Winning against undergeared people is not rewarding

[Reith]

First off all, this isn't a GC conspiracy. I know that's the go-to kneejerk reaction, but that doesn't make it any less annoying or any less wrong.

Secondly, and most importantly, you have to look at the other side of the coin.

Why should a person who takes, say, 6 months off from the game be able to come back and be instantly competitive with someone who was actively PvPing their ass off all that while? I don't even PvP and I don't think that would be fair. What would be the point of playing regularly?

What would be the point of playing regularly?... Isn't the answer obvious? To play the game. To enjoy it. The more balanced it is, the more you can focus on enjoying the game. I thought that'd've been common sense.

[mercutiouk]

Took first steps into PVP this expansion this week (on a DK so, yeah, pretty faceroll but still) and not finding much trouble at all. I don't consider myself a particularly high skilled player, experienced, maybe more so (ex RBG lead) and I'm already feeling fairly OP in most situations. I don't expect to walk into PVP and be a beast though and play accordingly so maybe it's just an expectations problem?

[yurano]

When joining Battlegrounds/Arena your gear should be normalized. Wins should be based on tactics/skill and not gear. It's simple mathematics why the current system fails.

PvP should be something fun you want to do, not something you know you can't win at based on gear.

So what you're saying is that people who put in months to grind up their set of gear should get steamrolled by a R1 player on a new level 90? Sounds like you're going to alienate a lot of players, both casual and hardcore. The whole point of the grind is to become more powerful. This holds true in both PvP and PvE. We expect higher skilled players to 'rank up' faster, but everyone should be able to progress.

Arenas and RBGs in their current implementation are fine due to MMR. The gearing problem only crops up in random BGs and World PvP. There's not really much you can do about World PvP because its just a huge clusterfuck. In random BGs, it is pretty frustrating to be a new 90 in full blues and get stomped by a really bad Malevolent player thats carried by gear. To address this problem, random BG matchmaking should utilize MMR.

Loosely put, MMR = Gear + Skill. Skilled players will fight against less skilled but more geared players but the win-loss ratio should be close to 50-50. This would make BGs vastly more enjoyable since one side won't get straight stomped. Skilled players feel awesome when they defeat a better geared player. Unskilled players feel awesome when they defeat a skilled player. When the win-loss ratio is 50-50, see how you can get something from nothing? Enjoyment for every player when originally, only one group of players had fun. In the current system, only geared players have fun. In the proposed system, only skilled players have fun.

Moreover, BG bots would get stuck in the lowest MMRs so unless you're a really bad player, you're not going to group up with many bots. If you're really that bad, then you can enjoy stomping bots. A GM could just sit in the lowest MMR BGs and chain ban bots.

What would be the point of playing regularly?... Isn't the answer obvious? To play the game. To enjoy it. The more balanced it is, the more you can focus on enjoying the game. I thought that'd've been common sense.

The whole MMO system is to become more and more powerful. This is especially true in WoW. If everyone were to obtain the 'best gear' upon hitting level 90, you'll find the game to be significantly less fun.

PTR is a prime example of free gear for everyone. As a result, PvP and PvE are all a huge mess because no one is 'attached' to their characters and no one really cares. Since Honor is largely irrelevant, no one bothers to do objectives and BGs are giant TDMs. Are you sure you really want such a system?

[Reith]

The whole MMO system is to become more and more powerful. This is especially true in WoW. If everyone were to obtain the 'best gear' upon hitting level 90, you'll find the game to be significantly less fun.

Nobody said give fully loaded gear. I already explained what should be done: normalized somehow (with customization) in arenas and RBGs, but still matters for world and regular battlegrounds. Best of both worlds.

PTR is a prime example of free gear for everyone. As a result, PvP and PvE are all a huge mess because no one is 'attached' to their characters and no one really cares. Since Honor is largely irrelevant, no one bothers to do objectives and BGs are giant TDMs. Are you sure you really want such a system?

PTR is the worst example you could possibly give... nobody cares because it's the PTR. It's temporary and completely outside of regular realms. Nothing to do with honor being irrelevant. That's also not the solution I proposed either.

