Thread: Rated Wolves' Den in 3.1 (Possible Issues, Solutions)

The long awaited rated Wolves’ Den will finally arrive with Patch 3.1. That being said, the developers need to be very careful as to how they implement this new feature. As we’ve seen in the past, PvP has always had issues, many which could have been prevented (looking at you GC restrictions guy). Here are possible issues (with possible solutions) that may happen, that the devs can prevent NOW with their design decisions before it gets released in 3.1. These are a collection of my ideas, as well as a few other PvPers that I have spoken with.

Issue 1. Wintrading has always been an issue and it continues to happen in Wolves’ Den to this day. For those that don’t know what wintrading is, it occurs when two teams deliberately go against each other to trade wins by queueing at the same time, and they’ll queueing a particular language (such as French or Japanese) so that they aren’t queued against other teams. In order to prevent this, Square will need to disallow the language rule when queueing for rating, and put in a matchmaking algorithm that prevents the same two teams from being queued together over and over. If not, rated Wolves’ Den will be meaningless from the start.

Solution: Disable languages in Wolves’ Den (or at least in rated). A team can’t speak to the opposing team, so why have the language option? With enough teams queueing, this should hopefully prevent the same teams from queueing into each other over and over.

Issue 2. Another implementation announced is 8vs8 Wolves’ Den. This can potentially be a fun new addition to Wolves’ Den, but I do not believe it should be considered for rating and ranking immediately. For one, gathering a team of 8 players for PvP is a challenge in itself for many. Now imagine trying to queue against another full team of 8 players. Queue times will either be very long, or you’ll be going against one other team that just happened to be queueing with 8 players when you are. Sure, we might have quick queues at first, but it will die down quickly.

Solution: 8vs8 Wolves’ could work if it’s unrated or by queueing duty roulette for it, but when it comes to more serious rated play, it will have flaws. Perhaps implement an alternative 8vs8 game mode, like capture the flag or king of the hill. Leaving rated to 4vs4 seems like a much better approach, as this will increase the amount of teams, and thus reducing queue times.

Solution 2: Implement 8vs8 rated Wolves’ Den later on if the popularity of Wolves’ Den grows enough after Patch 3.1.

Issue 3. Square will need to be careful about the gear rules with rated Wolves’ Den. As we know, the new PvP gear is ilvl180, but with the +30 morale, leaves it at ilvl210 in unsynced PvP.

If rated Wolves’ Den is unsynced, then players with PvE gear above ilvl210 will be at an advantage over players with full PvP gear. Also, if players have no PvE gear, and have yet to reach rank 50 to obtain the PvP gear, then these players will also be at a disadvantage.

If rated Wolves’ Den is synced, then it will likely be at a lower ilvl (lets say ilvl180). If this is the case, then the new PvP gear becomes somewhat useful, and ilvl180+ PvE gear can be easily obtained by fresh level 60 characters, thus allowing both PvP and PvE players the ability to participate on even grounds.

Solution: Consider having rated Wolves’ Den be synced. At the same time, add an unrated solo queue mode for unsynced gear, so that PvP gear (and its morale & materia) can finally have a use somewhere.



I know I am jumping the gun here, but I believe Patch 3.1 is this game’s real chance to bring back Wolves’ Den and make it popular, but if it has a faulty system like we’ve seen in the past with PvP, Wolves’ Den will just end up being an unused feature once again.

This is a collaborative list, so feedback and other solutions are welcome!

1. Glicko-2 and Bradley-Terry rating systems account for the possibility of someone just beating up extremely weak enemies for free wins and provide almost no benefits for just having an alt team to kill over and over

Win trading is easily countered with a zero sum system incorporated in rating tiers, starcraft 2 being the obvious example of this

2. no real comment, 8v8 objective will be welcomed

3. The point of ranked matchmaking is to determine who has higher skill, not who has better gear, unsynced should NEVER be allowed in this regard, allowing materia in an ilvl sync and different secondary stat differences should be the absolute limit of stat customization

I truly feel like 8 vs 8 is a bad idea. It's hard enough getting a 4 vs 4, why double the queue time?

I could only see this working if they fully disable the queues matching ranks. The ranks mean nothing if there's ways to cheat around them. Leave the ranks for epeen and let anybody queue with anybody regardless of experience. I'm a Rank 26 because I loved PvP when it first came out. I know zero people on Gilgamesh with a rank that high, mainly because nobody cared.

I really hope with rated added, it'll increase the awareness of PvP in the game. I enjoy PvPing in all games, but the queue times just make it not worth it...

I really hope the 8v8 thing they talked about is just a small scale battleground (which would be about damn time) and not a direct replacement to the arena (ie 8v8 season ladder, just no please).

Arena is the place where each person's actions are supposed to matter hence the size should be kept small.
A 8v8 battleground (say capture the flag or something of the like as suggested above) , in contrast to the 72man 3-way zergfests, would be breath of fresh air though and hopefully would make them see it's a better option than just putting out 72man maps one after the other.

As for the language point, if people would be able use it to wintrade then SE wouldn't have done it's homework (wouldn't surprise me tbh) but in any case it has no place in pvp, maybe if the datacenters shared a queue but otherwise no, at best it's just a silly useless feature and at worst it makes the queue worse. So yeah remove it.

As for the synced/unsyced thing, I agree that the rated arena should be synced, though i don't think this is what they'll do, and maybe let the 8v8 battleground (if it is that) be unsynced.

Kudos on the initiative, maybe they'll listen/communicate for once.