Defending the honor system

[oldmandennis]

2) It changes nothing. The caster itemization thing will be improving starting next patch. The fact that they aborted a BG does not mean that the 3 they have are not fun, don't need tactics, and can't use every classes abilities.

You are, in a round about way, defending the Honor System. Why would you do that? WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO THAT?

Level 1) Why does a relativly innocuous statment deserve the italics and caps?

Level 2) You don't address the statement I made "BG's are fun, require tactics, and a mix of class abilities"

Level 3) You instead make a turn into left field about the honor system. The fact that you inserted "round about" doesn't make your logic hold. If I thought the honor system was complete crap, I could still think that BG's are fun.

Level 4) I do think the honor system is more or less working as intended.

The purpose of the Honor system was to give players a "Warcraft 3" style system of measuring their achievment, to encourage both world and BG PvP action, and to give the "achiever" types some shiny baubles to go after. I think it has succeded on all counts.

Nowhere was it promised that you could casually chip away at high warlord, nowhere was it promised that PvP would be a good way for casual players to obtain epic gear. The closest thing was where some blue poster said "You will be suprised at how viable casual players are".

And a mitigation for the dissappointment some players feel about the above reality is the very nice rewards you can get from gaining faction with the various battlegrounds. That is a viable way for casual players to chip away at better gear. The "consolation marks" recently implemented make it even better for a casual player, because even getting 5 based still puts you one small step closer to your Defiler's Pauldrons.

Another problem people have with the honor system is that "it requires no skill, only time". While being HWL does require a massive time investment, it also requires a good team with a lot of skill. I speak from experience. Mostly I roll with Pugs. Once or twice a week I get on with one of the pro teams, including future and past high warlords. The rate of honor gain with them is probably 4-5 times as great with the pro team. I haven't done the math, but I think it would be physically impossible to make HWL without a good team, there just wouldn't be enough time in the day. Pro teams don't let unskilled players hang around (such as shammys that don't heal).

I'm still not a fanboi. There are some improvements that still need to be made. The rate of honor gain needs to be balanced between the BG's (currently AB gives an unbalanced amount of honor). I look foreward to the deserter debuff that should encourage the pro teams to fight it out. They need to do something about leechers in AV. Cross server BG's to get each BG up for everybody in primetime. Maybe some type of team balancer that attempts somehow to pit Pug's vs Pugs and Pro's vs Pro's. It would be nice to somehow weight skill even more strongly.

[Watto44]

Well, oldmandenis and I have had this discussion before, so I'm not going to pitch in, apart from quoting a post from a GM player. It pretty realistically portrays what it's like to invest yourself in the system and how hard it is to "just stop" once you've started. As for the honor system being "unhealthy", well I'll leave that you you own judgement. :)

Original post: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...mp=1#post340220

As of November 15th, 2005, I have successfully attained the rank of Grand Marshal (rank 14) on my Alliance Paladin. I have been PVPing, first part time then full time, since the honor system came out. I ramped up the amount of participation I had in the system as my rank advanced. I did stall at Knight-Captain (rank 8) for about six weeks after the battlegrounds came out as I focused more on Alterac Valley than the more honor rewarding Warsong Gulch.

It took a lot of things to get where I am. It took the cooperation of a good group, the understanding of players who were willing to scale back their earnings to allow me to surpass them, and the understanding / support of my guild. I would be the 'success story' of the PVP / Honor system it seems.

I can unequivocally state that I will never participate in the Honor system ever again. Even if the expansion does not reward former rank 14 players with the level 70 rewards, I will not compete to achieve new versions of the gear I have gained. The system itself is flawed, and in my opinion it is best if people do not get involved in it in. If I had known the real investment needed to advance when I started, I never would have gotten into it.

It is easy to sit back and criticize the choices that GM/HW characters have made when they talk about how much they have had to work to get where they are. The most common statement that the uninformed make is ‘it was your choice, and you should have just stopped,’ or some iteration thereof. I can state that it is not that easy.

There is something called the ‘Dollar Auction’ (sometimes called an ‘American Auction’), commonly used by charities, where when auctioning off an item (or, originally, simply a dollar bill) that the second place bidder must also pay what they bid, but do not receive anything in return. It is extremely common in auctions such as this for bidding to reach a rather silly level (an example is $20 for a standard $1 bill) due to whoever is currently in second place now having invested too much to lose what they are putting down on the table without getting something back. Psychological phenomena prevents the average human being from walking away when there is still a chance of receive some return on investment. Companies around the world continue to pour millions into failing divisions and projects due to the same psychological hurdle.

The honor system plays off this same affect, leaving those who don’t achieve the GM/HW titles with, literally, hundreds of man hours invested with no return. The frustration that this can cause leads to people pushing harder than is healthy to finally get something out of the system. This is where we hear the stories of people sleeping 4-5 hours a day, and then spending all day in the system taking breaks only to eat and use the restroom. Beyond even that, you have people who have their characters played in shifts so that they can have some semblance of a life.

I know people who have spent vacation days from their real life job in an effort to push hard for a next rank or complete the final weeks of the rank 13 to rank 14 transition. I have done it myself, taking four days off of work (November 7 – 10, 2005), so that I could guarantee myself the extra points so that I did not have to continue competing the week of November 15 - 21, 2005.

