Completely agree with sadris and posted something similar earlier in this thread:
I'd still much prefer an arena system where a player zones in with a full set of S4 gear, regardless of whether they're using greens/blues in the real world.
They can then buy that S4 gear with arena points, for use in world PvP, battlegrounds, or even PvE.
^ This way, arenas are based purely on skill, not about gear, and such a change would hardly break immersion from a fantasy world since arenas would typically deck out their gladiators in gear before they engage.
edit - furthermore, it would allow Blizzard to focus more on improving their world PvP and battlegrounds. As is, battlegrounds are merely a means to an end -- a way to gear up for arenas. With the above suggested change, the roles would be reversed. Arenas would become the means to gear up your character for world PvP.
Comparing the time investment involved in gearing up a character for PvE and PvP is simply not an adequate comparison. One is driven by progression, the other by competition.
PvE is akin to console RPG's and platformers, from Castlevania to Devil's May Cry to Mega Man. You have scripted encounters which you learn to overcome by recognizing its patterns, and acquire gear/levels to tackle further content. Except PvE adds the element of teamwork and coordination not found in the simple platformer.
PvP on the other hand is akin to first person shooters or fighting games, from Team Fortress to Street Fighter. If these games required the player to spend months on a single character just to compete on a level playing field, players would be discouraged from playing the game in the first place. If their character/class suddenly gets nerfed to near uselessness, they'll quit rather than reroll. You don't need gear as that carrot on a stick to keep PvPer's playing.
The only logical explaination for putting PR reqs on non arena gear is to encourage people to play arena.
A lot of players out there who were easily able to surpass 1850 in S2 struggled to even get there in S3. The reason is that there were far fewer playes in the areana ranks because the PR reqs of S3 drove away the, as I call them, "participation players" - aka players who didn't give a crap about rating and were only in it for the points and gear. Once the choice gear was out of reach for them they just took a pass on S3 all together. Putting even higher reqs on the traditional arena gear for S4 would drive even more players away from arena. Perhaps to the point that the pool of people playing arena's would be dangerously shallow. So Blizzard took the path of putting PR reqs on non arena gear to counter the inevitable player drain.
I've got to agree and this is exactly what I think Blizzard is trying to do with the off-set item ratings.
And this I think will have the effect of decreasing the arena pool, possibly significantly.
Yes, because every person playing WoW can hit 70 and 5 hours later be dragged through Hyjal/BT AND get all the drops they want.
My suggestion is something that can be done by any player, any class, and practically any spec. All it requires is having one friend to do 2v2 with (and we all know that practically any combination of classes/specs can get 1700). I'd say you were comparing Apples to Oranges, but they are at least both fruit. It's more like you compared Apples to Bulldozers.
Sorry, but if you can get to 1700 with almost any combination of class/specs, you probably outgear your opponents already which makes your comparison correct in reverse. You compare bulldozers to apples
I have been leveling druid, 67 now and what will this patch do for me ?
If there is none or very limited point selling, I HAVE to grind BGs to survive more than 5 seconds and get into some half decent team, then i have to grind even more BGs to get all that jewelery that is pretty much necessary if you want to compete and then, maybe i will be able to get some decent team where i will actually be able to compete without being stomped by people in full s3/s4, which means i have about 2 or 3 months until i can start having fun in PvP. That is my problem with the current system. I can understand that they want to eliminate reasons why gold selling happens but the sad thing is that alts, something that more than half of a player base enjoys, are being hit the most. Hell they could make S1 "for rent" as stuff that nobody needs and fresh 70s could use for arenas and close the gear gap a bit.
Certainly. You wrote that in response to my statement:
Originally Posted by Disquette
For instance, if S1(vindicators) gear had S4 stats, and nothing else in this game changed, I would be no happier than I am now. Similarly, if S1(vindicators) gear didn't exist, S2 had S1 stats, S3 had S2 stats, and S4 had S3 stats, and no ratings requirements, I would be happy.
