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[mannercookie]

Hi,

Good to see you guys, at least some of you guys 

I just wanted to stop by and talk about a few things that I've been thinking about.

I will be releasing a new video on the structure/format I want the tournament I'm organizing in the US to be like once it's closer to launch but in the meantime I wanted to share some thoughts with the D3CL community on how to improve and garner attention for D3-PVP.

This will not be organized and well-written, I simply did not have time to do so but I still wanted to share some of my thoughts in random numbered order.


#1. PVP Lobby > Challenge System

It's quite simple really, the current system of actively coming to an website to challenge someone else on the ladder is very 1999. This is not Kali and we are not playing Warcraft-2 on Case's Ladder (You old-school gamers know what I'm talking about).

We need an active-lobby system that Blizzard wasn't prepared to give us yet.

Here's my suggestion.

PVP Lobby = Act 4, MP 4, Quest 1 (This quest is what I found to have the least amount of players that PVE since it's really annoying to start outside of town for PVE players)

Want to play a few matches between your trades or farming?

All you gotta do is jump into a public game and you'll get paired with someone who's waiting for an opponent.

If you can't find a game through search, just create a game yourself and wait.

Once you've found an opponent you guys can agree to a match and create a private game to play out the match.


#2. Incentives, Incentives!

D3-PVP is unlike any other PVP game that has come out to date. The fact that there is a live marketplace and active economy makes it extremely interesting in terms of the landscape of the scene. It may be too early for all of you to see this, but I guarantee you guys you'll see it soon enough.

With that said, D3-PVP requires gold, and a LOT of it.

There are many ways to obtain gold.

You can buy it, you can farm it, or you can play the AH (Which is another game on it's own).

The important thing is you need to acquire it in one way or another in order to be competitive, and this is the fact what makes and will make D3 so interesting. The fact that no two characters are alike in every stat and no two characters have similar gear (With assumption duping is finally fixed obv).

In order for D3-PVP to work, players must be given incentive to gear for PVP since well it costs GOLD and lots of it.

For PVE, the incentives for gearing are you can farm more efficiency and in return you will make up the costs of your progression as you go. There is also an active market where you can buy+sell your old gears that you upgrade out of to the next player looking to progress their character.

For PVP, this simply does not exist.

There is no incentive and there is also no way for players to progress solely through PVP. In fact it's quite the opposite since as more and more players are becoming active in PVP, they are starting to realize that items require a certain % of perfection to truly be able to compete with other skilled players.

PVP is in the end the ultimate progression, you farm PVE or play the AH to acquire gold to progress your PVP character, it is not cheap nor is it easy and quite frankly it should never be.


#3. Tournament System

In my opinion tournaments shouldn't be a supplement for the league system, it should be the opposite.

There should be tournaments with prizepools that give people an incentive to try and push their limits for PVP.

The league should simply be an addition to that tournament where newer players to the scene have a chance to test out their gear and learn to play.

Anyhow, already too long.

This part #3 I will get into more in my next video talking about the structure/format the tournament I'm organizing in the US will be in.


Cheers,
MannerCookie

[Forti]

PVP Lobby = Act 4, MP 4, Quest 1 (This quest is what I found to have the least amount of players that PVE since it's really annoying to start outside of town for PVE players)

in 1.0.8 we will got tags like "game for pvp" etc.

[Mr.Mag]

we had 8 players on last 2v2

[RoGH]

Ad 1)
Challenge system combined with ladder system/statistics is not really comparable with pvp lobby. This is more official, this is the place when you can compare yourself to hundreds of other players and pvp lobby is more like "duel me noob" games from d2, when you can show other ppl how lame they are and how strong is your character.
However i like the idea of choosing less-popular quest and mp and make it official pvp lobby, where you can always find someone to duel with.
1.0.8. will bring some improvements to this section too http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/9382478/developer-journal-multiplayer-improvements-4-2-2013
Ad 3)
That was idea fix of our d2 activity "The league should simply be an addition to that tournament where newer players to the scene have a chance to test out their gear and learn to play."