[yurano]

Nobody said give fully loaded gear. I already explained what should be done: normalized somehow (with customization) in arenas and RBGs, but still matters for world and regular battlegrounds. Best of both worlds.

Here's a solution I think most people could agree with: Normalized stats in arenas (and maybe? RBGs) but everywhere else, gear still matters.

So whats the point of playing arenas? Play a couple of placement games, hit 2200 and thats it? Few people bother to obtain PvP gear for World PvP or random BGs. The primary aspect of grinding better PvP gear is to improve your rating, whether its arena or RBGs. The entire point of the gear grind is competition. When you remove that aspect, the game suddenly becomes very very bland. Having a chance at a tier token is what drives many raiders to keep going when the raid is clearly failing. Pushing for a higher rating for more conquests is what drives many PvP players to keep going after hours of roller coaster rating changes.

So skilled players play a couple of games, reach 2200 and thats that for them. There's no fun unless you work towards a goal and accomplish it. And what if you're a bad player? You can play an infinite number of games at 1500 only to get passed by skilled players who've played 10 games and instantly reach 2200. Without an avenue for progression, no one has any fun, casuals especially.

PTR is the worst example you could possibly give... nobody cares because it's the PTR. It's temporary and completely outside of regular realms. Nothing to do with honor being irrelevant. That's also not the solution I proposed either.

PTR is an good example because it shows how bad it COULD get when nothing matters. If you were handed free gear in anything that mattered (rated PvP), no one would care much and lose interest relatively quickly. People would just steamroll up to 90, play it for a couple hours and quit.

A similar situation happened in Diablo 3. At level 60, the avenue of progression becomes excruciatingly hard (improving skill is even more difficult than progressing in Diablo 3). As a result, only the hardcore players remained and Diablo 3 pretty much a ghost town compared to release. Its pretty obvious why any form of 'normalization' is undesirable in a MMO.

[Deleted]

It is rewarding if you are not aware the opponent is undergeared. Then you believe you are "pwning someone really hard". A lot of bad/ignorant players will believe this, and it is quite clever design. The best way to make your opponent lose is make them believe they are winning. The opponent in this case is the customer though.

GCs comment also makes very much sense from an economic point of view.

Lets ignore free to play in this equation.

There's 2 paths:

1) Gear is normalized. In this case, you immediately get to play PvP based on skill alone. This is ideal for people who want to play casual, who have a job and only have a few hours to (irregularly) play a game.

2) Gear matters in PvP stats. You first have to grind gear before you're useful. This version creates a social ladder: those who have grinded the gear, and those who haven't. Now, time is only finite and it is equal to money. Those who say: go grind your gear first and then you'll be on equal field are basically saying your time isn't valuable. (This more or less calls those people real-life losers.)

There's a very good reason why GW2 is group 1, and WoW and SWTOR are group 2: the former group is buy once, play forever and the latter group is subscription-based. It is also no coincidence that subscription-based MMORPGs are on their way out. In our time of financial crisis where there is so much to do people simply don't want to grind anymore. They want to go straight to main course and skip the apéritif and appetisers.

Say you have 3 hrs a week to play MMORPG. In WoW, you'll be grinding and fighting an uphill battle every day you are playing. In GW2, you won't. The only reason you will suck is because of your gameplay; not because you didn't grind. Your GW2 gameplay you can improve by theorycrafting, experimenting, and practice. Your WoW gameplay too, but you will still be undergeared compared to those pwning you.

The bad players will not have a lot of fun in GW2. They cannot outgear "a bunch of undergeared noobs" they will only be able to "to pwn other noobs". This is, of course, in contrast with a game like WoW (or SWTOR). True, in WoW a good player who's undergeared can win from a mediocre player who is better geared but in GW2 a good player would win as well with a larger margin.

On top of that the biggest loser in the world can still win BGs by being completely AFK or useless: he'd get HP. With HP he can buy gear, and this is the price every player gets eventually (even when he got boosted by others). In other words the "work" is "just being there on the winning team". Not only does this mechanism promote the silly system where good geared/bad players can win from bad geared/ good players, PvP gear promotes botting. Removing PvP gear and normalizing gear instantly removes botting. You don't see bots in GW2 PvP. There is simply no point.