What I particularly value at this point in my WoW career is the feeling of accomplishment of things that I've been doing on my own. I can get the best BG gear by accomplishing tasks x/y/z. I can do this almost any time of day. It doesn't matter to me that much what the stats are, but it does matter to me that for BG players, I've been able to get the best set available.
The minor difference in stats between S3 and S4 doesn't bug me. It's that now the BG top of the line stuff is actually BG+Arena top of the line stuff.
I've had a gripe about the consistent deterioration of solo play stuff in WoW since BC came out, so for me, the issue isn't the gear level, it's that the one real way to get top level solo gear no longer will exist. I would like to be able to say "in this particular area of the game, I have maxed out." Up to this point, and until S4 starts, I have been able to do that, if I want, in BGs.
The rating requirement on the BG gear is a step in the wrong direction, IMO. If we look at season 3, take a rated arena character against a non-arena character and compare their pvp power:
Arena Character over Non-Arena Character:
Weapons (2 slots)
5 piece set (5 slots)
Ranged slot (1 slot)
So, an S3 PvPer has 8 slots of advantage over the non-arena character already. This increases to 11 slots in s4:
Boots (1)
Ring (1)
Bracers (1)
Basically, it looks like gear difference here is going to be so vast as to discourage nearly anyone who isn't already in a high rated arena team from participating in BGs or Arenas. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but how would a "new-sh 70" team even get their personal rating high enough to get competitive gear when that team is at a serious gear disadvantage like this? You need good gear to get the high rating but you need a high rating to buy the good gear, hm... (yeah yeah, you could grind for s2 via honor, buy s3 via arena, etc, but you'd still be at a gear disadvantage and you have to admit that is a huge mountain to climb)
Edit: responding here for clarity
Originally Posted by Bula
A page back an excellent post was made that shows exactly how you could go about gearing up a new character, if you're interested you should check that out. So, realistically, that leaves player skill as the only remaining gap between a low and high rated player.
Of course there is an optimal upgrade path that would be relatively easy, but my initial point remains about the power gap between the new 70 (blue pvp gear, S3 off set items) and the s3/s4 folks. I already have experience getting hammered on an alt in such gear (~200 res, blue pvp set) b/c I just roll in to BGs for fun once in a while. The huge gap here is going to be discouraging, especially as it would involve an honor grind for a significant portion of time to purchase the s2 stuff.
Last edited by Cloudgatherer : 04/23/08 at 5:17 PM.
Certainly. You wrote that in response to my statement:
What I particularly value at this point in my WoW career is the feeling of accomplishment of things that I've been doing on my own. I can get the best BG gear by accomplishing tasks x/y/z. I can do this almost any time of day. It doesn't matter to me that much what the stats are, but it does matter to me that for BG players, I've been able to get the best set available.
The minor difference in stats between S3 and S4 doesn't bug me. It's that now the BG top of the line stuff is actually BG+Arena top of the line stuff.
I've had a gripe about the consistent deterioration of solo play stuff in WoW since BC came out, so for me, the issue isn't the gear level, it's that the one real way to get top level solo gear no longer will exist. I would like to be able to say "in this particular area of the game, I have maxed out." Up to this point, and until S4 starts, I have been able to do that, if I want, in BGs.
Why would you expect that in a massive multiplayer game's player versus player aspect that you should be able to accomplish complete character advancement alone? It would be a pretty shallow game if that were the case.
If there is none or very limited point selling, I HAVE to grind BGs to survive more than 5 seconds and get into some half decent team, then i have to grind even more BGs to get all that jewelery that is pretty much necessary if you want to compete and then, maybe i will be able to get some decent team where i will actually be able to compete without being stomped by people in full s3/s4, which means i have about 2 or 3 months until i can start having fun in PvP. That is my problem with the current system. I can understand that they want to eliminate reasons why gold selling happens but the sad thing is that alts, something that more than half of a player base enjoys, are being hit the most. Hell they could make S1 "for rent" as stuff that nobody needs and fresh 70s could use for arenas and close the gear gap a bit.
