Here’s a long attack to WoW’s Honor System that I consider completely broken on all the core elements. In particular some of the rules designed to prevent griefing and exploits are obtaining the exact opposite result and are encouraging the players to exploit the system and grief other players.

Only “Senior Lead Designers” can consider this as positive for the game.

—
With the diminishing returns Alterac is simply pointless.

The CTF BG allows you to heap the cumulative reward for each victory AND get a constant recycle of enemies. So the CTF already nullifies the diminished returns because you’ll jump to a session to another, meeting different players constantly.

In Alterac the gameplay becomes pointless from the reward perspective. The cumulative goal can be achieved (maybe) in an arc of hours and it’s just a TINY percent of what you can get in CTF. PLUS after 20 minutes you get no points from direct kills due to the diminished returns.

At best the players are ENCOURAGED to jump from session to session in order to refresh their kill counts and keep earn points.

Not only. If you play during the off-peaks you’ll most likely meet always the same opponents because there aren’t many players logged in. The diminished returns completely BREAK the game in this case. Whoever is able to play for long periods of times and during the peaks is severely advantaged thanks to a constant resupply of enemies.

A player shouldn’t be PUNISHED just because he is playing in a smaller server or at odd hours. This castigates again the casual players and just begs again to pack the players all in one server instead of spreading uniformly.

—
And let me add:

The diminished returns DO NOT solve the exploits, they ENCOURAGE AND MAXIMIZE them.

The fact that two guilds can meet and farm each other is way easier if they know exactly the “cap” of their points. In a matter of a few minutes they are able to MAXIMIZE their points and then continue to play the game and heap more points on top of those they farmed on each other.

This means that with a cap you are TRULY able to control and MAXIMIZE your honor performance. Since the diminished returns are reset *daily*, these guids can just arrange daily matches and maximize their full value in a short time span.

This means that they have a 100% safe MAXIMUM VALUE. You cannot surpass them because they capped the mathematical limit of the system.

—
WHENEVER you set a cap, you are setting as well a precise pattern that the exploiters can find out and maximize.

Without these diminished returns the exploiters would be forced to repeat over and over what they do since there’s no fixed cap. This means that they would be easier to spot for a GM.

Now, let’s say that:

– The first time a GM catches you arranging encountrers you get your honor points and rank reset to zero.
– The second time you are banned for a week.
– The third time your account is permanently suspended.

How many players you think will continue to arrange encounters?

This is NOT a problem of the ruleset. This is a problem of GMs and the tools they have available to monitor the situation. The “diminishing returns” are just a terribly unfun bandaid for a problem that is not even remotely addressed in this way.

—
Let’s see some basic math. So maybe you get the point.

Let’s say that every character is worth the same amount of points for a kill. Let’s say it’s 200.

Now, we have a group of casual players joining the Alterac BG. So 40 vs 40. And we have another group of two guilds that are going to arrange an encounter to maximize their points. And it’s again a 40 vs 40 situation.

What is the amount of points you can aspire in the two situations?

In the first example I can safely assume that, on average, every player is going to die at least four times in an arc of 30 minutes. So after this period it’s absolutely sure that noone will gain anymore points from the direct kills. To calculate the total of CP for each player we have to multiply the 200CP for each kill for 4 (the number of kills worth points) and apply at the same time the diminished returns.

100% of 200 = 200CP (first kill)
75% of 200 = 150CP (second kill)
50% of 200 = 100CP (third kill)
25% of 200 = 50CP (fouth kill)

Now we sum them. 200 + 150 + 100 + 50 = 500 CP
Then we take this total and have to divide it to the number of players in the raid. 40 in this case. 500 / 40 = 12.5 CP

12.5 is the MAXIMUM amount of honor points you’ll get from another player, for that day, in a BG scenario. If we multiply 12.5 for the total number of opponents you have (40 in this case) we obtain: 12.5 * 40 = 500 CP

500 CP is the MAXIMUM amount of points you can earn in a BG in about 20-30 minutes. After this period you’ll get zero points from direct kills. And in the case you’ll meet again one of those 40 players somewhere lese in the game or in another BG, you’ll still get zero points for the rest of the day.

Now let’s consider the other situation where two guilds can organize an exploit.

In this case it’s obvious that they won’t group in a raid in order to maximize the gain. So each character becomes a potential of 500 CP. If we multiply these 500 CP for the whole group of 40 we get a total of 20.000 CP

Now let’s compare, in half an hour, how many points the exploiters and the “fair” players can achieve.