---------- Post added 2013-01-09 at 05:46 AM ----------

[...]

A similar situation happened in Diablo 3. At level 60, the avenue of progression becomes excruciatingly hard (improving skill is even more difficult than progressing in Diablo 3). As a result, only the hardcore players remained and Diablo 3 pretty much a ghost town compared to release. Its pretty obvious why any form of 'normalization' is undesirable in a MMO.

Diablo 3 is a single player PvE/ARPG game. We are discussing the MMORPG WoW's multiplayer PvP aspect. They're an entire different beast.

In Diablo 3 all skills are unlocked at 60, and its the last level (they later added paragon levels to breed the game new life). On top of that, it means the player finished the game 3 times. If you play CoD single player 3 times you'd be bored to death by the time you finished the 3rd time. Heck, many players got sick of Diablo before they reached Hell. On top of that, gear drops did not matter due to the (RM)AH more about that later. Plus the Diablo 3 map design was a few variations and that was it. I have played games 10-20 years ago which had more RNG in map design than Diablo 3. Heck, I can tell name you a free game which has more RNG in its map design than Diablo 3: Nethack and its variations. Its a rogue-like game which is where the "hardcore mode" in Diablo 3 is derived from (in a rogue-like game there's only hardcore mode). By the way, in 2012 hardcore mode is a disaster for a real-time game which required always-on Internet connection. I digress...

Don't forget Diablo 3 had micro transactions. Basically, if your time was valuable (something akin to you earn more than 2 EUR/hour in your professional career) you would invest a small amount of money to buy gold or better items on the (RM)AH to make you progress further. It boils down to you pay to evade the RNGish grind, and also get the item with the stats you prefer. WoW has grinds and RNG, but PvP grind does not contain RNG in relation to gear unless you count the Sha PvP gear drops. More important you cannot skip those grinds. You can't pay Blizzard to skip grinds in either game. You can pay botmakers to skip grinds, you can buy gold from third parties, but not from Blizzard (you can buy gold in Diablo 3 through legal means but you can't buy gold/gear for the PvP part in WoW). Come to think of it, it appears it might make economically sense people bot PvP WoW. How long does it take right now to get full HP gearset? To get your weekly CP cap? Anyone have those numbers? Is it worth more than a complete WoW account + active subscription?

PTR is an good example because it shows how bad it COULD get when nothing matters. If you were handed free gear in anything that mattered (rated PvP), no one would care much and lose interest relatively quickly. People would just steamroll up to 90, play it for a couple hours and quit.

Good PvP games will be kept playing. People are still playing chess, Scrabble, Pong, and so on. Know SWTOR? People who've played it universally agree the game has one good feature: Huttball. People love it. Reason: it is well designed. Its anecdotal; I would love to play that part of SWTOR. But I don't want to play against a bunch of no lifers who have grinded their gear while I have to play a spec I don't enjoy because the spec I originally rolled as "had too high burst in PvP" (yet pre and post PvP nerf it was shit in PvE). Nevertheless I will remember SWTOR in my gaming history, and the positive part of my memory will be Huttball.

[mercutiouk]

I get the point with all the posts about gear normalization and how much better it is in other games etc. The problem is though you are taking that and applying it to a VERY gear orientated RPG. It doesn't fit. Wow is a HUGELY gear-centric RPG. While it sucks to be undergeared for a few hours playing BG's until you have the gear to compete with others it's rather the style of the game. There's still a decent balance applied by relative skill and character choice.

Applying the "same gear" mentality to wow would make it rather bland. They're experimenting with set gear in PVE, give it time and you may well have something that suits you too but it's another style of game in the similar niche to those wanting old school expansion servers etc - nice idea but not really relevant.

[kosechi]

I'm sorry, all you have really added to this thread is whining, name calling, condescension, and more QQ.