Why not just move S1 to the rep vendors like they did with the old honor gear, and just phase the honor gear out completely?
It really isn't that big a deal about putting rating requirements on offset pieces, since the S3 offset pieces will still be available and have no rating requirements. As long as there's a comparable and reasonable alternative that allows players to start *somewhere* doing pvp, there shouldn't be a problem. I'd like to see them put the offset pieces on vendors elsewhere too (maybe for gold + a small heroic badge fee?).
Basically, it looks like gear difference here is going to be so vast as to discourage nearly anyone who isn't already in a high rated arena team from participating in BGs or Arenas. Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but how would a "new-sh 70" team even get their personal rating high enough to get competitive gear when that team is at a serious gear disadvantage like this? You need good gear to get the high rating but you need a high rating to buy the good gear, hm... (yeah yeah, you could grind for s2 via honor, buy s3 via arena, etc, but you'd still be at a gear disadvantage and you have to admit that is a huge mountain to climb)
If you've ever taken time to actually check out the statistical difference between the tiers of gear you'd see that the difference between a full s2 and full s3 geared player is very minor. In terms of resilience it's almost a zero increase across the board. A page back an excellent post was made that shows exactly how you could go about gearing up a new character, if you're interested you should check that out. So, realistically, that leaves player skill as the only remaining gap between a low and high rated player.
I've had a gripe about the consistent deterioration of solo play stuff in WoW since BC came out, so for me, the issue isn't the gear level, it's that the one real way to get top level solo gear no longer will exist. I would like to be able to say "in this particular area of the game, I have maxed out." Up to this point, and until S4 starts, I have been able to do that, if I want, in BGs.
Wait.... what?
I could well be wrong but in terms of "solo content"
PreTBC:Honor Grind up to Knight+ (blue level sets). Going further required rolling a preform for horrendous numbers of hours
S1 TBC:Crafted epics, Blue honor gear, offset epics
S2 TBC:Crafted epics, Blue honor gear, offset epics
S3 TBC:Crafted epics, S1 Glad gear, offset epics
S4 TBC:Crafted epics, S2 Glad gear, half of offset epics (as well as legacy Vindicator's epics for those slots)
There is still a solo progression path, and if the mixing of Honor and Arena bothers you, does it similiarly bother you that Hat enchants require faction rep (group content except for SSO) to perform at the top level for solo/raid/group pvp content?
Sorry, but if you can get to 1700 with almost any combination of class/specs, you probably outgear your opponents already which makes your comparison correct in reverse. You compare bulldozers to apples
I have been leveling druid, 67 now and what will this patch do for me ?
If there is none or very limited point selling, I HAVE to grind BGs to survive more than 5 seconds and get into some half decent team, then i have to grind even more BGs to get all that jewelery that is pretty much necessary if you want to compete and then, maybe i will be able to get some decent team where i will actually be able to compete without being stomped by people in full s3/s4, which means i have about 2 or 3 months until i can start having fun in PvP. That is my problem with the current system. I can understand that they want to eliminate reasons why gold selling happens but the sad thing is that alts, something that more than half of a player base enjoys, are being hit the most. Hell they could make S1 "for rent" as stuff that nobody needs and fresh 70s could use for arenas and close the gear gap a bit.
Feel free to check the armory for this character, she's my most well geared (2 S2 Maces, and some other S2 BG/Arena Gear), so I never out gear anyone in Arenas. I've jumped to about 20 teams in the past mainly because other guildies need the points (and this was back when Warriors ruled the day, not Rogues meaning Pre-HARP). We took every team to 1700, it's easy. Sure, we'd get rolled by the occasional point selling team, but when we actually fought teams that were meant to be in bracket, we'd generally go 2:1 in the Win:Loss ratio. Occasionally we'd get to about 1800, but since we only really played once a week and the comps where different every time, lack of practice and the skill of our opponents would make about 1810 our glass ceiling.
