Remove honor decay

[Raukodor]

I give +1 to.this because sometimes i pvp sometimes i have a long break so lost all the gains

[Jimmicz]

The whole point of r14 is that not everybody gets it. + you already have it waaaay easier by bloated PVP pool.

[Jimmicz]

Honor decay does not only affect R14. And why should it even be so that "not everybody gets it"?

If somebody is willing to invest the time needed to get r14 then they should get rewarded.

If somebody is asking for RP not to have decay, then they are just asking for an easy way to get r14.

[Paw]

But pvp is good if its in motion. Liiiike U can fish in a pond, choose the time and place for it where as if you wanna experience the rush of a river you leave the dam open.

[Rytz]

I have minimal PvP experience in WoW primarily due to three reasons:

[1] The grind and time requirements required for ranking.
[2] Having to respec constantly for PvE vs PvP (although I think dual-spec is a thing on turtle?).
[3] General PvP class/spec balance issues.

From an outliers perspective, PvP ranking as a goal might be more appealing if the grind wasn't so harsh. Other than that, I don't have the experience or knowledge to offer an opinion on what changes would help.

[Paw]

I see. So the problem is that its basically undoable. In that case... its a thinker.
What I'd love to do is that we spunk pvp and make it real but how...?
We could start small and make an appointment for like 8pm in the gurabashi arena every day for the interested parties.

[Karmax]

Although I don't have any plans doing PvP / BGs on Turtle WoW, I approve of this suggestion.

Yes - reaching rank 14 should be hard, but it should also be possible to take a break without losing progress. The system has always been unhealthy and - quite frankly - stupid in my opinion.

[Tortuga]

Maybe a convenient solution could be a glyph of honor freeze: while carrying it, the char does not lose/gain honor.

But in the long run, a re-itemization of both PvE and PvP sets would be very appreciated (no need to make a sacred cow out of a deadline-driven-development game that Vanilla WoW was baaaaaack in the days, but basing on that 17 years of experience we have now), making PvP gear no more than mediocre for PvE content (and maybe vice versa, "maybe" because it's still a PvE server)

[Valadorn]

I dont know Tortuga, pve server or not, I dont think PvP gear should be nerfed, if people take the time to get it, they deserve to have fun with it

[Lahire]

It is of the mentality "I should be able to obtain all gratifications even if I have no time to achieve them". It is a retail mentality centered on the individual game level (optimisation of individual "fun" by augmenting the reward rate).
The problem is : if acted on, it has the adverse effect to lessen the visual stratification of players. Visual stratification is very important at a global level, because it creates positive social effects, from a design perspective :

- the achievers can flex in capital (it gives them a meaningful goal and achievement). If everybody has R14, the achievers feel ripped off. It is not a real achievement anymore, it doesn't mean anything.

- it gives visual goals, fantasy or dream to achievers wannabe (who are another kind of players). It motivates them to play more. They are the ones frustrated to not have achieved the goal (and some ask the barrier to be lessened instead of trying to augment their time/skill investment).

- It gives a diverse visual playerbase to non-achiever players (people who don't care about achieving these goals, but love the feeling of a lived-in world, who want immersion). Having only some achievers in town who have the T3 or R14 make non-achievers feel like being part of a stratified society. If everybody has it, it doesn't feel like a real society but like a game machine.

So, hard to achieve goals actually benefit to all players. The individual frustration some feel is part of the design and is globally beneficial to the game as a whole. Sometimes, the individual inconvenience is actually a global benefit for the game.

Vanilla designers were clear on one thing : in MMO design, global benefit must win against individual satisfaction. Why? Because it is a global game and not a single-player game : it tries to create a society, and not just game systems.
The inversion of this philosophy is actually one of the pillars of retail design (in retail, individual gratification matters more than what is good for the game as a society).

[Tarluk]

Personally, as long I can get enough HKs to maintain my Sergeant Rank 3 discount, I'm happy.

1 HK per week is thankfully all you need to maintain that though. Which is great, because it's impossible to find any sort of BGs at low levels right now after level 19.

