. If there is no monk or the team mate warrior is use mending for example, people tends to leave, it's a fact. They think there is no chance to win even a single match. I suggest a "Leaver Penalty" wich "Increase leaver enter battle counter by 30 seconds" every time they leave, a message can say "your penalty expires in: (count down)". This will not affect casual leavers but it will for serial leavers that are looking for the "right" party. It maybe add more balance into RA games being the parties really random. This along with proposal 1 (just dont add points for the first battle but add it later maybe at the second win, this will avoid leechers). The "leave party after the match button" as suggested above is also fine but I may add it later after monitoring the situation. --Alex Silverfox 12:59, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, there has to be a penalty for such leavers. Why? Let's see. By my guess, those morons don't even go for glad. points, and therefor all of the proposed solutions would be completely irrelevant! Those "noobs" rather go for batha. points, as they cannot really hope to achive a single glad point in their low level of game knowledge. That's why I think that there must be more than a new title system. Furthermore I personally don't think adding 30secs to the counddown would help enough. Is there any reason I don't see why you don't give them a 10 minute ban from PvP or something like that? That ban would trigger upon leaving a game while it is not over or while the gametimer has not yet hit 1 minute (not including pre-game countdown). I really don't see a reason why you did not add this 2 years ago. --Ineluki 15:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

First of all experienced players do "party jumping" until they find what they like. This is the first cause of party leaving. By leaving a party 'cause of disconnection or any other reason 10 min pvp ban is too much. Adding 30 seconds to countdown for every abnormal leave is the way to go. If it was by accident, you've got 30 seconds more, not that much and it's not really a problem instead if you jump let's say, for example, 4 parties, you've to wait 2 minutes before the normal "Time until the mission starts" countdown(or even to be let to press the enter the battle button). If it's not 30 seconds, maybe also 1 minute penalty. This penalty should expire after one hour from when they left, if it's not programmable this way in terms of costs, then also increasing the penalty to 2 minutes for every single leave is doable. Going too high would kill random arenas. That's why this change has to go along with one of the proposal of changing this title: in average random parties doesnt last for long, having not the option to choose either will repopulate Team Arenas or will make people flee. --Alex Silverfox 19:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

You're able to leave a game safely after the game is over -- all we're punishing for is leaving before the game is over. If you have the occasional disconnect/kick the cord out/etc, we're not going to account for that. Ryan Scott 20:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see an actual penalty for leavers AS WELL as the cool down timer. In arenas in Factions, lots of people leave the arena and switch to another one, or don't mind a 30 second cool down - in Fort Aspenwood and AB you will probably be waiting 30 second anyway. A 500 faction penatly doesn't sound horrible to me but it probably does to other people. The point is there needs to be discouragement for people from leaving and it needs to be strong. I guess we will know more about how well the coming methods work when they arrive. 58.110.139.72 12:46, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Another opinion

Proposal 1 looks good on paper and indeed it would remedy people leaving during the battle, but it makes the title track too easy to complete and turns the title into something that doesn't require as much skill to gain in it.

Proposal 2 is a better balance and may very well reduce the amount of leavers. Obviously it wouldn't completely stop them, but it is certainly more appealing to stay for 5 rounds then (very roughly) 30 minutes to make it to 10. - Spinner Sun.

Proposal 2 would be the best and better at stopping leavers if there was a bigger reward at 10 wins like 4/5 points.(Marsc 22:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC))

Another two cents worth...

There are several problems with the Random Areas with the biggest causes being the fact that they are not entirely random and that a serious amount of effort is required to achieve any headway on the title track. People keep leaving until they ¨randomly¨ find a good team or rather they just try to sync join in the first place. Some things I have read seem to suggest that people think the changes to the title track are the method to stop leavers but the way I read this thread, the plan is to address this problem by punishing people for leaving and as a result the way the track works would benefit from being changed.

I like ¨minimising leavers¨ as an idea and I also liked the suggestion above that the team is randomised at each match. If both are combined then there will be no point in leaving to find a better team and a sync join will be only relevant for one match. Also, you won't need to get kicked over to Team Arenas after winning significantly.

I think that Proposal 1 is excellent in that it makes Random Arenas more attractive in a number of ways. It means that it would not take as long to get started and would not require so much time to be dedicated to attempts to achieve at least some advancement on the track (whilst still requiring that same time and effort in order to obtain a high rank) We have had many instances of people being unavailable to assist other Guild members or delaying Guild events because they ¨have got to six wins and look like we might get to ten¨. If you achieved something for every win then more people would be inclined to participate on a less intense basis and would dip in and out if they have a few minutes spare.

Also, if you get commander points for every win in hero battles why shouldn't you get gladiator points for every win in Random Arenas?

One other option I liked from earlier in the thread is that the points for longer winning streaks can be increased (like in HA I suppose) and therefore the higher levels in the track could require more points to achieve. This would seem to cater to both sides in that in order to gain the higher levels in a sensible time frame you would need to keep winning lots (as you currently need to do to get anywhere) but those that wanted to dip in and out (or could not spare the amount of time in one sitting which is currently required) would also see a tangible benefit (other than fun of course). It would also more generously reward those capable (or sufficiently inclined/dedicated) to achieve a 70+ winning streak.

Blitz

thanks anet

the increased attention and in the gladiator title is killing ta hounds. as people are forming guilds to literally run around on ta maps. with arcane echo/mimicry/shadowform sins, 4 evasive rangers, or 4 highly armored warriors. 30+ minute matches are glorious. the gladiator title is prestigious and glorious we know. but dont make it easier, and you know it is making it easier.

10 in a row streaks require a group's build in ta to be fast and efficient. 5 minute matches would but a glad point at 1 hour including the time to find an opponent after each match. so its ideal to be as efficient as possible and put matches at 1-2 minutes. to factor in losses in streaks and lagging out and unable to find your requested match stuff. making any win worth something in the gladiator title track would only make things a defensive battle. not one with fun and edgy build designs that arn't about wasting 15 minutes in a match with aegis chains, wards, and spirits.

keep the glad title as it, and create a sister title. one that can be achieved in ta and ra, but uses the proposals above. as 1 point per 10 win streak and 10 points for 10 wins in which you can win individually are not the same. it is true that the people that have the talent for ta will progress faster and farther. but the gladiator title wasn't created to be progressed by anyone right? just like the survivor title and the defender of ascalon? one shot or no shot deals? i dont understand the change of heart in this. especially with all the problems in pvp already. get ready for the 2 restoration paragons, bonder, and spirit spammer to wait teams out for 30+ minutes for 1 point... proposed names for sister title:

(pugio-latin for dagger. gladiator is latin for sword)
pugio
Fierce pugio
Mighty pugio
Deadly pugio
Terrifying pugio
Conquering pugio
Subjugating pugio
Vanquishing pugio
King's pugio
Emperor's pugio
Balthazar's pugio
Legendary pugio

(Lives of the Twelve Caesars)
1st caesar
2nd caesar
3rd caesar
4th caesar
5th caesar
6th caesar
7th caesar
8th caesar
9th caesar
10th caesar
11th caesar
12th caesar

(gladiator through school http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator#Training )
novicius
sacramentum
paloi
ludus matutinus
ludus gallicus
ludus dacus
ludus magnus
auctoramentum
collegia
lanista
Doctores

TA takes more talent and being nice to fellow human being. while RA is kind of cut throat emotional pain. the pain trying to figure out why people think there is a better 8th skill than a resurrection signet, or why res when your the only one left with 10hp, etc, etc.

if the two titles were split it would clearly show the difference in difficulty in the 10 sin streak = 1 point compared to 1/10 of an original point per win regardless of streak. if anet is willing to lower their standards on this. i would like to see a chapter of a book of secrets given out per quest in elona in which 10 = one book. same with the amulet of the mists. maybe partial gems for the quests inside the doa since pug groups dont always succeed. partial points when people dont completely cap a shrine in alliance battles?Penguincontact

Interesting proposal, but we're not looking at separating or dividing the Gladiator title right now. Instead, the idea is to find a single title ranking system that maintains a skill-based feel of it now, while allowing some more access to it for casual players. Essentially, having this title should be easy -- getting it high should be hard. Ryan Scott 20:56, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

since you clarified the intent it makes sense. I was under the impression that anet was just trying to make it easier and keep people interested until gw2. but easy access, but hard to get 7+ makes more sense. with all my contacts within the core TA community says everyone is dreading this. we will take advantage obviously of the bonuses. but i think even the glad(1) title is way more prestigious and skillful than almost any other pvp title except the champion title. i see a rank 10 hero and i think, i bet he has a cool emote. i see a rank 5+ glad and i think he must be nasty at whatever class he plays. thanks for the timely replyPenguincontact

it may be important to consider talking with people from [wins] and [STEP] since they are the old remnants of [jzta]. [jzta] is the guild that build ta into what it is now. obviously mutiplying the current glads by 1 more than the projected title rank multiplication is a start.Penguincontact

Do you feel the prestige is maintained if only the elite TA players have high Glad titles, and casual players have the title, but a low level? Ryan Scott 00:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

absolutely not. the prestige is in the fact of the talent needed to even start the grind of glad streaks. its not something you can luck into 25 times to even get the 1st title rank. everyone who is chin deep into this ta stuff took all the punishment of ra and learned their way to success. with basically fractional points per win there would be no need to learn. people will stay in their arrogant and defensive ways in ra and ta. thus drawing the same crowd that leaches in AB battles and fort aspenwood. this same crowd wants things handed to them as such as every generation seems to inherit more of this trait. i understand what you're trying to do. but once again the only way to keep the gladiator title the most prestigious title besides champion title is to leave it the way it is. i've always seen the gladiator title as the more accessible champion title, as you don't need to have a guild with high rating and be able to beat highly ranked guilds which are al smurfs of like iQ anyways. every loss in ta/ra teaches us something, and still people don't want to bring reses and refuse to not bring healing hands or mending. making stupidity, rudeness, and arrogance rewardable would not be in the best interest of the game. loot scaling thinned out the pve crowd, and glad dilution would thin out what is left of the pvp people who arn't in the exclusive gvg circuit. especially now since HA players are siphoning over to TA.

FOr the people who have played TA ever since the title came out, these proposals will destory over an years worth of work. isn't it the same reason why anet won't lower the treasure hunter and wisdom titles? let everyone put survivor streaks together, and everytime you die you restart? why dilute the only title people can actually obtain with dedication and effort and be proud of?Penguincontact 01:26, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I do have to kind of agree here. I'm not a TA player (i have 19 glad's) but i have a friend who is and believe he is Glad5 atm. His title actually means something, he has never HA'd seriously as far as i'm aware and doesn't have hero ranks to show, but his glad rank does show this. The reason being the title itself IS respected. If it becomes easy to access (and therefore get points) There is nothing to show a difference from a R5 who got there with 30 game streaks, or one that got there grinding 5 game streaks. The title as a whole would be seen as grindable and people wouldn't respect it. --ChronicinabilitY 05:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

If anet is serious about accessability to the glad title, and want to make it a marketing point for the next 6 months then fine. everyone knows its not about access to the title. its about getting people interested long term until gw2. in the meantime make other titles more accessable. People don't want to HA for 4 years on select l33t teams to get high in that title either.

Everyone in the TA community is more concerned about the increase in Griefers in TA. People that just join with complete guild groups to run and evade the other team until they quit for 30+ minutes.

Augury of Death(taking long enough to nerf), Dancing Daggers(taking long enough to nerf), Ride the Lightning(thanks HA people for exploiting TA with this), Painful Bond(promotes camping), aura of displacement(Griefer), shadow form(Griefer), arcane mimicry(Griefer), death charge(Griefer).Penguincontact 04:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Looks like no more responses from Ryan means that anet has settled on an idea, and are working to code it. wonder which path they took.Penguincontact 07:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If that's the case is a little sad. There is still plenty to do, excellent ideas keep coming. And i have not finished my article yet. Coran Ironclaw 14:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Share out the monks better

People don't leave because they're looking for a "perfect" team, they leave for one of two reasons: no monk; or 2-3 of them and no damage. I think the system should attempt to share monks out more evenly between teams. It wouldn't solve the leavers issue altogether, but could cut it down a lot. It would also promote more interesting and competitive play, and serve as a better introduction to PvP as a whole. Errr 13:42, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

While it does kind of defeat the purpose of having the arena called "Random" arena, I actually think it would be a good idea. Shendaar 14:31, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

If a Monk's influence on the battlefield didn't, on average, have a MUCH greater impact than all the other classes then we wouldn't have the current problem. No one quits because they don't have a Necro on the team. We may have to wait until GW2 for better impact balance a class has on the field than the others - tht's if Arena.net recognizes and is determined to fix this problem. --arredondo 14:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I know quite a few monks who leave if they don't have a balanced team, and a curse necro is extremely useful. So distributing monks will not necessarily solve the problem. --Brainless Thought 15:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Beware, however, that having a monk primary does not prevent the player from having a different and unusual monk build that does not include healing. Part of the RA experience is trying things out, and restrictions based on class alone could force each class to play this game in a given way, which is probably not the Developers' intent. Economist 19:19, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that of now the engine lists resto ritus as healers as much as monks. However, stupid people don't see that and leave either way! --Ineluki 09:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Subpages

Hello Ryan, do you know that you can also create subpages in your namespace? Especially for the gladiator title discussion, it can be beneficial to create a subpage for that at User:Ryan Scott/Gladiator Title changes and it's discussion page User_talk:Ryan Scott/Gladiator Title changes. A good example of using subpages is Izzy's talk page with various subpages for different topics. For general questions, people can then use your 'main' talk page (this one) and for specific topics you could create subpages. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 13:57, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Good call. I'll try to set this up when (if?) I get a free moment. Ryan Scott 20:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

My point of View

Heres is what i think about the current system:

The system should be updated, no matter what option is the best;

The leavers should be punished, for leaving the game, i give an example -1 point for leaving the game during the battle or before start, not after finish the battle ( players may need to leave :P )

Afk'ers, also should be punished, because if the system is going to be updated to one the options, i think that the numbers of afk'ers will increase. People, that was leavers, dont want to be punished to leave the game if they dont like the team, so they only have 2 options, or fight with the team or simple afk and die quickly, this peolple should be punished

One of the most important things to do is to update the system of choosing the teams, example: sometimes in a battle is not fair, my team not have a monk, and the opposite team with 2 monks or 3, this means that every random team need a monk, to be fair.

Other think that should be keep it in mind is that, if a team have 5 consecutive wins they could be play against a TA team,that is not unffair, but sometimes, at 1st or 2nd game we are fighting against a TA team, ohh man that is completly unffair.

Now about the possible options:

Here i give my example about the current system, and the possible update system.

Actually, my account have 16 points, so i need 9 more points to get the 1st tittle, this means that i need to win 9 groups of 10 victories in a row to achieve the tilte, so "90 more victorys" to get it.

Option n. 1:

If this options was the one to be implemented my 16 point will be multiplied for 30, that will be 480 points, this means that i need 20 more points, so i need 10 more victorys in a row to achive the 1st title (5+5)+(5+5)=20, much more easier than the current system, because actually i only get 1 point for 10 victorys.

Option n.2:

so, with my actual 16 points, i get 64 points, i need 11 more points to get the first tittle, to get that points if i only do 5 consecutive wins, i need 55 more victorys to get the 1st title, but if i get 10 consecutive wins each time i play, for every 10 consecutive wins i get 3 points, so i only need 40 more victorys, harder than the 1st options.

Option n.3:

if this was the winning option i will get 80 points, to get that 20 points i need to, if i only get 5 consecutive wins, i need to win 100 more time in RA to get the 1st title, but if i do 10 consecutive wins i get 3 points, i need +/- 65 victorys,

Final statement

i like the first option, because atm im a ocasional player, i only do PvP(GvG or RA) in gw, i dont have much time to play, and RA always belong to people that are doing is first steps in pvp, or for occasional players, not to people who play 5 or more hours a day, for that people there are other things better than RA, so if this is for peoaple who are doing is first steps in pvp, i think would br gratefull to have a pvp title easy to get, something that i could get without staying hours in front of computer, And that's it, this is only my opinion about current state of RA and possible updates.(Supermax / talk)

And what about monks? By Lvsitani

Hi... In my point of view the main problem is the lack of monks and some times the excess of them...I think the most easy way to settle this (i think) is to some how Anet slove the problem putting 1 monk per team... normaly when i play has monk 80% of the time i have 1 or 2 more in the team... when i play has other char, maybe 2 out of 10 times i get a monk on the team... I think the main problem is that... you want to reduce leavers, random the teams better... and you have no leavers... then just blaim the monk if the thing goes wrong xD ...

Skilled Players vs. Dedicated Players

If the Gladiator title is to be given any importance at all following the proposed changes, I believe that a distinction must be made if it is supposed to be a Skill Title or a Dedication Title.

As it stands now, it is very much possible for a casual player that plays twice a week for, say, 3 hours a pop, to get more Glads than a kid that plays over 8 hours a day, simply because such kid lacks the stamina necessary for 10 win streaks.