As for not having gear, this new change in no way changes that you'll need to grind BGs for a few pieces, plus you now have free top quality blues (provided you leveled via questing and are Friendly with the 5 factions), which is a great starting point. You can grab the Belt from Halaa in about 15 minutes if there's a raid going, that just requires boots and bracers which you can start with S3 if you don't feel you can find a Warlock buddy to help you go 6-4 for a few weeks (as a druid, it's automatic).
1700 is not difficult if you are playing people who truely represent that bracket (i.e. not point sellers power leveling a team), I'm sorry, it just isn't.
I'm sorry you disagree, but having one friend help you get to 1700 is FAR from what Sadris said, having 24 people drag you through BT for T6. It's light years different, how you can't see that is beyond me.
re: BG gear and solo play - Couple thoughts flowing from this discussion:
1) Once S4 Starts a solo player can now fully gear himself with entire S2 arena plus ever single S3 (and three S4) off-set items. That means person never had to go into a 5 man or join a group or even farm one single badge of justice. Or anything. All this in an MMO. Pretty good?
2)At the high end Blizzard is fine having two crowds. PVE-raiding and PVP. What people seem to be asking now is for PVP-bg-solo play? Yes S3-offset was given away for free to all, but maybe, just mabye Blizzard felt it was a mistake. Sure you don't get the latest and best PVP item. But to do that it requires you to do Arena. PVP-BG and PVP-arena are meant to complement each other. (And for this reason many despise this). I.e. you need to both together to truly achieve the best results in both. This all encompassed in the PVP player track.
3) I understand Disquette's reasoning that he wants to achieve the best possible things for this character and have that sense accomplishment. And in his view he would be perfectly happy if all the PVP-offset items lost 10 ilevels. But at least his accomplishment was to achieve the best possible PVP-offset items possible.
However to counter that argument, this doesn't happen in PVE, does it? I.e. you can run 5-mans for pretty good gear and get stuff off of Badge Vendors. But if you want the truly end-all PVE gear in that slot, don't you need to 25-man raid? I understand the sentiment, but it doesn't follow that it is available in any other avenue of the game for a specific slot.
Should people zone into Sunwell and get a full set of t6 while they're inside? How is PVP different? Both PVE and PVP are about character progression as well as skill - the purely skill-based PVP is on the tournament realms, but arena and BGS on live servers are still tied to your character, and given the nature of WoW's progression based appeal, they still ought to be.
I disagree. PvP is not about character progression. The majority of players who enjoy or would enjoy WoW PvP do it for the competition. Grinding honor and new gear is simply a means to an end -- to remain competitive. Create a level playing field for all arena players, and you'd bring back a large portion of the casual PvP crowd.
PvE, on the other hand, is all about progression and the whole point of it is to acquire gear which allows you to tackle new encounters, which drops better gear that allows you to tackle further encounters, etc. The only competitive aspect of PvE is intra-guild, and that's all about who progresses the fastest.
I hesitate to say much because the solo vs group stuff gets into a can of worms that no one likes usually. So, I'll try to be brief about it.
I could well be wrong but in terms of "solo content"
PreTBC:Honor Grind up to Knight+ (blue level sets). Going further required rolling a preform for horrendous numbers of hours
S1 TBC:Crafted epics, Blue honor gear, offset epics
S2 TBC:Crafted epics, Blue honor gear, offset epics
S3 TBC:Crafted epics, S1 Glad gear, offset epics
S4 TBC:Crafted epics, S2 Glad gear, half of offset epics (as well as legacy Vindicator's epics for those slots)
There is still a solo progression path, and if the mixing of Honor and Arena bothers you, does it similiarly bother you that Hat enchants require faction rep (group content except for SSO) to perform at the top level for solo/raid/group pvp content?
