Arena Rewards (was "Arena Season only 2 months") - Page 12

Symbul · 02/24/07, 12:30 AM

This thread has a sadly high amount of "Raiders vs Casuals" mentality. I don't see much specifically wrong with casual/bad pvpers getting great weapons eventually from a very small investment. That really isn't the problem. The real issue is what to do with the raid drops, crafted (boe) epics etc. that the Arena weapons will replace in 2+ months time. Who would've wanted any of the weapons in MC/BWL/AQ (pre-CT) if they'd had access to HWL weapons like we got in 2.0?

Also, the 1h dps progression in "old wow" was what? 5-8dps from HWL (mid '05) to pre-frostwyrm Naxx (late '06)? "Rocketing" to 11-13 at the big man himself. I was in a Naxx guild (with horrid luck on weapon drops admittedly) and I still went back and farmed a HWL's sword when 2.0 hit.

Maels · 02/24/07, 5:36 AM

Originally Posted by LuckyAC

Well, looks like they were reading this thread carefully, based on their change to weapon prices.

This thread was epic.

Zagzil · 02/25/07, 2:59 PM

Some of the price changes are kind of strange though, such as the caster dagger now being 3125, equal to the staff. Difficult to understand the reasoning there.

Illidor · 02/25/07, 3:19 PM

The staff is 3750 arena points. Still, the Spellblade seems relatively overpriced now, especially considering all other main-hand weapons cost 2625 arena points.

Edgewalker · 02/25/07, 4:09 PM

I still don't understand the lack of decent healer weapon itemization either.
I thought they had learned from the old HWL system when they added in healing weapons a year after implementation.

Zagzil · 02/25/07, 7:15 PM

Originally Posted by Illidor

The staff is 3750 arena points. Still, the Spellblade seems relatively overpriced now, especially considering all other main-hand weapons cost 2625 arena points.

Ah, my mistake. Still, odd that the spellblade is more than the other mainhands.

And the lack of healing weapons makes no sense, considering they made healing armor.

qam · 02/25/07, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Aren't arenas supposed to be fun in themselves anyway? You want to offer rewards, but they need to be within some sense of proportion, no?

It's like saying that all 5-man instances should also drop nothing but ilvl 115 epics, because otherwise, why should people bother running them?

One of my biggest concerns about the old PvP system was that it rewarded things that weren't fun, and didn't reward the things that were. Steamrolling inferior pick up groups, AFKing out of challenging games because it killed efficiency, spending hours in a queue in the capital cities waiting for a BG to open up.... None of these things were fun, but they were rewarding, and people did them. Spontaneous world PvP was fun, but few people did it, because it wasn't materially rewarding.

There are two inseparable motivations for playing MMORPGs: the first is achievement and growth of your character and guild; the second is having fun - both as a video game and as a social arena. Over the length (and for the sheer volume) of time that we want to play these games, we have to be satisfying both criteria. Boring rep grinds or masturbatory Deadmines aoeing get old very quickly, but activities that challenge or entertain you at the same time as they feed your character's growth stay fresh for a long time.

I don't think we should ever be looking at the quality of rewards and saying "that is too good for something that is supposed to be fun." It's a masochistic perspective.

WoW definitely seems to be moving in a positive direction in this regard: gold farming through quests instead of grinding, more quest and instance based reps (though this still has some way to go), hard 5 man limit on dungeons that used to be zerged, and, now, The Arena.

The general framework for the Arena is hugely promising. Teams will play similar quality opposition, have the opportunity and the motivation to get better, be able to play with a very low barrier of entry, and will have fun doing it. The long-term success of the Arenas depends on the availability of games (for all skill levels), the quality of the rewards, and the general balance of the matchups.

The one-handed weapons were too cheap and would have robbed players of progression, and this has largely been fixed by the price changes. However, it is important that the rewards are of high quality and high obtainability for everyone. If the terrible players leave out of frustration, the mediocre players drop to the bottom rung and begin to feel the same frustrations, etc.... Taken to an extreme, you will end up with a small group of the previously elite, bitching about how much time they have to spend practicing and raiding for gear to win 50% of their games, so they get to wait 12 weeks to obtain equipment of the same quality they had to already have to win it. The quality of competition at any level depends on the health of the whole ladder.

The ladder system, without even considering potential class an combo imbalances, will be very difficult to balance. In my opinion, they should err on the side of excessive rewards - though not to the extremes we saw with the cheap 1H weapons - to ensure short queues and high participation. I think the current system gives them the most margin for error.

I've been having a lot of fun in the arenas, even though I'm winning less than 50% of my games. I hope that I start doing better, and failing that, that there'll always be someone for me to play.

Letalis · 02/26/07, 3:02 AM

Being one of the proud members of Knockout (2047 5on5 rating after first week in bg5.eu) and reading through this damn long thread I felt like writing my own feedback on this issue. I do my raiding in a fairly competetive guild called Celestial, formerly known as Beyond Redemption .