Even on a ‘soft’ server like Argent Dawn, where the competition is nowhere near as steep as the PVP servers such as Blackrock, Shattered Hand, or Archimonde, those that have achieved rank 14 have at times succumbed to exhaustion, psychological burnout, and general malaise in regards to the game. The system creates a burnout or shell shock affect in the players that participate in it, causing them to cut back on or cease playing the game entirely. In effect, this system can cost Blizzard customers just as constant overtime can cost a company an employee. Anecdotally, many different players on the Blizzard forums report that the rank 14s on their servers all but vanish after achieving their ranks.

There are many achievement oriented people that play MMORPGs, and that is precisely who the Honor system is attempting to hook into participating. Just as the game itself is potentially psychologically addicting (just like a gambler’s addiction, which is very real), the Honor system is even more so. The need to get to that next hurdle or accomplishment to prove to oneself that one is progressing can be extremely strong. This type of compulsion will not show up in everyone, but that is simply due to the fact that every person is different. What affects one person mentally is not guaranteed to work on another. This can lead to decisions that adversely affect the self, just like a gambling addict that sells his car for money to take to a casino.

In summary, I find that the Honor system is not something that is either healthy or constructive. Blizzard has created a system that people can abuse themselves with, and should make changes to it so that the intensive, consecutive time requirements currently in the system are no longer the case. This would be both to show care for their PVP oriented populace, and to retain the customers that often quit after either finishing or no longer wishing to participate in the system. Compete at your own risk.

[oldmandennis]

An excellent post.

Internet addiction has claimed a lot of people, WoW didn't start it and WoW woln't end it. I know a guy who got thrown out of a very expensive school due to a mix of IRC and Quake 2.

My comments are directed at the vast majority of people who hit their wall about rank 7-11. You could make 11 probably if you got on a good team and concentrated on PvP without taking time off of work. Anything past that will probably involve some sacrifice.

But getting to the top of any game involves a lot of sacrifices. "Pro" CS teams practice 10-12 hours a day.

Relatively speaking, its not that many people who are playing like that. I'd be interested if you have any ideas on how to tweak the system to promote the objectives it currently promotes, while simultaniously discouraging burnout and addiction in the top players.

[Guest]

The honor system sucks.
It may well work as intended - that doesnt mean its good.

DAoCs pvp point system(not the rewards just the system) is far superior to WoWs.

The WoW system was designed to allow anyone to get to the top by using a ladder rather than a accumulation system.
But thats not good for a MMORP where some people play casual with the intent of reaching the "top" but doing it more slowely than other players with more time.

People can argue the issue of "fairness" from both sides but really thats silly. MMORPs are a service we pay for and a great ammany players(like me) feel this system serves them poorly.

[Watto44]

I'd be interested if you have any ideas on how to tweak the system to promote the objectives it currently promotes, while simultaniously discouraging burnout and addiction in the top players.
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As I see it there are two major issues with the honor system as it stands:

1) Casuals. I hope that the casual dillema has been solved by the changes made in 1.8. (If you missed the patch note, rating point gain was increased for ranks 1-10 in patch 1.8.) Prior to 1.8 it was nigh on impossible for a casual player to gain any meaningful rewards through the honor system (as distinct from the reputation system) before they hit "the wall". While this doesn't give casual players access to "the top" ranks/items, that seems to be blizzards approach to casual players: give them blue sets/items. While I don't agree with that approach, that's the road they have taken and hopefully the 1.8 changes have made rank 10 and achievable goal for casual players who focus on pvp.

(Prior to 1.8 it certainly wasn't. I was far from a dabbler in the honor system, but restricted by timezones as I am, I hit the wall at rank 7. And that was playing with a burgening "pro" team for the last three weeks.)

2) Decay. This is the real kicker, and where the honor system truly falls apart, introducting burnout and addiction. For those of you that don't know, each week your rating points decay at a rate of 20% of your current raiting points. If you fail to earn more rating points than that decay, you move backwards in. (Note that if you fail to beat the 20% you only move backwards by either 2500 points or 10%, whichever is less.)

This is what causes the "addiction". The closer you get to your goal, the harder it is to reach. And when you're very close to a goal you've worked hard to achieve, it's very difficult not to push yourself harder and harder to reach that goal.

The way in which decay works needs to be heavily tweeked in my opinion. I can think of two options off the top of my head. 1) Scale the decay percentage based on your rank. (ie. 20% at rank 14, 18% at 13, etc.) While this method would still produce the "addiction" effect, it would at least be less pronounced. 2) Implement decay thresholds based on your rank. For example, from ranks 1-5 there is no decay, from 6-10 decay only kicks in if you don't meet a certain fixed quota of CP in a week, etc. This would mean that if you can't pvp as much for a week or two, a smaller level of participation would at least keep you even. It would also mean that more casual players could chip away at their goals while hardcore players have to put in more time to achieve their goals.

But, in an ideal world, the honor system would get a radical overhaul. While I like the idea of a ladder system, I think it should be more of a novelty or for bragging rights than for character progression. Certain rewards should remain for ranking up, but they should be the curios like the mounts, battle standards, potions - perhaps even a magical tabard. (Although I would probably keep the weapons as a reward for getting rank 14. After all, it should be a pretty serious reward for a pretty serious investment.) Use a point buy system of some sort for the armor rewards. Place whatever checks or balances you want on the point buy system to prevent hardcore players from completing their sets in one week/fortnight/month, but at least give casual players a chance.