Honour System - Explanation and Thoughts

[Lasiien]

Many of you will have read over the past couple of months about the honour system that is about to come into the game (Friday). Thought I'd start a thread to discuss both what we expect and think of the system as it has been implemented and to see what happens and how our thoughts change after a few weeks of playing with it.

Explanation (the readers digest version!)

For those that don't know, from Friday's patch you will get honour for every kill made within PVP. You'll also get a group bonus for your kills if you are in a group (but considerably less 'per kill' in a group).

There are no 'tagging' rules as per pve mobs. You will get a percentage of a kill based on your (or your groups) damage. Healing and other utility functions will not count towards honour, essentially meaning that anyone healing should be grouped to get a reasonable share of the bounty.

At the end of the week (or so, Blizz haven't exactly said when) Blizz do some funky maths essentially to compare you to how everybody else did over the previous week and some of your recent history. From this you get your ranking.

I think you also have to have a minimum amount of points to achieve a pvp rank (so not everyone can get rank 14 in the first week as I understand). Your points also degrade over time in order to filter out inactive players (Blizz say after a few months being totally inactive it would drop to zero).

You can get some nice rewards depending on your rank. Mainly armour, weapons and a cheaper epic mount. You have to keep your rank in order to continue to use these items.

Link to armour sets (weapons and mounts can be seen from the links at the top of this page)

Please add anything else I may have missed !

Thoughts

These are some of my personal thoughts, very much *Theorycraft* until we get to run with the system for a few weeks:

Positive:

* Finally a reward for killing players PvP. It gives PvP a purpose now, which  was really lacking previously.
* The item sets and mounts are nice, without being totally overpowered upgrades in my opinion when compared to items/epic items that are available elsewhere in the game. I'm no expert however and wonder what other people think about their class items.
* Again on the items it's nice that Blizz have listened to player feedback, the priest stuff has INT and STAM and almost no SPI (which is a big problem with the devout set and epic set)
* Only a handfull of people are ever able to be at the very top ranks. I think Blizz is aiming for a self sustaining system, whereby you won't find things like in other games with everyone having achieved a top PvP rank.

Negative:

* Why did they not release battlegrounds at the same time ? It's gonna be utter mayhem for a few weeks at least.
* Tied into the above, level 50-60 zones are going to be farmed by level 60's waiting for raids and with nothing better to do. Going to need eyes in the back of our heads even grouped up!
* Instances and common quest locations are going to be thoroughly camped.
* I dislike the idea of items getting taken away from me by inactivity when I felt I had perhaps achieved something.
* Even if I am not inactive I could lose my ranking (and thus items as above) if everyone else plays more. I'm thinking specifically of School Holidays here... which many of us don't get the luxury of.

Discuss !

[Cernos]

I'm more than a bit worried about how they've implemented the honour system to be honest, especially from what I read on the US boards. It's early days on the US servers of course and everyone has gone into a frenzy, as will happen for the first few weeks on the EU servers. It's what happens after the frenzy dies down which will be important. Trouble is, decaying honour points won't allow the frenzy to die down much.
 
An honour system without any dishonour counterbalances for killing targets substantially lower, or when substantially outnumbered, will turn the game into a nasty gank fest and 'who zergs wins' situation. The fact that honour points decay over time compounds the problem because all those honour point horny gankers will have to keep ganking to satisfy their honour point lust and keep their honour system toys.
 
Rather an irony that they're calling it an "honour" system when it seems most of the gaming behaviour it is going to encourage will be dishonourable play (if you can get honour points by indulging in unfair fights, why seek out a fair fight or anything remotely challenging?).
 
Leaving out the Battelgrounds from this patch also compounds the problem because at least Battlegrounds would be a focal point for those after PvP points and keep at least some of them from seeking out and chain ganking people trying to level up.
 
There definitely needs to be more meaning to PvP than currently, but I fear that the current honour system they've created isn't the solution. Killing someone regardless of their level or the odds doesn't add any meaning or challenge to PvP, it just makes for an unpleasant game experience for the player on the receiving end of a 'kicking', something Blizzard need to consider because all those people who bought one of the 250,000 new game boxes just released are going to have a VERY hard time trying to level up on a PvP server.
 
It's always been my worry that the 'afterthought' nature of PvP in WoW (in contrast to games which were designed with PvP at their core like Daoc) might lead to problems. Hopefully Blizzard will sort it so the system is enjoyable for everyone not just those with a hardcore ganker mentality.
 