That's a pretty good chart. I like it, as it seems pretty accurate. BGs have long been the source, for solo play, of belts, boots, and bracers. If you did BGs, and only BGs, you could get the best honor items for those slots. Now that is not true. I agree, that as your chart shows, there are many other ways to get gear. I happen to dislike the fact that the trend is no longer followed.
As for the hat enchants, since you're asking, yes. I do not like that faction grinds require groups. My "main", who has the Illidan neck, wasn't keyed for Honor Hold heroics untill they nerfed the key requirements down to 0. I'd be happy spending time to get rep, as I've done for scryers, but finding people to do Shattered Halls rep runs (this was pre dungeon dailies when I was playing that toon mainly) as an enhance shaman wasn't fun.
Raid reps, yeah, I'm fine with that. Scale of the Sands, the Violet eye, etc. Requiring rep to be required in groups to even enter certain 5 man instances, when I'm running around in some T6, is pretty absurd. I'd be happy to do it on my own, but don't want to be begging guildies to do regular shattered halls.
Why would you expect that in a massive multiplayer game's player versus player aspect that you should be able to accomplish complete character advancement alone? It would be a pretty shallow game if that were the case.
And yet, we've been able to do that anew with new gear each BG season. That has been pretty frickin cool, to me. Guess what - I also enjoyed grinding out diamond seals by myself in Darkness Falls and soloing for artifact scrolls in DAoC. I like being able to do stuff, in an MMO world, by myself. It's a lot like I live life, tbh. I read books on my own, and char advance my knowledge. I take online self-directed and char advance my skills. I jog on my own and char advance my health. Yet, I enjoy living in a world populated by people with whom I can interact, and I enjoy interacting despite the fact that they are not necessary for me to advance in my life.
I don't expect other people to have the same views or preferences as I do, and I don't see why it's a big deal that I enjoy things that other people don't. As the converse, I think 0 about lore in this game. I don't understand it, and have no clue how the NPCs are related to this world other than what I pick up from the occasional quest text that I didn't skip over for some reason. But, I'm glad that's in the game for people who like that stuff.
If anyone would like to continue this discussion, please feel free to PM me. I already feel bad enough by taking away from the main discussion of the PVP changes. I certainly understand if anyone adds a response to this message because they feel like I'm wrong. I'm simply saying that I won't respond to it unless it's pvp-related (no more solo/casual vs mmo discussion from me in this thread), or in a PM.
The central problem with the rating requirements on honor gear, I think, is the mixing of BG and arena when the two are quite different beasts. The idea behind the rating requirements of both the arena gear and the honor gear for s4 is to ensure that players have to have some degree of success in PVP to get the top gear, which - up until now - has only been the case (barring system loopholes) with weapons and shoulders. The problem is that there's no true metric for "success" in battlegrounds - points can be accumulated through failure as well. The solution to ensure that the top quality PVP gear goes only to successful PVP'ers is that gear whose currency is earned in BGs is tied to success in arena, which feels like a disconnect given that the former is a casual, solo-able activity while the latter is competitive and group-based
While I completely understand and agree with the motivation for putting PR requirements on more gear, since the inevitable progression of PVP gear over seasons being entirely unlinked to success in PVP seemed really at odds with the nature of progression in the game at large, I'm curious what impact this will have on both arena and BG interest as we approach the expansion.
edit:
Originally Posted by Sumie
I disagree. PvP is not about character progression. The majority of players who enjoy or would enjoy WoW PvP do it for the competition. Grinding honor and new gear is simply a means to an end -- to remain competitive. Create a level playing field for all arena players, and you'd bring back a large portion of the casual PvP crowd.
I believe this is a fundamentally incorrect assumption. There is a percentage of PVP-minded WoW players who want PVP to be solely about skill and competition, yes, but I do not believe that percentage is close to the majority - and again, for those players who want purely skill driven, balanced PVP, there are tournament realms available to them. I am a highly competitive person who enjoys PVP in WoW and I also appreciate the persistent improvement in my character that comes as a result of my arena success.
