ceasefire

Actually the incentive for many players are the bottom of the bracket, so to speak, are the first pieces of season 4 or the next piece of (god forbid!) BT-item level or superior Season 3. You can't really have it both ways right. Either the casuals have the points to buy one item at a time, or they get better ratings and get more points to fill out on season 3 gear. It's not like players getting 200-300 points a week are going to be sitting on 5k for season 4, unless they're buying points.

People sometimes act like they're adding rating requirements to season 3 as well.

 

PimpinShammy

My feral druid is in full S3 except the items with ratings requirements. I play on a non-serious 5v5 or 3v3 and hover between 1300-1450 and have nearly 5k points banked for S4. I have even missed several weeks (though I had a good number of points carried over from S2) and still have plenty of points. S3 has been so long that anyone who plays every week should have points banked as well as full non-rated S3. People who don't play every week or didn't start playing till part way through the season might still have incentive to play, but I know as feral there is no point in me playing a single game in S4, since I will never get above 1500 as that spec. Trying out the resto thing, but not really enjoying it much, so I may just let the points sit till WotLK after I get my S4 gloves.

 

whysoez

Just for the record, I have seen quite a few effective 3's teams with feral druids. And I've run several 2's 3's teams up to 1850+.

 

oldmandennis

Next time, please do the math before replying. S4 gloves, S3 head/chest/helm, and a S4 ranged or OH will cost about 7k points. A 1400 team achieves that in 22-29 weeks, depending on bracket. This assumes you start from scratch with no points or gear - I would venture a guess that most players will either take at least a couple thousand points or a piece of S3 into S4.

 

whysoez

How are 'bad' people getting completely shut out? I think the raid metaphor is apt - sure guilds that don't know what they're doing can participate in the raids, but they have zero chance at getting the gear unless they actually down the boss. Think of achieving the requisite rating as downing the boss. You can still participate in the arenas, you will just actually have to do well in order to get the gear - just like it's been in challenging raids.

 

lairpie

I heard thousands of people in kara level guilds all are quitting the game because they might run out of badge rewards some day. Sure, they could put in a bit more time and effort and do ZA, join a guild doing t5 stuff, but they'd rather just quit? That's pretty comparable.

I'm still a little disgusted that after waves and waves of complaints about how blizzard is making it too easy for casual (usually using the word casual to mean bad, not actually casual) players to get pve gear, that people now are complaining that it might be a fraction as hard to get good pvp items. If you put as much time into arenas as peopel do into pve, you'd almost be able to get 1700 by accident just by eventually getting enough games where the opponents DCed or something.

Also, people are completely misunderstanding how the points are working. Once a team falls from 1500 to 1300 or wahtever, they're not continuing to pump more points into the system. If everyone under 1800 suddenly quit, its not like the teams at 2k magically become 1600 teams. Besides, people always have bad alts to use to pump more points into the system.

 

Denogran

I think you're the one that's completely missed how the Arena ranking system works... A team that falls to 1300 is absolutely continuing to pump more points into the system - the system is _completely_ relative. Every team gains ranking by beating teams that are worse than them. If there aren't teams that are worse than you, you can't gain ranking. If everyone under 1800 suddenly quit, then who do the 2k teams beat to stay at 2k? By definition, pretty close to 1/2 the teams arenaing have to be under 1500 ranking.

Again, I don't think that anyone is arguing that putting a rating on gear so that people who fail at arena can't get amazing gear is a bad thing. If you're not good at arena, you shouldn't be rewarded with the best stuff. But you also shouldn't be shut out entirely. There definitely should be consolation prizes for participation. Something that keeps people motivated to stay and keep the system functioning. The problem with Season 4 is that there are a large number of people that already got all the incentive gear of Season 3 (See PimpinShammy's post for an example), and will have no motivation to continue. That seems to be a huge flaw in the Season 2.4 implementation.

 

• Kestrel

If everyone under 1800 suddenly quits, the 2k teams beat other 2k teams to stay at 2k. This is what win-trading is based upon, that if you lose and win equally against an equally rated team you both stay at the same point. If everyone 1800 is a hermetically sealed group, where the people at the bottom of the bracket lose most of the time, but win a few improbable battles and are rewarded heavily for those wins, than nothing changes. Now if a new team comes along and moves up into the 2000 bracket, those points need to come from somewhere. But if everyone under 1800 quits, then the average of active arena teams will be something like 2000, and it will *stay* at 2000 so long as nobody else enters or leaves the system.

Likewise, a team that falls to 1300 and then stays at 1300 ISN'T pumping points into the system, at least not while they hold steady at 1300.