Guess we'll have to see.

[Saxif]

Its a novel idea, on the whole i like it.  Having honour points that decay wont mean that much tbh, because those ppl in organised PvP guilds with the right mindset will dominate the rankings for a long time, Eclipse, SotL, LoE and various  Mid guilds were active for very long stretches.  I dont think have decaying honour points will make it that dynamic, ppl will fall into a rank and stay there until they stop playing and only then will they drop down.

Most of us wont see the upper ranks ever, which is a little disheartening tbh, but its a new idea, and new idea's are always welcome.

[Lasiien]

Aye Cern I agree the implementation is not going to be without it's problems for sure, but also we do have to recognise how young the game is and the systems do need to mature (remember DAOC PvP at the start, who mes's wins!).

No doubt for a few weeks we will need to lower our expectations, especially of being able to get quests done solo (or at all to be honest). We may also need to do a death run into an instance or two which could be fun or frustrating depending on the time you have available and the level of opposition

I am also hoping they do something like an honour bonus for killing in the battlegrounds to encourage more fighting there, which should take the attention away from the contested zones a little.

Sax i agree it is different thinking. The plus side as I said before is that you'll never get the case of a large number of players reaching the top ranks and saying that they're bored - they need to fight to keep what they have earned.

The downside to me is that I believe you should never take away something once it has been earned in a game like this. Losing your rank and items that you felt you put some hard work into because 200,000 kiddies have 6 weeks off doesn't sound good to me.

[Ozymandias]

With a bit of luck it'll be tweaked for the following:
 - dishonour points / negative honour points for killing those grey to you
 - something to discourage 5 vs 1 at same level (group ganking), there's no honour in outnumbering an opponent.

that might slow some of the madness.

I just hope that I hit lvl 26 before Friday - with seduce I may have a chance of running away!

If anyone wants me I'll be solo-ing Ragefire Chasm.

Until Christmas!

[eKo]

They originally meant to have dishonor points for killing greys, but they removed it as it was too hard to implement. A low level priest/druid/shaman/paladin can heal/buff higher levels, but killing them would be a dishonored kill?

It would most likely take up way too many resources to check on those sort of actions as well and with most PvP-servers being high load already it's just not possible.

Can't say too much on PvP as I mainly play on a PvE-server, except that it will no doubt get tweaked, just like in DAoC. Even though DAoC started out with PvP in mind, the 'end result' is totally different from how it began (for better or for worse).

[Saxif]

First of all Honour is a misnomer, they should have thought up a different name.

Second i dont think the game world is very well set up for PvP, its to small for ppl to hide out somewhere and lvl.  There are atm no objectives for you to take, attacking a town eventually leads to a guard spawn that does enough damage to the attackers that defenders can then swamp them.*  Combat is a zerg fest atm, and I cannot see that changing due to the way ppl enter combat, i.e from one town or another.  

The BG's may change this, depending on how large they are and how many mobs they have in them, but as it is looking very much like a valley it would seem to funnel players towards the middle to meet in a large chaotic zerg.  They have said that there are tactics involved in taking the enemies base camp, but once again this will be achieved through a large force attacking to kill the large number of elite guards as well as the other sides players.  A well organised raid of lvl 60's would undoubtably be the way to do this, but that is only likely to happen in guilds who can muster 40 lvl 60's, and those players being willing to listen.

WoW is an exerlent game, but i feel it *may* be let down by not having an element of small scale PvP; but being aimed at a large number of players fighting all at once.  Which although fun and you'll undoubtably see me in Hillsbrad often enough, isn't the most rewarding way to play.

*I have been involved in a Southshore attack that lead to the entire town being destroyed, all npc's in the Inn and Town Hall were killed along with WR and any PC's there.

[Cernos]

Several days into PvP and here's how I feel.
 
I love the PvE side of Warcraft, it's a beautiful, well thought out and fun game. I'm not naturally a quester and I'm easily bored by PvE, so it's a testament to the game design that I'm still hooked on the PvE aspect.
 
However ....
 
The PvP side, which was what I has the highest hopes for, is what I'm currently rather disillusioned with. The new [dis]honour system is indeed a complete misnomer. There's no honour in any of it - it's all about ganking, zerging, outnumbering, griefing and a generally unsavoury 'kill everything that moves' atmosphere. Prior to the [dis]honour system, I liked the detente that existed between most players in quest and grinding areas, with only the hardcore gankers willing to kill you. PvP needed a *little* more edge than this, but now it has gone way too far in the opposite direction.
 