The central problem with the rating requirements on honor gear, I think, is the mixing of BG and arena when the two are quite different beasts. The idea behind the rating requirements of both the arena gear and the honor gear for s4 is to ensure that players have to have some degree of success in PVP to get the top gear, which - up until now - has only been the case (barring system loopholes) with weapons and shoulders. The problem is that there's no true metric for "success" in battlegrounds - points can be accumulated through failure as well. The solution to ensure that the top quality PVP gear goes only to successful PVP'ers is that gear whose currency is earned in BGs is tied to success in arena, which feels like a disconnect given that the former is a casual, solo-able activity while the latter is competitive and group-based
While I completely understand and agree with the motivation for putting PR requirements on more gear, since the inevitable progression of PVP gear over seasons being entirely unlinked to success in PVP seemed really at odds with the nature of progression in the game at large, I'm curious what impact this will have on both arena and BG interest as we approach the expansion.
I disagree. I think putting PR reqs on what was traditionally honor gear is soley an attempt to counter the inevitable arena player drain that higher reqs on S4 would have caused.
And yet, we've been able to do that anew with new gear each BG season. That has been pretty frickin cool, to me. Guess what - I also enjoyed grinding out diamond seals by myself in Darkness Falls and soloing for artifact scrolls in DAoC. I like being able to do stuff, in an MMO world, by myself. It's a lot like I live life, tbh. I read books on my own, and char advance my knowledge. I take online self-directed and char advance my skills. I jog on my own and char advance my health. Yet, I enjoy living in a world populated by people with whom I can interact, and I enjoy interacting despite the fact that they are not necessary for me to advance in my life.
But you really haven't been though. You have needed a team from day one to go into arena and earn points to get the top of the line gear. Nothing has changed this, they only expanded it.
I disagree. I think putting PR reqs on what was traditionally honor gear is soley an attempt to counter the inevitable arena player drain that higher reqs on S4 would have caused.
And I think it's going to backfire. The great majority of people will quickly realize that they can't get the required rating, and will simply stop pvping altogether after they have the unrated items, probably from honor/arena points banked from S3. And with far fewer under 1500 teams playing, it will be that much harder to get 1700, never mind 2200. People who think it's easy to get 1700 rating now may find it alot harder when the team they are playing at 1600s are teams that used to be in the 1800s.
And I think it's going to backfire. The great majority of people will quickly realize that they can't get the required rating, and will simply stop pvping altogether after they have the unrated items, probably from honor/arena points banked from S3. And with far fewer under 1500 teams playing, it will be that much harder to get 1700, never mind 2200. People who think it's easy to get 1700 rating now may find it alot harder when the team they are playing at 1600s are teams that used to be in the 1800s.
Yep, there were a whole of people who prior to S3 were saying "Man 1850 rating is nothing, don't sweat it", only to find themselves struggling to get past 1750 3 weeks after S3 went live.
There is a percentage of PVP-minded WoW players who want PVP to be solely about skill and competition, yes, but I do not believe that percentage is close to the majority - and again, for those players who want purely skill driven, balanced PVP, there are tournament realms available to them. I am a highly competitive person who enjoys PVP in WoW and I also appreciate the persistent improvement in my character that comes as a result of my arena success.
I'm sorry, but I think you're in the minority. I'm not merely talking of the current WoW playerbase, but the pool of possible players who've become disenchanted with the time investment required of WoW PvP and have turned their eyes toward Guild Wars and Warhammer.
