PvP Ranks

[Quark]

When Blizzard first announced the Honor system, the webpage stated that about 5% of a realm's population would be able to reach Rank 11 or higher after a few months stabilized it.

Fast forward to a few months, and people recently started complaining that the numbers were much, much lower. What did Blizzard do? They changed the webpage to say 1.4%. A firestorm overtook the PvP forums over the weekend, and spilled over to the General forums. Now, there is a response from Caydiem (a real response, instead of the 10 or so "we're looking into its" given before):

All right, folks, I've just spoken with the developers on the situation with the mysterious 1.4%.

The original 5% projection was based on the assumption that players perform at the same level consistently, which, as you all know, isn't normally the case.

Now, the change to the web page wasn't requested by the developers, but rather by one of the testers, who was going off more specific, recent data. The change was made, and thus sparked all this confusion.

Here's the important bit of what I learned, however...

Due to the fact that players are not performing as consistently as previously estimated, the developers currently plan on widening the rank percentages somewhat.

Cryptic, but maybe the 5% will be seen someday.

[Rinnhart]

When Blizzard first announced the Honor system, the webpage stated that about 5% of a realm's population would be able to reach Rank 11 or higher after a few months stabilized it.

Fast forward to a few months, and people recently started complaining that the numbers were much, much lower.  What did Blizzard do?  They changed the webpage to say 1.4%.  A firestorm overtook the PvP forums over the weekend, and spilled over to the General forums.  Now, there is a response from Caydiem (a real response, instead of the 10 or so "we're looking into its" given before):
Cryptic, but maybe the 5% will be seen someday.
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They need a better queue system and more variety to their battlegrounds if they expect people to WANT to maintain rank. Right now it's just the big guilds rotating members at the top.

[Skandranon]

Widening the percentages isn't going to change the problem that currently exists regarding rank on Stormrage. Currently, a tiny minority of the players (perhaps twenty people total) earns well over 80% of the points available to the faction pool each week. The reason is because bad Horde teams just don't play BGs, meaning the majority of Alliance groups get stomped and only the Alliance teams good enough to beat the Horde's best actually earn significant honour.

However, given the way Blizzard's math works, this means that all the remaining players get very few points from the "faction pool". The high achievements of the group at the top is essentially stagnating advancement below them. The high-skill, high-time players shouldn't be punished for being what they are, but the system as it is causes high-skill, high-time players to damage the advancement of players who are either less skilled or have less spare time.

Casual players compete against casual players, Blizzard said, and so the system is fair. They were wrong on both counts. The truth is that when points are divided up amongst all players based on relative accomplishments, everyone is competing against the best, who essentially earn their advancement at the cost of casual players. If the margin between the best and the rest is small, the system works. If the margin is large, the system breaks.

[lemekim]

Widening the percentages isn't going to change the problem that currently exists regarding rank on Stormrage.  Currently, a tiny minority of the players (perhaps twenty people total) earns well over 80% of the points available to the faction pool each week.  The reason is because bad Horde teams just don't play BGs, meaning the majority of Alliance groups get stomped and only the Alliance teams good enough to beat the Horde's best actually earn significant honour. 

However, given the way Blizzard's math works, this means that all the remaining players get very few points from the "faction pool".  The high achievements of the group at the top is essentially stagnating advancement below them.  The high-skill, high-time players shouldn't be punished for being what they are, but the system as it is causes high-skill, high-time players to damage the advancement of players who are either less skilled or have less spare time. 

Casual players compete against casual players, Blizzard said, and so the system is fair. They were wrong on both counts.  The truth is that when points are divided up amongst all players based on relative accomplishments, everyone is competing against the best, who essentially earn their advancement at the cost of casual players.  If the margin between the best and the rest is small, the system works.  If the margin is large, the system breaks.
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Untrue. Blizzard's system is based almost entirely on standings, rather then percentage CP. Surprised? The only stagnation you might see is because people perform well during one week, and bad during another, getting in each other's way. There was a test performed on one of the servers. Most people don't have the resources to pull it off, but these people were already pretty much alone at the top, so this group gained about 400k+ CP in a week, with highest being at 600K. The next week, they all went purely by standings, with highest member only having 350k CP, and maybe 250k for the remaining members. Meanwhile, the average PvPer stil had about same amount of CP per week, I believe standing 50 had 65k or so in each case. Mind you, all this time they all took the top 10 spots. In the end, the progress was about same.

Standing 1 at rank 13 gives you about 30% movement, standing 2 gives 17%, standing 3 does not move you in any significant way.

So really, you should laugh at the people who try to pull in absurd amounts of CP because they think it will help them rank faster. Smart people would coordinate who gets what standing, and "powerlevel" people to the High Warlord with much, much less effort.

They need a better queue system and more variety to their battlegrounds if they expect people to WANT to maintain rank. Right now it's just the big guilds rotating members at the top.

I don't see how that would help. No matter the battleground, top guilds would still outperform your average player, and thus earn more CP. And unfortunately, it is impossible to measure individual skill in a team-based game, so even if that person is the best PvPer in the game, he is nothing if he doesn't have a good group around him. Example:

On our server, one player got a lot of CP through just pubbing all week. He was in the Battlegrounds the whole week... Yet the PvP group on that server PvPed for maybe 3 days, and got double his total for the week. Why? This guy's games lasted 25 minutes a piece, and he didn't always win... Yet the PvP group had 5-10 minute matches, with almost 100% win ratio. So essentially a solo player would not be able to compete in the system, and his best hope is the widening of the ranks.

