Elusive Honour Ranks

[Cernos]

I've been involved in three extremely long (4-5 hours) but ultimately successful (Horde won) AV battles in three nights this week. Weekly calculations show 1268 honour kills, 23956 CPs, standing 124. But no rank gain. I'm still Rank 6, Stone Guard and puzzled.
 
Admitedly only 1/3rd of my kills from last night's battle got recorded in last weeks calculations (the rest had better go against next weeks) but even without them I'd have thought almost 24k CPs in a week should be enough to jump a rank from 6 to 7. Obviously not. Either there's a lot of people zerging, or it's broken? Or maybe the fact that I probably only just scraped back up to Stone Guard last week put me at the bottom of the Rank 6 pile.
 
It took approx 15 hours of AV play to get those points this week. Given no rank gain at all, it's rather demoralising and there's a huge "what's the point" factor given that unless I keep it up, all that effort will decay away anyway.
 
The honour system needs to be much more transparent in its workings, so you can get a clearer picture of what sort of time committment you need to put in to get anywhere and if its worth bothering or not. Right now I feel like I totally wasted three nights of my life (actually even if i got a rank I probably did, but that's gaming for you).

[Lasiien]

You didn't waste your time Cern - there are 'soft' caps of total cp/honour to reach a new rank, you're probably just not there yet. In the next patch they are going to put a display in the honour tab to show how close you are to the next rank.

At the officer ranks they expect it to take more time to get to the next level.

[Saxif]

Cern I have been keeping tabs on my progress, and here are some facts that may help you.

Week that Honour was released:- 25K - 265th (Stone Guard)

Next week:-15K - 74th (made Blood Guard)

Week after:- 19K - 120th (Blood Guard)

This week:- ?? (need to get home and check)

Basically I was Stone Guard for 2 weeks, I have been a Blood Guard for two weeks and if my rank has not changed this may be the 3rd week.  It does get alot harder to increase in ranks as you start into the officer ranks, and as you went up to Stone Guard last week, you'll prolly have to earn another 20K or so this week to get Blood Guard.

Also judging from the CP you earned and your rank ppl were pretty busy this week in the BG's.

Lasiien is also correct about soft caps, you need to have earned a total number of CP to be eligable for ranks, if you dont have that then no matter how high up the ladder you score you wont get a rank increase.

[Cernos]

You didn't waste your time Cern - there are 'soft' caps of total cp/honour to reach a new rank, you're probably just not there yet.

Yeah, maybe that's the reason this week, I will probably have started at the very bottom of Rank 6. I hope this is the reason, rather than there being too many other players putting in more time. 15 hours solid and frenetic PvP is a fairly large amount in a week for most non hardcore players. I don't ever expect to reach ranks 10+, I'm happy to leave that to those who PvP 24/7, but I would hope to get to and maintain ranks 7-8 with a reasonable amount of effort each week and maybe rank 9 if I really go for it. Will see what happens next week with a similar push.
 

In the next patch they are going to put a display in the honour tab to show how close you are to the next rank.

Some sort of gauge will help quite a lot. Will hopefully give you some indication of how much effort is needed to maintain a rank and how much of a push you need to gain the next one.

[Cernos]

Cern I have been keeping tabs on my progress, and here are some facts that may help you.
 
Week that Honour was released:- 25K - 265th (Stone Guard)
 
Next week:-15K - 74th (made Blood Guard)
 

Yeah this is my issue. You went from Stone to Blood with 15k in a week. I made 24k in a week and didn't. However, your standing in the week you made 15k was 74th, whereas I made 24k and was 124th. I think you're right, overall PvP activity being up looks like the main reason. In fact I think I have read somewhere that because it's a ladder it's your standing which is more important than CPs (soft caps aside). I don't think it's a soft cap thing with me because my CP earnings have been pretty good over time, apart from one week where I didn't PvP and perhaps this dented my progress more than I realise (who knows how much it decays - Blizzard are even less transparent about that).