First of all. High level arena requires tremendously more skill than anything PvE has so far thrown at me. Now, you may think of that as a flame, but before writing your angry response, have the decency to read my post entirely. Having killed Nightbane, Gruul and all the outdoors I can safely say that none of those encounters have pushed me to a limit that could be described as challenging, needless to say this isn't the case in arena. Beyond that I have little experience yet, but I doubt things will change that much, didn't change in MC, BWL, AQ or Naxx either. The only encounter I could describe as "somewhat hard" would be KT, on a personal level that is. Rest of the time it's pressing backstab/sinister and slice and dice mixed up with a direct dmg finisher every now and then, in the worst case you might have to run a few yards, with at least 1 second error margin when [Insert random boss] uses a flashy ability of doom. And then you hope someone doesn't fuck it up.

Meanwhile, a second wasted while me, or any of my team mates is getting focus fired in arena can be the difference between a win or a loss. You can't win in arena with one mediocre player either, when you're facing the best. However you can really easily complete heroic Slave Pens for a quick primal nether even if one of your players is shitfaced and about to pass out on the keyboard. So, I eagerly await your justification dear blacksmiths, why the hell are upgraded profession weapons on par with arena weapons, I know I won't see a huge upgrade from Dragonmaw to arena fist, will I?

Secondly, I agree with the majority of the people in this thread that the time involvement involved in the arena play is way less than it should be. People shouldn't be able to have access to a single piece of arena set (or a weapon for that matter) playing 10 games a week with a shitty rating. Adding a rating requirement to the items would solve this problem. Currently there are loads of teams floating around 1300-1600 rating who have made little to no effort in trying to improve their play, yet they rack up a steady income of points every week. Then again, if they didn't gain any gear from doing arena, the gap between the good teams and the bad teams would just grow wider and wider.

In a nutshell, from my experience the rewards from doing in high end arena should damn well be on par with anything that comes from PvE side of the game, they just have to figure out a way to hand out the rewards in a more balanced way.

thebuddha · 02/26/07, 3:50 AM

Originally Posted by Letalis

In a nutshell, from my experience the rewards from doing in high end arena should damn well be on par with anything that comes from PvE side of the game, they just have to figure out a way to hand out the rewards in a more balanced way.

I don't think anyone is disputing this here, but instead pointing out the exact problem you mentioned in your post.

Originally Posted by Letalis

People shouldn't be able to have access to a single piece of arena set (or a weapon for that matter) playing 10 games a week with a shitty rating.

Agreed.

Edgewalker · 02/26/07, 4:34 AM

Originally Posted by Letalis

B, the gap between the good teams and the bad teams would just grow wider and wider.

How is it currently on other servers?
On our (rather awful battlegroup) anyone even above 1950 will see the same few teams over and over again, I can't imagine what the competition would be like with even less players in the system.

Chuck · 02/26/07, 4:56 AM

Originally Posted by Edgewalker

How is it currently on other servers?
On our (rather awful battlegroup) anyone even above 1950 will see the same few teams over and over again, I can't imagine what the competition would be like with even less players in the system.

Beeing in a raiding guild with only people who are occupied in a full time job we currently can only play latenight 5vs5. Yesterday we did 15 matches against 3 (!) different teams so I guess this will suck even more beeing really high in rating.
Anyhow, got 304 arena points out of 2vs2 in the first week, rating of 1600ish, which also sucks but as already posted still way too fast for the effort put into this.

Pwny · 02/26/07, 5:38 AM

Originally Posted by Edgewalker

How is it currently on other servers?
On our (rather awful battlegroup) anyone even above 1950 will see the same few teams over and over again, I can't imagine what the competition would be like with even less players in the system.

Im in the same battlegroup as Letalis with 2018 rating, and when we played our 20 games or so over the week, I'd say 8-9 of those were against the same team (rated around 1600 I guess). We really want to play the high ranked teams, but instead we keep getting matched up against 1500-1700 rated teams earning 1-3 points a game. We could farm these all day everyday, but then you throw in the fact that we've had 4 losses due to 1-2 people dcing from a game at the loading screen, and losing 30 points everytime just makes you not want to queue up anymore.

Zagzil · 02/26/07, 11:18 AM

Originally Posted by Chuck

Beeing in a raiding guild with only people who are occupied in a full time job we currently can only play latenight 5vs5. Yesterday we did 15 matches against 3 (!) different teams so I guess this will suck even more beeing really high in rating.
Anyhow, got 304 arena points out of 2vs2 in the first week, rating of 1600ish, which also sucks but as already posted still way too fast for the effort put into this.

How is that way too fast? 9 weeks for an epic one-hander (based on current point allotment). Sure you didn't put much effort in, but at that point it's easier to just farm a blacksmith weapon than wait 9 weeks.

padrote · 02/26/07, 12:55 PM

Where are my caster blacksmithed weapons? Whose business would I be ruining by getting a Spellblade? This increase just serves to discourage more people from participating, if Blizz had read this thread a little closer they would have lowered the cost of the armor.

edit: There is a crafted dagger for casters but it's not worth the materials.

Keeper · 02/26/07, 1:25 PM

Originally Posted by Edgewalker

How is it currently on other servers?
On our (rather awful battlegroup) anyone even above 1950 will see the same few teams over and over again, I can't imagine what the competition would be like with even less players in the system.