The system that Darrowshire has sounds intriguing, but it's not really necessary for this server because the focus just isn't on PvP. So the significantly easier solution is to just have the bloated honor pool.

[Karmax]

I respectfully disagree, Lahire.

Removing honour decay doesn't mean R14 is obtainable for the casual player - it's still hard to achieve, still requires tons of time and dedication, especially if the honour required for the different ranks gets adjusted (raised) accordingly.

But instead of being a super unhealthy royal pita it would at least become just a royal pita.

[Lahire]

Your post doesn't disagree with mine actually.
I was talking about the large design philosophy. A change which preserves the fact you need to dedicate yourself to obtain the achievement would not go against it.

But it would be really difficult to tune it so not half the population can get R14. If half the population gets it, the vanilla philosophy, and the design benefits I was talking about, would be lost in the process.

[Lahire]

And it wouldn't be too difficult to tune. A) As I said before, Honor decay doesn't need to be removed completly. If you, say, half the honor decay, you'd still achieve a ranking pool that is changing constantly, and have players lose ranks if they do not PvP at all. It'd just be less punishing to take a break.
On top of that, the ranking point requirements per rank can be increased (e.g. tripled when beyond Rank 8, so 15k instead of 5k) to achieve the same total amount of time needed to get to R14.

This kind of fine tuning, which preserves the visual stratification of player achievements, seems reasonable to me.

[Karmax]

Your post doesn't disagree with mine actually.
I was talking about the large design philosophy. A change which preserves the fact you need to dedicate yourself to obtain the achievement would not go against it.

But it would be really difficult to tune it so not half the population can get R14. If half the population gets it, the vanilla philosophy, and the design benefits I was talking about, would be lost in the process.

Well, I do disagree with you regarding your statement that half of the population could possibly reach R14 if honour decay was removed - especially if ranks require (just as an example) 20% more honour points to make up for the lack of honour decay.

It's still a crazy challenge only few people are willing to take on - and much less to actually complete.

But again - I have no personal stake in this matter as I don't have any plans to PvP at all.

As a side note:
Maybe becoming a diplomat should prevent you from attacking members of the opposite faction - that way people would need to decide to either pursue the path of diplomacy (raiding, PvE) or hostility (BGs, PvP). Not gonna happen, but it would be nice (and consistent) from an RP perspective.

[Tortuga]

I dont know Tortuga, pve server or not, I dont think PvP gear should be nerfed, if people take the time to get it, they deserve to have fun with it

I did not say "nerfed". But the situation when a PvP item is BiS for PvE in some cases is sorta weird, no? Like Blizzard was "We need to finish this game/patch before the deadline. Some stuff was forgotten/delayed/omitted? We'll fix it in TBC then, if ever, now move move move to production!"

[Tortuga]

I see. So the problem is that its basically undoable. In that case... its a thinker.
What I'd love to do is that we spunk pvp and make it real but how...?
We could start small and make an appointment for like 8pm in the gurabashi arena every day for the interested parties.

While we are at the thing...

Maybe the general playerbase's interest to fight at BGs while leveling could be stipulated by an improvement:
1) duplicate the BG vendors from the anus mundi they are currently standing, their exact copies could stand at PvP hubs in their respective racial cities
2) make the gear they sell visible unconditionally (now if the char is neutral to that faction, the vendor appears empty), so people can see the rewards right from low levels, maybe adding more gear for different classes (ex. for low-level WG there are daggers, swords and staves, but no maces or axes, etc.)
2a) make the PvP higher-ranks buildings in Org & SW accessible for all; again, let people see the rewards
3) [this might be a harder one, but still a bomb] separate BG queues for twinks (they have a glyph) and no-twinks, and give some XP for BGs (like Blizz started to do in WotLK)

[Jimmicz]

You literally get to rank 8 by just having 1 kill per week, what more do you want ?

"I"m a casual but I want the rewards from the "hardest" grind in Vanilla WoW" .....

[Paw]

I see. So the problem is that its basically undoable. In that case... its a thinker.
What I'd love to do is that we spunk pvp and make it real but how...?
We could start small and make an appointment for like 8pm in the gurabashi arena every day for the interested parties.