[Saxif]

CP decide your standing, and its your standing that decide where in the ladder you fall. If to get rank 14 you have to be in the top 0.1% (approx), and there are 1000 ppl getting the required 25+ kills then you have to rank 10 or above consistantly to get and keep it.

To expand this say to get Rank 8 you need to be in the top 12%, if we have 1000 ppl achieving 25+ kills to rank then you'd have to consitantly place 120 or better.

Of course these are figures i plucked out of the air, I expect there are more ppl achieving the 25+ kills needed to rank, and I have no idea what % you fall into to achieve a specific rank.  However it (hopefully) shows that unlike DAoC and similar games its not CP that decide ranks its standing, however to get a rank you will need to have earned xxxx CP first and then rank highly second.

[Cernos]

However it (hopefully) shows that unlike DAoC and similar games its not CP that decide ranks its standing, however to get a rank you will need to have earned xxxx CP first and then rank highly second.

Yep, I don't mind competing week-to-week for rank with others (though I'd prefer an absolute system like Daoc where you don't slide back if you take a break) but what I don't like is the lack of transparency of how it is all worked out.
 
Players with limited gaming time on their hands (and many people have much less than me) need to know what sort of time committments you need to make to get anywhere. At the moment it feels like pouring time into a rather deep hole and never knowing if you've done enough or if you're not even close and have no hope of putting in the necessary time (and so would be better off spending the time in other ways).
 
It's not like PvP in the BGs is intrinsically fun in its own right. The first hour or so is fun but after that most battles becomes a grind killing the same players over and over and tackling endless guard respawns (in AV) or running the same patterns in WG. PvE grinding has a purpose because you know you'll reach 60 eventually if you do it. PvP grinding makes less sense because there's no absolute finishing line, it's all down to whether you have as much time to throw at the game as others in any given week (and can manage to keep doing so week after week).
 
The progress indicator will help next patch and will give a rough idea. But ultimately it all comes down to how many hardcore PvP addicts there are on your server to compete against.
 
All I want is a better idea of what I can achieve with the game time I've got available / am willing to spend PvP'ing. Hopefully Blizzard will make the system as transparent as possible.

[Lasiien]

Aye i gotta agree really cern, i prefered realm points in daoc where you knew the target you had to reach. This is hard to understand Just logged in to find no promo still myself !

[Brigh]

Aye i gotta agree really cern, i prefered realm points in daoc where you knew the target you had to reach. This is hard to understand Just logged in to find no promo still myself !

tbh I don't know much about the ranks as I have been avoiding PvP as much as I can so I can concentrate on getting to 60 but from what I have seen I think it would be easier if it was similar to DAoC - you knew what you needed to do to get the next rank etc and you don't have to worry about the amount of time you can put into PvP.

Brigh

[Lasiien]

I didnt move this week with 30k honour, still about 3/4 through stone guard.

Kiddies must be on hols :-)

It's also getting tougher as people are figuring out how to get more honour out of the system (mostly people camped in AV)

[Khaleb]

Actually, to add to the conversation:

Week before last week: 30k points, ranking 175, moved from senior sgt to 1st sgt

Last week: 35k points, ranking 185 or so, bar moved upwards maybe 10%, still 1st sergeant.

So it seems more and more people are drawn to honor farming. *sigh* Well, at least I still can spend countless hours in AV farming reputation

Sylvver (alliance mage) got actually upset for being ranked first (aka most cp for the week of alliance) and moving *backwards* on the meter and quit farming honor with his mage, which is (still) rank 13.

I think blizzard should not have incorporated that damn bar, makes things just much more complicated.  :rolleyes:

[Saxif]

How could he have ranked first and moved backwards, that sucks, i'd get damn pissed if that was me.  I have stopped farming honour for the mean time as thats all it is farming, especially as so many ppl are off school, college and Uni atm.