Do any T4 scens ever actually get played?

[Boggy]

Seems like every scenario I've entered in T4 has a fixed group in it, that dominates for 2 minutes, then the opposition all leave.

This is a complete joke of a system, where your choices are (a) stay and get farmed, because even if your PuG WAS up to the battle, after half of it leaves it isn't anymore, or (b) leave and re-queue. Since it happens so frequently, this means your scenario choices boil down to spending all evening getting farmed or queueing.

Does anyone enjoy this? I can't imagine even the fixed groups enjoy facing such lopsided battles, though I suppose we all know there's the odd freakazoid out there who gets his jollies from easy wins.

When I first realised WAR works like this, I had trouble believing it. WoW faced this problem from the moment it created Battlegrounds, and it's well-known how much players hated being in a system that didn't differentiate fixed groups from PuGs. It's some kinda idiocy to create a system so similar to something so unpopular.

I quit my subs yesterday over this. My one saving grace in WAR, up until I saw this happening in T4, was that scens were a laugh. No matter how simplistic and protracted ORvR becomes or how little interest there is in the PvE, scens were good for 15 mins of actual PvP battling. Without this, the game hasn't got enough for me to stay in it.

 

[Afran]

There will always be premades when fortress attempts are going on, if you don't want to face them simply don't queue for the zone that's being capped at the time.

 

[Sharkith]

They really need a system of renown matching for scenarios - not a queue for one scenario but several running concurrently and a factoring system that places fairly even teams of players against each other.

Surely this is possible?

Not by going on the average renown of the group but by working on the mean and the standard deviation of renown. A poorly matched group or PUG is likely to have a wide standard deviation and a low median and a well matched farm group would likely have a higher median score and a smaller standard deviation.

Is it not possible to have some sort of ladder system even?

After all a good scrap is what a lot of people are after. The more unpredictable open game is going to always be ORvR - unless people want to continually avoid each other in Keep takes which is what is sadly happening in Tier 3 on Karak 8 Peaks.

 

[Boggy]

Afran, I tried all kinds of combinations of queueing and ended up both lengthening my wait for scen pops substantially and STILL facing premades. It's not just the one scen of the capped zone - I couldn't find one without them.

It's pretty obvious how the queuing system should work. It should put all of the premades into one queue and all of the solo/duo people in another. Players could have a preference so that they could opt to face premades, but it should be elective, not compulsory.

This is not a trivial issue. It clearly presents problems for large numbers of players, otherwise you wouldn't see the steady stream of people immediately leaving a scen during the entire 15 minutes it is running when one side has a premade group in it.

 

[Ctuchik]

They really need a system of renown matching for scenarios - not a queue for one scenario but several running concurrently and a factoring system that places fairly even teams of players against each other.

Surely this is possible?

probably, it wont solve anything but its possible to do. what would solve things were one scenario queue for premades and one for the pug ppl.

that way premades will never face pugs and vice verse and everyone have fun.

unless the premades are only in it to farm pugs, they will hate it but who cares about those sad ppl anyway?

 

[dee777]

I doubt that this is gonna help. When one faction tries to cap a zone, they ll still announce in regionchat and most reasonable people will stay out of the scenario in question. So all the premade guys will just queue as solo and still get a premade group once the scenario pops.

It will only ever change, if scenarios wont contribute VPs towards zone cap anymore.

 

[Boggy]

That would probably help a little, Dee, but when you look at the WoW example, you can see that a lot of people just play scens in premades for renown or because they get a kick out of easy wins.

It's sad, but most MMO PvP comes down to people stacking the deck in their favour before they get anywhere near the actual combat. I suppose quite a lot of people are just like that, which is never going to go away, but the MMO game mechanics are all built to encourage it too.

Look at WAR - the easiest way to get quick renown is to camp a scen spawn and kill opposition the over and over and over for 15 mins. You even see some premades holding onto the salvage in SP so that the scen is guaranteed to run for the whole 15 mins while they do this. Are our MMO developers really so lacking in imagination that they cannot come up with mechanics that encourage something more entertaining than this?

It's all symptomatic of the single biggest problem with MMOs - the reward treadmill. MMOs providers are never confident that their games will keep punters coming back just for the fun of it, so they put in stupid little measures (levels, renown, inf, equipment) to make sure people always have something more to aim for. Sadly, many people lead empty enough existences that these virtual rewards actually keep them pay subscriptions.

 

[Wyleia]

Its not always a lopsided value.. I am 99% of the time in scenarios with my guild and we win majority, but of course when we get put in against 1-2 other order premades, that is when the fun fights happen and its a race to the finish...

Would be nice if the system put 6 man groups into same scenarios though to even it out a little and make it more interesting fights.