Even then, if all players zoned into arenas with the same set of gear, but could subsequently buy that gear with arena points for use outside, then you retain a competitive and level playing field within the arena, while still having the persistent character improvement you so desire. I don't see why "purely-skill based PvP" has to be limited to the tournament realm, when we have a perfectly fine arena ladder system in place. If Blizzard really wants arena to be an eSport, they should really take the gear disparity out of the equation.
edit - My situation: my warlock has had full S3 for a few months now, capped at 5000 points. I still play games in all my brackets cause I find arena fun, and I'm helping friends gear up their toons. But I've grown bored of my lock and want to PvP competitively with one of my alts, but the sheer amount of time I'd need to spend to just get them competitive at the 1500 bracket is ridiculous. It wasn't as bad when I could feed one of my alts points from my warlock's teams, but Blizzard is now taking this away too.
Now imagine a player who is completely new to WoW (rare I know), who wants to get involved in arena. This player could be a star gamer, someone who dominated in Starcraft, Counterstrike, Guild Wars, etc. But the mountain he has to climb to even reach a competitive level with players already decked out in S3 is huge and can be quite discouraging for anyone, especially those with limited time.
Point is, the current arena system discourages new players, and discourages old players from PvPing with alts. This is bad.
The whole idea of putting rating requirements on most gear seems flawed to me. Once people (sub-1500 crowd) get their 2 pieces of season 4, why would they keep playing if they cant get the rating for the next piece? They're not playing to be competitive, obviously, or else they would be doing a lot better. If they stop doing arenas, or just quit entirely what happens to the 1200-1550 teams? They stop playing, meaning everyone's rating goes down. Its not hard to see this getting to the point where getting to 2200 is nearly impossible, and getting it without wintrading becomes impossible, simply because people don't have a reason to continue once they're unable to get the rating for whatever gear they dont have.
I only see everyones rating going down, since the whole system is designed around an average rating, and if you take away the lower half of the average, the average just moves up (I'd assume the average is somewhere around 1500ish).
The whole idea of putting rating requirements on most gear seems flawed to me. Once people (sub-1500 crowd) get their 2 pieces of season 4, why would they keep playing if they cant get the rating for the next piece?
It's not like the next piece of S4 is at 2000, it's at a very tantalizing 1550. If Point Selling teams are eliminated (doubtful, but let's hope), that means the 1400-1600 part of the brackets should be relatively competative. Meaning you that if you stick it out 4 weeks to get all the PR-Free S4 items (remember, at that low rating it'll take a while), hopefully there should be some incentive to get to 1550 and get your pants. I mean, we're talking going 6-4 and 6-4 over a two week stretch to get to 1550.
I pride myself on being a person who can be logical, but I really can't understand some of these counter arguements, people make it sound like 1550 or 1600 is this unattainable level that just isn't possible. A Ret Pally in my guild with zero PvP gear and very little PvP experience started doing 2v2 with a Warlock friend (granted, a good player with some good gear) back in S2 and they hit 2000 rating in two weeks. Other friends took a Prot Warrior/Ret Pally team to 1650 one week just by enjoying themselves and playing some games. Getting to 1650-1700 just isn't difficult as long as you bind some keys, use your mouse to turn, have a Focus Macro and use a few mods like Proximo.
It's like you need a car, and I give you one for free, but then you complain that you have to pay the State Sales tax on it.
If this sort of happiness function doesn't make sense to you, then I think you don't really understand my issue with the system.
Actually, I believe that we both have very similar kind of happiness, and that it's precisely because of this kind of happiness that I'm happy with these restriction. I just start from a different point of view.
If I understood you well, what you wish is simply the ability to improve your gear through playing your favourite kind of game (ie : being able to log on and have fun in BG without having to form groups or the like). What interest you is progression (again, if I understood you correctly).
I happen to be also interested in progression. And that's precisely the problem : with the actual broken situation, you can get better loot through low-end instances (Kara and heroic) and easily-gained honor/arena point where you don't even need to win to get loot. You can get better loot with less involvement.
As such, putting restriction on PvP gear diminish this broken progression. I share your kind of happiness, I just have the point of view where this flood of overpowered and easily-acquired item is destroying my progression.
Originally Posted by Sumie
Comparing the time investment involved in gearing up a character for PvE and PvP is simply not an adequate comparison. One is driven by progression, the other by competition.