That is because to win 10 times in a row means that you are able to consistently beat teams of more or less skilled players, while coming across 5 weak teams in RA and getting a glad point without any real challenge is a real common event. By playing 10 matches in a row you are far more likely to meet an opposing player which has a counter to (at least some part of) your build and dealing with those sticky situations is what being a Gladiator is all about.

If you reduce the win count required for a Glad from 10 to 5, you will not have 2x more points gained by the overall population, you will have like 100x more points gained. By allowing such a thing you are encouraging less balanced builds which unlikely to be solid in the long run but that can just pull off a 5-winner (as long as there is no enchantment removal on the other team!)

It is my opinion that if points are to be distributed to smaller streaks and this is to remain a Skill Title then the bonus points awarded to large streaks need to be extremely high compared to smaller streaks. You can be a Cartographer if you really want it, but not everyone is supposed to be a Gladiator - it should not be a grind, but a challenge.Economist 20:09, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That's the conundrum -- we want to maintain Gladiator as a skill title, but we want to make it more accessible also. My thought is you make the "slow gain" easy...5-win streaks isn't asking much, and give the lion's share of the goodies at streaks 10 and beyond. This way, high-skill teams can rake it in, while low-skill teams and players can pick away at it. I do want the title to be easier -- I don't want to devalue it in the process. Ryan Scott 20:46, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to discriminate players as far as gaining points is concerned? If a Gladiator Level 0 were to accrue one point every 1 win, a Gladiator Level 1 were to accrue one point every 2 consecutive wins,..., a Gladiator Level 9 were to accrue one point every 10 consecutive wins and so on then the players starting out would have an easier time, while keeping a sensible degree of challenge for the higher levels. Economist 21:04, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting approach. I'll toss that around and see if any ideas spark as a result. Ryan Scott 23:24, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Consider making the title progression linear if you're gonna pass that around. :) (Terra Xin 16:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC))

I don't think there would be an issue with balanced builds considering it is RA. Archangel Avoca 20:09, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Same title for TA and RA - this has been stressed throughout the discussion. I have personally had consistent 7 win streaks with a team of invincieles in TA. Should I get a Glad for that? I think not, because this build is not sustainable in the long run (one Gaze of Contempt and bye bye). Economist 12:06, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

My ideas

Teams on RA should be as balanced as possible. Not balanced teams are the main reasons why players leave the game. Teams with no healer, or 3 healers have no chance to win (or to complete rounds quickly).

I have a few ideas how to improve Random Arena chosing player system:

1. Number of characters of the same profession in a team should be limited.
2. Introducing a more advanced filter based on a main attribute would be an interesting option(i dont mean primmary attribute) e.g. no more than one Monks whose main skills are Protection Prayings.
3. Cap based on chosen elite skills (no more than 1 Shadow Prison assa, no more than 1 Zealous Benediction monk)
4. Cap based on character duties e.g. no more than 2 meele fighers (character with 3 or more meele attacks counts as a meele fighter), no more than 2 healers, spirit spammers, etc.

Beginners would benefit from these changes too as they would learn how to construct proper teams and what are the differences between PvP and PvE teams. On the other hand balanced teams are more likely to win their battles on Team Arena.

About Gladiator Title changes

Proposal 1 will make that title worthless. Proposal 2 and 3 seems more sensible. It would not make this title easy to achive but progress in gaining this title will be easier to be noticed. From Proposal 3 will especially benefit experienced players who need lots of points but can win a lot of battles as well.

There is one more thing.

To help beginners, they should not meet more experienced players in their first battles. I mean in first battle they should fight against another 'first battle team' (if possible), in battle 2-5 they shouldn't meet teams which scored more than 5 rounds. On the other hand, that could make players play only first 5 rounds to gain easy point (this can be prevented by incresed bonus at round 10 e.g. 3 (+2) points instead of 2 (+1) - according to proposal 3).

81.102.136.222 20:51, 14 August 2007 (UTC) Damra

i believe and hope anet would not try to make things easier just for beginners. te whole point is to get better by playing better competition. not to create favorable matchups so you can lvl up faster in the title...Penguincontact

Quite the contrary -- without new blood into PvP, the hardcore will slowly decline, eventually dying out entirely. This is why most hardcore-only games have a small cult following for a long time, but run out of steam quickly as far as an active, thriving community (Tribes, Tekken and Team Fortress are excellent examples of this). Hardcore-only ideals that span the entirety of the rewards base for a system will eventually strangle out the very community that likes it that way. Like it or not, hardcore players need new blood to continue having opponents. Matchmaking (as we see it within most competitive games) is a great way to allow players to have better games and learn at a reasonable pace, and keeps veteran teams from blasting through opponents who provide no real challenge. This fosters community and also improves competitive play. Ryan Scott 23:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Drek's Dumb Ideas for improving the RA/TA experience

Better Matchmaking Make the RA teams... less random, but not based on the monk class. I've had success running with teams with rits, paragons, eles, etc as healers. I've had success running with teams where every member had self-heals, but no dedicated healer was present. For example, the game could try to give each new team around 10 to 12 healing skills across all bars. (this would also reward players who take less defensive builds, since they'd be more likely to end up with a dedicated healer. That could be good for the gameplay.)

The game could use some quick, dirty matchmaking. Put RA players with high PvP titles on the same team, and face them off against other teams with high PvP titles. This is more fair for newer players (since they'd be more likely to face newer players). It could be a less frustrating more competitive experience for vet players. And it could extend into TA.

Give TA the better reward I think at least a few of the leavers are people trying to spike the entry timer to get on a specific team. Solution might be to make the reward for TA a bit higher, to provide incentive for teams forming in the proper arena.

The Move to TA The move to TA can be frustrating if you've come in with less wins than the rest of your team, esp since most RA teams choose to break up at 10 wins rather than go on to TA. Instead, a player with 10 wins should be reslotted back into the RA's random queue, keeping his streak (and again re-slotted at 20 wins, 30 wins, etc). If an entire team of four has 10 wins, an NPC could appear to allow the players to opt into TA -- if everyone opts in, the team moves to TA, otherwise everyone's reslotted into RA teams.

Replace Droppers, Leavers, Leechers, people who fail to load, people who sac themselves to death If a person drops during the countdown or within 30 seconds of the match, replace him with a hench for the duration of the match. For the new leech system, consider players who kamakaze or sac themselves to death in short order leechers.

Nerf spirit farms in 4 man modes only Spirits make for esp. boring matches in 4v4. A global effect across all 4 player arenas (including HB) punishing large concentrations of summoned creatures could make for more dynamic gameplay.--Drekmonger 23:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

To Whom it May Concern...(by Torp)

After looking at all three proposals, punching lots of numbers into my calculator, and using a little bit of logic, I have decided that I am in favor of option 3.

Here's why....

• Option 3 gives easy access to more inexperienced players by lowering the streak to 5, yet at the same time it rewards the more advanced players who play for streaks of 20 and 30 in TA.

• Option 1 is too vulnerable to leechers and "invinci tanks" and would devalue the title even with the 5 win bonus points. For example, i walk around today with more than 400 gladiator points under my belt,most people who see my title think wow that guy must be pretty good to win more than 400 streaks of 10, if it was to be changed to option 1 people would be thinking "oh look at that nubby farmer he must leechbot while he sleeps because theres no way he's that good"

• Option 2 is tempting, but unlike proposal 3, it doesnt give a substantional bonus to players winning in Team arenas. A team arena team wouldnt benefit any more than an RA team until they got to 10, and then they would only get 1 extra point per 5, I don't know about some of the other TAers, but with option 2 i would still spend most of my time in RA dominating less skilled players whilst i farm glad pts.

• With Option 3 it would allow the truly hardcore TAers like me to extend their titles further, while still allowing less skilled players to pick up a few points here and there, which would be ideal for gaining experience with the 1st few easier tiers of the title. It would also help to keep the more skilled players like me in TA (because of the consecutive bonus) so that there would be less pressure on the newcomers in RA

--Torp 23:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

This is where my head's sitting on it as well. Three is my favorite because it allows the hardcore to play hardcore (and be appropriately rewarded for it) while not increasing the barrier to working towards the title slowly. So far, this is the reason I think proposal 3 is the best solution to both issues. :) Ryan Scott 23:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Yeah some of these points wern't clear untill I was in TA today.. Im pretty much 100% up for Proposal 3 as long as there's an eventual cap applied after so many consecutives. Gogo popularize competetive TA ~_~--Berserk 02:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

i recommend its capped at 3pts (otherwise things get unreasonable) thanks for seeing it my way berserk =) ~~torp

I've been seeing several suggestions for VoD in RA/TA and have put some careful thought into the idea. As I recollected my memories of past grief builds...a rit spirit grief build (as well as many others) would only benefit from VoD, theyre already high defense would be barely neutrailized whilst their damage putput is increased, only boosting their chances to win. I suggest that an implemented sudden death be implemented at 10:00minutes instead. This would be far more advantageous to the non-grief builds, seeing as they wouldnt have to worry about hard-resses from the grief build --Torp 22:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 1 mixed with proposal 3

As a player I like proposal 3 the most, but I think #1 would be better for the game overall. RA is really important for the PvP-community, because nearly every PvP-player started there. With #1 maybe more PvE-guys give RA a try, because they go in with the title in mind and possibly discover "Hey, this stuff is fun, I want more of it" and go find a GvG-guild etc.

Could you mix #1 with #3 maybe and add the consecutive boni like in #3? So you get 1 point each win, additional +5 for 5 consecs, +10 for 10 consecs, +15, +20 (capped). This would reward skillful TA-players alot.

Number 1 would fight the cause of the whole problem with gladiator-points in RA, rather then it's symptoms - leavers. Then again, I really don't know what you are planning to do against leechers, because people *will* program bots that follow players and cast something from time to time.

Sorry for my english and thanks for finally trying to fix RA. --Selber 00:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC), PnH

Why I Prefer Option 2 Over Option 3

First off, let me just say that I don't think option 1 needs to be considered anymore what-so-ever. As has already been discussed it makes the title far too farmable and cheapens the whole experience.

Moving on, this is why I like option 2: I enjoy TA, but I am also human and don't enjoy sitting there for 40, 50, 60 game runs. Those take hours with little room for breaks in between matches. It just all becomes quite tiresome. What I want to be able to do is stop to take a break at 30 without feeling like I'm wasting the glad point bonus that I've grinded up, and option 2 allows that to happen. Making it to 10 wins and beyond for the double glads is an easy 20 minute task that most TAers can accomplish with regularity, and not something I feel anyone would really mind having to do over again were they to pause their run.

However, that 20 win grind for quadruple glads proposed in option 3 is a longer, more treacherous affair. I think option 3 creates a "shop till you drop" feel for the TA, that once you've reached 20 you'd be a fool to stop because you'd be giving up the quadruple glads you spent 40 minutes attaining. Maybe I'm just too casual, but I don't like that one bit. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Paris .

A random browser's thoughts

I've played a decent amount of RA and TA (r2 glad), and most of those points have been hard earned. I've had a lot of 8-game and 9-game streaks cut short by a superior team, and that makes the points I do have all the more precious. The current method of obtaining gladiator points should not be altered, as this severely depreciates the hard work that a great many people have put forth to scrape up points.

However, I do agree that a number of the other strategies proposed for reducing leaving in RA and running in both RA and TA should be put in place. The idea of making it less convenient to leave a game and immediately join another (when your original team was a full 4-person team) such as by implementing a set time-out period, could be effective. This still has the loophole of forcing a disconnect (as might be done using the Windows task manager), but it would at least create an inconvenience, motivating players to stay for the remainder of the first match. Alternatively, people that stay for the duration of a match and leave during the interval should still be free to do so. However, I don't think a penalty in terms of faction points (or some such thing) is necessary, as some people genuinely need to leave during a match, and should be able to do that without fear of losing points (only not being able to gain any from the current match).

The time limit on RA and TA games would be effective for deterring runners. 5 minutes is most likely too short, while 30 is clearly too long. I think 10 minutes would be a fair compromise in this regard.

The option of creating a separate title track for individual wins and gladiator points is also viable. As some people have previously mentioned, everyone starts out in RA. It is the nursery of many new builds, and a primer for the rest of the PvP game. For those less experienced, less committed, or who simply don't have the time or desire to earn gladiator points, another title track might be an added incentive to joint the fight. And it doesn't hurt the "prestigious" nature of the gladiator title track. Indeed, if the gladiator title track were devalued (so to speak) by making points easier to earn, I might abandon RA and TA altogether and work on the intact HA title. 74.249.209.199 03:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Just wanted to add another few note to my previous comments. The team composition in RA does seem to be skewed at times. This is mostly likely due to me noticing when my team has 3 monks, and paying no attention when it doesn't. It's something to look into, but I'm not nearly as concerned about it as the gladiator track. Also, it would be nice if I didn't have to reconnect when a new build for Guild Wars comes out that makes no changes to skills, attributes, or PvP maps. I've had a fair number of good runs interrupted by updates that turned out to have absolutely nothing to do with the PvP aspect of the game. Not sure if that's something that could be fixed, but it would make me, and the people that I've played with during those frustrating interruptions, rather happy. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:74.249.209.199 .

Ryan mentioned that there is going to be a time limit to stop runners. This probably means that both teams will be kicked out of the arena and I think that this is not entirely fair. In RA it happens occasionally that 3 or even 4 healers are in one team. With the new "deserter" system they may feel obliged to fight even more than before. Obviously, very few RA teams can overpower 4 healers. Similarly in TA it is entirely possible (it happened before) that a team that lost repeatedly against another team gets upset and brings 4 mimicry assassins not to win but to break the run of the team who beat them so many times. In order to avoid these situations the following rules could be implemented:

• the team with higher party moral wins after 10mins
• +100% damage after 10mins--Brainless Thought 13:16, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Getting the point: Fixing leechers

While this should fix the mess in RA, realize that this is going to make the leecher problem worse AGAIN in some zones by further preventing players from bailing out of games without a full team to get a real one.

Leechers need to be fixed, and the solution needs to punish inaction, not punish people who simply lose the match, which is actually punishing people simply for being on the same team as leechers just as much as the leechers themselves. Now those people are about to be punished further??

As long as you can click a button, go eat a sandwich, and come back 5 minutes later with more faction than you did when you clicked the button, especially the full faction amount for winning occasionally, people are going to leech.

World of Warcraft recently came up with a somewhat-awkward but effective solution to the problem: Users can be "reported AFK" which gives them a debuff lasting 30 seconds, and if they don't enter combat by the time it expires, they're marked with a new debuff that prevents them from gaining honor until they enter combat. Similar automated solutions would also be possible, the easiest just being not giving any faction to someone who's been within earshot range of the opening spawn point for the entire game, more complex ones being checks to see if they're actually attacking or using abilities on anyone.

Whatever solution is cooking, please ensure that it distinctly targets leechers and inaction, not the winning or losing team, or some other gross misfire. Riotgear 05:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The only problem i see with that is for people who are UaX. They dont need faction. Instead of faction, i would do glad points. Also, it shouldnt be combat, cause a monk doesnt do combat, he/she heals. It should be the use of 2+ skills. i do like the idea of reporting people AFK and giving a debuff (cant say hex/enchant, cause it can be removed by game mechanics).--68.193.12.177 05:15, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Title progression that rewards skillful playing, fixes leechers and gives incentive for newbies

This was my suggestion posted on GWO. I made several lenghty posts about the subject with reasoning behind changes. I believe this would help to solve leecher problem before it even has chance of happening.(link)

Many have been complaining that giving fame for simple one-round victories will cheapen the title, as anyone can farm that much and just restart instantly when team fails for any reason. For this illustration I'm going to use a "poor" player or leecher who is winning one match at the time by lucky shot and "good" player who is winning matches in 10-victory streaks.

Proposed system: (1 point per victory, for every 5 consecutives 5 points more)

Poor player: 1 win, loss 1 win, loss 1 win, loss 1 win, loss 1 win, loss --->Result is 5 points gained for 10 matches

Good player: 10 wins in row --->Result is 10+5+5 = 20 points gained for 10 matches

Now difference between skillful 20 points and lucky 10 points is not very huge, is it?

Improved system: (same point progression as fame)

Poor player: 1 win, loss 1 win, loss 1 win, loss 1 win, loss 1 win, loss --->Result is 5 points gained for 10 matches

Good player: 10 wins in row --->Result is 1+2+3+4+6+8+12+16+20+24 = 92 points gained for 10 matches

Difference between lucky 5 points and skillful 92 points is huge as it should be. The more wins you get in row, the better player you are, which is the basic premise of gaining gladiator points on old system. Because higher tiers require more and more points you actually have to consistently get 10+ or 20+ consecutive streaks to get them, because farming 1-3 point victories takes absolutely ages. That's how it goes in HA too.