 

Giantlol

arena point:honor conversions would be amazing
or adding the honor gear to be also purchased for arena points, but obviously at a lower price, no thanks on blowing ~1875 arena points for something like new boots.

Just a random thought! Incentive for those who have gotten as high as they can(assuming they break 1600~) they can buy honor gear at a lower price

I know personally I end up with a lot of excess arena points that I'd like to burn on honor gear because farming honor for more than 1 character is lame. Plus I'm likely to be levelling an alt and farming an additional 100k+ honor is really a turn off Blizz.

 

Denogran

But to assume it's a hermetically sealed group is a bit naive, no? I'm not great at arena by any means - usually right around 1500 with my lock/pally 2v2, and I tend to win most all of my matches at 1480, and lose most all of my matches at 1530. If you took away the sub 1500 teams so that I was only playing 1500-1530 teams, I'd start to lose a lot more than I won, which would inexorably drive my rating down. In turn, the teams that were beating me at 1530 to stay at 1550 would now get less points for beating me, and their ratings would drop. Eventually, all the ratings would depress.

Now, if you were only playing at your level, and you alternated winning and losing each game, then no, dropping the bottom out wouldn't have any effect. But in my experience that hasn't been the case( I don't have any experience at higher levels though, so I might be mistaken ).

 

lazerpewpew

And the often-lose 2k team won't stay at 2k level any longer.

The 1300 rating team supports 1400 rating team, which in turn supports 1500 rating team, which in turn supports 1600 rating team, so on and so forth.

You need to have an ample supply of "losers" to make the winner "win".

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Siddown

The one problem with your example is that if you currently lose most games at 1530, then you really aren't a 1530 rating, you are more likely a 1500. If everyone below 1500 suddenly quit, so you were literally the last placed team in the entire Battlegroup, you might lose a few games dropping you to 1450, but at that point winning two games would get you back those points (consdering your opponents would be all 1500 or greater). An equalibrium would again form as long as nobody new entered the system.

Just look at the 2000+ rated teams that have been at that ranking for a number of weeks, their overall record might be .750 win percentage, but their most recent week will be approximately .500.

 

Siddown

That's simply not true, not in a closed system. Every team starts at 1500, therefore 1500 is the medium. Assuming nobody drops out and nobody new is added, 1500 will be the average score no matter how many games you play (now that queue dodging isn't possible). If you then drop everyone who has less than a 2000 ranking, suddenly something like 2150 or 2250 will become the new "Average", assuming nobody new gets added or taken away, this is your new medium. Some teams will inevitably drop below 2000, maybe even down as low as 1900, but if they were a true representation of a 2000 team, that would be temporary and they'd eventually get back to 2000 as they gained more and more points for a win and lose less and less for a loss.

 

Denogran

Ya, we're a 1500 team, I'm just saying that mid-play it fluctuates between 1460 and 1550, generally closer to 1500. If everyone below 1500 dropped out, and we lost a majority of our games (because that's what we do against teams ranked higher than us, in my experience), then our rating will drop, and continue to drop. My rating doesn't stay static right now because I keep beating other 1500 teams, it stays static because when I drop below a certain point I can win to boost myself back up, and when I win past a certain point I get beaten which drops me down. I think if you were to look at the 2000k teams, you'd see that their win percentage is high versus teams ranked worse than them, and low versus teams ranked higher than them, giving them an average of a .500 team.

This is only true if no team ever beats teams worse than them once everything is settled. If your team is an even ranking because you win 5 and lose 5 against your exact level (the hermetically sealed example of above), then sure, it won't change. But if you're in a static rating slot because you're 3-0 against teams with a lower rating, 2-2 against teams with the same rating and 0-3 against teams with a higher rating, then removing those lower rated teams takes you from a 5-5 record to at best a 4-6 record (assuming you go 4-3 against teams your own rating and 0-3 against teams with higher). If that's the scenario, and it's certainly been for my low-level arena teams 1200-1500 range( one week our only 5v5 win was because the opposing team tried to kill my prot pally first...), then the overall ratings of the entire system will gradually fall.

 

lairpie

No, you don't understand. Say every team below 1500 drops out and you're right at 1500. Every single team in your battle group is better than you. You're not going to keep going down and down unless you lose every single game. Say you play 12 games go 4 and 8, you'll only be playing teams that are higher ranked than you so say you lose 10 each loss and gain 20 each win. Then you'll still be a 1500 team. This is the most fundamental core of how the arena ratings system works, and nearly every system like it. If you can never ever beat a team better than you, sure you'll drop a little bit, but only a very little bit because a loss to a team much above you won't cost you much. Say an extreme example that you are so bad that you can't ever beat any of these other 1500 teams

How about a different example. Why isn't the top ranked team at 10000 rating? For the exact same reason why even a terrible team isn't at 0 rating. Unless you have a perfect 100% win ratio, you can't go too far because each win is a tiny number of points, each loss is a huge number of points, and everyone has bad luck with the RNG or screws up, or DCs once in a while.