While we are at the thing...

Maybe the general playerbase's interest to fight at BGs while leveling could be stipulated by an improvement:
1) duplicate the BG vendors from the anus mundi they are currently standing, their exact copies could stand at PvP hubs in their respective racial cities
2) make the gear they sell visible unconditionally (now if the char is neutral to that faction, the vendor appears empty), so people can see the rewards right from low levels, maybe adding more gear for different classes (ex. for low-level WG there are daggers, swords and staves, but no maces or axes, etc.)
2a) make the PvP higher-ranks buildings in Org & SW accessible for all; again, let people see the rewards
3) [this might be a harder one, but still a bomb] separate BG queues for twinks (they have a glyph) and no-twinks, and give some XP for BGs (like Blizz started to do in WotLK)

Firstly, I'm having hard time keeping up with the entire argument but as I see Lahire summed up my thoughts nicely.
Secondly, on this note of yours, Tortuga, I don't know how it works I'm guessing you get to see when you achieve the level? If we let everyone see everything from the get go then we rob first time players of the experience of surprise. Easter-eggs are fun to discover. If they are lined up on a table then they are just painted eggs.
Thirdly, someone please explain to me how this entire ranking system works? I have no knowledge about it. I was always on the recieving end of gankings.

[Jimmicz]

Firstly, I'm having hard time keeping up with the entire argument but as I see Lahire summed up my thoughts nicely.
Secondly, on this note of yours, Tortuga, I don't know how it works I'm guessing you get to see when you achieve the level? If we let everyone see everything from the get go then we rob first time players of the experience of surprise. Easter-eggs are fun to discover. If they are lined up on a table then they are just painted eggs.
Thirdly, someone please explain to me how this entire ranking system works? I have no knowledge about it. I was always on the recieving end of gankings.

- watch this, it's a good starting point.

Things I know are different on Turtle compared to Classic.

PVP pool is being artificially bloated, meaning there are more slots for high-ranking people. For 1 Rank 14 player, you need about 333 players in the PVP pool every week just so that one guy can spend 3 months not sleeping to get the gear.

Honor is essentially just a number to compare people against each other, the guy with the Highest amount of honor in one particular week gets the standing 1 and the biggest amount of Rank Points available in the set bracket.

Brackets size is depending on PVP pool size. So the more players you have in the pool ( to be drafted into the PVP pool you need 10 kills on classic / 1 kill on Turtle WoW ) the more players can achieve high-Rank Point gains. If you have about 1500 people in the PVP pool you can have 3 people in the "Rank 14 bracket" .

Not sure exactly what's the max amount of Rank points you can get, simply cause I don't remember it anymore.

Every week after the honor reset, players lose 20% of their CURRENT Rank points. Meaning the more points you have the more you lose and the more you need to gain. That's why people aiming for R14 need to be very high in standing.

I'm pretty sure this decay is already lowered on Turtle WoW.

There are other things like stacking bonuses etc. but that's not really applicable on Turtle WoW as people simply mindlessly grind honor instead of getting together and making it easier.

In theory, you could earn Rank 14 by having 1000 honor per week if everybody else playing PVP would have less than you for 3 months.

[Paw]

Questions:
If we remove the decay then its just like collecting linen cloth, isn't it? I don't think that removing is even an option because then it loses all competition and it'd become about only piling up honor or am I mistaken? Btw how do you collect honor around here?

Answers:
Thank you for your explonation! From the look of it there is never going to be such progression the way things are now. We are a pve/rp server. This ranking system is quite something however but its built for mass pvp population. It would be nice to see people in those epic items though but it shall be earned and I'm thinking "server-competitions" where you can collect turtle tokens and eventually if you play long enough and learn to play well enough you can use those tokens to buy stuff. You could get the blue set from the ranking system and the epic from attending server competitions. How's that sound?

[Tortuga]

Secondly, on this note of yours, Tortuga, I don't know how it works I'm guessing you get to see when you achieve the level? If we let everyone see everything from the get go then we rob first time players of the experience of surprise. Easter-eggs are fun to discover. If they are lined up on a table then they are just painted eggs.
Thirdly, someone please explain to me how this entire ranking system works? I have no knowledge about it. I was always on the recieving end of gankings.