But we have realized that in d3 it is damn hard to gather people on one-night or one-day event and make them duel for few hours. For example most of d3cl players arent teenagers, many of them have families and its difficult for them to have that long break in real life for a tournament.
Of course, huge amounts of gold in prizepool for each single tournament would help, but first of all, you need really big prizepool, you need it every week or every 2 weeks (because imo its non-sense to create a pvp community based on single tournament every month ) and you still arent sure that this will bring amount and level of participants you are counting for.

[Ajantis]

That's some nice thoughts, Mannercookie. In theory, ordinary PvP chat channels could serve as a lobby for duelers. The problem is, that info about that has to be spread very widely, so that "PvP channel" is a natural place for people interested in duels. I wouldn't say we are there now... But in 1.0.8 we will get private channels, so we could make them only for ourselves.

Of course, huge amounts of gold in prizepool for each single tournament would help, but first of all, you need really big prizepool

True that. Also. pay attention, that if you want to win shitload of gold, you have to already have shitload of gold to equip your char. That's why we could also try some blue items/max lv leagues.

[mannercookie]

@rogh

They released the new multiplayer info after I already wrote this up nonetheless

even though they are improving public pvp games.

I think for a league system this would be a good way to find potential matches.

all good points rogh

I think the first step it to make something happen and go from there.

The prizepool will grow to a decent amount by the time this tourney I'm trying to setup will run and in terms of participants having few hours to duel I'm not too worried about (can always use reserve players).

@ajantis

Yes 1.08 should fix these a few of the issues I mentioned in OP.

I think the fact that you have a chance to win a lot of gold will give more incentive to spend lots of gold and even without that incentive the players in the US are already spending a lot of gold on PVP.

on a side note, I read through the 1.08 preview notes, and can't wait to see all you guys on PTR.

[Wittster]

I appreciate all the work you put into evolving pvp but I strongly disagree with your concept of incentives. As you can see in the popularity of this website so far, especially the EU part, people don't need any kind of gold rewards to put in the time, money and effort to play competitive pvp. People are playing for fun and competition atm but by inserting gold rewards, I'm sure you'll destroy a big part of the 'fun'  in the equation and replace it with things like lame play, rules lawyering, negative feelings of being forced to spend real money just to be able to keep up. Basically what you will achieve is that the top players will spend even more gold to perfect their gear and the average players will realize even more that they will never be able to compete and just give up. To really make pvp grow, I think you have to keep a strong focus on the average player, as well as offering top competition for the 'elite'. Also I agree with others that it's hard for most of our player base to commit a whole evening to a tournament. I think this whole thing would be a much bigger success if you spread it out over a couple days weeks either as an invitational or as a league top8 playoff or something.

TLDR: I do agree we should offer some incentives for more people to play, but I think the keywords here are 'fun'  as opposed to 'gold' and 'more players' as opposed to 'less'. We achieve fun by offering rules that are clear and simple and make duels balanced and quite honestly the whole setup of your pvp ideas and tournament are clearly based on you being an awesome dueller and feeling like you can take on anyone, but just look at all this this from a monk's or wizard's point of view or anyone who think he doesn't have a chance to beat you in a duel and you'll see you'll reduce the pvp community to about a handful of people and then you want that handful to all be able to play for a couple hours at the same exact time on top of that. Also, these people already have the gold to build perfect characters and the $-value of gold these days is negligible. I really don't understand what you're trying to achieve

[Iria]

TLDR for Wittster's TLDR:

Let's duel for fun, we know your tournament is almost certainly set for you to win and show off lol.

