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Today a friend of mine told me that he has been queuing up random 4s all day and leaving the game immediately to farm for multiplayer achievement portraits. The result? Promotion into silver league and a ~50% win/loss ratio with around 20 wins an hour.
Apparently this is a very common strategy among "win farmers". I informed him that such action would hurt the quality of ladder play but he does not care about his random team ladder performance. In fact he can easily write a bot to do all this for him and farm it all night long. (Question: botting while playing the game is against EULA, what about botting to queue?)
Taking a look at a wider picture - getting quick "wins" have promoted this all-in/rush/cheese style of gameplay. While it is a legit strategy, and we have seen some of it in major tournaments (1), I have a feeling it chips away the quality of the game as a whole. Sure, once we learn how to counter a lot of these cheese and all-ins it would be a free win for us, but it becomes extremely repetitive and annoying winning against people who just 7 pool all-in with drones after a week... I want my games that last more than 5 minutes.
As Day[9] mentioned in his daily a few days ago, having win/loss recorded has the drawback that people are afraid to try new strategies. Players are afraid to off-race because they fear that their ladder rank/point/win ratio would drop.
I wonder if removing this whole achievement/win-loss record thing, and add "practice mode" based on your ladder ranking would help turn this into a better game.
(1) Machine v Huk (IEM group stage), today's GSL in DoS v Hyperdub (proxy 2 gate/mass marine), and even JD v Flash in WCG korea.
 
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A free mode/melee mode would be nice tbh. But how is leaving a 4s game right away getting him achievements?
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It gets him team ladder icons.
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His allies gain his resources and rush with it, or that people are just so terrible where 3v4 is very doable.
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On September 11 2010 07:10 ManButter wrote:
It gets him team ladder icons.
I dont understand this either..
So if I left my 4vs4 team and they won do i get a win? or?
Edit: oh ok
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I can't believe people waste time just to get new portraits and achievement points. Why not just play the game?
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its a blizzard server who cares... Soon there will be a third party system that works way better and is more popular among skilled players for this reason exactly. Think about BW.. They used to have a bnet ladder system with the gamei ranking and such. Then came along WGT and ICCup and all these better servers that finally took over and we had a great time on. There are just too many retarded newbs that ruin things so its gonna happen eventually.
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On September 11 2010 07:16 teh leet newb wrote:
I can't believe people waste time just to get new portraits and achievement points. Why not just play the game?
Obviously because acheivments > playing the game?
Apparently you havn't played WoW T_T
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On September 11 2010 07:16 teh leet newb wrote:
I can't believe people waste time just to get new portraits and achievement points. Why not just play the game?
Bigger epeen? Why did the pennoyer guy worker rush every 1v1 and autoleave vs terran?
Truth is there are a lot of such players.
And those players do not usually mix with those who actually want to get better/enjoy the game.
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*feels bad about spending 8 hours killing 100 insane comps*
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United States12235 Posts
It promotes bad habits because a win is a win, be it against a Diamond player or a Bronze player. Perhaps what they should have done was tiered the portraits not by number of wins but by number of wins above a certain quality level. In WoW, if you wanted to get different pieces of gear, you had to have that 1800, 2000, 2200 or whatever rating which meant that each piece of gear was slightly more prestigious than the last. "That guy has shoulders" or "That guy has the arena tabard" caused opponents to tread lightly and allies to be impressed. If gear pieces could have been obtained by amassing wins of no particular quality, you would see the same habits in WoW. It's surprising that Blizzard has forgotten this.
If you unlocked the first portrait after 100 Gold or higher wins, the second after 250 Plat or higher wins, the third after 500 Diamond or higher wins and so forth, those higher portraits would be things to be revered rather than reviled. You would know that the portrait-holder is a skilled player rather than a win-trader or worker rusher.
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United States24641 Posts
On September 11 2010 07:55 Shi wrote:
*feels bad about spending 8 hours killing 100 insane comps*
I really don't think that the OP is blaming you for doing this lol... if you want to grind out stuff that doesn't hurt anybody else then more power to you.
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Woah, this actually works?
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Given the current state of the game, I suspect if you 6/7 pool all-in with drones you can probably get to low diamond.
Blizzard can spend a little more effort in educating players into "how to get better" in combination with certain changes to discourage such "5 minute win or lose" games. The anti-rush defense challenge mode is a good start. Additional challenges (think qxc's training maps) with achievement attached (so casuals would do them) is a really good way to make players better! Not everyone have the time to go through 100 episodes of day9 dailies.
Once a large portion of the community "start out" at a decent skill level I think the multiplayer environment would become much better!
On September 11 2010 08:02 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2010 07:55 Shi wrote:
*feels bad about spending 8 hours killing 100 insane comps* I really don't think that the OP is blaming you for doing this lol... if you want to grind out stuff that doesn't hurt anybody else then more power to you.
I had a friend grind those out for me and I do some of them while watching TV/IEM+MLG. But just leaving a team game and hoping 1/3 of your remaining ally knows how to utilize the extra resource and win for you is somewhat abusive.
One can argue this is a valid strategy in team game...
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I've always felt that the achievements / win-loss record / personal game statistics route most games are getting into has made me more stressed when I'm playing. I feel the same way in HoN. I know in the end the stats don't matter, but the fact that everything is recorded makes me feel more pressured to play the same way and to take every game seriously. It makes games less enjoyable for me overall.
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On September 11 2010 07:55 Shi wrote:
*feels bad about spending 8 hours killing 100 insane comps* Yeah its pretty boring.
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At first I was confused as to how your buddy was farming wins, but due to your post below, I now understand! :D I think you should edit that in so that people don't have to go searching for the reasoning behind what he was doing, I'm sure that I am not the only one who would get confused.
Personally, I think it is fucking stupid what he is doing, but what the hell? 4v4s are hardly competitive at all. I mean, seriously, who actually takes 4v4s serious? I know I sure as hell don't, it's almost always a race to see who can get max supply of BCs, Ultras/BLs, or Stalker-Zealot-Sentry-Colo. If it isn't that, then it's simply a race to see who can rush who better. When do you see timed pushes in 4v4s? Not very often, and I say that with great confidence, I'd even expand that to say that any kind of strategic push is very rare in 4v4.
My point is that I don't think it's a big deal. If he wants to get the Predator(lol, am I the only one who thinks that the Predator is possibly the WORST portrait available?) via 4v4, I say knock yourself out. Some people want to impress others, some want the largest e-penis around, some just do it purely for shits and giggles. This is a videogame, so why not have fun in something that isn't generally taken seriously? 
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Dude, there's a lot of other problems with SC2 right now that needs to be fixed by Blizzard. This achievement thing can be solved by us. Just don't pay attention to the achievement thing, its that simple
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EPT