Correct penalty system for leavers is done through hampering the potential to get gladiator points. As said before, some players are abusing the fact that you can leave and re-enter until you get a team you feel is capable of getting the maximum possible consecutive victories in row. Of course this isn't fair for those who stick with their original teams until they are defeated. There are also players who have slow connections and occasional disconnects. Solution is not to apply hard justice like limited access to service i.e. bans for leavers, because there can be false positives.

Players participating in Random Arenas should acknowledge the nature of random encounters and not try to twist the luck to their favor. Good random arena builds therefore pack a degree of self-reliance among other things if Monk is not present. This is the vision that should be encouraged.

How about this: Whenever player leaves a team before match has ended, that player's account receives a mark used for determining points gained for victories. For every 2 legitimate losses player's account loses one mark. This is used to clear the "reputation" and also negate effects of unintended disconnects. When account has 5-10 marks it can not gain any points for victories.
---> those who want organized teams are better off playing in Team Arenas.

Miscellaneous suggestions:
- To combat leechers 1-2 first victories should earn no points, but rather give them later for 2nd or 3rd victory.
- Victory of Death time at 10 minutes should be put into play to prevent stalemates.

Achievement comparison on old system and new system:
If 96 points equals ten consecutives, then first level gladiator would be 96 * 25 = 2,300 points on new system. Difference to existing system is that smaller consecutive streaks (as well as longer!) are rewarded better and system isn't so rigid ten-or-nothing.

When counting consecutive victories it would be like this: (percentages are to compare achievement to standard gladiator point on our current system)
1st win: 0/96 (0%) <---\
2nd win: 0/96 (0%) <----*see note
3rd win: 6/96 (6%)
4th win: 10/96 (10%)
5th win: 16/96 (17%)
6th win: 24/96 (25%)
7th win: 36/96 (38%)
8th win: 52/96 (54%)
9th win: 72/96 (75%)
10th win: 96/96 (100%)
15th win: 272/96 (282%)
20th win: 472/96 (491%) <--- **see note
50th win: 1672/96 (1741%)

• No points for first two victories to prevent leeching. Points for first two victories would be given at 3rd win.
  • This means that getting 20 consecutive victories is considered to be as difficult as getting 10 consecutives five times. (and rewarded as such)

--Toge 12:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

You didn't ask for my opinion but I'm going to give it anyway - I like what you have to say. I think it would be perfect... for TA. I still see people dropping to get a better team setup if streaks are rewarded (even with your marks system they get a few tries before they have to stop). RA should reward a straight amount for every single win and not reward anything for the first win IMO. It's random, and if you win more often then you are still winning more points than if losing or restarting. If the amount of points is trouble then double the point rewards for each battle won after the first. I really do like your ideas tho but I still think it would be better applied to TA than RA. -- Vallen Frostweaver 13:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I very much like the idea of getting your reward EVERY game, not only every 5th or 10th game, and i very much like the idea of increasing rewards for more consecutives. The idea that rewards shouldn't start with the first fight but after two or three fight is nice, too. However, I think your proposed system is WAY to extreme, there should be cap on how much points you get for one single game, and it should be low. Otherwise, one run of luck leaves you with an incredibly high amount of gained points, and that should not be possible. My idea would be something like this:

1st/2nd/3rd fight: 0 points

4th fight: 1 point

5th fight: 2 points

6th fight: 3 points

7th fight: 4 points

8th fight and every above: 5 points

The current amount of glad points needed for the title should be multiplied by 30, as you get 25 for a winning streak of 10 victories. Something like this would be far more balanced. -- TeleTeddy

interesting ideas, don't understimate the amount of thought leechers and "griefers" will put into making everyone's lives miserable. "Griefers" are the new term given by TA guilds to the people who bring complete guild groups of shadowform/echo/arcane mimicry sins, 4 rangers, 4 warriors, 4 healers, etc...Penguincontact

Why not just turn RA/TA into HA altogether? noty /disagree--Torp 22:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't see why this ideas would encourage grieving any more than the current system, or even worse, a system where you need 5 wins. And Torp, no changes to RA/TA are being made. We're talking about the reward system, and yes, why not turn it into a system similar to HA? It's the better system. Adjustments would be needed, of course, but that's exactly what this is about: The idea is, to take the HA reward system, adjust it to RA/TA, and use it. A system that rewards every 5th or 10th fight instead of every fight is much more luck-based, and can be very annoying. TeleTeddy 08:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry Tele but i laughed when i read the part about the consecutive being luck-based. Also, anything that affects RA/TA (even the reward system) is still a change to RA/TA. If you like the HA reward system then go right on and map over to HA because if they changed it to this they might as well just merge it into HA because thats what it will become. Not only does it devalue the title. To you it might be luck-based, but to most high rank gladiators like me it's nowhere close. Sure some luck is involved, but most of my wins come from pure skill. If you can't handle the competetive play then heres two recommendations

• practice alot and find a build that works

OR

• go back to pve and grind some dedication titles rather than complaining about skill titles

--Torp 08:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Let me explain what I meant with my comment: Fighting in the RA/TA, eventually you will lose. Maybe there are some players who never ever will lose but stop voluntary every time they play, but the vast majority of players will lose eventually, so let's have a look at them: If you're good, chances are you get a decent winning streak before losing, but if you're unlucky, you encounter the one team that beats you in your first fight. We are of one opinion saying that making many wins requires a good team, however, I don't think failing requires a not-so-good team. It just needs bad luck. Having this in mind, I don't think a team making 10 wins should get significantly more reward than a team making 9 wins, as the 'required skill' is nearly the same. So, I didn't say the glad title system would be completely based on luck, I just said the current system is MORE luck-based than the proposed system would be, and therefor I'd like the new system better. No need to rage. Ah, and I play RA/TA for the fun of it, the reward is secondary. So playing HA is no option, I don't pick the place I play by the reward that can be earned. ;) TeleTeddy 09:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

You guys are still forgetting the main focus. They want to change the focus from "I need to win the next X matches." to "I need to win THIS match." and by rewarding streaks more you are encouraging the prior and droppers. RA should totally be randomized every battle (never the same players with you) so as to make it really random and reward a straight amount - perhaps skip the first win reward though to annoy leechers. That would be truely random and exciting. -- Vallen Frostweaver 13:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Au contraire, mon capitaine, we do NOT forget the main focus. The contrary is the case, as the most important change with this (proposed) system would be, that every single win is rewarded (except for the first few to annoy leavers, as you phrased it) - this way players will (hopefully) focus on winning THIS fight, but on winning the next X matches. Rewarding (or giving bonus points) every 5th or 10th fight causes the whole issue here, because many people are playing only to earn these points. True, the (proposed) system would reward winning streaks better than single wins, but this is what every single system does, including the three proposed by Ryan Scott. You can't change that unless you want the gladiator title to be time-based only.

The idea to totally randomize RA sounds fun, but I think it would be rather impossible to get a decent winning streak with that system. TeleTeddy 15:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

yet, the totally randomize ra idea it is the only suggestion i see here that really stops leavers. And the only idea i have read against synch, destroying it completely. All progressing proposals even increase the problem of leavers. But the main advantage of the totally randomize is that it is a different idea so it can be combined with a proposal. It will be rather a lot harder to get winnning streaks yes, but that can be easily be adjusted combining it with an adjusted proposal, like the this one from Toge. Or even increase the bonus per win further. Actually that totally randomize ra idea would be a lot easier to model because the independence on events can be adjusted with a geometric distribution. I would just need a probability of winning per glad rank. I am starting to like very much the totally random idea, and i dont see any major downsides.

Well, there are downsides. However, I don't dare yet to say whether they are major. Firstly, implementing a totally randomized RA would mean you have to change conditions to reach TA. No Newbie would be able to get five wins in a row, at least I think so. Yet, that is no big deal, the TA requirement of 5 RA wins in a row could be easily removed, and I would consider that a benefit, as I never liked it. There is, however, a second issue. I always liked the fact, that there grew some sort of relationship between the team members, while progressing to 10 wins. Most of you RA players will know that, the first two or three fights no one will write anything, as it is wasted effort and quite annoying to chat ever again with random strangers. But getting the impression that this team will do it, team members will start to chat and fool around, having fun. I always liked that aspect of random arena, and I would miss it. In a totally randomized RA you would truly be a single fighter, up to now it's more like a random team, if you know what I mean - On the whole, I think RA would be less fun. To me, that is, as I think RA is no place where you fight alone, but a place where you fight, if there's no one on your contact list to play (PvP) with. TeleTeddy 08:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree awarding that so many points for a more than 10 win streak. I think that would create an over extended difference from ra to ta. Coran Ironclaw 00:54, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That's the point, you're not supposed to go all the way up the ladder in RA, that's title farming. Title farming doesn't distinguish between the persistent wammo in RA and the skilled team player in TA, title farming is lame. --Tankity Tank 01:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

You have a flaw there, just because you can go all the way up in RA, it doesn't mean that's a title farming. There is Skill in RA too. It is a valid pvp playstyle too. I would love to have the data to show with numbers (as i requesting on the statical analysis topic) I could show how much each proposal distinguishes between a low skilled level player from a high skilled. And most importantly there are many ways to increase or dimishing that "distinguishment". Actually here Toge create a big difference from proposal 1 increasing that distinguishment a lot, i wont disagree with that if i can't prove with numbers they are outraged, but I dont like the way you discrimine ra wanting to exclude it from the high tiers.Coran Ironclaw 01:43, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

AB, FA and RA don't require the same sort of social networking that any other form of PVP does. That makes them random, easily puggable and easily accessible to new pvp players. The competition in these arenas isn't of a consistently high quality solely because of that randomness. If I have a choice between playing with a team of people that I trust to play well and a team of 3 other random people I'm going to pick my team, and that means I'm not going to play random PVP. I'm not going to say that RA, FA and AB are invalid PVP forms but I will say that they don't take anything near the amount of team coordination or social networking that other PVP forms do (if only because the opponents are random too). Because of this I don't think RA, FA and AB should give the same high level of reward that TA, HA and GVG do. People who put time into forming skilled and coordinated teams should reap more benefits than people who just click "Enter Battle." You're obviously entitled to your own opinion but those are my reasons and I'm going to stick to them until I hear better ones. --Tankity Tank 02:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I understand your reason and in that form I agree with you, i think ta is a higher level of pvp, and it "should" deserve a better reward. But Ra is still a valid pvp gamestyle, and if it has a title it should be able to get their max in it. I feel it is completely unfair to ra players to have a title and not being able to get their high tiers. The best solution I think is to split the title as many suggest but that brings many other issues and ryan has stated they dont want to do that. So, in my opinion, anet commited a mistake of putting the same title to two very different things as ra and ta are, and we must stick with it, both must receive the same level of reward. Coran Ironclaw 02:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely that RA players should be able to max this title; however, RA players don't have to do the work up front (forming skilled groups, building and maintaining the kind of social connections that allow them to TA and win glad points) so I think that they should do so at a reduced rate. I've played a lot of TA in the past, as well as a lot of RA, and TA involves a lot more work if you expect to win consistently. The rewards really need to scale with the effort expended. --Tankity Tank 09:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

That more work needed to prepare themselves pays off already with the ability to win 10+ battles. Let's compare a high skilled ra player and a high skilled ta player. The ra player already knows his builds so he takes at most 5 minutes to enter battles, and he manage to get 40 consecutive wins, but since it is ra and everyone left at 10 streaks, he was forced to make 4 runs separately, he won 96x4= 384 points. Assuming a mid time battle as 3 min he took around 120 min. So that's 384/120 = 3.2 points per minute. Now the ta player contact his friends they delay 30 min grouping, and then 30 other minutes organizing their builds and then they manage to get 2 nice 20 consecutive wins, after that everyone leaves. With the current proposed system of Toge they would get 472*2=944 points. Assuming the mid time again as 3 min they took 60 min of preparation + 120 min of gameplay. So that's 944/180 = 5.24 points per minute. So they get more even considering their time of preparation. If instead of capping at +40 like fame we cap at +24 representing the 10 win-streaks limit, the ra player gain is the same. for the ta player he instead of 472*2 point he gain 336*2 obtaining 672/180 = 3.73 points per minute. They get more, even considering their time to prepare, even considering they lose once at 20 consecutive. The ra player got 40 consecutive without considering leaving time to get a nice team, etc... But it could get worse if we assume they got their 40 consecutive as the current proposal implies they gain 1272 points that's 1272/180 = 7.06 points per minute! vs 3.2 from the ra player 7.06/3.2 = 2.20 so the same point a very skilled ra player get in 2.2 months a ta player can get it in 1 month playing the same time. If we cap at +24 for 40 consecutive they would gain 816 points that's 816/180 = 4.53 points per minute vs 3.2 from the ra player. Still higher but reasonable and on the same limits! So I propose to cap the gain at +24 representing the 10 win streak limit on ra instead of a +40 that is proper only for a ha run. Coran Ironclaw 14:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

You've just demonstrated why a proposed ever-increasing points per win progression is a totally bad idea, proposal 3 beats it hands down. --Tankity Tank 21:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Good communications

I have no idea who came up with the idea of allowing the players to discuss the various proposals and have a word in on what will be the final solution, but good call :D

Anyway I prefer proposals 2 and 3, either one is fine by me, though at the moment I'm inclined to say proposal 3, with a cap of 5 points per 5 consecutvies (so from 25 consecutives onward, average gain = 1 per match). Seems about right to me. Disregard this, for my opinion on the subject, look at the Glad title thread at GWO.

In short: Proposal number 1 seems best, with a few minor edits: The first game does not award a point, the second game awards two. The points are doubled for TA, to support the gaining of the title there.

The post itself: http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5046600&postcount=71Akirai Annuvil 14:16, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't getting the perfect team be reserved for TA?

Right now I think that the biggest problem is that the glad title is shared between both team arenas and random arenas. People leave in random arena because they NEED to get a team that can consistently win ten times in a row. While it is probably only a small percentage of the gaming population, most of the people I have talked to see the "glad title" as a "jerk title" because the BEST way to earn it quickly is to leave over and over again... which penalizes people who actually WANT to play with and against random teams (like me).

I've always seen random arena as a fun arena, but it is also a test of single player skill because you cannot rely on your teammates to help you. In that sense it is a very serious arena. It makes sense to me to reward random arena players with a title that is more reflective of personal skill than team skill. The glad title is TOTALLY appropriate as is in the context of team arenas, where you CAN choose your party from the get-go.

Hence, I would stick with proposal one but make it into a separate title for random arenas. I wish there was a better system for calculating points earned based upon player skill (such as damage efficiency, heal efficiency, interrupt efficiency, etc.) but I know that such a system does not exist in Guild Wars at the moment and would probably take a substantial amount of work. However, the proposal one change is necessary, because as long as getting the "perfect team" is an important requirement for RA to get a title, people will ALWAYS continue to leave. It would be an interesting experiment at least!

Thanks for listening to our input Ryan!
--The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Tozen .