[mannercookie]

I appreciate all the work you put into evolving pvp but I strongly disagree with your concept of incentives. As you can see in the popularity of this website so far, especially the EU part, people don't need any kind of gold rewards to put in the time, money and effort to play competitive pvp. People are playing for fun and competition atm but by inserting gold rewards, I'm sure you'll destroy a big part of the 'fun'  in the equation and replace it with things like lame play, rules lawyering, negative feelings of being forced to spend real money just to be able to keep up. Basically what you will achieve is that the top players will spend even more gold to perfect their gear and the average players will realize even more that they will never be able to compete and just give up. To really make pvp grow, I think you have to keep a strong focus on the average player, as well as offering top competition for the 'elite'. Also I agree with others that it's hard for most of our player base to commit a whole evening to a tournament. I think this whole thing would be a much bigger success if you spread it out over a couple days weeks either as an invitational or as a league top8 playoff or something.

TLDR: I do agree we should offer some incentives for more people to play, but I think the keywords here are 'fun'  as opposed to 'gold' and 'more players' as opposed to 'less'. We achieve fun by offering rules that are clear and simple and make duels balanced and quite honestly the whole setup of your pvp ideas and tournament are clearly based on you being an awesome dueller and feeling like you can take on anyone, but just look at all this this from a monk's or wizard's point of view or anyone who think he doesn't have a chance to beat you in a duel and you'll see you'll reduce the pvp community to about a handful of people and then you want that handful to all be able to play for a couple hours at the same exact time on top of that. Also, these people already have the gold to build perfect characters and the $-value of gold these days is negligible. I really don't understand what you're trying to achieve

I don't think D3CL is as popular as you think, maybe in the EU server (even then just a handful of the same players). Most players on the US server do not play in this league, out of like 50+ people on my list that PVP, only about 5 of them play in the D3CL league and very seldom at that to give you an idea of what the ratio is like (D3CL is not popular on US nor is it known).

I can think of so many good players on the US server that aren't spending the time/gold required to gear up for PVP, well simply because it's expensive and there's no point (good pvp items on US server get instantly bought out @ 2b or max bidded, good pvp items in EU generally sit there with everyone waiting for prices to drop)

I have been paying attention to both markets the past two weeks and I can tell you for a fact that on EU there is almost no competition for gear and there is very little interest in PVP on the whole in terms of the entire population (PVP gear is not being actively bought/sold and traded between players, meaning players who buy gear aren't able to sell their old pieces to get new, this disrupts their progression and forces them to find other avenues to get this gold)

Although you guys may have more people active in the league, there is a much larger player-pool in the US that are actively gearing for pvp and competing for gear and these players on the US already face all the negative problems you speak of in terms of feeling like they need to spend a lot of $$$$ to compete.

I really dis-agree with everything you said and I'm not sure you are qualified to label what is "fun". People want to see PVP played at a high level, that's what builds interest to the game not a league with 50,000 random players. There's a public pvp lobbys and games for a reason, for the average player who wants to casually PVP. A league should be comprised of people who are trying to achieve to be the best and highly competitive to keep it active and interesting.

Also, there is no problem on the US server for our player-base to all sit down on evening for an organized tournament.

I think you have a very skewed idea of what the PVP scene is like because you are basing all your opinions off of what's happened on a much smaller server that is oriented around PVE, well simply because that's the only active marketplace in the EU and the only way to acquire gold (unless your buying gold).

The player-pool and market is much larger and much more active on the US server, and to be frank you should learn what's going on in both servers and take the time to research it before you bash on me in a polite way across your forums.

Cheers

[RoGH]

Wittster is playing on US server btw.

[Wittster]

Wittster is playing on US server btw.

^this, funny reply Manner I like how you pretend to care about promoting pvp, yet have no interest at all in our view of things or working together, just want to use this platform for your little fantasy pvp world.

You really have a talent for using a ton of words to say nothing but do you honestly believe a couple streams of a few top players is better for pvp in this game than a league with 50.000 players???

[kaio]

Hi,

Good to see you guys, at least some of you guys 

I just wanted to stop by and talk about a few things that I've been thinking about.

I will be releasing a new video on the structure/format I want the tournament I'm organizing in the US to be like once it's closer to launch but in the meantime I wanted to share some thoughts with the D3CL community on how to improve and garner attention for D3-PVP.