Exploiter = 20.000 CP in 30 minutes
Fair player = 500 CP in 30 minutes

This isn’t everything. Not only there’s a HUGE gap of efficency, but the exploiters, in order to reach 20.000 CP in 30 minutes, “used up” just 40 other chatacters. A “fair player”, in order to reach the same result, would need a total of ONETHOUSANDSIXHUNDRED other players. DAILY.

Then explain me how the diminished returns are helping the situation.

—

So your 38 guildies organize an exploit in a BG… what happens when 2 people come in and want a real BG, not a lame tagging fest? what happens to those 38 people when those 2 report them?

Obviously a guild with the intention to exploit the system will farm the CPs OUTSIDE the BGs. That’s OBVIOUS.

You missed the point.

Lets look at it from the existing system of diminishing returns (100/75/50/25). I join a raid group (the sensible, teamwork thing to do) and I am on the front lines with 29 other people killing Private Jenkins – I will only have a POTENTIAL of 13 CP to gain from Jenkins for the entire day!!!!!

Why would I EVER want to join a raid group if this was the case?? Don’t get me wrong, I am part of a large PVP guild that wants to dominate our battlegrounds…..my point is, I WANT teamwork and coordination to be rewarded. Right now it is punished. The CP yields from Alterac do not equal the amount of effort that is put into them.

No, YOU are missing the point. That would still encourage exploits since you are able to maximize your performance. So it solves nothing at all and it encourages again to leave the BG as you maximized your points. The only effect that your idea will have is to make the mechanics of the game even more obfuscated to the players.

Again the only solution is to remove this idiotic mechanic altogether. Like I wrote on the previous page.

Here’s the complete list of changed to unfuck this broken PvP system:

– REMOVE the "diminished returns” on Contribution points inside the BGs.
– Boost up the goal-based rewards to a level that farming consensually CPs points outside won’t offer a benefit.
– Save the persistence of a BG, preventing it to reset even if there are no players inside.
– Add dynamic structures to slowly realign/reset the BG (like temporarily boosting the defenses of the losing faction till they are able to recapture their headquarter).
– REMOVE the points for direct kills outside the BGs.
– ADD goal-based PvP systems to the world outside the BGs like conquerable graveyards, towers, escort/assault missions.

—

The systel will already be exploited as it is, by guilds who have both horde players and alliance players.

They’ll create a BG with only your guild and let one side win.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
…

That’s why this game has GMs. Having one of them checking the BGs from time to time will definitely help to identify these groups and take actions against them.

The point is that to exploit the system you HAVE to repeat the exploit over and over and over.

THIS IS GOOD.

If an exploiter is required to repeat the exploit constantly, the GMs will have greater possibilities to identify them and take actions.

Since the Honor System is based on a continued experience along the weeks and months, the exploiters would be required to exploit constantly. And if they do this inside a BG it will be EXTREMELY EASY to spot them and cut the problem at the root.

Even though you already stated, and tried to defend the ways to avoid two groups of people farming honor. How? Changing the BG? Whats happens when they DO get into the same? 10 n00bs to Warlords in a day? I can’t think of any effective way they can keep two parties from farming each other.

By requiring them to exploit CONSTANTLY in order to be effective.

Right now a group of exploiters can heap a huge amount of points in a very short amount of time. This means that they are HARD to spot because you have to be there in that exact moment.

If, instead, you force them to join a BG of 40vs40.

– Firstly, you are forcing them to have EIGHTY players agreeing to exploit the system (which is extremely risky).
– Secondly, you are forcing them to exploit the system in a way that will be BLATANLY OBVIOUS, so easy to discover and report.

Totally agree. But incentives to kill one another (honor points) should remain because otherwise it just becomes a PVE love fest. Why would I want to stop you from accomplishing an objective? Maybe just because I feel like it and because it’s part of the game we play, but I feel a whole lot more incentive to go stop someone from attacking something if I am going to get rewarded for it. Selfish and overly pragmatic? Yes, but also realistic. I remember when there was no honor, hardly anyone would respond to World Defense messages because they couldn’t be bothered.

Your reasoning is flawed.

I want the game to stop rewarding for the free ganking outside the BGs. This because it transforms everyone in a “bag of points” and makes the action absolutely predictable.

My idea is to reward for GOALS instead of meaningless ganking players at a disadvantage. Because right now an PvP fights happen only against players without many possibilities to win, like a level 60 Vs a level 52 or three lvl 60 Vs one lvl 60.