From my understanding Random arenas is a place where four random players are placed together and need to work as a TEAM to overcome obstacles and sticky situations. Of course it does involve individual skill, but if your team cant function together then your not going to make it very far. The same is true in Team Arenas, the only difference being the more organized style of play with strategies and voicechat. The thing with most leavers is that they already have maximum faction (as do I) and have no reason to stay with a team that isn't going to win. The only thing we can achieve from RA is glad pts, and well if we see horrible people on our team its M/select/enter/select until we get on a good team. Option 1 won't really solve the rage problem either because people will still want teams that can achieve the bonus points. I've noticed a lot of people are saying they want a title split, but it's not going to happen. Option 3, however, is the best method for what they are suggesting. A title split would create a distinguishable difference between RA and TA players. But if you think about it, option 3 will do the exact same thing. With option 3, the TA players (or at least the skilled ones) will gain a surplus amount of bonus points, pushing them farther above the random arenas players, and hence make that distinguishable difference in their titles --Torp 21:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

My vote is on proposal #1

I'm more of a PvE player, but when I pvp, I like to R/A or F/A. So far I've got only one point, but if I were to count all the times I've played in R.A and had the 10 consecutive wins, then I woulda gotten 6 points into the title. Proposal #1 would be great for somebody like me who decides to Pvp like once or twice a month, but spend most of their time in PvE. IMO, winning one battle is hard enough as it is, but then again I haven't R/A'ed in a while. If proposal #1 does become the new thing, I'd most likely spend more time in R.A. again. Makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time so much if I didn't reach that 10 mark, y'know?-- Zemmy 18:24, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

However the title would be totally devalued. It's not meant to be easy. It's one of the few titles left that are worth something. --ChronicinabilitY 18:37, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you're coming from, but I'm speaking for myself why I want proposal #1. For the way it is right now, you actually have to dedicate yourself to that one thing. Right now, I'm dedicating myself to all the PvE titles all at the same time, and I don't have all the time to pvp constantly in R/A to reach rank 1. You might, but I like to have the possibility to see it go up if I decide to just play a couple of battles a week. I think Gladiator should just be what it is, a title ... like all the others. Besides, R/A is like a starting ground for new players being introduced to PVP, and they should have an opportunity at this title as much as the older players.-- Zemmy 19:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

You are working hard on you're PvE titles and being rewarded equally. You have to vanquish 30 something entire areas etc which is no small task. If you farm allegience faction once again the title takes a lot of work. You have chosen PvE titles so you should be able to show that you are more dedicated than a PvPer who just farms occasioanally for some gold or black dye. If the Vanquisher title meant you didn't have to kill all the creatures in one go and could simple pick at it when you felt like it, mob by mob, it would become devalued, and someone like yourself who works hard for their PvE titles would be rightfully very annoyed at this change. This is what's happening to this PvP title if you choose option 1. --ChronicinabilitY 19:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I think Chronic put it pretty well, not all titles in the game are meant to be grindable. Some titles show that you have skill in a particular area rather than demonstrating that you can do something a bajillion times. If you award 1 point per win you've turned RA into an LB/SS'esque grind fest for glad points and you devalue the work that highly ranked Glad title holders have already put in. --Tankity Tank 19:33, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

thank you tankity tank. everyon in the ta community appreciates those comments. especially since anet refuses people to restart survivor titles after deaths, limitied defender of ascalon title to death leveling, and no solution to leechers in alliance battles and fort aspenwood. they should make other things more accessable before this... I also don't want to hear the comments that letting people restart survivor title as long as you can string together xp between deaths would ruin the purpose of the title either. since the gladiator title is... about being a gladiator through 10 competitive matches and winning.Penguincontact 19:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Not all titles should be grindable (though 10 battles for 1 point is a grind no?), all titles should be accessible. What the gladiator title does now is discourage newer players from playing in random arena due to the fact that they will most likely not be "skilled" enough to run with the so called big dogs. Maybe someone new to pvp will get a few decent groups, get a point or two here or there. More likely they wont, and will probably be discouraged by losses, and lack of anything to show for their efforts and decide to quit trying. You talk about the value of titles, but i think what is more important here is the value of players, and keeping them interested in new things, letting them feel good about something. Nobody wants to fall short. 9 wins, 1 loss, no points...no point. Keep more people interested longer and maybe youll get more skilled people playing. If nothing else, at least this proposal will give them some kind of reward for trying. Bringing new blood into this could turn out to be more positive for the community, and new blood means new ideas which could expand or change pvp builds all together. I think that is more important than your precious egos over some title. Doubt this will change anyones mind, felt like saying it anyways. ~Zem -- Zemmy 02:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I support proposal #1. It is good for RA. Give double points to those in TA, so the more skilled and organized guys get higher rewards for their effort.

Proposal 1 is the only one that will cut down on leechers

If people are leaving because they dont' think their team will get to 10 wins why would they stay with a team if it was only required to get 5 wins. I dont' really see the difference. Most of the teams that get to 5 get to 10 anyways, and for RA sake, to get rid of leechers proposal 1 would fix it. The best solution for RA leavers now would be for them to go make a team in TA, but obviously this isn't the case.

My only suggestion would be that you should make a new title, one for RA with proposal 1, and then one for TA with the current system. This would keep the current PvP base happy, while also rewarding the casual player.Archangel Avoca 20:03, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

First of all, they've already said they're not going to make two titles. Second of all, they are also implementing a time-based downtime for people who leave before/during battles (or something similar). This will easily cut down the people who leaved. Also, i think you have mixed up your terms, leechers are people who enter battle and sit afk hoping their team will get faction for them. Proposal 1 would only boost the number of leechers. And with the downtime for leavers there should be no problem. Therefore proposal 1 will only make it worse --Torp 21:40, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I think adding a sit out timer is a band-aid, and a potentially annoying one. I mean, if a guy wanders into an arena with no armor, a party hat, and candy cane daggers we should be able to quit out without penalty. Actual solution would be better matchmaking and team forming in the randoms. Proposal 4 is my favorite out of the lot.--Drekmonger 21:59, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

/agree. 68.35.91.2 22:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

wow, how many guys do you see with no armor, a party hat, and candy cane daggers? they made some items pve only, if that was an actual problem they would just make that stuff unavaliable to pvp play as well~torp

It's RANDOM arena's!!! By clicking the button Enter Battle you put yourself into a RANDOM team!! These shouldnt be filtered at all. Totally random. That is the point of Random arenas! And should you get the 1 in a million person who has no armor and a candy cane sword then deal with it!...it's not going to be a long battle so just learn not to rage so much. --ChronicinabilitY 22:33, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

/agree with chronic --Torp 22:41, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

if you encounter a candycane master, just have a good laugh and bodyblock the enemy so he can't be killed. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Rhydeble .

This is not the system that's intended to cut down on leechers and leavers, it's an accompanying change to another systm that will solve those problems. Ryan Scott 02:06, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Do you monitor RA? Could you? Statistical Analysis

I was thinking of making a statistical analysis of 6 proposals I see here. So, we could get the "real numbers". But I am afraid i need data, tons of data to be able to asure a really fair update on the gladiator title. What I need is a big sample of ra/ta runs including the following information: arena(ra/ta); Glad Rank; No.Streaks obtained on a run. I would love to have a sample of a week, but i think a couple of days would help also. well, actually i dont know how big is that sample but I need something like that. If you cant obtain that information or you decide it is too much work for it, then i cant do much of the analysis i wanted to do. =( If you can but you dont want to trust it to me, then please do something like this: create a frequency table of the # streaks per run per glad rank per arena, from it, obtain a stimated probability for the gw poblation of attaining a # streaks per run per glad rank per arena. P(5s|2r)=means probability of a glad 2 to get 5 streaks on a run.

For each proposal, evaluate a more fair corresponded points for each rank according to:

NGP = CGP/P(10s|#r) * (P(10s|#r)*PGP(10) + P(9s|#r)*PGP(9) + ... + P(1s|#r)*PGP(1)).

NGP=new gladiator points; CGP=current glad points; PGP(s)=Points given for the new proposal at S strikes; (#r)=gladiator rank;

Example: for evaluating the new necessary rank 1 points needed for proposal 1.

NGP = 25 * ( P(10s|#r) * 20 + P(9s|#r) * 14 + ... + P(1s|#r)*1).

with speculated values (just to exemplify):

NGP = 25/0.05 * ( 0.05*20 + 0.04*14 + 0.05*13 + 0.06*12 + 0.07*11 + 0.08*10 + 0.09*4 + 0.1*3 + 0.12*2 + 0.14*1 )

NGP = 25/0.05 * 5.54 = 2770.

(I repeat: I dont have the real values, so dont take this answer seriusly.)

That would be a really better aproximation of the points needed, keeping the same amount of effort as it is currently. Many people say that proposal 1 cheapen the title, but how that can be if the amount of points required for each rank can be adjusted to represent the same effort as it takes now? The real question is: How much less do a High skilled player has to grind in comparation with a Low skilled one?

Every account glad points would be updated using the same formulae, This way you are not only given to them the points they currenty have multiplied just by a number. You are also given to them the points for all posibles 9 strikes, 8 strikes and so on, based on data taken directly from the game. And that is what people are demanding. And i feel they have the right to do it.

You may find that result are different using ra data, than using ta data. And that is perfectly understandable because ra and ta are truly very diferent things. At that point it is up to you to use the ra values or the ta values or the mid value or apply different rules (proposals) to them or sapparating the title into two versions one for ra and one for ta like some people are suggesting.

NOW, with all that done, you can calculate a number of important parameters for each proposal, in order to make an objective comparison. and finally putting all parameters for each proposal in a conclusion table.

Parameters I think important: (all are aproximations using the probabilities values)

• number of matches for a r0 to attain the points needed to r1 (considering skill level 0).
• number of matches of difference for a r5 skill level player to go from r0 to r5 glad in comparison for a r0 skill level player to go from r0 to r5 glad.
• number of matches of difference for a r10 skill level player to go from r0 to r10 glad in comparison for a r0 skill level player to go from r0 to r10 glad.
• number of matches of difference for a r10 skill level player to go from r0 to r10 glad in comparison for a r5 skill level player to go from r0 to r10 glad.
• number of matches for a r0 level player to go from r0 to r1 plus a r1 level player to go from r1 to r2 plus ... plus r11 level player to go from r11 to r12. (life span of the title, this must be on a desirable window)

Multiple the difference of #matches with the mid time of a battle (i guess around 2 min) and you get the gameplay time spent. It might take like 2 years of gameplay time for a r0 skill level to attain r10, but only like 2 months of gameplay time for a r10 skill level player. (considering both start with 0 glad points).

and when you have all parameters in the table. Obtaining the best proposal shouldn't be hard. According to what you want Ryan: "I do want the title to be easier -- I don't want to devalue it in the process".

Finally, let me say that even proposal 1 can be tweaked to fill any parameters you want. For example, just aumenting the amount of points given when a 5-streaks is obtained or introducing variations like keeping the 1 point per win and increasing the next gain, something like proposal 4, or like proposal 5 (from Toge).

I have not done all this process, so this may require tweaks.

On my personal opinion, I think every win should award something even when it is so low the amount that you take months to get to rank 1 and cant even think on getter higher than rank 1 with just that. well, actually the very first win can reward 0 to prevent leechers, i agree that =p and proposals 1, 4, 5 and 6 (Skilled Players vs. Dedicated Players from Economist) are good examples of that. well actually the last one propose to be streaks required=gladrank. which is interesting. IGN Coran Ironclaw 23:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC) Guild:Guardianes Del Honor

this sounds like a hard complicated task that arenanet probably doesnt have time for, /disagree--Torp 23:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

If it is hard and complicated to you, it doesn't mean it is to them. Let them decide. If they want to do things the right way, they should be doing it, but that's just my opinion. Furthermore, I offered myself to do the analysis, but I cant monitor ra/ta to obtain the data I need. Coran Ironclaw 02:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

*Blink* ._. Ryan Scott 02:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Ryan, I am working on a detailed article explaining this idea and many other things. I am actually confronting the problem from the beginning step by step doing what in my opinion should be done taking advantage of statistical analysis. I also want feedback on the design guidelines. my free time is lowering so be patient, but at least I need to know if you will take a look at it and if you will consider the methodology. The link is Finding the best solution for gladiator title. BTW, I am just curious, do you have an statistics expert on anet? if not, how do you survive without one? =p (wait for my application in 2 years when I finish my Applied Statistics Master degree xD) Coran Ironclaw 03:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal #1 is best

Proposal 1 is the only one that I see as viable. First off, it requires more hrs than i have spent on gw to get max title(I have 4,100hrs). You would either need an insaintly good team, or hax to get max title. maybe be a robot.

Max title would be 200,000 points. Each 5 win streak = 10 points. So we have 200,000/5 = 40,000/2(we get 10 points for a 5-win streak). So 20,000 5-win streaks. Now lets just say you can beat every match in 3min. And instantly be in the next match. 20,000*15 = 300,000 min. So lets see hrs: 300,000/60 = 5,000hrs. Let's see how many days that is: 5,000/24 = 208. Months? 208/30=6.9333 Months. (not every month is 30 days) Personaly, I dont feel like spending nearly 7 MONTHS in ONLY ra/ta EVERY day. Note, this does not account for losses, disconnects, rages, endless matches, and not winning only 5-win streaks(ie lose on two wins). etc etc, things that make a match take longer. This whole title needs to be revamped. I say you change how we get points and make the titles take only 2 times as many points to get. then it MIGHT be viable to get high glad title.

So, in a nutshell.

• Gladiator title is already extremely hard to progress.
• It would take 7 months of 24/7-only-winning-never-leave-your-desk game play to get max title.(no eating, bathroom breaks, sleeping etc.)
• This title desperatly needs to be rethought.

Unless I missed something, this title is just rediculous. (edited for spelling issues and to check math :S) --Lou-Saydus 23:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

your flaw #1: you are judging the proposal only looking at the max title. You can't conclude "it is extremely hard to progress" with only that analysis.

your flaw #2: It is a pvp title, and as that it should be extremely hard to get the max title. It is reserved for very hardcore gammers. 7 months to get a pvp max title is very very low, the game has more than 2 years and nobody has reached the max title for heroes ascent and that was available since day 1.

So, looking at only the max you can conclude nothing because it can be a very valid option to put a max pvp title for say 10 years of gaming o more. I suggest you recalculate it better, not basing your judge on max titles.

Also (flaw#3), there are 2 very different things. The proposal of how getting points, and the points needed to get each rank. If the second part is flawed it does not imply the proposal of how getting points is. As Ryan said, the necessary points and updating conversion can be adjusted. Coran Ironclaw 03:32, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

First off, why would I judge a title off it's lowest tier or a mid-level tier?

And secondly yes, the rank title is broken too. and to add to that, rank is from heros ascent and battle in the hall of heroes, you can hardly compare hoh to ra or ta.

and thirdly, with that kind of reasoning, who decides what is "necessary" and what isnt?

I base my comment off of the idea that every person in the game should get a chance at maxing these titles, not only the super-hardcore player. --Lou-Saydus 05:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Because lowest and mid-level tiers are what progressing a title means. You cant conclude "it is extremely hard to progress" without analysing them.

you say "the rank title is broken too", but you are not even saying why. I can hardly compare hoh to ra or ta by gameplay. But i feel confident enough to compare the time needed for a hardcore player to max their reward title.

The game disigners are the people who decide what is necessary and what isnt, based on their game experience and the path they want to conduct the game to.

That's your flaw #4, it is not "necessary" for every person to max these titles. But it could be. That is a decision that only the disigners should answer. Do they want a title every person get a chance to max even when hardcore players are annoyed by that because it is devaluated?, or they want a max title even the most hardcore player would be proud to wear?? Since Ryan wants feedback you can post your opinions about the subject, but just like that: an opinion.Coran Ironclaw 12:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Very well then, if you want an analysis I would be happy to give you another.

Let's take title rank 1,2,5, and 8.

Rank 1 is fairly easy to gain as it is currently only 25 points. they want to multiply the current titles by 20 times their original cost(prop1). At 3min a round and never losing(same formula as before). We get approximatly 10 points per 15 minutes. That is 500/10 = 50 five-win streaks needed. So we do 50*15min = 750min/60min in and hour = 12.2hrs. Very reasonable. Sure it takes a long time, but the reward is being able to wear a nice new shiny title.

Rank 2: Following the same formula as before, 15min = 10 points. We need 1,000 points for this title. So it is exactly double the first title. So, 24.4 hours. Still reasonable, but hard to obtain.

Rank 5: Again with the same formula we get 15min = 10 points. But this title is much higher than rank 1 or 2. This takes 5600 points to reach. so 5,600/10 = 560*15 = 8,400min needed and in hours that is 140 hours. This is a long time to play, with this many hours of pure winning, I would think I would be rewarded with a pretty high tier if not, max title. But this is not even half way to max. The title gets harder and harder to progress.

Rank 8: This title takes very many points to obtain. 25,920 to be exact, if this proposial goes through. so 25,920/10 = 2,592 fifteen minute blocks = 2,592*15 = 38,880min needed. In hours that is approximatly 648 hours, lets see days. 648/24 = 27 days exactly. This is not 27 playing days, but rather 27 days of winning, playing the game literally non-stop. To me, this is a large investment, and as such i expect a great return. This is getting to the point of this title taking up time in real life, not just for fun. Even though, the hardcore would probably not mind doing this. But in my opinion I think this large of an investment should be recognized with more than just a high rank teir in a title, not max.

The reason Rank is broken: First off this title is even hard to start. If you don't have a great guild who is good at hoh and will let you participate, you can just forget it. PUGs never take people under rank 3, and most the time wont settle for less than rank 6. This is not so much the title's fault, but should not be ignored by developers who put these numbers into action. Rank is much more complicated thank the gladiator title because the way you gain points is dissimilar. But if you really want a detailed explanation why the rank title is broken, i would love to. But this is not the place to discuss that.