Again, if all you want to contribute is "QQ CHEATERS QQ" then make a new thread about it. Its not relevant, especially since you are the only one whining about it, "kid."

i'm condescending to you because you don't seem to understand what i'm talking about despite me having explained it three or four times, and i call everyone names. i'm actually running out of synonyms for moron.

let me try to outline this again for you with a few simple statements.
a. gear scaling is very very steep this season.
b. there is a lot of win trading and exploiting going on.
c. gear scaling being as steep as it is right now makes it very hard to beat some one who out gears you based on skill.
d. less skilled teams, due to aforementioned wintrading and exploiting are beating more skilled teams who are not engaging in win trading.

this is not a matter of mid range teams like mine not capping our points and then complaining we can't beat full malevolent teams while wearing contenders gear. we are in full malevolent gear, with a lot of it upgraded. but we lack T2 weapons and fully upgraded gear because we don't exploit rbgs for the higher points cap and T2 weapons. we are losing to teams who do have those things based on gear alone.

this is a problem.

[Noxina]

About the problem with alts, I came up with this idea on how to catch up faster. This way people who lvl up alts mid-season actually got a chance to get progressive with it in a pvp matter without being outgeared by several pieces of items:

If you play arena and RBG from week 1 of the season and get all the caps you should have had gained 8800 after 4 weeks. Then when someone hit lvl 90 on an alt 4 weeks in he should be able to obtain the same amount by having an increased conq cap the first week, if he dosnt get the cap that week he will "lose it", so the first week he would have a 8800 conq cap = 40 arena wins + 4 RBGs the first week, then if he's still at low rating he'd have 2200 conq cap the next week. However, if this person dont get his 8800 conquest points capped that week, he will not have a second chance the next week. So if he obtained 4800 that first week, he will not be able to get the remaining 4000. So in week 5 he would sit at 4800+2200=7000 total, when he could have had a 8800+2200=11000 if he realy cared about it.

What do you think? And if you got some questions, feel free to ask. As I guess some stuff may be "shady" as I'm Norwegian, and it was somewhat hard to explain it all x]

[Wilian]

This reason alone is why I hate PvP in general.

When joining Battlegrounds/Arena your gear should be normalized. Wins should be based on tactics/skill and not gear. It's simple mathematics why the current system fails.

PvP should be something fun you want to do, not something you know you can't win at based on gear.

Then it ceases from being RPG in which character progression is vital and pretty much the main defining element which I don't want to lose. There are plenty of PvP games with fixed stuff.

[Kaleredar]

Winning against under geared people is still winning, as far as I'm concerned. My random battle ground teams are always hampered by any number of poorly geared players; I relish the opportunity to sink obliterate crits into poorly geared enemy player's faces.

As for "world" PvP, I don't prey upon anyone who's level is lower than mine, unless they themselves are picking on someone.

[skrump]

sure it is rewarding just as killing someone 10+ levels lower than you is rewarding.

The question is, is the reward of the Hk, though I really think they should stop calling them honerable kills as their is nothing honorable about killing a much weaker opponent, maybe we should start referring to them as handicap kills.

[barrsftw]

The best I can come up with is to use some sort of ilvl bracket. Fiddling with stats themselves only compounds the problem of number balancing, and outside of separating PvE and PvP, there's not too much Blizz can do.

PvP is just broken in general.

This is actually a solid idea. Smogon is a pretty popular pokemon tournament website that uses this philosophy in matches. There are different tiers:
1. Uber - Anything goes, all pokemon are usable (in our case all ilvls)
2. Overused - Anything but Uber are usable (in our case anything below ilvl X)
3. Rarelyused - Anything but Uber and OU are usable (in our case anything below ilvl Y)

You get the point. It works pretty well and you even have the aspect of people intentionally using pokemon from a lower tier, or in our case: lower ilvl. One problem I could see however is even longer arena Queues, which nobody likes :/.

[Noxina]

The best I can come up with is to use some sort of ilvl bracket. Fiddling with stats themselves only compounds the problem of number balancing, and outside of separating PvE and PvP, there's not too much Blizz can do.

PvP is just broken in general.

To easy to trick it.
If they balance it with average ilvl, all PvEers with HC gear would get screwed if they only had dreadfull pvp gear, as the system would see them as 505 ilvl insted of 460ilvl, thus getting them trampled by people in full Elite gear.
If they balance it around equipped ilvl, people with full Elite gear could just equip some lower ilvl items and end up in the same lobby as the people still gearing up from questing.. And then ruin their experience.