That’s a broken PvP system. Terribly unfun because ALL the fights are between two sides where one is at an advantage and the other always at disadvantage. And the system is REWARDING this behaviour.

How’s this good? How’s this fun? How it promotes a meaningful PvP with a purpose?

This is why I want them to remove the CPs for the free ganking (outside the BGs) and start to reward for GOALS.

Rewarding for goals would mean, for example, that you can conquer a graveyard in a zone and get CPs for doing that. As you can see this ENCOURAGES to fight for a purpose. It ENCOURAGES to check the world defense because you are fighting over something with a purpose and not to kill repeatedly easy targets.

The fact is that a battle is fun when you are fighting FOR SOMETHING. Not when you transform the zone into a First Person Shooter Deathmatch.

Why would I want to stop you from accomplishing an objective?

Because you’ll be REWARDED for doing so. Not from points coming from the free ganking, but because you’ll engage into competitive missions.

Let’s do an example. There will be a PvP mission where you’ll have to escort a caravan of NPCs from point A to point B. You take the mission and your duty is to keep them safe till they reach their destination.

On the other side, the other faction will be able to join the exact same mission with a difference. Instead of defending that caravan, they need to destroy it.

You’ll gain a conspicuous amount of CPs in the case you are able to defend the caravan and make it reach the destination. Instead, if the mission fails, it will be the other faction to get those points.

THIS is how you reward for meaningful PvP. You fight OVER SOMETHING and not by ganking peoples at disadvantage.

Right now this Honor System is just A LEGAL FORM OF GRIEFING. Encouraging you to pick all the fights where you are at an advantage, engage lower level players or forming ganking groups to attack solo players doing quests. And nothing else.

The short version is here.

—
I’m reluctant to open a new thread but I also want to underline the basic point once for all to not have to return on it over and over.

The BGs, right now, have many bugs and inconsistencies, like the possibility to break the CTF by logging with the flag, the durability hit on the equipment, the use of overpowering skills (speed, invulnerability shields etc..), the lag, the narrow “bubble” around the character that makes the guard spawn/despawn right on you and so on between minor and major problems.

All this could get solved in the next weeks since the BGs won’t be moved to the live servers before June. So, even if I find odd that all these problems slipped through 6+ months of focus testing, I’m confident that sooner or later Blizzard will address them.

Instead I’m not confident that they’ll fix the BASIC problem. Actually I believe they do not even see it.

The rule that they completely inverted is the following:
– It’s OUT of the BG that you CAN reward for goals and CANNOT reward for direct kills. (persistent environment)
– It’s IN the BG that you CANNOT reward for goals but CAN reward for direct kills. (instanced environment)

To explain the reasons behind that rule it’s enough to examine how the BGs work right now. There are two possible ways to interact and get a reward. The first is through the direct kills, so by fighting enemies and killing them over and over. The second is by “winning” the BG mission, so winning the CTF game or defeating the opposing faction in Alterac by conquering its base.

Now the evidence of the truth of the rule I wrote above comes directly from the fact that BOTH those ways to interact are broken.

Let’s take the first. You kill an opponent and you gain points. This is the very basic form of PvP we have on many different games. Here we are in a battleground, peoples come here to fight. It should be okay to reward for a kill, shouldn’t it? Not for Blizzard.

If this part is broken why only a small part of the players are complaining? Because the evidence of the problem is hidden:

Players may now see an “estimated contribution point value” in the combat log for an honorable kill. Note that this value does not take diminishing returns against the same player into account, and is therefore “estimated”.

The fact is that the BGs are the WORST way to heap Honor Points gained from direct kills. This because of the actual implementation of those “diminishing returns”:

Repeated killing: you only get full CP for killing the same player once per day. The second kill on the same player on the same day gives 75% of the CP, the third 50% and the fourth 25%. Subsequent kills give no CP at all.

Add to this the fact that these reductions aren’t relative JUST TO YOU, but to the whole raid group.

Now, a battle in the Alterac Battleground can last even a few hours and the instance works as a 40vs40 arena. Let’s take the average player, how many times he will die in an arc of 15 minutes? Less than four? I do not think so.

After putting together all these points you’ll find out that in 20-40 minutes you’ll be able to squeeze all the possible points from a BG. From that moment you are there for the fun because, while your UI will tell you that you are still gaining points, in the reality you are getting NONE. If you add the fact that a BG in Alterac lasts a few hours and not 20 minutes like the CTF version, you’ll find out that this first path (getting points for direct kills) is definitely not viable since these “diminished returns” prevent you from gaining points after a short, initial period.

