For one, more players actually play something else than 1v1 in SC2, because of how stressful and hard SC2 actually is. So when it would come to a decision for the masses, which is what you advocate, they would very well adopt it if it was workable.
Second, none of these games, SC2 included, is a mmorpg. None of them has as a defining block the social aspect. Even if some designers decided for a game that takes 30 minutes on average that they need to somehow separate players based on their skill, it for sure shouldnât apply to a game in which the social component is basically as important as the gameplay mechanics.
Youâre never gonna be able to make the distinction though are you? Only okay with people on friendlist? Just have people add you and in 3 weeks send you a whisper âhey buddy homie pal wanna do a +15?â âHey buddy pal can I borrow some gold from you since we friends?â
I think you get way too many âsuspiciousâ players to get checked by an employee. We can all say that an algoritm is going to the magic, but i am afraid in relatity it has to do magic
You could cross-check different logs to help that issue.
Letâs take the super obvious boosting example to keep it simple.
A +5 hero suddenly gets all +15 achievements within a week.
An AI could notice that this is kind of weird and look further into it.
Upon that the AI could check through everyones logs who was participating in that run. If one of those accounts received a huge amount of gold which equals the amount of gold the other +5 hero account los, then the AI could be pretty sure about this being a boost and flag the account for further inspection.
I view it as a trade, like any other in game. You are hiring a bunch of mercs to carry you through whatever content. Your gold for their time. RMT is not permitted and a separate issue.
At present there are no rules against any trade for gold. Whether itâs a mythic plus boost, getting an item crafted or buying a BoE etc.
The only place I dislike the boosts is in the group finder. But they are not meant to be there and thatâs whole different issue.
I did. The thing that is more salient imo is this: letâs say, for the sake of the argument, there would be a solution, even though not obvious to us, to differentiate between payed (by gold) boosts and playing with friends. What would at the end of the day be the basis of differentiating between the two? Is it because we feel the payer doesnât deserve the rating / m+ clear / raid clear they gain? If that is the case, arguably someone helped by their actual friends on the friends list is in the same position. Or I can take it even further than that: someone underperforming on a certain boss, or simply naturally being the lower skill player in an arena team is technically getting carried in that specific occurrence, even if itâs not even a matter of severe discrepancies, and you canât make an argument that all players in all arena teams or raids or dungeons are perfectly equal in terms of skill. Where does this witch hunt stops? And more importantly, what makes that point where it stops be something else than arbitrary?
I think it is time to acknowledge that people like and use these services and fully embrace them, give them a seperate tab to advertise, openly set prices posted like the AH and provide a trade window to stop scammers (you put gold in and it is held until the service is complete -there are some issues to work out for that to work well -Youâd likely need a third party of arbitrate issues and I cannot see Blizzard getting their hand dirty with it) Make it all âlegalâ and transparent and monitorable. Even go as far as a ebay style review system. Get a good, value for money carry give em a positive review, like etc.
I know like all systems some one will abuse it, but that will happen no matter what is done.
I assume people pay for runs upfront? Are there many cases of hit and run? Iâve never done it though if Sire keeps dropping (75K Iâve seen today) I might
Tbh I donât care about the PvE aspect at all here. Sure, it can be seen as an issue in PvE as well and Iâve seen obviously boosted players ruining a few of my keys.
For example a hunter who conveniently had every key +15 ⌠once⌠and didnât even know he can soothe certain mechanics. He also didnât know it was a bad idea to kill a Pride as the last man standing. Basically denied the pride for the whole group and though he did good by doing that.
I mean I donât care that much but I can see why this frustrates other players.
The huge issue lies within PvP.
A boosted player destroys the experience for other players while he gets boosted. He also receives way better gear. Gear currently grants you an idiotic power boost.
When this player then drops in rating, because he didnât deserve 2k+ in the first place, heâll get matched with players who try to climb on their own.
Now the way better geared boosted guy has an incredibly high advantage due to gear where he could, even if heâs lower skilled, still 1 shot someone, especially given the current state of PvP balance.
Boosting, within a rated PvP context is horrible for multiple reasons.
By buying boosts in PvP you not only increase your own rating, no, you also decrease the rating of others and THIS is the huge problem.
Gold always goes first, havenât heard of hit and run in a long time due to the big communities atm. Nobody earns anything from stealing 200k from someone, thatâs small change in the boosting world
I feel you arenât addressing the point I brought up now. Iâm not going to deny that boosting doesnât award players with better gear, or that it doesnât take rating or ranks from others. Obviously, it does. My argument is that any instance of a skill discrepancy can be construed as boosting by the more skillful player(s) to the benefit of the less skillful. And the point where you can stop construing it as such is arbitrary at best.
Its not worth to scam
Turst is something you can lose only once
More so, boosters go greath lenght to make their costumers happy, make sure they got the kill, etc and the loot
In this business they canât afford scammers and bad reputation
Most of the LFG abusers are third party sites and not the kind of advertisers using trade.