This will not be organized and well-written, I simply did not have time to do so but I still wanted to share some of my thoughts in random numbered order.


#1. PVP Lobby > Challenge System

It's quite simple really, the current system of actively coming to an website to challenge someone else on the ladder is very 1999. This is not Kali and we are not playing Warcraft-2 on Case's Ladder (You old-school gamers know what I'm talking about).

We need an active-lobby system that Blizzard wasn't prepared to give us yet.

Here's my suggestion.

PVP Lobby = Act 4, MP 4, Quest 1 (This quest is what I found to have the least amount of players that PVE since it's really annoying to start outside of town for PVE players)

Want to play a few matches between your trades or farming?

All you gotta do is jump into a public game and you'll get paired with someone who's waiting for an opponent.

If you can't find a game through search, just create a game yourself and wait.

Once you've found an opponent you guys can agree to a match and create a private game to play out the match.


#2. Incentives, Incentives!

D3-PVP is unlike any other PVP game that has come out to date. The fact that there is a live marketplace and active economy makes it extremely interesting in terms of the landscape of the scene. It may be too early for all of you to see this, but I guarantee you guys you'll see it soon enough.

With that said, D3-PVP requires gold, and a LOT of it.

There are many ways to obtain gold.

You can buy it, you can farm it, or you can play the AH (Which is another game on it's own).

The important thing is you need to acquire it in one way or another in order to be competitive, and this is the fact what makes and will make D3 so interesting. The fact that no two characters are alike in every stat and no two characters have similar gear (With assumption duping is finally fixed obv).

In order for D3-PVP to work, players must be given incentive to gear for PVP since well it costs GOLD and lots of it.

For PVE, the incentives for gearing are you can farm more efficiency and in return you will make up the costs of your progression as you go. There is also an active market where you can buy+sell your old gears that you upgrade out of to the next player looking to progress their character.

For PVP, this simply does not exist.

There is no incentive and there is also no way for players to progress solely through PVP. In fact it's quite the opposite since as more and more players are becoming active in PVP, they are starting to realize that items require a certain % of perfection to truly be able to compete with other skilled players.

PVP is in the end the ultimate progression, you farm PVE or play the AH to acquire gold to progress your PVP character, it is not cheap nor is it easy and quite frankly it should never be.


#3. Tournament System

In my opinion tournaments shouldn't be a supplement for the league system, it should be the opposite.

There should be tournaments with prizepools that give people an incentive to try and push their limits for PVP.

The league should simply be an addition to that tournament where newer players to the scene have a chance to test out their gear and learn to play.

Anyhow, already too long.

This part #3 I will get into more in my next video talking about the structure/format the tournament I'm organizing in the US will be in.


Cheers,
MannerCookie

Thx for ur advices we will try to work on them if possible

[mannercookie]

Wittster is playing on US server btw.

^this, funny reply Manner I like how you pretend to care about promoting pvp, yet have no interest at all in our view of things or working together, just want to use this platform for your little fantasy pvp world.

You really have a talent for using a ton of words to say nothing but do you honestly believe a couple streams of a few top players is better for pvp in this game than a league with 50.000 players???

This is why I dislike coming to this forum.

I just don't understand why your trolling?

I don't "want to just use your platform", I can promote this tournament with the group of people I'm organizing it with just fine.

I really don't think you speak for D3CL, or do you?

cuz if your are the voice of D3CL, I really have no interest in working with you guys.

edit: the fact you play on US server makes me question your post even more because then you should have some kind of grasp on what's going on in the server.

 

[Wittster]

I really don't think you speak for D3CL, or do you?

Nah, i'm not speaking for D3CL, no worries, there's some good guys around here as well.
Apologies for trolling and gl with the tourney etc

[Mr.Mag]

i dont get your skepticism about his intentions. every promotion of pvp is also a benefit of us, especially if we are involed. i do not see any disadventages if we share our platform (which is not ready yet). prizepool is only a minor detail. one thing is certain, we have very small number of players on d3cl and need to do sth with it.