Now let’s take a step backwards. Why these diminished returns were added to the game in the first place? They were added in order to prevent the corpse camping and to put an initial limit to possible exploits.

BOTH these motivations have ZERO reasons to exist in a Battleground. Corpse camping doesn’t exist because you directly respawn at the graveyard and the whole purpose of the gameplay should be to search the battle since the players have joined the instance exactly for that purpose.

The first conclusion is that this path (getting Honor points for fighting the opposite faction) is broken on two points. The first, because you get no points at all after an initial time span that will encourage the players to leave and “farm” each instance, jumping from one to the other (breaking the purpose of the BG, I’ll return on this). The second because the evidence of this mechanic is “hidden” by a broken UI delivering wrong feedback (since you do not see the diminished returns and the UI will keep telling you that you are heaping points).

What about the other path? The other path to gain Honor points is is by accomplishing missions. For example in Alterac you’ll be able to get a cumulative reward if you are able to take over the headquarter of the opposite faction. Which is.. impossible.

Since these BGs are instanced, the persistence of a goal like conquering an headquarter simply doesn’t work. Once a losing faction is starting to see an unavoidable defeat, they’ll simply log out, forcing the whole instance to reset and kicking the “winning” faction out of the BG without getting the well deserved reward.

So both these paths are completely broken, but not due to bugs as the glitches I listed at the beginning, but simply because they reverted a model that works on precise rules that cannot be moved at will. Rules that must be considered instead of ignored.

And these rules are summed up in the two points I wrote above:

-INSIDE a Battleground you are supposed to fight and kill. Because you go there exactly for that purpose, exactly because you are SEARCHING a fight. So the system is supposed to encourage the fight itself, it is supposed to provide reasons and goals (in the form of the reward). This is the reason why the “diminished returns” make no sense in this environment. You don’t want to inhibit the gameplay, you want to encourage it and reward for it.

The purpose of a BG is exactly to search a fight. Right now the fight is the least relevant mechanic because the greatest reward will come by accomplishing the goal (in the CTF BG). The goal itself makes the direct kills completely irrelevant considering the total of the points you’ll receive.

– At the same time, again INSIDE the Battleground, the goals make no sense. A goal, intended as a meaningful interaction with the environment, is supposed to be a persistent element, like the conquest of the oposite headquarter. But it’s exactly for this reason that a “goal based system” is more appropriate for the world outside, that is already persistent. And not appropriate for the BG, which is instanced.

The evidence of this is in the current behaviour of the players. Right now it is impossible to “win” the Alterac BG because the players “exploit” the false persistent element by logging out and forcing the instance to reset. This happens exactly because Blizzard founded the persistence in something that isn’t persistent. Guess what? It doesn’t work.

– OUTSIDE the Battlegrounds the situation is reverted. Here you CANNOT reward for the direct kills because the players go after different goals. They may be questing, they may be travelling and so on. Rewarding for ganking is inappropriate because it wipes off the game that variety that existed before. The fact that each player is a ” walking bag of improvement” makes everyone a target. Erasing the possibility of CHOICE. INSIDE the BG it’s okay to give out points for the direct kills because all the players are there exactly for that precise purpose. Outside the BG the gameplay is less focused and it’s inappropriate to force the players into a strictly codified behaviour coming form a direct reward given by the system.

The fact that outside the BG the behaviour of the players was less codified and less predictable brought to the game a type of depth that now is completely gone.

– Still OUTSIDE the Battlegrounds the idea of adding GOALS to the PvP is a GOOD idea. Fighting for the control of towers, graveyards and some escort/defence mission could help a lot to add depth to the game world and encourage the players to participate actively and have fun. Since the reward would be GOAL-based the players won’t be FORCED to partake in the action. They could just ignore it and continue doing something else if their current focus is elsewhere.

A goal-based PvP outside the Battleground would mean that the goals become the center of the action. The players will have the choice if to fight the opposite fight in a war with an actual purpose instead of a scenario where the whole depth of PvP is just a pointless genocide excused just by the reward for the direct kill.

Shortlist without explaniations:

– REMOVE the “diminished returns” on Contribution points inside the BGs.
– Save the persistence of a BG, preventing it to reset even if there are no players inside.
– Add dynamic structures to slowly realign/reset the BG (like temporarily boosting the defenses of the losing faction till they are able to recapture their headquarter).
– REMOVE the points for direct kills outside the BGs.
– ADD goal-based PvP systems to the world outside the BGs like conquerable graveyards, towers, escort/assault missions.