Itâs funny one of the reasons Iâve never used trade for buying and selling is because I do not trust it. Too many friends got scammed, I know that you can report scams and they will remove the gold from the scammer but youâre not guaranteed to get it back. I use the AH or friends because I know I can trust them.
Big boosting communities all have discords and you can verify that you are dealing with a real representative. I can understand why people like using them, a friend used to boost and their particular community would refund the customer if the run failed AND give them a new team to boost them through whatever it as theyâd paid for. There are also penalties for boosters that fail to do what is expected.
I canât see Blizz giving them a specfic channel for boosting, it has one, itâs called trade and although boosting is not against the rules, itâs also not supported. I do like the AH idea though, but Iâm not sure it will ever happen.
True but this is an issue for many systems. There are still certain thresholds for it. LoL for example draws the line at the 2 division discrepancy. It allows lower skilled players to play with their higher skilled friends to a certain extend.
It doesnât stop boosting of course but it reduces the amount of boosts at least. You canât make any system completely bullet proof, same goes for IT security for example. You can just make a system so hard to penetrate that it becomes really unattractive for 99% of people.
With the current state of the game combined with boosting you could also just implement an in-game shop in which you can buy gear with your credit card if weâre honest about it.
There pretty much is no difference between a guy who bought 10 WoW Tokens and bought a boost with gold for his 220 gear and a guy just buying his 220 gear for 200 euros or whatever a Token costs now.
I think the root of the problem is not that boosting for gold is legitimate here. I think the problem is that pvp gear is extremely good in pve, because of the âgear is gearâ idea they tried to push since Legion. If there would be no obvious universal power rewards to be reaped by having higher rating, there would be no point for such a high boosting percentage to exist as it currently does.
Take the WoD pvp system as an example: all players, regardless of their skill level, eventually ended up in the same gear. PvP reward for rating were cosmetics, titles, in other words vanity rewards. There was also no interference from PvE gear being good in PvP, which meant also no boosting the other way around.
Now, because WoW is a mmo, it is at the end of the day based on a reward structure, which means that there must be a reward of some sort for performing in pvp, as well as in pve. Vanity rewards are nevertheless rewards, and when there is any kind of reward, there will be at least someone interested in gaining it, and when there is a difficulty level, there will be at least someone incapable of overcoming that difficulty. When those two groups overlap, there will be someone interested in being boosted. But boosting is only a problem when there is a significant proportion of the player base (doesnât mean a majority, simply a significant enough proportion) interested in it, and I submit far fewer people would be interested in buying a pvp boost if the rewards would simply be vanity, and the way things worked in the past supports this supposition.
So I submit that the correct solution to the current boosting problem in pvp is not to actually bar people from playing with whoever they choose as long as it doesnât involve real money transactions or account sharing, but to bring back a system like the WoD gearing system for pvp, gear separation to pve and vanity rewards for being good instead of power increasing rewards.
Yes, but Iâve had the discussion about a better reward system in many other threads already. Common line was that most people want better gear for more difficult content. Cosmetic rewards are deemed as ânot interesting enoughâ. With the argument âThis is an MMORPG, itâs about power progressionâ.
Iâd be fine with only granting cool cosmetics for harder content. At least in PvP like in WoD.
Iâd be fine with that.
There is still one thing though:
This also applies for PvE. People are buying CN HC/Mythic boosts or +15 boosts, which grant you better GV rewards and, in 9.0.5, also upgrades for your mythic items.
Granted, I donât care about the PvE part that much but in that sense the whole point of better gear for harder content is kind of irrelevant since people can just buy that gear with their credit card because WoW Tokens exist and Gold sellers previous to that.
Essentially WoW, in its current state, has an in-game shop that sells gear.
Iâm pretty sure everyone would be outraged if this was directly available within the game, so Iâm not really quite sure why people are not outraged about the situation we have now because itâs basically the same thing just with one extra step.
Yes, well⌠we do need to highlight the point that pvp is not pve, and as such it needs to have itâs own reward system thought out to work in conjunction with what is good for pvp, not for pve. Power progression via gear is an intrinsic part of mmo pve, because the whole point of pve is to overcome static challenges with an increasingly powerful character. The tougher the challenges, the better the character needs to become. The fantasy of pve is, if you like an analogy, something like the hobbit and his merry band going in the dragonâs lair, only to emerge from there with the shinies.
For pvp, it needs to be recognized that this doesnât work well. Rated PvP is at the end of the day about fair competition, itâs a competition of skills and not of random outside power. Thatâs what makes it fun for the players that engage in it willingly and to a greater degree, and thus it follows that integrity of the competition should be the central focus of the pvp system. Power progression contradicts that, and while a token nod towards the mmo roots probably needs to be maintained, it needs not be more than just that: a token nod, as it was in WoD or MoP.
Yes, but X buying a boost in PvE doesnât hurt Y doing the content as it does in PvP, at least not directly. Y doesnât lose their m+15 or nathria clear because X got boosted. So I submit that pve boosting is never a big of a problem as pvp boosting is.
That would mean Blizzard not only acknowledges such services but also takes responsibility for them which is not the case (itâs even in the TOS somewhere - or was - that such actions are performed âat your own riskâ).