Perhaps Blizzard should just go ahead and make the distinction between casual players and hardcore, and implement two separate Honor systems - one for casual PvPers, that has good rewards, but is only limited to that particular server... And another system server-wide, where the rewards are higher, but the competition is also bigger - you are competing against the best guilds across all servers. That might at least give smaller guilds and casual players a chance to compete among themselves.

[Skandranon]

In the end, the progress was about same. [right][snapback]89752[/snapback][/right]

I expect that there's a correction factor for the people at the top. But it wasn't their advancement I was talking about; it was the people at ranks 4 through 7. One week on Stormrage I was standing 94; the next week I didn't PvP at all. The second week my bar moved a little bit downward, but not significantly. You just can't move in the middle ranks any more.

[Quark]

Widening the percentages isn't going to change the problem that currently exists regarding rank on Stormrage.
[right][snapback]89733[/snapback][/right]

Believe me, I know that. But maybe, at least, Blizzard could give what they promised - that 5%. I doubt Stormrage will ever see the day where Honor is actually worth it for me, so I'll stick to Faction - and it's damn near impossible for me to get that now, too.

[Rinnhart]

I don't see how that would help. No matter the battleground, top guilds would still outperform your average player, and thus earn more CP. And unfortunately, it is impossible to measure individual skill in a team-based game, so even if that person is the best PvPer in the game, he is nothing if he doesn't have a good group around him. Example:

On our server, one player got a lot of CP through just pubbing all week. He was in the Battlegrounds the whole week... Yet the PvP group on that server PvPed for maybe 3 days, and got double his total for the week. Why? This guy's games lasted 25 minutes a piece, and he didn't always win... Yet the PvP group had 5-10 minute matches, with almost 100% win ratio. So essentially a solo player would not be able to compete in the system, and his best hope is the widening of the ranks.

Ever play shooters online? If it's the same map, it gets old fast. If it's a variety of maps, you get alot of people just kinda hanging out kickin' back and forth. It also makes it more difficult for a group of people that excel at one kind of combat to dominate a game if you have a large selection of game types and styles. It also keeps Joe Average interested long enough for fights not to be lost by default.

[lemekim]

Ever play shooters online? If it's the same map, it gets old fast. If it's a variety of maps, you get alot of people just kinda hanging out kickin' back and forth. It also makes it more difficult for a group of people that excel at one kind of combat to dominate a game if you have a large selection of game types and styles. It also keeps Joe Average interested long enough for fights not to be lost by default.
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Variety is great of course, it would mean PvPing for the sake of PvPing and not grinding honor... But server-wide ladder must be a factor one way or another. As it stands, new maps would require implementation of a server-wide BG system, because currently the individual server population will not be able to keep those BGs filled.

But server-wide ladder would already provide a good solution to the current system, since it would provide fresh competition for hardcore guilds, which in turn would prevent a lot of guilds afking out in tough matches, which will lead to increase in pub vs pub types of games, simply because the guilds spend more times fighting each other.

So implementing the server-wide system is needed one way or another. We could perhaps go a step further and separate Casual and Hardcore competition through server-wide Hardcore ladder with higher rewards or individual-server ladder system (but you can only be on one or the other).

[Watto44]

This is actually quite a crushing blow for me. A few weeks ago I decided that I was going to dedicate more of my time to PvP because, one I love it and two I have difficulty finding groups to collect decent gear and rarely get invited to MC (once a fortnight on average). So I thought I'd have a crack at collecting the blue pvp set. After reading this I busted out the calculater and did some referencing between warcraftrealms.com and the pvp rankings feature on the bliz site.

Terenas:
Total Population: 23,575 (Alliance: 16,997, Horde: 6,573)
Level 51-60: 5,380 (A:3845, H:1535)
Level 60: 3,582 (A: 2541, H: 1041)

Rank 11 and higher: 16 (A: 10, H: 6)
Rank 10 (what I'm aiming for): 17 (A: 8, H: 9)

Rank 11 and Higher as a % of:
%
Total Pop 0.067
51-60 0.297
60 0.415
Total Faction A: 0.058/H: 0.091
Faction 51-60 0.26/0.39
Faction 60 0.394/0.576

Ok, so as I understand it the number of players who can attain rank 11 or higher is based on the number of players who actually engage in PvP (although I don't know how blizzard determines who exactly engages in pvp). So let's look at the number of players who engage in pvp using the 1.4% recently given by blizzard, and then apply the originally intended 5% to that and see what comes up. (Again, I don't know if blizzard splits these calculation by faction or not, so I'm including both posibilites, not that it makes much difference.)

Number of PvPers(5% of them)
based on:
Total Rank 11 1143(57)
Faction Rank 11(Alliance/Horde) 714(36)/429(21)

What does this mean? Well, for one thing at the moment I have to aim to keep my standing at 15 or higher in order to achieve rank 10!!! Meaning that I have to be in the top 15 horde pvpers to aquire a BLUE set. (Right now, based on the above figures, approximately 3.5% of a faction's pvp pool can achieve rank 10 or higher.) In order to get my next rank (rank 8) I have to maintain a standing higher than 48, or in the 11th percentile of the horde pvp pool. If you adjust the 3.5% based on an increase from 1.4% to 5%, the theoretical "desired" percentage of players who can achieve rank 10 or higher is 12.5%, or 54 players from terenas's horde pvp population.

I was already a little down about not getting promoted to rank 8 (shiny new chest and pants for me!), and crunching these numbers was too much. On the plus side, I got to spend the time reading a trashy book and enjoying spring. :) What these figures mean is that as it stands it's essentially impossible for me to aquire the full set of blue gear unless I do nothing other than pvp all day everyday, which ain't going to happen.

Sorry for the long post, but I was really disappointed by this and wanted to vent. I'd be interested to see figures from other servers and to see if they matched up, but I'm far too lazy to do this right now. :D