Although I will admit I dont see how wanting all titles to be feasible for all players is a flaw I will try to explain myself. True, it is the game designers choice to decide who gets what in the game. If they decide that not all players should be rewarded for this title, that is their own choice. But following with anets tradition of trying to give the more fair playing enviroment to all players(dragon festival redux) I would assume they would do the same for the relation from the pve community to the pvp community. After all I don't have to spend 7 months getting my cartographer title, nor my survivor title. Anet has always tried to base the game off of player skill, not time spent in-game. As such the gladiator title is "broken" in my view, it takes far too long to max or get mid-level. Sure it's quick for low level, but honestly, who wants a rank 1 title to wear around that isnt max? --Lou-Saydus 17:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I like proposal 1 most too. It gives less talented pvp players also a chance of getting this title. - Tulen elementti (talk) 07:45, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I've just read your argument and I'm curious about two things. First, does every title need to be easy and thus worthless in the eyes of other players? Second, why are you assuming that the max tier of every title should be gained in any particular amount of time? The last time I checked the box Guild Wars didn't make any promise that "every title is accessible to every player in a short period of time." The problem with the kind of approach you're suggesting is that it devalues titles skill based titles in one fundamentally important way: If I know that you can get a gladiator title just by farming for it I won't respect you for having that title. If I know that the gladiator title is hard to get and only people with experience and a consistently good team can get the title then I will respect you for wearing it. Right now I can assume that someone with glad 6 probably has a pretty good understanding of 4v4 skirmish and that they are capable of adapting to a changing meta. If you setup the title ala proposal 1 then you can't make these sorts of guesses at all, in fact I'm going to assume at that point that the guy wearing a glad title is some dude who farmed scrubs in RA for a week or two to get his rank. --Tankity Tank

ps: For the record, fame isn't exactly broken either. Rank tells you how much someone has played and won in HA, it doesn't tell you what build they ran or how good they are, it tells you that they know the maps and the meta. They might have run ritspike or pugged with r11+ for 1500 points of that fame but during that time they probably learned something about playing in HA. If anything gimmick builds devalue rank by making it easy, the same thing proposal 1 would do. --Tankity Tank 19:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Easy-to-get low ranks, hard-to-get high ranks

This talk page is getting a bit crowded - maybe a forum is a better forum for discussion after all? ;)

"That's the conundrum -- we want to maintain Gladiator as a skill title, but we want to make it more accessible also. My thought is you make the "slow gain" easy...5-win streaks isn't asking much, and give the lion's share of the goodies at streaks 10 and beyond. This way, high-skill teams can rake it in, while low-skill teams and players can pick away at it. I do want the title to be easier -- I don't want to devalue it in the process. Ryan Scott 20:46, 14 August 2007 (UTC)"

From this I gather that ANet goal with the upcoming change is twofold: 1) Accessibility of lower levels of the gladiator title and 2) A reduction of leavers in RA. Changes might come to recude runners/griefing/deadlocked matches as well all leeching, but these are not the primary goals.

Personally, I think you are looking the wrong way at how to make the title skill-based with a lower step in. Why not do something like this instead: For Glad1, all 5-win streaks earns you a point. For Glad2, all 8-win streaks are rewarded. For Glad3, count all 11-win streaks etc. (These are just wild stabs in the dark, other intervals may be far better)

This will make the lower levels of the title very easy to get, whereas the high levels will demand a very, very strong team in TA. Another interesting feature of this kind of system would be that it would be inefficient to do RA in order to achieve a Glad3 or higher - Winning with an RA team in TA is not easily done. This will make the farming of RA a passing thing for every true title grinder and might in fact reduce the leaver problem greatly in itself.

Paired with a leaver punishment system, I believe that this would be sufficient to address both the issues you see with RA/TA. 85.229.14.239 23:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

That only makes it harder for the high-ranked players and we'd all just quit gg /disagree --Torp 23:57, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The idea is interesting, but this can only work, if the points needed for higher ranks are reduced (significantly). I have no reliable data, but my guess would be, that the vast majority of players gain their gladiator points by winning fights in the random arena. Besides, being gladiator rank 2, i would be very displeased with this change: Everything I achieved so far would now be much easier to achieve - everything i have yet to achieve, would be much harder to achieve. ;( TeleTeddy 08:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

This point has been discussed previously with Ryan in a post above (Skilled players vs Dedicated players). Economist 12:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Back on Track

• Sorry to break it to you guys, but as i remember this thread was created to discuss and evaluate the 3 PROPOSALS I'm sure your suggestions are appreciated, but the three proposals all offer an abundant variety of new methods. Instead of proposing new ideas I think many people as well as myself would just prefer you commented or suggested changes to the current proposals.

• ALSO please hop around and READ some of the other posts before you repeat something thats been said 3 or more times already. you can then read player responses and maybe some of your questions will be answered so things don't have to be reexplained every single time. thanks --Torp 00:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

The top of the page could use a big fat notice box to get people into the existing discussion instead of re-stating things that people have already hashed out.

Note: Please READ the existing discussion before commenting. It's more helpful to support current arguments than it is to repeat them again and again and again...

Something along those lines would probably help. It's your talk page Ryan, what do you think? --Tankity Tank 00:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

.... ..... .....

Just so people just finding this page from the forums aren't confused:

• Torp is not a moderator. There are no moderators, at least not the kind you'd find on a forum.
• This is a discussion page for Ryan Scott's user page. Generally, that means Ryan is more or less "in charge", and comments are directed at Ryan Scott. However, that's just being polite. In truth, the policy for user page discussions allows any non-destructive edit, so long as it isn't abusive (such as insulting another person) or breaking copyright. Etc.

A more controlled discussion would have to occur in a more controlled environment, such as a moderated forum.

I really appreciate all of the a.net devs who have made themselves active on this wiki. I can't think of any other major game studio that does anything even remotely like this, and it's a privilege I hope people don't abuse. That said, technically there is no policy that prevents any sort of discussion on this page.

Again, just being clear for those who are new to the wiki. Torp might possibly correct as far as utility goes. I'm agnostic on that point.--Drekmonger 00:38, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I never said i was a moderator, I was simply making a suggestion--Torp 00:49, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

feedback is feedback. up to them if it is relevant. just throw ideas out there.Penguincontact 01:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Drekmonger Torp, although you do make some valid points regarding the size and contributions currently on this talk page, it is User:Ryan Scott who has the final say over how this page has to be set up. And so far he has replied to other users' proposals, therefor allowing them to be put on this page.

Personally I would like for him to make this discussion a subpage of his talkpage, but I already pointed this out to him here.

Please don't try to manage someone else talkpage, after all, it is Ryan's decision on how to collect information or comments. He chose this method and perhaps didn't realize how it would be used before he created it, but that's a learning experience on wiki-stuff for him. --  (CoRrRan / talk) 10:54, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not trying to manage his talkpage. I was simply making some suggestions like everybody else --Torp 16:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I think most people are aware that it was just a suggestion. I was just worried that the people coming in from the forum links might think otherwise.--Drekmonger 19:29, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I like an unmoderated discussion just fine, although it's correct to assume that supporting current arguments or proposing new points is useful, where repeating them is less so. Ryan Scott 02:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Does Gladiator need to be "accessible"?

I don't understand why you want to make the title more "accessible". Titles are meant to be a mark of prestige; a symbol of some accomplishment. Especially since there are no game benefits tied to the title track, "casual" PvP players do not need or deserve Gladiator ranks.

Consider my circumstances: I am a casual player (I play for about 10 hours on an average week, frequently less, seldom more), I play both PvE and PvP, and I do not leave RA matches when I am on an unbalanced team or even when other teammates leave. Somehow I have managed to achieve R2 Gladiator, and I like to imagine it's because I have a bit of skill and patience. Currently it is possible for a good, casual player and a mediocre, frequent player to both become Gladiators. I don't understand why the title should be extended to mediocre, casual players. If anything, it seems like making it hard to achieve any progress in Gladiator (like the current system does) rewards players who try to improve their own skill level rather than just grinding short win streaks.

Look at it like this: if option 3 is chosen, then lower levels of Gladiator become worthless to the hardcore, and the question is now not "Can this team get 5 wins?" but instead "Can this team get 10, 20 or more wins?" and nothing is solved. Casual players will achieve low levels of Gladiator that don't garner any respect, and hardcore players will still feel the need to find that perfect team build for a long winning streak because picking up single points from five-win streaks will still not be an efficient way to gain ranks. That's the reason people quit: to maximize their efficiency.

A guild mate had an idea in another thread that seems simple and effective to me. Here's my take on his plan: award 1 glad point for 10 consecutive wins in RA. Award 2 glad points for 10 consecutive wins in TA. Increase Balthazar faction rewards in RA (by 25% or even 50%).

Now, the most effective way to get glad points is not to repeatedly quit in RA, but to compete in TA. RA still offers rewards for good players, and the increased focus on faction means that the focus in RA shifts to single kills, single victories, and flawless victories. Ryan, you have said on this page that faction is a tertiary reward, but if you make faction the point of RA, then there is still reason to play, but less reason to leave and invoke the anti-quitter penalty. Additionally, increased faction lets new/casual players more quickly gain access to a large enough range of skills to become effective and flexible in TA. And good teams are still rewarded in RA with a glad point, but they are rewarded MORE if they try to stick it out for another 10 wins in TA. Swampangel 15:06, 16 August 2007 (UTC)swampangel

This is actually what I enjoy about prop 3. It's not intended to be prestigous to get Glad 2 or 3 under this system -- it is so to get 11, much in the same way high ranking HA players don't care about the R3s. The goal is to give a reward for those players -- seperating the titles (we did entertain the idea, but it comes with far too many problems of its own that we didn't feel we could solve properly. I agree -- casual/mediocre players should not get the prestige of the title from the Arena crowd -- that's not the goal. The goal is to make accessible casual PvP rewards. Right now, the only thing we reward with in PvP what isn't completely exclusive is a title, as we all know faction isn't much of a reward these days. Ryan Scott 01:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Is Gladiator Prestigious?

Several posters have already commented about the fact that devaluing the Gladiator title would be detrimental because it is one of the few titles in the game that rewards skilled players. Yet I've always found it strange that it rewards, in equal measure, someone who plays TA and earns their points that way, compared to someone who's earned it through RA.

I think someone who gets their Glad points via TA *is* a very skilled person, and is indicative of a decent level of skill regardless. But someone who earns their points via only RA... it can be very hard to say. As an example, you're a good player and have three rubbish players - you're not going to get the Glad point in all likelihood. But you can be a pretty average (I'm being polite) player in RA, but end up with three very good team mates, and walk your Glad point(s). Sometimes you don't even need 10 wins in RA, if half the teams facing you don't have monks, but have raqequitters... Even four very average players but with one monk in the team, could (and frequently do) come up against nine teams without monks and maybe only have to scrape through another average team (and yes, I know a good team without monks will wipe them anyway). After all, RA used to be a soft intro to PvP, until Factions came along...

What I'm trying to say is that I really think that the title track should be split between RA and TA anyway. (And yes, I know they've said it won't happen, but they wanted to know what we thought was best...) Until that happens the title is going to stay devalued. You could argue that changing the system to one of the proposals would dilute the prestige of the Glad title, but I'm suggesting that maybe that argument is borne as much out of resistance to change as anything else - I've always found it incredulous that you get the same recognition for winning 10 in a row in RA (rewards luck more than skill in general) and 10 in a row in TA (rewards skill generally speaking)...

As a very very basic illustration, in a four man team you contribute 25% towards the end result of a match. Whether you play well enough to contribute 5% towards your team's cause (ie not so good player), or 20% of your team's cause (pretty good player), it still pales into insignificance compared to the 75% that the other three *randomly* assigned team mates are going to influence. (Let's not start on syncing :P) That alone takes a large element of the "skill" factor away from it (not all, but a sizeable chunk). As I said, it's a very loose illustration. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:81.6.241.89 .

Er, in your organized TA team we can't find out your contribution. For all we know it can be 5% and your friends always take you with them. If you go to RA, you won't have that luxury, you have to play with good and bad players because it is random, so whatever your contribution is to the team, it will ultimately determine the success of your runs. There are numerous but entirely different reasons why the competition is stronger in the RA spin-off arena (TA) than in RA. --Brainless Thought 00:49, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I hope your kidding Brainless Thought. This is the type of mentality that is gonna come into the "new" TA. exploiting spikes that only work in 4v4, and defensive builds. Never been on a RA team reach 50+ wins. Been on many TA teams 50+. There is no arguement in the talent between the 2. It's the fact that changing the titles will draw more griefers to obtain 1 point. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Penguincontact .

RA and TA aren't even really PvP... Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 21:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

orly? Go troll somewhere else readem.--Tankity Tank 22:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Yup. TA isn't real PvP. that is why it's only the 2nd most revered title behind champion. even then ATS has diluted the champion title. mostly because it is absolutely impossible to get unless you've got a way into the inner gvg circle. the glad title rank 5+ is still supreme.--The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Penguincontact .

Don't waste your time feeding the troll, he does this on a lot of talk pages just to provoke a reaction --Tankity Tank 04:47, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Lol, sure...I am a troll! Don't feed me! lmao Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 05:01, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

In my opionion only an inexperienced player that loses all the time would think that RA and TA wasnt real PVP --Torp 07:05, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

That is very nice, and I appreciate you sharing your opinion. However, I would like to state that RA/TA are poor examples of PvP, and are on similar (if not lower) levels then AB. I don't see many people getting into guilds by stating "Look, I am fucking glad 1. I must have skills!" No you don't see that now, do you? Mind if I upload my picture, where I win with Flare/Echo/and Arcane? It is because I am a supposed "Troll". Now like many others have said before, "Don't fucking feed me." Ty, and have a good day! Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 07:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

That is very nice, and I appreciate you sharing your opinion. However, your opinion is retarded. Ty, and have a good day! lmao. Scrub (talk*gwwcontribs) --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:86.15.239.219 .

That was probably the dumbest response, I have ever heard. Not only are you unable to come up with anything that is viable/witty, you merely copied what I said lol (as well as my signature). I am so happy that you can cut+paste, and use both your eyes and hands! (/sarcasm) Well, at least you proved my point (Being that you are the perfect example of a Scrub lulz...) and I ty for it. Have a great day! Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 01:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

GWW:NPA You're very close IMO. --ChronicinabilitY 02:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Explain. I have done nothing but insult his creativity, or lack there of. He has openly called me a scrub, and I have merely recipricated the favored. If you are offended by Sarcasm, by all means let me know. Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 04:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aiming it just at you, but definately including you. Just think a little more about what you say, and try and remember that this is someone's talk page. --ChronicinabilitY 05:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Nor was I aiming at poor Ryan here. He unfortunately just has to listen to people complain about leeching. Now upon the subject of RA/TA, why not just sever the connection between the two entirely? If RA is about introducing people to PvP, then why must it include a title? That in itself promotes leeching. Make Gladiator a more respectable title, by forcing teams to be coordinated in TA. RA should just give Faction (perhaps more, so as to get people acclimated faster?) Without the chance of a title, little, if any leeching will occur. Take it as you will. Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 20:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Spamming my glad title to get into a guild may be more viable than spamming the max rank on the AB title. just my opinion though.Penguincontact 07:38, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Readem. His comment was a good response. Comparing TA or even RA with AB is like comparing RA to top GvG. Anyone GvGing would get insulted. So, since we who play 4v4 (and other PvP) and see how much advanced is than PvPvE AB (run in circles kill NPCs, rinse repeat) - since we get insulted - i can understand his comment and support it. Servant of Kali 22:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Woot, someone agrees with a radical "Nub"! Readem Sorry, I'll stop trolling now. 05:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Yet another idea

This page is almost full but I am not certain the steps that are planned against the leavers will be successful. (Leavers will just leeroy to evade the penalty.) Link gladiator points to the sum of the wins in three consecutive runs instead of single runs.

• 1 point for 10 wins (in 3 consecutive runs)
• 2 points for 15 wins (in 3 consecutive runs)
• 3 points for 20 wins (in 3 consecutive runs)
• ...(you probably have lots of statistical data so you can set the numbers more accurately to make it "accessible but also skill based in the higher tiers")

It does not matter if the ten wins are made from 8+1+1 or 3+3+4 runs, as long as it adds up to 10, a point is granted. It is always the last three runs which counts, so every time the player enters the arena the wins from the earliest run are deleted and replaced by the new run. One run can be used up to three times for glad point(s): after the last 3 runs were "cashed" for glad point(s), the last run is deleted. This way, every single run may count toward a possible point and leaving will not pay off because a leaver would just decrease his chances for his glad point. Everyone will want to fight in every match because every match may count toward the point even if the team is relatively bad and they can only win once or twice. --Brainless Thought 15:07, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice contribution, this sounds very interesting, I think this and the totally random ra are the only proposals here that actually reduces the leavers instead of encouraging them. I would make tweaks however, but I dont know all well yet. But for example deleting the earliest run to be replaced by the current one shouldn't be the way to go. Since players will still leave a lot until they get a 10 consecutive win run and then only the next 2 will be taken seriously. It would be a lot better if every 3 runs no matter how well or bad they were are automatically cashed for glad points, that way if it is your first run and you decide to leave a team, automatically you have to enter and leave another 2 times to reset your counter, this sounds like encouraging leavers but actually this means a leaver will have to waste 3x times each time he leaves. Furthermore, you can make it every 5 runs instead of every 3 so leaving is no longer an option. And with this proposition you have plenty of options of points to be given according to the sum of win streaks per 5 runs, but they must be chosen extremely wisely to not unbalance the title. Coran Ironclaw 16:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't fix any problems anet thinks there are with the gladiator title. Under your proposed system anet would have to multiply each rank by 3, and it would still promote broken builds.Penguincontact 07:35, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Which are the problems you mention this wont fix?, what is a broken build? why do you think this will promote it?Coran Ironclaw 00:55, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

If every single run counts toward the title, that encourages grinding and it would be difficult to make the higher tier glads more skill based. It is hard to predict how gamers react to rules, and you may be right that some people would still leave, but together with the planned "deserter system" I think this would be enough to drastically decrease the number of leavers (and leeroys!). Indeed, 5 runs are better against leavers than 3, but 3 has more fluctuation so the reward system can be set more accurately, and with 3runs you always have a realistic "target win number" that you have to reach for a point, which may not be the case with 5runs.--Brainless Thought 19:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

I fail to see why taking every single run into consideration encourages grinding manking it difficult to differenciate high skilled from low skilled players. (btw the concept of encourage grinding is not clear to me, do you say it forces grinding instead?)