Ummmm... where do I start? (It's really much easier to show than to explain in plain text)
Once upon a time, the 3 battlegrounds were introduced to Vanilla. The only way to get there was to get to the middle of nowhere, where one of 6 PvP factions (3 Ally + 3 Horde) stand guarding their respective battleground entrances. At every such base, there is a trader like this one: https://database.turtle-wow.org/?npc=14754 , selling PvP gear for the BG tokens, called "%Insert BG name% Mark of Honor" https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=20558 (you get them after you take part in BG, 1 for just being there, and 2 more if your team won), each BG has it's own token, so you can buy stuff from the vendor paying with his particular type of BG tokens, nowhere else (one exception, in Org/SW you can buy a special mount for, iirc, 20wg+20ab+20av tokens).
On other servers I played, those vendors were showing their shop no matters what, like any other vendor. But on TWoW, they show an empty shop. I thought this is a bug, but since I rarely do low-level BGs, and on TWoW they are almost non-existant, I just thought its a bug, but I bug one can live merrily with, since on PvE server who cares of PvP low-level gear, anyway.
But someone told me it's not a bug, and a shop will be showed normally once you hit friendly with this particular faction. And in order to be friendly with, say, Warsong Outriders (faction, not a guild), you have to run Warsong Gulch (works like XP in party: for every HK happened near you, you get some Wars.Outr. reputation). In human words: if you be good and learn to swim in a dry pool, one day we put water into it.

What I suggest should be clear now: make the vendor's inventory visible for Neutral rep too (the thing Blizz did in TBC), and bring them to a place players can meet them easily. Blizz tried to do the later in later Vanilla, putting the Warsong Gulch Battlemasters (and other two) in every Horde city, and the same to Alliance -- that's why there is a "PvP hub" in every city now. Blizz did not move the vendors though, but Blizz did not do many optimizations just because "it is not so important", so it cannot be an excuse not to fix it 17 years later.

Of course, my suggestion comes from the point that the dev team is interested in more BGs played before 60. If "it's good as it is", just forget it.

[Tortuga]

As for the "easter eggs for the first-time players" well, the thing exists for 17 years, even if someone never ever played WoW, but by some mysterious ways found our server and decided to play, he will know it anyway, either from this new thing called Internet, or his older mates will tell him

[Paw]

Our staff is partial for pvp. If we come up with a proper plan instead of small corrections implementation will welcome. For this to happen I need to learn the whole system; the gear, the class distribution, etc... and last and most importantly your collective and if individual pov regarding player versus player introduction widestream in our community life, pve and rp viewpoint alike. So feed me with opinions and I'll see to it for happen!



ps.: slow and steady... "each road starts with the first step but u'll reach the end if you keep on walking." /Gandhi/

[Jimmicz]

Your post doesn't disagree with mine actually.
I was talking about the large design philosophy. A change which preserves the fact you need to dedicate yourself to obtain the achievement would not go against it.

But it would be really difficult to tune it so not half the population can get R14. If half the population gets it, the vanilla philosophy, and the design benefits I was talking about, would be lost in the process.

Well, I do disagree with you regarding your statement that half of the population could possibly reach R14 if honour decay was removed - especially if ranks require (just as an example) 20% more honour points to make up for the lack of honour decay.

It's still a crazy challenge only few people are willing to take on - and much less to actually complete.

But again - I have no personal stake in this matter as I don't have any plans to PvP at all.

As a side note:
Maybe becoming a diplomat should prevent you from attacking members of the opposite faction - that way people would need to decide to either pursue the path of diplomacy (raiding, PvE) or hostility (BGs, PvP). Not gonna happen, but it would be nice (and consistent) from an RP perspective.

Ranks do not require honor to get them though....