Honestly, I dont think they can do much about the geared vs undergeared aspect, its just how the system works - someone that got better gear have spent more time getting it and should then be rewarded by easy kills. In rated PvP this shouldnt be a problem, as MMR would sort them out (kind of).

[Baduric]

So what you're saying is that people who put in months to grind up their set of gear should get steamrolled by a R1 player on a new level 90?

Are you saying that the less skilled person should win, and that it would be unfair if they lost? Why would you possibly want to justify such a system? Hopefully if someone has been grinding gear all season long they should have a better understanding of the new comps and strats than the person who hasn't been playing, and thus should win without a gear difference.

Unskilled players feel awesome when they defeat a skilled player.

Well if we're going to use that as a justification for game design... why not just build it into the game that the damage that you do is equal to some inverse of your MMR (dmg done = dmg/MMR). That way people who are good at the game can be appropriately punished, and all the idiots who have absolutely no idea what they are doing can feel amazing. Sounds fucking perfect :|

I don't see how you can defend the system as it currently stands: it is only fair if the best player / team is the one that wins.

[Nicola]

This is actually a solid idea. Smogon is a pretty popular pokemon tournament website that uses this philosophy in matches. There are different tiers:
1. Uber - Anything goes, all pokemon are usable (in our case all ilvls)
2. Overused - Anything but Uber are usable (in our case anything below ilvl X)
3. Rarelyused - Anything but Uber and OU are usable (in our case anything below ilvl Y)

You get the point. It works pretty well and you even have the aspect of people intentionally using pokemon from a lower tier, or in our case: lower ilvl. One problem I could see however is even longer arena Queues, which nobody likes :/.

So, you mean that the guys with fully upgraded malevolent gear can farm free points on all those fools in their normal/heroic PvE gear?
Or do you mean that multi gladiators will play with a low ilvl on purpose so they can only meet undergeared people?

[Fela]

Make an option to que with preset gear.
Should not be to hard

That, a hundred times over.

[Verrari]

I'm a decently geared Shadow Priest and I do very much notice (hard not to) when I'm facing under geared people (they go down really quickly, not much of a fight more like a slaughter). I do generally agree that it's not very fun or interesting to just downright dominate your opponent through gear.I think it'd be better if people were separated into iLvl brackets, with the higher iLvl brackets having greater honor rewards. This would allow for more even match ups, whilst still keeping the feeling of "progression."

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I get the point with all the posts about gear normalization and how much better it is in other games etc. The problem is though you are taking that and applying it to a VERY gear orientated RPG. It doesn't fit. Wow is a HUGELY gear-centric RPG. While it sucks to be undergeared for a few hours playing BG's until you have the gear to compete with others it's rather the style of the game. There's still a decent balance applied by relative skill and character choice.

Applying the "same gear" mentality to wow would make it rather bland. They're experimenting with set gear in PVE, give it time and you may well have something that suits you too but it's another style of game in the similar niche to those wanting old school expansion servers etc - nice idea but not really relevant.

Agree with this. If you like that system, play a game that has it. As for me, I don't mind losing some games. I have mediocre gear, mediocre skill, and a mediocre rating. I can tell when a team has a much better ilvl than I, and I love beat those teams, or at least attempting to beat those teams. This is a game and genre about grinding for gear, be it PVE or PVP.

No matter how many times you bash me, call me names, or "explain" things to me, I will be unlikely to agree. I understand what you are saying, but I do not wish it to change. I have never cheated in this game, I have never stomped all over someone with less gear than I and relished in it, but I don't think normalization would be fun, better, or good in any way. I was going to try out GW2 until I heard about the gear normalization. I feel this system would only benefit some people, those dubbed "casuals" because they wouldn't need to grind. Ironically, with less time played I think they would be less skilled, which would still result in a loss.

Change for the sake of "progressing" is rarely a good idea. Why don't we see how well those games with gear normalization are doing compared to WoW.

I understand there is a cheating issue. I have only heard about it extensively in this thread to be honest. There is a better way to fix that issue than gear normalization.

[Chief Brouhaha]

If they normalized the gear then the glaring differences in class strength would show. Now they don't want that :P