Some will say that "well you chose to play on a PvP server, what do you expect?". Well I expected that Blizzard would develop a game that was a bit different to the other PvP free-for-all "fragfests". A game where the risk of ganking was present but where there were consequences (or at very least a lack of rewards) for dishonourable play. To say "well it's too hard to work out / code" is not acceptable - it's the devs' job to work it out, rather than release an unfinished PvP system into the game and destroy the whole atmosphere. They should have thought better about how PvP would work in a game world largely designed for PvE. This was *always* the risk of approaching the game design from a PvE first, bolt-on PvP later angle.
 
Currently there's no small scale PvP, no tactical battles on any scale. Which just leaves mindless zerging (which is currently fun for the novelty factor, but the novelty will rapidly wear off) and endless ganking.
 
The zerging I don't mind - it will probably calm down and even if it doesn't you can always go somewhere else (and over time more and more players will - just like how in Daoc those who didn't like Emain zerging would go Odins or Hadrians).
 
The current ganking I plain and simple hate. It's wrecking the game and unless the Battlegrounds change things, or Blizzard put in some kind of dishonour system or balancing measures to help people quest and xp on PvP servers, then a lot of people will either migrate to PvE servers, or quit because I think a substantial proportion of the player base are not interested in hardcore fragfest PvP. I know I'm not.

[Saxif]

I didn't want to say it, but i think we have been spoilt by DAoC, the PvP system there was so good, and well thought out with hindersight, imo, its hard to get used to this.  However it is early days, very early, not been into it a week yet so i think we have to give Blizz the benefit of the doubt and see how it works out.

The things that get me are

1). Bad game world design for PvP
2). No reason to attack towns and no strategic objectives
3). No small scale PvP (this is the fault of players and a fact of a imature PvP system DAoC was the same in the early days)

With a bit of time it should calm down and become alot better, hopefully they will introduce more than one type of BG.  Of course for small scale PvP we could always migrate to Guild Wars

[Lasiien]

I agree with the points made in general, and I wish Bliz had put in the battlegrounds at the same time which would have helped a ton.

The way they are talking about Battlegrounds is they will be population controlled instances so that there is an even fight between each side. They are also promising it will offer smaller scale and objective based PvP. This gets my hopes up a great deal, but again we'll have to wait and see.

I agree with Sax that the system is immature and we have to wait for it to flesh out a bit. But there is potential here in my opinion.

Sorry you are frustrated questing/soloing atm Cern Frankly i think its a problem with the rulesets and descriptions (as PvP means different things to different people, and PvE tends to imply there is no PvP at all). Plus the fact that PvP servers were supposed to have some protection with the dishonour system as you point out. I am happy being on a PvP server still, as it adds a real element to the PvE side of the game for me. However, i do wish they'd just create a 'hardcore' corpse looting/exp loss/griefing/FFA server and give the people that like that kind of stuff a transfer to it

On the flip side I have been able to quest and solo more than I had thought I would be able to (yes with the occasional encounter, but nothing too bad, but also avoiding the real hotspot zones). When the battlegrounds arrive and the system settles you will find some of the spirit that you talk about coming back. Killing someone in an area that you still want to quest in is never a good idea really as you can guess what'll happen unless you corpse camp (and even then, that distracts from your main reason for being there). Just saying once it settles people will start to leave each other in these areas a bit more i think - however, when they are done with their quest you might find they turn on you

[Cernos]

I think the gank fest situation on the PvP servers could change once the Battlegrounds are released, assuming they are exciting and fun and a draw to players. If they get the BGs right then hopefully the majority of people after quality PvP will go to the BGs and stop farming people trying to quest.
 
Griefers will always exist of course, including whole guilds of them like Ganked Again. That's fine and to be expected on a PvP server. The problem with the current system is that it turns EVERYONE into a member of Ganked Again

[Herne]

Not sure about that Cern,

I was questing quite happily in Ungoro and Felwood last night with PvP encounters I could count on one hand. None of which ended up in my death. Anyone on last night will tell you how amused I was when a pally who decided to mobkill me saw everything go horribly wrong, ending in him running into the big bad devilsaur.



I did try to goad an equal level paladin into a fight but he just smiled and waved and pointed at the mobs so I left him be. The one pally I have seen that could play nice, I wasn't about to spoil it.

Of course Winterspring and the Plaguelands might be hell on earth but I aint there yet.

Herne