"It is hard to predict how gamers react to rules" Most gamers will always look for the fastest and easiest way to obtain their rewards.

"but 3 has more fluctuation so the reward system can be set more accurately" actually i think the other way, since 5 has less fluctuation it will be differenciate more (less dependable on luck) high skilled player from low skilled ones.

"which may not be the case with 5runs" why not?. Please explain better the system you have in mind.Coran Ironclaw 21:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Grinding: Nvm, I misunderstood your suggestion above, sry. Fluctuation in 3 or 5 runs: yeah more skill based, you are right, but this system it is already a lot more skill based than it was and I am not sure if Ryan wants to move the title into this direction (I think not so much). Realistic "target win number" with 3 or 5: as we go above with this number, the sum of your wins will differ more and more from the wins required for a glad, but perhaps I exaggerated this one a littlebit, if it is 5runs then I guess glad point will come at lower wins, and it wont be a huge difference. --Brainless Thought 01:08, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Anet has stated that they plan to introduce a separate anti-leecher and anti-leaver system. If that comes to be reliable i would start giving 1 point for 1 total wins each 5 runs, of course that 50 wins for 5 runs would get a large number (for example 250). I dont like to set numbers speculating only. If the system comes to not be very reliable then you can tweak the system to not give points for very few winings to prevent leechers. Another thing I started to think about is what if instead of runs we think on matches instead? Every 10 matches you will be rewarded for the total wins you accumulated, for example: 1 total win=1 point, 2 total wins=3 points, 3 total wins=6 points, 4 total wins=10 points, 5 total wins=15 points, 6 total wins=21 points, 7 total wins=28 points, 8 total wins=36 points, 9 total wins=45 points, 10 total wins=70 points (bonus points for being perfect score). I repeat that is an example, not the real numbers i suggest to be implemented. That way you simplifies the system a lot, since you only has to watch for the last 10 matches and not for the last 3 runs. It will be enough to include a announce everytime you win a match below the "you have won xxx faction for winning", something like "you have a total of x wins on the last y matches", when y = 10 instead of the previus you receive "you have won z glad points for your x wins on the last 10 matches". That way every match is very important to all players, leaving will not be an option, players will stay at least until the match finishes or they really lose all hope to win it. Coran Ironclaw 04:25, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Great idea. I was thinking in runs (not matches) because I wanted to change the system as little as possible. But counting matches is very simple. I would not give any point below 5wins (be at least average to get a single point!) and I think I would sum 20 instead of 10 because of TA (or 20-30 in TA with higher bonus). -- Brainless Thought

Noooo, TA mechanics already differenciates a lot high skilled players vs low skilled players, there is no need to increase it there, especially when you will be complately unfair to RA high skilled players. 10 matches if fine, if a TA player does a run of 30 consecutives wins then he will get 3xpoints, (210 points according to the numbers i exemplified with) i feel that is enough reward (still just speculating...). Coran Ironclaw 19:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 1 will mean more leechers

It seems to me that proposal 1 will only serve to make obtaining the gladiator title way too easy. By that I mean that by implementing this option, there's a risk of massive amounts of leechers joining the random arenas in the hopes of getting easy gladiator points without actually doing anything. This could be a problem.

To me, option 3 seems the best because it rewards skillful players who are in it for the long run.

­­ Chicounet 00:26, 19 August 2007 (UTC) chicounet

If there were a way to decrease points, just by making leavers lose 1 point would dramatically decrease leavers. MithranArkanere 17:29, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

That seems a bit drastic, maybe if they lose a point after they leave like 5 times. Some people might need to go to do something else.--Nick 02:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

The multipler of current points should NOT be a CONSTANT

One thing I am 100% sure is, old gladiator points are worth much more, no matter which proposal is taken. As such the constant conversion is not fair imo. Make the multipler dynamic, otherwise it's just a linear conversion and turns existing high rankers into grinders instead of skilled players.--Hydralisk mk2 16:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but it is hard to arrive a suitable non-linear conversion just speculating. So, I am working on a proposition based on statistical data. On the other hand, the amount of points required to each title does have little to do with the relation grinder-skilled. That is determinated by how the points are given. The real reason to not making a linear conversion is to maintain the same level of effort required to acheive each rank as it is now, in order to be fair with all the gladiators that have already invested their time and got their rank. Coran Ironclaw 21:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Define "existing high rankers" --Tankity Tank 04:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Proposal 1 with some mods

As a casual PvPer and GL of some that are not so casual we have come to a consensus that Proposal 1 ,with some slight changes, would be the better of the options presented. 1. Enable point gain on the second win for both RA and TA. 2. Leave the "Proposal 1" point system for RA intact but change TA point gain to give higher rewards i.e. 2 points per consecutive win after 5 consecutive wins or possibly give double reward for a flawless win. 3. /kickvote is not an option as it would create a biasd and hostile play enviroment regardless of any good intentions, it would be misused. 4. Leaver "Time Out" this is a good idea but 30sec is to short and 2min is too long how about 1 min. If you got disconnected it usually takes longer than a min to get back on and if you left it serves you right. If you are leaving a team repeatedly to try and make the best team to get your points, then you have missed what RA is about..."Random", take yourself over to TA. Just like any Pvp event AFKers are always a problem, regardless. If you win you still get a point and then after the battle at the appropriate time you can map back with no big loss. 5. Disable the direct to TA after 10 conecutive wins and make it go directly back to the RA holding area. After 20 consecutive wins a TA team would be sent back to the TA holding area with a message displayed in the chatbox proclaiming their achivement in the TA holding area only. The idea behind this is to make TA more appealing where afkers and leavers are not a real big problem. The fact of the matter (in my opinion) is that, regardless of any changes you do or do not make, you are not going to please everyone.

Concerning the matter of "grinders" and "skilled players" there is no difference concerning titles...every title in Guildwars is a grinding title....hours of doing the same thing just to obtain that single title. I personally do not PvP much, I will admit that at least, the reason being is that every time you hit that enter battle buttton you are taking the risk of your play time to contend with every leaver that comes to the party. When I do lower myself to RA I have never left a battle, even if I am the only one of my team that didn't, just to spite the other team (hey I might kill them all). It is also extreamly frustrating to carry a hodge podge team to 9 wins just to be shut out by a miriad of different reasons with no gain.--Hagarr 17:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)Hagarr

I might quote your last sentence. Coran Ironclaw 18:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

For deserters, I would rather see a scaling timeout, starting at a minute and doubling. i.e. First leave is a one minute wait, next one two minutes, next four minutes... Reset it every 24 hours or something that you don't leave a match. Someone that gets a disconnect once or twice won't be bothered too much, but a chronic leaver won't last long. (And as for a chronic disconnecter, aren't they causing more trouble for their RA teams than good anyway?) PeteVasi 17:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Multiplying effect

Multiplying effect

As you choose any proposal it will not reflect Gladiator title track experience as it s now. As now in the world of Guild wars Gladiator rank 3 equals Hero title 6 (multiply by 2 to get hero title from gladiator). You need about 10-20 eneterings to Random arenas to get 10 wins stack, which equals 1 Gladiator point. All players with Gladiator 3 that I know have about the 2 mil baltazar faction earned... Tranformation as you offer will highly decrease prestige of this title track and would be most unfair against us players that are concerned by this title. All players that i know would prefer Gladiator r6 to Hero r12

So my opinion is:

1) Leaving is problem of RA not TA, so leave GLADIATOR TITLE as it is in TEAM ARENAS with no changes

2) Start NEW TITLE TRACK in RANDOM ARENAS (Concider possibility that 10 win stack in RA still could award you 1 Glad point)

But if you really want to transform Gladiator to make people be more motivied to not leave in RA, make the multiply difference much bigger then as you propose it now as I mentioned before. You need 20 enetering to get a stack. That s about 1/2-3/4 hour approx.

LifeIsCruel 23:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)LifeIsCruel

Toward a Balanced solution, hopefully

A Balanced Solution

So as to avoid appearing unbiased, I will state up front that I have ~250 gladiator points.

So, I am not naturally inclined to make it easier to accumulate these, having worked considerably within the current system.

This being said, I understand the reasoning behind the changes, and I am willing to try to think flexibly for the benefit of all involved.

All of the suggested changes will make it not just substantially, but exponentially easier to get points. I currently average about two points an hour when playing, and I usually stay with every team. Most teams I get either 1-2 wins or 5-6 wins. However, as you progress, the chances of fighting a very good team increase, so the longer you are in the system, you face two relatively steep obstacles:

1) the possibility of opposing a great team

2) the possibility of opposing a team with incidentally specific counters to your team

So, as I see it, these operating in conjunction with each other create a scenario where it is twice as hard to get six wins as five wins, and again, twice as hard to get seven wins as six wins.

If I am even marginally correct, then all of the current changes will:

1) Massively devalue the entire title system, regardless of any intended compensational changes, and

2) Make it practically impossible to adjust the points of current title-holders.

For example, assuming the second system is put in place, the current points would have to be adjusted along the lines of something like this to be fair:

1 old point = A; 1 new point =B

A = (2b)(2b)(2b)(2b)(2b)(2b) = 64B (to compensate for wins 6-10)

So if you go with system 2, I would feel that it was fair to multiply the points needed for the title by 64.

It's not actually possible to adjust the points of players who already have accumulated them in a 1/10 win system, so I make no proposal on this point. It seems that they are just trying to give a few extra to make up for the fact that the ones you worked for have less value... This is nice, but obviously unsatisfying.

On a secondary note, please consider that some people make builds for RA designed to survive forever, but not win. I recently opposed an assassin with a build that effectively maintained shadow form without any downtime for over 15 minutes before our team gave up and left. I would hate to think we'd have to be punished if there were 2 of those, one on each team, effectively holding 6 players captive indefinitely. Perhaps set the limit such that you are punished for leaving before the end of the fight, or 2:00, whichever is sooner.

It is possible to adjust the points of players to reward them fairly. and no, i am not agree with the speculative "1.5" for current holders. As you say, it may end being "unsatisfying". So, I am working on a statistical analysis to measure all the effort current gladiators have invested for it and to be able to create a new system maintening the effort (or at least to reward current holders accordingly). I currently paused my work cause the sneak peek and my limited free time =( Coran Ironclaw 01:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to say thanks for your response. I appreciate it. I'll try to suspend my doubts and hope for the best. </peace, Arn>

An Idea, from an anonymous bystander

Just because most, if not all the ideas are bad/terribad, here is my proposal that was completely ignored because I am troll. Ignore my trollness for now, and listen to my proposal: "::::::Nor was I aiming at poor Ryan here. He unfortunately just has to listen to people complain about leeching. Now upon the subject of RA/TA, why not just sever the connection between the two entirely? If RA is about introducing people to PvP, then why must it include a title? That in itself promotes leeching. Make Gladiator a more respectable title, by forcing teams to be coordinated in TA. RA should just give Faction (perhaps more, so as to get people acclimated faster?) Without the chance of a title, little, if any leeching will occur. Take it as you will. Readem (talk*gwwcontribs) 20:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC) " Readem Sorry, I'll stop trolling now. 04:03, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

If you want to farm faction go to the Zaishen Challenge. Random Arenas is about introducing players to pvp and learing how to work together with other players in a pvp enviroment and should be rewarded with glad points not extra faction. Besides Ryan Scott has already said a hundred times the title is NOT going to be spilt or changed to Team Arenas --Primeval Sentinel Talk 01:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

3k faction a day isn't farming, how about when you grow a brain you come back and say something resourceful. —The preceding awesome-sauce comment was added by Skakid9090. 01:01, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, w/e. Fail less plx, and come back when you are able to spell "Split" and are UAX. Readem Sorry, I'll stop trolling now. 23:38, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

wow readem great comeback....--Torp 03:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I still <3 u to torp. Readem Promote My Ban Here 03:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

i duno, i quite like the fact that RA provides easy access to action packed pvp =P. I think it would be quite deserted after the change you suggested. Anyways i kinda always thought the zaishen challenge/isle of the nameless was meant for pvp introduction? Maybe there should be a nerf to the glad pts obtained from RA i mean no points AT ALL would make RA kinda crap, there would be no 1337dudes for em n00bies to learn from(although it kinda complicates things for those ppl who got pts from TA =S).--WikiWu 10:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Cap glad title in ra

Hi, the following idea is not my own actually, i read it on gw guru, but i like it very much.

So obviously Anet intended ra as an introduction to pvp. In my opinion, when you are fierce gladiator, you are well enough introduced, at least for ta, the next higher level of pvp.

so my suggestion: make it so, that you cant get more than 50 glad points (req for glad2) in ra (you might even reduce the cap limit to 25 if necessary). this will stop glad title farming by experienced players. This will automatically turn ra into a more noob-friendly place (sounds awful, but thats what ra is meant to be), cause nobody with more than 50 glad points will go there any longer. Also will it reduce leavers i think because what i found out on reading threads on this topic on many gw forums is that the majority of leavers (especially in intl dis ra) are players with r3 and higher and glad2 and higher. (Im glad4 myself so Im not gaining any advantage of this proposal either)

another result from this idea: TA might turn into a more crowded place hopefully cause at the moment its always quite empty, most groups there already have their team fixed and dont accept "random" players. Also, as some people already pointed out, the whole problem derives from leavers in ra, so i dont see the point why you would punish ta players too.

Its a radical idea, but no more radical than the 3 proposals from Anet. Also it doesnt change the title track, which I FIND A HORRIBLE IDEA. i wouldnt even care completely taking glad points out of ra, but just DON'T CHANGE THE TITLE TRACK. if you do, the ultimate result will be people saying: "ok, you display your glad title, i see youre glad4, but how many wins have you made in the old system?" and stuff like that. even with all the complicated maths, the title will just get blurred, it wont mean anything to ppl anymore. --Bowidl 07:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Fundimental Comments

I like the first idea, but that's probably because I'm pretty bad at Team and Random battles. I do think the idea of making the title easier is a good idea, and also rewarding people who already have high glad points with a good multiplier. But of course the question becomes, should we give a point for every win? Or require shorter streak of 5. I'd tend to think you'd want to keep this a more unique title track by requiring a streak.

I'm currently one of the few rank 7 gladiators, and I do not believe that any of the proposals accurately reflect the work that went into the gladiator title. One would make it very farmable...which is a big nono. Two, better than one, but still no. Three would probably be the most reasonable of them, although i do believe the multiplier for current glad points should be slightly higher, perhaps 3 per current point and title multiplied by 2. If three is implemented, it should be capped at two to three points so that people who are willing to spend 6 hours get no advantage over those who can merely stay for about two.

TA Ladder?

I apologize as this is a little offtopic, but I feel this is probably the best time for me to bring up something myself and many other frequent, high-level TA players (I wont name names, but people that play TA I'm sure dread our names) have talked about: a TA Ladder. TA is the backbone of the Guild Wars PvP system. Sure the game puts a lot of emphasis on GvG...but TA is where you learn the skills to become a well qualified GvG player. Granted there are many things you will not learn in TA that you need in GvG, but the basics are there, and TA can be just as challenging and intense as GvG given two good teams. We have Hero Battle ladder, we have HA and GvG on obs mode...why not a TA ladder and TA obs mode as well?

TA is just organized Random. Readem Sorry, I'll stop trolling now. 23:39, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I am all for a TA ladder, it would help to alleviate some or the issues Ryan pointed out especially the desire for new blood to replace the experienced players that are leaving. The experienced players would have more reason to stay, and the new blood would be drawn by the desire to see their name "up in lights" on a 4v4 ladder. Ernie 23:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

TA is no less gimmicky then HB... Readem Sorry, I'll stop trolling now. 23:27, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The changes are ridiculous

Changing the Gladiator title is torture for us Gladiators that have worked hard to muster up enough points to wear the title. If leavers is what you fear, join a good guild that TA's alot and you will prevail in TA and get your gladiator title. Leave the Gladiator title as it is....

A suitable change in the eyes of an R7

This is mostly a mod to proposal 3. I think getting a point at 5 wins is a very good idea. If I had a point for every time I lost at 8 or 9 wins, I'd be R12 by now.

Every 5 wins gives you 1 point Every additional 5 wins gives you a bonus point (plus the original 1 for 5 wins). 10 wins = 2 total points, etc. This would be capped at 2 5-win streaks. Multiply current points by 7 Multiply each rank by 5

Using that, they could update the title requirements up to this: Old/New

r1=25 / r1=125

r2=50 / r2=250

r3=100 / r3=500

r4=168 / r4=840

r5=280 / r5=1400

etc.

Someone who currently has 50 points would then have 350 points.

Problem isn't really the fix, it's the goals.