[Jimmicz]

Secondly, on this note of yours, Tortuga, I don't know how it works I'm guessing you get to see when you achieve the level? If we let everyone see everything from the get go then we rob first time players of the experience of surprise. Easter-eggs are fun to discover. If they are lined up on a table then they are just painted eggs.
Thirdly, someone please explain to me how this entire ranking system works? I have no knowledge about it. I was always on the recieving end of gankings.

Ummmm... where do I start? (It's really much easier to show than to explain in plain text)
Once upon a time, the 3 battlegrounds were introduced to Vanilla. The only way to get there was to get to the middle of nowhere, where one of 6 PvP factions (3 Ally + 3 Horde) stand guarding their respective battleground entrances. At every such base, there is a trader like this one: https://database.turtle-wow.org/?npc=14754 , selling PvP gear for the BG tokens, called "%Insert BG name% Mark of Honor" https://database.turtle-wow.org/?item=20558 (you get them after you take part in BG, 1 for just being there, and 2 more if your team won), each BG has it's own token, so you can buy stuff from the vendor paying with his particular type of BG tokens, nowhere else (one exception, in Org/SW you can buy a special mount for, iirc, 20wg+20ab+20av tokens).
On other servers I played, those vendors were showing their shop no matters what, like any other vendor. But on TWoW, they show an empty shop. I thought this is a bug, but since I rarely do low-level BGs, and on TWoW they are almost non-existant, I just thought its a bug, but I bug one can live merrily with, since on PvE server who cares of PvP low-level gear, anyway.
But someone told me it's not a bug, and a shop will be showed normally once you hit friendly with this particular faction. And in order to be friendly with, say, Warsong Outriders (faction, not a guild), you have to run Warsong Gulch (works like XP in party: for every HK happened near you, you get some Wars.Outr. reputation). In human words: if you be good and learn to swim in a dry pool, one day we put water into it.

What I suggest should be clear now: make the vendor's inventory visible for Neutral rep too (the thing Blizz did in TBC), and bring them to a place players can meet them easily. Blizz tried to do the later in later Vanilla, putting the Warsong Gulch Battlemasters (and other two) in every Horde city, and the same to Alliance -- that's why there is a "PvP hub" in every city now. Blizz did not move the vendors though, but Blizz did not do many optimizations just because "it is not so important", so it cannot be an excuse not to fix it 17 years later.

Of course, my suggestion comes from the point that the dev team is interested in more BGs played before 60. If "it's good as it is", just forget it.

Right so :
1, You get 1 token when you lose and 3 when you Win
2, getting the PVP mount in exchange for tokens is a TBC thing not available in Vanilla, as far as I know in vanilla you unlock the gear via rep/rank and then you just pay gold.

These low lvl items you are talking about were not available until the Naxx patch I believe.

And no matter what the dev team does, if you have a player base that is not interested in twinking / low lvl BGs, and you don't have 5k pop to fill all the available BG brackets, the dev can be a literal god and won't be able to do anything about people not doing BGs.....

For ranking gear you pay gold - https://classic.wowhead.com/item=18854/ ... e-alliance
BG items require gold and rep - https://classic.wowhead.com/item=19325/don-julios-band

[Erok2]

I would think about what incentive is going to get people pvping on this server. There are servers out there for grinding out ranks the traditional way. Players that get destroyed in PVP are just not going to PVP. Why not make up to rank 10 have no decay, and buff stamina on the blue PVP sets. Perhaps even add rank 10 weapons on par with 60 blue weapons.

Or since its a PVE server, just give everyone PVP epics at a certain stage of the game. I understand I am just a single sample, but I have played wow for PVP since it's release. I am decent at PVP, I enjoy PVP, but I am done grinding PVE items or ranks to be able to enjoy PVP. I just wont be doing any PVP.

[Jimmicz]

Wow, this is taking off! :)

I really like what I've been reading. I've also put some more thought into how the ranking decay would need to be adjusted to a) still guarantee a changing ranking pool and b) allow players that cannot play 24/7 for several weeks to get R14.

The essential issue with R14 & Ranking decay is this: To get from R13 to R14, you need to get from 55k to 60k Ranking Points. Honor Decay is 20%, so on 55k, you lose 11k honor. And here's the catch: Only 0,007% of players can make more than 11k RP at all per week (the maximum is 13k). Even in the *best* possible case, you'd still need to be number one for at least 3 consecutive weeks to get from R13 to R14. Even on Turtle, that means grinding every day without breaks.

