[EU] Current rbg situation and possible solutions

[Tetarius]

Starting this thread because current rbg situation on EU is bad.

Some of my personal statistics from 1st april to current date (23rd may)

1st april- 1 game vs eu random grp.
7th april- wintraders 1233 mmr, then germans.
8th april- 3 games vs russian randoms
12th april- found 20 ppl , divided to 2 grps, each grp had a tank, raidleader and ~ 4 RMP. Played 3 games. Then some wintrade (empty) grp popped. After that Sparkly with germans.
14th april- played vs some eu/ru mixed grp, then vs Frostwhisper. Bit later played vs some russian grp (they "challenged" us).
15th april - 1 game vs germans, 1 game vs Parabella
19th april- 2 games vs russian randoms
20th april- same.
22nd april- 1game vs Stormscale.
29th april- russians, 4 games vs 2 different groups.
4th may- russians again, 1 game.
6th may- Defias brotherhood, 1 game.
19th may - 1 game vs wintraders with -51 mmr ( yes, "-51") , 2 games vs Aszune,
20th may- 1 game vs russians
21th may- same

thats all.

If you cut russian grps from those who was getting ppl vs me and wintraders you will get : 10 games in 2 months. All those games were or vs high or medium mmr (1650-1800) with not very high chance to win ( so rating will be around the same) or vs some noobs and +5 rating as a result.
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Now we have:

1) More than 50% of EU groups have already wintraded their rbg rating ( or how will you explain all those 2200-2400 rated ppl who got their achieves very fast in like 3 days? )

2) End of may. Its the end of school/insitute/work year, exams and summer holydays. More inactivity incoming soon.

3) D3 who everyone play and left wow.

4) Ppl who just "f*ck this, there is no rbg, only wintraders at nights, i wont do rbgs again blablabla"

5) Ppl who are just lazy and dont want to do them now after they have played some rbgs with their guilds ( i dont see much RBG activity in EU guilds at all) - because again - some of their members are in D3, some already wintraded, some even quit the bracket ( that is not filled with ppl who want to play rbgs) and we have alot of groups disbanded.

6) Autumn will have a small rbg peak coz of ppl coming back but then near november MoP will come and 70 bracket will be dead like it was at Cata launch. And im sure that they wont allow to do rbgs at 70 - "you are too low level to do a rated battleground" making them lvl 90 end-game content. Also i think they can do this with arenas too - "if you want to expirience/enjoy all game aspects you should level to highest level blablabla we dont want noobs getting everyting cool immideately blablabla".

So, basically we all have around - uhm .. june- jul/aug(no ppl at all) - september, october- boom MOP - 3 months?
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As a result ppl just see that noone plays RBG's and dont play because there are no ppl in queue. So it means "never-ending circle" or w/e its called, a recursion -> "noone in queue" -> "why bother going if there are no ppl in queue" -> "..."


Possible solutions and problems with them:

1) Some kind of coordination center where all will post like this "i will queue rbg 26th may 15:00 server time"

a) problem- there are still alot of ppl who want their ranks fast , who will wintrade and who do not want to announce when they will play

b) lazyness- Lets think theoretically what will happen : "okay Tet you want it- do it" . Fine. I'm making some kind of big forum thread, where 3 or 4 ppl will write where they will play, also as always noone will come because there are always some ppl who dont care much and wont be online.

Why's that? Because i've already made a forum ( 70 level rated bg forum if you wonder ) on some free forum hosting for my russian friends, i have around 150 of them in battlenet ( across 2 accs + their guildies/friends), 41 ppl have registered there, when i make a thread about rbg week before the game it gets 10-15 views including spammed F5. Then when time comes all are offline and most of online ppl says "whaa..? why rbgs? you didnt say anything about it, im busy atm", as a result from those 150 i have around 15 active and half of them are ready for rbg ( not including the best setup, just online ppl).

Also i had some small "wintrade" expirience few months ago when we decided to get some rating and when ppl got ~1500 they didnt want to lose it, started leaving, DCing or just telling " i already have 1600, i dont want to lose it " , they dont have any time for serious 3-team wintrade boosting eachother, no effort etc.

Same will be here- ppl are lazy, they dont care about anything, they want free rating, they dont have time, they can just be inactive casuals and still QQing why their raidleader dont give them free rating; only 5-10% of them will be serious.
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2) Wintrade. 3 teams, 2 and 3 boosts team 1 to ~1800 , then team 3 boost 2nd one to ~1600, then team 1 boosts 2nd one to 2k , then team 2 boost the 1st one to 2400, then boosting others. Not telling exactly how it works- who know it already know.
a) problem - "WTF FUKKEN WINTRADERS I REPORT YOU". 1st result- hating ppl , 2nd result- GMs removing the achieve and rating.
b) lazyness. described in 1b
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3) Some kind of what i was doing that is failed coz of QQing noobs- few ppl getting alot of battlenet friends, inviting them into 2-3 groups , finding a raidleader for each , making some kind of good setup and then plays to win without wintrading, where all depends on raidleader and ppl in his group
a) problem- one group loses hard and some ppl leaves
b) problem- QQing ppl about their rating
c) problem- guess what. 1b.
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4) An interesting solution ive decided to do when i wasnt sleeping at night and thinking about all this.
Someone ( no, not me) makes 10 TBC accounts, RAFing eachother, leveling them fast with 1 RAF + 3 invited + 85 boosting in dungeons to level 70. 2 Characters on each acc ( 2 ready groups) , 10 of them boosted to high rbg rating, lets say, 1900. Then boosted to ~2.5k. Then one highrated character queue with low rated 9 others and when rbg pops enters there giving his team only his MMR ( 9 other not entering) . Queue times should be random . That guy will announce that he will queue a high rated team, 3 times per week, only once from 13:00 to 20:00 server time ( which will be random ). Teams who plays rbgs will try to catch that team and get the rating eventually meeting others and play vs them. Ofc 1st time that guy should prove that he really have a team that will give free rating.