Goal #1: Reduce leavers. Do whatever it takes to reduce this please. It has recently gotten insanely out of hand. But as an old fart with wife and kids (and therefore, a person with real life situations that pull me from the game for reasons that are more important than "my guild needs me for gvg"), please limit the punishments to lockout time. I don't care if it's 2 minutes or 24 hours.

Goal #2: Make Glad titles more accessible to more people. As a Glad 4, I don't like this one very much and wish it wasn't a goal. Those of us with glad ranks are upset that this will reduce the prestige. I understand that you realize our concern and are trying to alleviate it by changing the title progression to more closely match that of Heroes Ascent. We all understand the difference between a Phoenix and a Bambi, and a Rank 9 gladiator will always mean more than a Rank 2. But, what has made the gladiator title special is that it actually takes some skill (I don't mean lots - I mean some) to get even rank 1. A good guild or some nice friends can eventually get even an AFKer a Bambi, but they can't do that in TA when each person has to contribute 25% of the team for 10 in a row - 25 times over. That AFKer can conceivably even get a glad point or 2 by scoring some lucky team mates in RA, but will never ever get 25. That's only part of the griping, and it's water under the bridge already because we are actually upset with the GOAL rather than any particular method. The other part all revolves around the fact that it's highly unlikely that we'll ever be adequately compensated for our current glad points to make up for the loss of prestige. Everyone mentions the 8 or 9 win streaks we didn't get credit for, but there are the far more numerous 5, 6, and 7 win streaks that were for naught when glad points were "hard" to get. I understand the global benefits of the proposed changes to the casual pvpers and the importance of "new pvp blood" in the system. I can't argue with that. Do what you need to do, but please compensate current glad points far more than the current proposals that hover around 3/2 ratio or so.

As a side note, please DON'T do any form of team "balancing" in RA. (You never said you would, but it keeps coming up for some reason) I like RA as a build testing/tinkering place and for the novelty of the whacky things I see. I personally don't mind not getting a healer very often. It makes me play wiser. Frankly, it's far easier for me to get a glad point in RA with 2 necros and 2 rangers than it is with a "balanced" team containing a healer and 3 "offensive" characters equipped with the "requisite RA self heals."

Lord Patch 05:24, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Glad Point scaling undervalues past points

Hi Ryan Scott, the proposals seems like a good change, but the suggested scaling seems to greatly undervalue past Gladiator Points.

The number of times I've won 5 games in a row is easily 5-10 times as many times as I've won 10 games in a row. The proposals, however only value past Glad Points at around 1.5 times the value of the more easily attainable new Glad Points.

This would be frustrating. Thanks, Mont 05:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

maybe increase rewards other than glad pts for staying?

You could keep the current system( although proposal 3 looks good to me =] )and just increase the rewards other than gladiator points for staying until the bitter end. Eg, a minuscule chance of getting a mini of some kind every time u deny the opposite team of a flawless victory, and wipe, chance increasing with every unique kill, and duration of combat(to a certain limit, say chance maxed at 5 mins into the combat). WikiWu 19:55, 30 August 2007 (GMT+10)

A mini? Then people would profit from it making them just go afk or bring running skills to escape averybody and waste their time until they get to 5 minutes....--Nick 19:31, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

You foiled his plans.Penguincontact 12:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

REBUTTAL:P Leeching might happen, but my main point was that there could be a rewards scheme that encouraged people to participate, even if the chances of making the ten are slim. Anyway, I think you misinterpreted the scheme. To have a chance at getting the mini, your team must make at least 1 kill against the opposite team, and then lose. Your chance of getting the mini increases with ever extra kill after the first, and as game time increases to the limit of 5 mins. Bringing running skills alone will not get you kills, and going afk will significantly reduce your chances of gaining a kill. But I gotta admit the mini plan is kinda crap =P(ppl would enter RA for all the wrong reasons i guess), just me typing what was thinking at the time. The main idea was that we could keep the old glad pts system, but change other rewards associated with RA. WikiWu 19:55, 30 August 2007 (GMT+10)

Offense or Defense

Brilliant defense makes for good games, and brilliant offense makes for dull games. Having to adjust your offense around the current meta defense should be the name of the game. Every sport evolves through exploiting defenses, and not offenses. The current TA situation is bad already. the 3 sin spike with 80000 knockdowns and the e/rt ride the lightning spike is pretty ridiculous is TA. especially with the ability to respike instantly. spikes may be part of the game. but it outdoes what ta can hold in a glass. i personally can monk out these spikes, but also can fall victim to any given match due to its overwhelming damage. It is not PRESSURE. It is pure damage. Thanks anet for buffing ride the lightning and making ancestor's rage more suseptable for use in a teleport spike. Such as eles and assassins. did you fire ryan scott. or are you guys done ignoring us and way into GW2 already? nerf dancing daggers, ride the lightning, augury of death, etc. all the skills that have no impact in all of PvE and 8v8 PvP. Only in 4v4 where statistically outdoes what a 4 man team can defend. unless you are hoping everyone bring 2 monks and 2 rits for defense every match. oh wait.... it's already happening due to the extremem output of these spikes in a 4v4 setting.Penguincontact 12:01, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, you certainly raise some valid points. This is, however, not the page to discuss them. If your point was, that the system should not be changed until these other problems are solved, then you should have said that. ;) TeleTeddy 12:56, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I TA running a balanced build like 1 War 2 midline 1 Monk and I don't really see where you're coming from at all. Those gimmick spike builds are easily disruptable and don't hold up long with their horrible defense. I don't really understand what you mean by saying a brilliant offense makes for dull games? Wouldn't exploiting an opponents defenses be a result of a brilliant offense?

Balthazar Title Track

Although it slightly off track, I think it would be a no brainer for the Dev Team, to add a Balthazar Faction title track, similar to the Kurzick/Luxon titles. Why? RA is a favorite playground for people to unlock PvP skills with Balthazar Faction, once you have everything unlocked there is less reason to play RA, so the pool of players gradually shrinks. A Balthazar title would introduce a reason to keep playing RA other than just Glad points. (Balthazar Faction is earned each time you kill an opponent) Ernie 00:05, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

What exactly is the point of a Balthazar title track other than "I play more pvp than you do lololololol" ? --Tankity Tank 01:11, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggested this quite a long time ago, If you see my user page there are links to a couple of suggested tracks. And Tankity that is basically the reason for it yes...it's more a 'gap-filler' for the newcomers to PvP who haven't grinded their R3/4 yet. Also it's a requirement by a lot of guilds and there is currently no way to show the millions of balth earnt. --ChronicinabilitY 10:22, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Screenshots IMO. --Tankity Tank 10:29, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeh there are lots of ways around it, and i'm certainly not saying its anything we Need!....but its not a terrible idea and since the faction is already pretty much in title form i doubt it would be too difficult to implement. --ChronicinabilitY 10:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Anet doesn't have anything to offer once people become UAX, other than buying tournament tokens. Something... anything would be cool.(Terra Xin 10:36, 6 September 2007 (UTC))

Getting some other use for tournament tokens would be nice too (like, say, making them worth 500g apiece to the merch to fuel the cost of sigils). If that was implemented, a title track wouldn't matter as much, but it's a nice idea to put in for the hell of it.

To Tankity; isn't "I do ____ more than you do lololol" the entire point of titles? :) -Auron 10:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, pretty much, but pvp has enough of the "I do ____ more than you do lawl NUBLOLOLOLOLPWNT /rank/rank/rank" already :p. I would like to see tournament tokens used for something else (guild halls for 100 tokens?). --Tankity Tank 10:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict) I still want to be able to spend Tourny tokens on other stuff as we've suggested before, or maybe have more rewards. Make sigils cost 50,000 balth or something, Just more stuff for us to do once all thos skills are unlocked and we dont really want a storage stacked full of tourny tokens. And to tankity, the idea behind the title was to get rid of the /rank /rank /rank atmosphere towards newcomers, by allowing them to show at least some PvP title before they get their R3. TBH i can't really relate to Unranked PUG's cos i very rarely HA these days and if i do it'll be with guild, but i can imagine it's not changed a lot abd its still a "show you're rank or you get kicked" atmosphere.--ChronicinabilitY 11:04, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

[reset indent] I think this topic should be moved to some other place. This page is already too congested. In my opinion a Balthazar Title Track wont be good, because it doesn't show skill, just time spent, it would be like an experience title track on pve characters which, since the beggining, is the most obvius title track that could be done, but anet didn't implemented it because they dont want it, not just because they missed it. Coran Ironclaw 14:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You Need a Paradigm Shift

The purpose of Random Arenas is about having fun, balanced games of 4v4 Guild Wars. Any revisions to RA should be made so as to realize this goal. Basing incentives in how players achieve Gladiator title track points is a poor way to improve RA. The best way to improve RA is to decrease the amount of leavers by punishing the act of leaving (for example, with a four minute delay before one can join another match without leaving). This is a proven, direct, and sensible way of decreasing the frequency of players' leaving games.

Any approach involving the Gladiator title track is a poor one, as the Gladiator title track has almost nothing to do with the actual game. You have your head in the wrong place in these proposed system changes; you need to think big-picture when formulating improvements to large systems like Guild Wars.

P.S. What you refer to as "leechers" is a more delicate problem that requires more advanced techniques to deal with. However, leavers and leechers are two entirely different groups of people, so dealing with leavers will be a large improvement to RA. Leechers can also be dealt with, but the solution is more difficult to describe as succintly and plainly as what should be done to deal with leavers. I reiterate that the Gladiator title track should have NOTHING AT ALL to do with any proposed system changes to RA. Meddling with people's egos has been shown time and time again to be a poor way of incentivizing them, not to mention that your proposed changes to the Gladiator title track barely incentivize staying any more than the current system does. The main goal in any changes to RA should make it more enjoyable for GUILD WARS PLAYERS to enjoy RA and HAVE FUN PLAYING (which is done mainly by eliminating leavers and leechers).

I could not agree more.

OK, you seriously need to read this discussion page more carefully before posting your opinion. The guy has already made the statement that leechers and leavers are going to be dealt with - and this is a side note from the changes to the gladiator title. Incentivize and incentivizing are not words... *twitch*. I don't understand your reasoning behind the gladiator title track having nothing to do with the game... but that's not the subject at hand, so I'll leave it there. (Terra Xin 04:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC))

Sorry to burst your "elitist bubble," but incentivize and incentivizing are words. Go look them up in a dictionary before assuming otherwise "*twitching even more*". Also, the current system does not need a change, it is fine the way it is. If you want to fix the problem with leavers, you just have to penalize them. If you go for number of wins instead of streaks, then you promote grind player and not skill playing. Any number of bots could easily farm a billion gladiator points if they were 1 point per win, as opposed to requiring a streak of 10 wins. Stexe 01:37, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh they are too :S Hey! don't throw labels at me! (Terra Xin 03:09, 2 September 2007 (UTC))

Mr. special needs to put his topic on top? someone who is admin bump this to the bottem where it should be in order of post.Penguincontact 11:52, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't take an admin to move stuff to the bottom of the page :p Just Do Eet. --Tankity Tank 03:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Promoting Staying Is A Failed System

All the current systems proposed are designed to promote staying, or at least to promote winning and not leaving. This idea is flawed because it will not stop leavers who want to win for streaks. Your ideas of making a system where it is better to stay than to leave, due to the time it takes to join a match over the time it takes to win a match, either A.) breaks the way current battles go for skill and encourages farming games for solo wins (constant playing instead of skill) or B.) doesn't stop leavers from still having benefits over non-leavers.

The best way to combat leavers is to directly stop it. The easiest way is to stop leavers from rejoining games for a set duration, basically discouraging people from leaving constantly because it would be more benefical time wise for them to "stick it out." I think that if someone leaves a 5 min ban on rejoining games should be sufficent to stop leavers, although this could be adjusted to something like 5 min ban that increases depending on how frequently they leave games within a set time period (24 hours or so). Not sure your servers can be designed to do that, but it would solve all the basic leaver problems. Stexe 06:23, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

read the first and second section directly below yours... (Terra Xin 04:33, 30 August 2007 (UTC))

Any news?

Hi, Ryan, any news about Gladiator and RA changes? --Lumenil 15:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

We haven't heard anything, but someone asked Emily (another Arena Net employer) about the lack of Arena Net feedback on this talk page. Her reply may be found here, but making it short (and saying what I understood from what she said), they are really really busy with post-stuff GW:EN things, hence the small Arena Net activity regarding posting on the wiki, but they're still reading what is happening. I know this isn't the answer to what you asked, but I hope it at least replies part of it until Ryan himself gets enough time to post here : ) Erasculio 00:21, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

What I notice from Leavers

Whenever I do TA, atleast 1 person 4 out of 5 of the time leaves. Either 1, because he looks at the team and think it will lose. 2, Some of the people leave. (Or they haven't even gotten on and mistake them for leaving) After that 1 person leaves, they all start to leave. From this, I learned that if the team just stays with the group, the other team will leave most of the time. Plus, if they leave, it wouldn't matter how good they are. Which means, this whole leaving thing is ridiculous.

Compromise?

Based on my own personal feelings and some of my friends, here's a compromise I'm suggesting. I think that every district except international should ban leaving and provide a harsh punishment. Why allow one district?

1. Nonleavers will be happy. 2. Leavers seeking balanced teams will not be forced to play with random teams

To me, this seems like a balanced system. First of all, there's no immediate advantage to this. Nonleavers will face other nonleavers and thus the chances of having a balanced build are less. The playing field will be equal, and every team stands a change to win 10. For the leavers, they will be facing teams that do leave, but the games they do fight will be more difficult to win.

Remove the Gladiator Title from Random Arenas

Random arenas are almost entirely luck, it does not require much skill to beat down gimped teams 10 times in a row because your team is somewhat balanced. You should just move the title to team arena's only and leave random arenas to people who want to play for fun or need easy faction. This would instill some life into TA which at the moment is probably the most balanced game type guildwars has to offer (obviously it has some problems like there being no reason to move throughout the entire match so people can just pump out a spirit fortress). This would solve the problem of leavers, and wouldn't produce leechers. TA isn't very hard to pug I'm not sure why you guys aren't encouraging people to play it since it will produce players for HA and GvG.

They have said this many times.... they are not gonna do that. Plus RA requires skills because not only new guys are gonna play, very expirienced people hunting for the title are too, and everybody in between. This isn't a very good idea and will Still produce leavers, except in TA.

2 unsigned comments, ridiculous!! Grrr. Anyway, to the first one, stop trying to elitize TA. TA is full of gimmick teams and builds with all sorts of unstoppable teams there. Some team builds are there to STAY alive and to cause the other team to rage quit. If you want to talk about luck, then TA is your best bet, because getting 10 wins in TA with 1 gimmick team circulatign will result in YOU = LOSE no matter what. RA is about skill, and accepting that random play is the key to adapting to each situation differently. Team builds are based on static tactics and gameplay, and half of those elite players in GVG get their butts handed to them in RA all the time. I see high /rank ones in RA and I just roll them over in a matter of a couple of seconds. Take the title away from TA, where that is the NOOB arena IMHO. --82.33.10.119 05:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

RA is worse than TA. TA is worse than GvG. RA is about the luck of getting into a team with a decent offensive character and a decent defensive character(i.e., one decent warrior and a decent monk or curses necro on your team = glad point). --Edru viransu 12:18, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

What you said is so very wrong, I just don't know where to start. Yes, there are gimmick teams in TA, as there are gimmick teams in HA/GvG. No, gimmick teams are not necessarily unstoppable, most of the time it's quite easy to beat them (there are exceptions). No, RA is NOT about skill, only. It's about getting the right team mates (completely based on luck) AND skill. You can compensate lack of skill with luck easier than in any other form of PvP, though. The whole idea that randomized PvP is more demanding than organized PvP is simply ridiculous. - TeleTeddy 09:54, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Please let the Glad title alone.

It's fine, don't waste all the time of good pvper wasted.

Critical Analysis of Proposed Changes

Here are my numerous and perhaps long-winded thoughts on this topic. I did read through all the posts but some of it I skimmed, it was yesterday, and I have a notoriously bad memory so if some of what I say has been said before, forgive me in advance.

I. Scaling: Qualitative and Quantitative

For any change in the title, accurate qualitative and quantitative scaling is of absolute importance for any current veterans of that title. It is essential to understand this is not simply the quantitative mathematics of proportional scaling. The scaling of gladiator points must also take into account the difference in difficulty between obtaining the title before and after the change. For example, if a new system is implemented such that all the current rank 5 gladiators remain rank 5 but rank 5 also becomes easier to obtain, then the vets who achieved rank 5 prior to the changes have been devalued (even though the quantitative scaling may have been correct).

I think all three of these proposals have CLEARLY not taken account of qualitative difficulty scaling. What I mean is, if any of these changes had been in place since the beginning, I would be considerably higher than Terrifying Gladiator (which I am currently). Now I could propose my own scaling but really I think it would take serious game testing with a random sample of players to determine the best statistics. However, putting aside the issue of qualitative difficulty scaling, I will consider each of the proposals from a game play standpoint.