PvE is akin to console RPG's and platformers, from Castlevania to Devil's May Cry to Mega Man. You have scripted encounters which you learn to overcome by recognizing its patterns, and acquire gear/levels to tackle further content. Except PvE adds the element of teamwork and coordination not found in the simple platformer.
PvP on the other hand is akin to first person shooters or fighting games, from Team Fortress to Street Fighter. If these games required the player to spend months on a single character just to compete on a level playing field, players would be discouraged from playing the game in the first place. If their character/class suddenly gets nerfed to near uselessness, they'll quit rather than reroll. You don't need gear as that carrot on a stick to keep PvPer's playing.
Completely agree on this one.
If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !
Instead of playing "yourself" in arenas, you hire "gladiators" (think Roman coliseums) to fight for you (which you control just as you would your own character). They are given a full gearset but cannot venture into Azeroth. Arena points are awarded to "you" and can be spent on gear which is usable in Azeroth (doesn't need to be only PVP gear though, maybe "Badges of Justice 2.0"). This would let you seamlessly switch between classes/races/specs without having to go through the second job of The Honor Grind or The Tournament Realm Tax. PVP-centric nerfs suddenly have much less reason for anyone to be distraught (or in extreme cases, quit).
I always thought it would be really easy to explain why you'd get a full set of top-of-the-line pvp gear whenever you venture into an arena. You are basically hired to fight in there by some goblins that probably make a killing selling the seats, or whatever. They supply you with gear, but it's theirs, so you only wear it inside. Once you have shown to be a good fighter that attracts the masses, the goblins might be willing to part with a few items, so you can use them everywhere.
Wouldn't give you the chance to play any other class/spec than your own though. But then again, it would be "you" playing there, which is probably nice for identification with your toon.
This may help with point selling, but it doesnt solve the problem of geared players running rampant through the lower ratings. In fact, people getting points for an alt or friend will be worse for lower rated teams than before since they will have to spend more time there to get a higher rating. People need to be matched against people the same level, and that doesnt happen if people keep resetting to 1500 like they do.
Given that this will likely be the last season before WotLK, I think it makes sense that there is a set of arena gear that isn't available to everyone and that can be distinctive, as a memento if nothing else. If you're already decked in full s3 and also think you won't be able to get to 1700, I guess there's less reason to play. I don't know how big that set of people is, however.
If anything, this adds a carrot for people to try to play arena more than it makes it not worth it. I can say that right now there's no incentive to play arena for the majority of the season, since if you know you're not getting gladiator and you already have the gear (this isn't that hard, I have 2 full sets and full points banked despite not playing for 3 weeks), there's no incentive at all to keep queuing. Adding a rating requirement does add a carrot to keep striving for, and makes people actually play games to achieve something rather than doing your 10 and not really caring at all about arena or getting any sense of accomplishment from it. I see it as a positive for the health of arena, I realize that a lot of people are accustomed to the way it was and prefer to not have any involvement in arena other than getting shinies to pve with.
I also completely disagree with the alt thing. This is an MMO, I've been arenaing on this character since day 1 of season 1, and have gotten my full arena set every season, ground out all the honor etc. I don't think an alt should be able to walk in and be on level footing with me immediately. The limited reset of seasons is fine, though really annoying, but I'm glad that now I'll be able to get gear that is different from everyone's alt. To take the pve analogy, everyone has to beat the content to get the gear. If you have all your friends carry you through BT to an immediate set of t6, that's fine, get your friends to level your personal in arena. Not being able to take a team of full green machines and get full s4 is something I'm fine with. Welcome to MMOs and character progression, something that has been sorely lacking in arenas.
If you say that destroys the integrity of the e-sport that arena is supposed to be, I would say go play on the tourney server if you want the e-sport, it's cheaper to boot. Live is about character progression and chasing the carrot on the end of the stick, which this patch adds.
04/23/08, 3:59 PM
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