TL;DR - A team with high mmr will secretly queue 3 times per week staying in queue for 1 hour or until it pops, there will be teams trying to find it to get rating meeting other teams. As a result alot of ppl will be playing.

a) problem- money for 10 accs
b) problem- leveling and MMR boosting
c) problem- hiding the team, if all member's names will be known ppl will just camp for character to come online and only then will queue; solution- only one of 10 enters. with 3 games/week it should be sufficient for 2 months or 30 games vs 1900 rated team.
d) problem- hardware. not a very big one but still...
e) accounts ban / rating reset. that can happen too

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Now i let you to discuss this. Please without big kittens/dogs/other picture sh*t, random posts like "I R TOP class_name_here " and other random/mindless/troll shit "info" ( offtop if generalize) that is flying around today alot on forums. Offer your solutions, discuss mine etc. If you dont have anything good to say - just read the thread, link to friends and maybe just think about it.

-- Tetarius @ Ravencrest EU

 

[Vapriest]

I can understand what you're saying and unfortunately everyone wants free titles for little to no work. I mention it later in this post, but in terms of those assisting me to find games when we were actively looking i had perhaps 2 or 3 people helping on a regular basis. Finding games ultimately came down to myself and these other select few who were willing to put effort into finding games. In all honesty, if people sign up on this forum you mentioned and don't show up, i'd use them as an example to the others, there was nothing more irritating than just this happening and forcing the team to not queue at all. There isn't really any way around this except choosing a team who all are prepared to be dedicated, but even then that doesn't combat the inactivity problem which has been around since the dawn of rbgs being introduced to the bracket.

As a former extremely active GM of a big 70 guild, officer and rbg leader in all guilds i've been in i think i can speak adequately about the situation you described. I used to get constant whispers everyday from level 1s or indeed guildless level 70s asking if the guild did RBG's. To start with all i said was yes, but people transferred and never got picked and frankly i felt like a dick for giving them false hope that they would get near to joining the team. (To clarify, i never PROMISED anyone any spot in our rbg group, merely stated that we had a team.) Eventually i was just brutally honest with people, giving them responses like "yes we have an rbg team, but it is full, and only if you're an EXCEPTIONAL player, i.e atleast 2.5k+ in arena would you get near to getting a spot". That kinda response might seem like a dick way to go about it, but it was the utter truth, in some 78 games, i played with less than 25 different people, some more than others.

Due to the lack of games, as the leader of the group, i never wanted to lose, simply because we would get absolutely nowhere with constant losses. Losing meant our mmr went down, cause we were far above pretty much every other team except Goblin Factory; losing also meant people's morale dropping, making the already undedicated players even more undedicated (who wants to continue playing when you lose if you dont really care about it in the first place right?) This desire to never lose, which any team should have creates further problems, because teams that you beat along the way no longer want to queue against you, and in some cases ever again.

The only way in which i believe the activity could be restored is if those that have wintraded their titles already, some 40 of the active players in the bracket, were willing to queue just for fun. Undoubtedly this is unlikely though, why would they want to supposedly 'wintrade' away their ratings to other people after putting all that damn hard effort of trading it in the first place. Simply put, they won't. Perhaps if you managed to somehow rate players (which again is a completely impossible scenario) could you get balanced teams and restore the activity within the bracket. I remember when we tried to balance 5s teams back on Terenas in <Eternal Sanctuary> we gave each team 2 healers, 3 dps, not always the same classes, but it never ended in a fair match, one team always dominated.

I think the best approach would be to do the following:
Reinstate Sundays as RBG day. Once this happens extend it to Saturdays and then to the other days in a gradual process.
Get RBG leaders together and discuss when you would be willing to queue.
Don't wintrade, honestly every half brained level 70 who sees grand marshal/high warlord (unless FoS) knows its wintraded. The few of those who have wintraded it and i played with rarely used it, frankly i feel really proud of my 75 win and marshal title being legit. As you can all see wintrading has practically stunned the rbg scene into a freeze as tet has described.

Ultimately the bracket will only stay alive in all fronts if the community keeps it alive, before wintrading, RBGs were the bees knees, everyone wanted and most enjoyed.

TLDR; i suggest you read this, as well as Tet's.

 

[Een]

Twinkranking.com has a queue finder on their website. I have never used it, don't know how it works, but that could be a solution.

 

[Tetarius]

again- as i described in 1b. noone cares about websites/coordination centers etc, lazy randoms should be asked directly in /whisper- WHEN they can come. still- they sometimes do not show up :<

That queue on website just works as : "hello everyone, here is me and i want to do RBG"; so, when there are alot of ppl there registered they can communicate, add eachother to battlenets and make a group ingame. It does not have any connection with the game, it just shows the player names who want to do rbgs.

 

[Goodsneaker]

We played like 5 games vs you guys, we will start queing again soon, as soon as we get 2 more healers.