II. Critical Analysis

Naturally, lets begin with “proposal 1”. First, as a technical matter, this proposal is absolutely contingent on the bot/leecher problem being solved first. Aside from this, the reason why I think the first proposal (any like it) is undesirable is because it makes the title less based on actual player skill and more based willingness to grind through the ranks. This is also what is meant when people argue it “devalues” the title. It doesn’t necessarily make the title less time consuming to obtain (although I think its currently proposed scaling does this) but it lowers the required player skill level. What this means is that the title is no longer something to be proud of and it no longer is a representation of your skill level. More than anything, it only shows your willingness to grind through the ranks. Consequently, it becomes nothing special to be proud of. Moreover, there are already PvP titles based on this philosophy. Principally the commander (HB) title and to a lesser extent the hero (HA) title (also the champion title but that’s a special case). This criticism also holds but to a lesser degree for any proposed change that requires very small numbers of wins to get gladiator points.

Now I understand the arguments that the gladiator title is too difficult and I think it’s clear that of all the titles, 1 gladiator point is the most difficult to obtain (in terms of the actual game play you have to go through). On the other hand, the gladiator title is unique because of this difficulty and this is precisely why I respect it more than any other title as a representation of a player’s basic skill and knowledge of the game.

Now I will skip proposal 2 for the moment and move to proposal 3 because this also has serious balance problems. The concept of consecutive bonuses like HA is appealing because it does reward those skilled teams who are able to go well above just 10 (or 5) wins. However, the problem is that this destroys the precarious balance between TA and RA. Namely, this type of consecutive bonus highly favors TA teams. Recall that RA teams go to TA after 10 wins (and certainly I don’t think this feature should be changed). Now, in my (extensive) experience, RA teams usually fall after just a few rounds in TA simply because any decently balanced TA team is set up to counter most combinations you find in RA (even if they’re very good players). I don’t know about other people but I usually have fun trying to get glad points from RA and I would not wish to feel obligated to TA just to work on the title. There should be roughly the same rewards from both arenas.

Before considering proposal 2, let us look first at the motivation for leaving because this is a central factor in the considerations for changing the title. To state the obvious, people leave because they don’t think a team will make it to 10. Now, unless you want to significantly devalue the title (e.g. glad points every small number of wins), this motivation will always be there. In all cases I can imagine, any attempt at positive incentives for staying in a “bad” team have the side effect of devaluing the gladiator title. If this problem is to be solved there has to be a negative incentive (i.e. punishment) for leaving a team before the battle is over. The 1 or 2 minute time-out penalty for the first person to leave before a battle or during, say, the first minute sounds perfectly fine to me. However, it should be perfectly fine to leave after the battle is over because TBH, who wants to play with a ranger with minions or a warrior with heal party? Therefore, the system where late leavers cause the next round to be 3v4 should be corrected.

III. Balanced Compromise

Now lets look at suggestion 2. First, although I don’t think the title necessarily needs a change, of the 3 “official” suggestions, #2 is the least harmful. First, it is a compromise between the “hardcoreness” of the title as it currently stands and completely clueless players grinding through the ranks (as seen in suggestion 1). Also, with no huge special consecutive bonuses beyond 10 (as in suggestion 3), TA remains almost balanced with RA teams that get past 10. I say almost because like I mentioned earlier, TA teams do not have that added difficulty of getting from 10wins to 15 like RA teams do.

If there must be a change, this is what I propose: 1 point every 5 wins between multiples of 10 and 2 points every 10 wins. Therefore, wins at 5, 15, 25, 35, 45,... get 1 point. Wins at 10, 20, 30, 40,... get 2 points. This way TA remains balanced with RA and the title still more or less represents player skill (well.. slightly less but that’s what compromise is all about).

However, as mentioned previously I do object to the scaling for #2 as it is currently proposed. Just from personal experience, I get to 5 consecutive wins probably 3 or 4 times more often than I get to 10. In order to account for this qualitative difficulty (and prevent devaluing everyone’s current gladiator points), the multiple for current points should be something closer to 6 or 7. As a side note, I don’t care what the multiple for the title requirement is because this doesn’t impact the scaling of current points with points after the change. However, for those who don’t understand the math, if the titles are to remain unchanged, the coefficient for “current player points” should be equal to the coefficient for “rank requirement”.

Empathy 01:27, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Well reasoned. I think this list of points is worth a good look. Overall, changing the math for the gladiator title won't fix the problem at it's root - if it's too easy, people will leech. If it's too hard, they'll leave until they get the optimal team. I'm worried that a change to the title(s) is anet's response to the problem, and that will create more problems than it fixes. There needs to be a passive discouragement to leechers and leavers both. Something cumulative would discourage persistent problems, while being more forgiving for repeat disconnecters (though the reconnect option shows that the software can tell the difference). Craw 02:48, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Great Job on the Dungeons

Just wanted to say the work you guys did on the dungeons in EotN was fantastic! My guild loves them! Casual fun content anyone can pull off - a brilliant idea. They are a lot of fun too, especially in guild raids. My guild was really slack in getting together but now people are always going off and exploring different dungeons. I especially loved the Arachni's Haunt dungeon and Kathandrax - fireballs are funny. Thanks for a job well done. 58.110.139.72 12:50, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Gladiator changes, as implemented

Needs some slight tuning, RA is apparently quite infested with people running builds extremely oriented around survivability which isn't keeping up with the ease of punching through them.

Suggestion: After 4 minutes in an RA match, a VOD-type effect is activated which causes enchantments and stances to last half as long, after the 6 minute mark, no dishonor is given for leaving. That should stop most over-defensive builds cold and help ensure matches come to a conclusion, while providing players with a way out of it won't.

The dishonor system as implemented was a terrific idea, honestly one of the most well thought-out changes I've seen come out in a while. It's just that the undesirable results need to be addressed now as well. Riotgear 06:26, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Some similar thoughts on that: Talk:Game_updates/20070927#Feedback - TeleTeddy 13:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

All new updates are retarded. gg. You just promoted the immigration of 1000+ nubs to PvP. ty for that. Readem Hate Mail Goes Here 06:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Please keep in mind, that RA is meant to be played by so-called nubs, or as I like to call them, beginners. - TeleTeddy 13:39, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

As it should be. So that's means it was a complete success! (too early to affirm that yet xD)Coran Ironclaw 19:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I love this update, thankyou very much for this, it is great to get into RA and not have at least one person leave each match, and to the person above saying it promotes noobs in PvP, thats a bit silly to say, seeming that the game would become completely stagnant if new people werent added to it.. and everyone has to start somewhere. :) once again TY great update 58.168.10.40 02:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that this was a sad update, not because of the dishonor system, not because of the random corrections, but because of the glad title track change! No matter how one argues for it, how one compensates, the title is no longer the same. It's rather disappointing to see the truly respectable title get soiled.

I say make RA no longer give glads. Then we won't need a shitty dishonor system. Readem 03:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The only issue I have with the update is that RA teams should not continue to redirect to TA after 10 wins. I understand that this may have to do with people not grinding RA for a gladiator title that is higher ranked, but come on now. If a team can be randomly formed and beat out other teams ad infinum, they should get credit for their play skill. They should NOT be instantly moved to TA where a 3 spirit spammer, solo sin spiker griefing build instantly wipes them on a kill count map. If you want to compensate, do it with the points, not with inequality. For example, both arenas cap out at 4 points per streak. Allow TA to cap out at 8 points per streak and keep RA to 4. This would keep plenty of people on both sides happy. 75.143.108.214 04:13, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Why RA disadvantaged?

Before the update, a player who only plays RA and never do TA even after winning 10 matches, had to achieve 10 consecutive victories for 25 times to get glad 1 title. Now he has to achieve those 10 consecutive wins for 34 times, to reach 100 points. So TA players have been advantaged and RA-only players disadvantaged. Why that? To solve the problem, you could remove the automatic transportation into TA of the succesful RA teams, so that they can sum up more than 10 victories while staying in RA. Only when they lose, they could be transported in the TA outpost, so they would be able to choose freely if staying there in TA togheter, or going back to RA alone. --Lumenil 14:01, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Do you want to know my guessed real reason why the transport to TA is still there? To feed TA. If that is removed then TA teams will end playing only againsts themselves (2 or 3 teams) or even will have to wait a lot because there is no enemy team. Coran Ironclaw 02:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Maybe they just don't want good teams to rampage in the random arena forever. Why should you be further rewarded for having luck (luck, that you joined a decent team) anyway? And why would you want to play RA only? Starting in RA, there's only one difference between RA and TA: Your enemys tend to be better. If you can't stand the challenge keep practicing. If your team is good, you should fight other good teams, there's no point in beating up noobs, and that's exactly what will happen with RA if you stop relocating teams with 10 wins to TA: It will become a place, where experienced players beat up noobs. Observe newbie arenas at Yak's, Ascalon etc for further undesirable effects. - TeleTeddy 14:49, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

You forget the fact that TA is full of gimmick builds. That's the reason why I don't play TA, and that's the reason why good RA teams most of the times fail in TA very soon. --Lumenil 18:17, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this, it's garbage they send RA teams to TA - 9 times out of 10 you will lose because TA has a distinct advantage. Having teams which have winning streaks play each other in RA would make more sense. Dancing Gnome 02:57, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

"there's only one difference between RA and TA: Your enemys tend to be better" Heavily disagree. your enemies is one thing yes, but your team is the main difference. In TA you can choose proffesions on each team member, in Ra not. In TA you can choose every skill on the team, in Ra not. In TA you can know very well each team member, in Ra not. In Ta you can have voice chat, in Ra not. If you can't choose your team member proffessions or skill or you don't know your team members well or you don't have voice chat, Why do you want to play in TA?? If the continual (more than 10 battles) playing of a "lucky" team in RA is the problem, then reshuffle the team in RA instead of sending them to TA mainteining their consecutive number of wins. Coran Ironclaw 05:44, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Let's keep this discussion on a serious level, please, so don't tell me you can choose you own team members in TA (wow, I didn't know that!). What I said was, that - starting in RA - there's no difference whether you fight in RA oder TA, except for your enemies. Switching to TA, your team won't change, your skillbar won't change, maps won't change (I know someone will come along and tell me there's one additional map in TA - okay, there is, but this map's all the same to the other priest map), there's no difference to RA. That's why I don't get why it's so bad to be relocated to TA.

Reshuffling, however, would be a decent alternative to relocating, although I like the current system better. I agree that gimmick builds in TA are a problem, but that's true not only for RA teams that are relocated, so they should adress to this problem anyway. ;) - TeleTeddy 07:55, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Do some quick math... Old system: 10 wins = 1 point. New system: 10 wins = 3 points. Title multiplied by 4x across the board. What does this mean for the average RA player that isn't into serious farming or to good players who don't have any friends interested in TA? It means that they have to work (old=1*4) (new=3) 4/3 = 1.33x more than they did in the past. Additionally, the RA players almost stand no chance to TA teams, the advantages in team design/build + communication that TA teams have should win out every time vs an RA team. If a TA team is not good enough to beat the "awesome" RA team, they aren't really using their resources as well as they should (or the players could be significantly worse at what they do, who knows). How often does an RA team get to TA and keep winning 5+ consecutive? Very rarely simply due to builds... Even more rarely due to people not wanting to deal with it to begin with so they head right back to the RA outpost instead of even fighting the TA teams.

Was the intent of this title really to put people off to trying to earn it in RA? It was supposed to become more accessible, not slower progression for equivalent accomplishment. Yet another decent idea ruined by a complete lack of thinking it all the way through. 75.143.108.214 08:14, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Ehm... no. Old system: 10 wins = 1 point. New system: 10 wins = 2 points, 5 wins = 1 point. You don't get 10 wins every time you join, do you? - TeleTeddy 10:30, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

@75.143, as I think Teleteddy was trying to say, your quick math fails. You are not considering the times you enter and you win 5 consecutives without obtaining the 10 consecutives, and let me say that for the most players that is a lot more more frequent that obtaining 10 consecutives. @Teleteddy. I will only keep 1 argument, you have no voice chat in a team from RA, and most TA teams have voice chat (at least they can have it) and that is a very high disadvantage, and that is reason enough the transportation to TA from RA to be unfair. Coran Ironclaw 22:58, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

RA, serious business. -FireFox File:Firefoxav.png 23:15, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

My quick math does not fail when you look at the foundations I put forth. I'm saying for the equivalent 10 wins in a row you're only getting 3/4 the results. As for the issue of 5 wins happening much more often than 10 wins, of course that happens. For that very reason we should have gotten a much higher bonus than a mere 6x. Something more like 10x sounds more reasonable to me. *edit* @FireFox: It's always nice when an officer of ZoS chimes in merely to be a dick. Sure shows a lot. 75.143.108.214 18:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

ok you agree you get much more 5 wins rather than 10 wins. Now if you get one 10 wins every four 5 wins (and i am only guessing here) then counting one 10 wins and four 5 wins: old = 1, new = 4 + 1 + 2 = 7 that yields to 1*4/7 = 0.57 => -43% more difficult in the new system or 7/4 = 1.75 => 75% more difficult on the old system. Can you see now why your quick math fails? The fact is that you can't know how much more easy or difficult is to get points if you don't have the real global rate of wins, but since that is dependable of every person it is not easy to obtain and a global rate would be wrong since it should be lower for low-skilled players and higher for high-skilled ones. A try to calculate that yields to the system I was proposing here but since I can't have in-game data I couldn't conclude anything. Coran Ironclaw 21:50, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Hilarious. Did you notice how you contradicted yourself? Anyway, your math maybe correct, your conclusions certainly are not. - TeleTeddy 15:44, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Coran, it certainly is great that you go off on your own tangents without even reading what I'm saying. I'm not there to win 5 in a row over and over, it's just a nice buff. I'm saying on the times that I do end up making it to 10, it's worth less than the old 10 win streaks used to be and in RA that's not something to be celebrating.75.143.108.214 10:08, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

And of course ignoring that "nice buff" which happens to be weight more is perfectly valid and understandable [/sarcastic]. no further comments. Coran Ironclaw 21:23, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Great job on reducing leavers in RA.

I went back to RA for the first time in months, and was very pleasantly surprised that in playing about 30 games I only met one leaver. Excellent stuff. Sadie2k 22:04, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Changes failed

The amount of leavers might be reduced, though now people just run in and die (suicide), even monks do this and don't use any skill, so they lose and can go again. You can report them, but apparently most people don't even know how to report.

Leechers are gone now, though now you have bots. They got 7 stances and healing signet, so no damage at all. Of course bots can be reported too. The downside is though that i for one have been reporting bots since they appeared (since the changes) and now even after several months i still run into the same bots with the same names. I know it might be hard to catch bots and to make sure that they really are bots and i'm not expecting those bots to be banned 1 hour after reporting them, but this new system is running for a while already and the bots that were there when the new system came are still there even though they get reported all the time. 88.159.130.14 07:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)Berry Hoodlum

As far as i know most bots are gone now (don't blame me if i am worng, i am not in RA all day long either!). Personally i think i RA a lot, most of the time i play monk and most of the time i just run in to die asap, so i can go again and find a team with half a brain. If i say that in chat the wammo with live vicaiously, mending and balthazar spirit calls me a noob or whatever and PMs me a few times after. What really annoys me is that i can't report those retards for spamming me, because they aren't in the same district. I nicely stayed with my team and waited till the battle was over until i raged. Every now and than i get reported for leeching, but that's okay. I rather take a 5 minute break every now and than instead of playing with complete retards. That makes me come to my next point; Maybe it's a good idea that people first finish pre-searing, before they are allowed into any kind of PvP action. With all respect, Flare is a really nice skill to kill Charr near Ascalon, but if i see an ele in my team using Flare, then i quit using skills right away, so we die as soon as possible, so i can find a team with half a brain! I don't know how, but there must be a way to stop Rage-Quiters like me! Maybe send a newsletter to everybody and tell them how to spell the commands "report" and "resign"?! Anyway, what this post is really about is that i would like to report the people that are spamming me after i rage-quit from a team, but that it doesn't allow me, because they aren't in the same district! 88.159.130.14 06:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)Berry Hoodlum

Ok Ok This is II Court Jezta II and first of all id like to say Gexte is my homie! I believe everything he is saying is 100%. I mean this comes from everyone...not just Gexte...hes just one of the main peoples brave ebough to state that this gets annoying! I mean say for example im on Me/E PD and my team has a wamo with mending (to cancel bleeding) and healing breeze JUST incase! and a ranger that doesnt interupt anything...but instead activates his 4 stances that he has and uses power shot over and over! When i see stuff like this im like....oh wow the ONLY way we are going to win is if i shutdown the neverneding antimelee that the wamo will attack through shutdown the healer on the opposing team interupt warrior / sin combos with PD and leech sig keep apply poison down on rangers, interupt ele dmg, strip important enchants so the war can hit people and less energy is being generated on the opposing team, divert key skills like WoH and SV or whatever needs to be diverted and MUCH more! just to win...OR i can just die until i ge ta decent team =P Im totally feeling Gexte on his point! w3rd! peace!

-Jezta