Sure, maybe a 1500 team will drop to 1450 points, but those 50 points didn't just vanish into the ether, they're going to help some other 1500 team get their bracers or whatever it is you get at 1550.

 

Siddown

I came into this conversation late, but it does seem like you are just splitting hairs at this point. If you did magically remove everyone who was below 2000 rating AND magically made it that the skill level of those still in the picture didn't change, yes a few people would dip below 2000, but not too much. Because 2000 is now the new 1300, the lowest team on the totem pole. So if they maintained the same skill level, the wouldn't pull the entire system down, they'd maintain a score at about 2000. So even if they go 4-6 for a few weeks, at that point it only takes one 6-4 to get them very close to the mythical 2000 that we've set. But since the system is closed, the overall ratings of the entire system will not gradually fall, it will stay the same. It might spread out or tighten (making the Standard Deviations change), but the overall average score would stay the same.

Frankly, all of this is pretty irrelevant because we are assuming no skill, gear or comp changes, not to mention we are talking about a closed system which we also know isn't possible. But based on pure mathematics, once you make the system closed, you are talking about a finite number of points within the system, so the overall group setting cannot change (beyond rounding issues), just the how it is distrbuted. No team that is 2000 ranked would drop to 1500 in our made up, "only 2000" closed system, unless they were the unluckiest team known to man.

EDIT: Actually, after to my favorite place to think (with news paper in hand), I actually realized something. Since there will be way more teams at 2000 than at the top of the bracket (say 2500), if anything, the new system would approach a new equilbrium first, likely raising the average score before becoming relatively static. Yes, you might have people dip below 2000 (and actually, it'd be shocking if you didn't), but the average score for the system might actually rise a bit.

 

SanSul

Lots of talk about closed system arena, not quite sure what the point is.

If everyone who sucked did not play arena, then it would be far more difficult to achieve higher and higher ratings. This is common sense. Winning games increases ratings, and beating crappy teams, point sellers, and what not increased many peoples ratings. If you instantly lowered peoples ratings to what they would be had they never played easy win teams, many teams would probably lose hundreds of points in their rating.

Going into Season 4, we are looking at a much more serious competitiveness in Arena. Crappy players have signifigantly reduced incentive to participate. Point sellers and win traders are being removed to a degree from the system.

So making people will actually have to be better then other people to earn their gear now. The reason people are upset is because this has gone against the entire philosophy of TBC. People are used to grinding Attunemen and Heroics getting gear superior to 25mans and losing against druids and getting gear better then most in the game.

What is good for the game and good for business can often conflict. And Joe Casual's wallet speaks volumes more then Joe Hardcore/Joe PvP.

 

• Beliandra

Except that you seem to be overlooking the fact that the predictions are being made regarding the start of season 4. The start of season 4. Where everyone gets reset to 1500 points.

 

Siddown

I was under the impression the issue some people had was that after the people below X rating had gotten the items they could, they'd quit leaving nobody below that X rating (be it 1500, 1550, 1600 or whatever).

I grasp what people like Denogran are trying to say, I just think it's flawed. Basically, assuming that the system is like a bell curve, if we eliminate 2/3rds of the playing field (all on the lowest end), we now have a lot of people at the new low end of the spectrum, and a fewer people at the high end. That will then regulate as teams (in this case) progress towards the mean, and then stabalize. The number of re-rolls will likely be much lower in S4 (hopefully), give us at least a pseudo-closed system.

I guess I'm just not sure when people think this mass exodus will occur. Do they think that the "real" 1200-1600 crowd have enough points saved up that they'll only play for one week to get their Epics then quit? I think it's a bit naive to think that everyone (and their alts) have tonnes of point saved up, but I guess we won't know until S4 actually starts. My reason for posting was just responding to the flawed logic that the entire system would see a decrease in points, that just won't happen.

 

PimpinShammy

Why would you need to play even 1 week? You know if you've never broken 1500 in S3 that you're not going to in S4, so if you have your points saved, there's no need for you to play at all. Just buy your non-rated items and go back to doing whatever else you were doing. Obviously only time will tell how many quit. But if any significant percentage of the under 1500 people quit, it would have a definite effect on where your rating would be for a given skill level relative to where it was in S3. This could easily cause a cascading effect as teams that used to be over 1500 in S3 are now under 1500 in S4 realize they also have nothing to gain from the new system and also quit, and the process repeats itself. If only the really good teams are playing and it's a zero sum system with a 1500 average then the average really good team will be 1500.