Now, the solution: Say, we reduce honor decay from 20% to 15%. At 55k honor, you would then only lose 8,25k honor, a threshold that 0,77% of players can surpass (mind you, this includes Turtle's 800 dummy characters sitting in the lower brackets).

Even a relatively small change to the honor decay could significantly reduce the unforgivingness of the system. It'd still be a grind, but you probably wouldn't need to play *every single night* for 3 months to get to the highest Rank - an investment that I'm sure we can all agree nobody should be encouraged to make.

Right, so basically you are still asking for Epic gear without the grind it is required to get it. I was ranking on classic and got to r13 and then I quit because the PVP pool was just too small.

You have two options how to make the "grind" easier without the devs doing anything.

You could bloat the pool even further ( look up PVP pool parties ) I'm pretty sure you would get banned for this over here as the devs are bloating the pool already.

Or just create a PVP community of rankers/players and work together (That's how we did it on classic). Agree on weekly Honor caps, that will give you a clear idea of what standing you will get and essentially for a waiting line for R14. That way you can get standing one even with 1000 honor. IF everybody will be on board and nobody will disrupt this agreed order of yours.

BTW if this is going to happen what about all the players who did the grind? You will just devaluate their achievement .

[Leozan]

I don’t think vanilla wows pvp system was perfect.

At the end of the day having more people with the same decent pvp gear makes for a balanced and better competitive experience.

Shortening that process (or adjusting the gear) will reduce the time new players have to get bodied by vets due to gear imbalance, which should result in them sticking around = more pvp.

I’m my opinion the only reward in the competitive scene for grinding is experience, player skill, and mastering your class/matchups. That should be the real progression of pvp imo; let gear progression mostly serve as cosmetics.

I’m sure players that grinded long hours for gear will get over it when there are more pvp matches popping up. After all the best matches are when skill beats skill, and that should be plenty incentive for all pvpers.

[Erok2]

Maybe there should be some questions posed and a poll done to figure out what players on this server want? On 'classic' servers I am all about setting yourself apart with Rank 14 or tier3 or whatever it is. I feel this server is all about giving you the Vanilla + experience so why does it need to turn into the gear grind part time job experience of classic? Are you here for achievements like rank 14? Do you want more players involved in PVP or less? Is it more important for you to have status amongst the few or blend in with the many, but also have many more to engage?

You have players that focus on PVP, you have players that wont PVP. Then there are players like me that would love to be involved but want to focus on the best parts of the wow experience. Grinding gear for hundreds of hours, to enjoy PVP for a few hours is the opposite of this. Maybe I am in the minority here and PVP is thriving on the server?

Maybe a poll with questions such as:
Do you plan to PVP? Yes/No/Maybe
Would you be more likely to PVP if everyone is in equal gear? Yes/No
Would you be less likely to PVP if everyone is in equal gear? Yes/No

[Leozan]

That would be an interesting poll.

I figure the dislike of pvp has mainly to do with toxicity and imbalance. The latter can be adjusted with the clients systems, the former lies in the responsibility of the community (outside of devs banning people).

[Jimmicz]

That would be an interesting poll.

I figure the dislike of pvp has mainly to do with toxicity and imbalance. The latter can be adjusted with the clients systems, the former lies in the responsibility of the community (outside of devs banning people).

Especially when the biggest griefer in PVP was a turtle WoW staff member when I played BGs :D

[Leozan]

It really sucks when stuff like that happens. The only solution I can think of is to record the whole thing (screen shots or vid) and put that person on blast constantly within the server community.

If nothing changes start posting to other private server community hubs like Reddit to force the staff to either remove the bad egg or suffer bad publicity. Though Even then it might not be enough, which at that point personally I’d just bite the bullet and move on to somewhere else.

[Jimmicz]

BTW I just checked, and in about half a year of not playing, I lost 6 ranks ... so yeah you can take a break.