In the same battlegroup as Pwny and Letalis as well. I haven't seen Pwny's team yet, however I think I've seen Letalis's team once. We lost that one due to horrible, horrible, horrible play(if it is indeed the team I'm thinking about).

That said, me and my team queued up in the weekend for around 6 hours straight, hardly got to fight different teams. We got matched up against this one team 10 times in a row. We got around 4-6 rating in the end.

We're currently at 2001 rating.(Losing -30 because 2 people DC at the screen isn't fun, seeing as we only got 2-4 rating of some teams)

Keeping in mind that Battlegroup 5EU is a group with around 12-13 servers combined in it, I've seen the same teams over and over again. It's getting rather old. I hope it will be better in 1 or 2 weeks time.

My major annoyances with the arena are:

-No healer rewards(Weapons/Shields)
-Fighting the same team over and over
-Disconnects
-Bloodlust
-Sometimes major lagspikes

Some suggestions of mine would be:

-Practice arenas should use your rated arena rating to find other teams to play against
-Allow people to log back in when they disconnect or make it so that when 1 team is missing players before the game has begun, it doesn't affect either teams rating.

Other than that, arenas are a lot of fun. It's been a while since I've had this much fun, to be honest.

[edit]Correcting some stuff.

thebuddha · 02/26/07, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by padrote

Where are my caster blacksmithed weapons? Whose business would I be ruining by getting a Spellblade? This increase just serves to discourage more people from participating, if Blizz had read this thread a little closer they would have lowered the cost of the armor.

edit: There is a crafted dagger for casters but it's not worth the materials.

Honor Hold exalted. Super easy to get and only a few items are better (Prince dagger, Gruul Sword, Arena 1her)

Dendory · 02/26/07, 2:06 PM

Personally since I saw the arena caster dagger I've been planning to work on getting that one thing out of the arena system. I've always been a casual PvPer, preferring the PvE raid content by far, and most of the people I know in-game are also not big into PvP. But with the previous cost, even with an aweful team, I could get it in a decent time of around a month. Now with the price almost doubled, and looking at begging 4 other people to do matches for 2 months or doing a duo and probably taking more like 3, I decided it wasn't worth it, and I'm planning on spending the next week doing 6 more SH runs for that HH sword.

Letalis · 02/26/07, 3:05 PM

Originally Posted by Keeper

In the same battlegroup as Pwny and Letalis as well. I haven't seen Pwny's team yet, however I think I've seen Letalis's team once. We lost that one due to horrible, horrible, horrible play(if it is indeed the team I'm thinking about).

Actually you fought vs Knockout plenty of times last tuesday, I wasn't playing much that day though personally. The lineup you faced was: Exael, Menthal, Mictain, Seita, Atok.

You'll propably remember now.

Zagzil · 02/26/07, 3:07 PM

It's definitely a seperate but equally amazing arena issue; why is there still no solution to disconnects?

They occur pretty often (I think I lost 6-7 games due to disconnects yesterday, and out of those, 6 happened before the game started). It's not as though you can scout games, so why not delay the start of a match if it is 4v5, or have the game not count against ranking?

Maels · 02/26/07, 3:17 PM

Also, does leaving queue before you get a game decrease your rating?
Does leaving queue after you've got a game, but before you go in?

I have a sneaky suspicion both do, but I can't imagine how it would calculate the amount you lose for the first scenario.

Ghostz · 02/26/07, 3:17 PM

Originally Posted by Zagzil

It's definitely a seperate but equally amazing arena issue; why is there still no solution to disconnects?

They occur pretty often (I think I lost 6-7 games due to disconnects yesterday, and out of those, 6 happened before the game started). It's not as though you can scout games, so why not delay the start of a match if it is 4v5, or have the game not count against ranking?

Delaying the start won't really solve anything. If you press accept and get disced at the end of the arena load screen, you'll log on by the queue guy with no arena queue. Making a 5v4 not count may work but I think the best way to avoid the issue is to fix the disconnect bug.

Edit: You can leave queue and you won't get penalized if everyone on your team manages to leave queue before you get assigned a game as far as I know.

Elendril · 02/26/07, 3:20 PM

Originally Posted by Zagzil

It's definitely a seperate but equally amazing arena issue; why is there still no solution to disconnects?

They occur pretty often (I think I lost 6-7 games due to disconnects yesterday, and out of those, 6 happened before the game started). It's not as though you can scout games, so why not delay the start of a match if it is 4v5, or have the game not count against ranking?

If there were no penalty for not accepting queues, many teams would dodge specific maps all the time.

alienangel · 02/26/07, 3:24 PM

My only comment is that being at the other end of tunnel is sadistic fun. We started a pretty casual team on Saturday, at the happy 1500 auto-rank. While I'm sure our one healer (pally) team would get thoroughly crushed if we rank up enough to meet Edgewalker or Ming's teams (I think standard ELO predicts a 3-5% chance for us to win that matchup...), being underranked against the ~1600 teams we ran into was highway robbery, pulling in 15-20 points per game.

Zyla · 02/26/07, 3:35 PM

Its absolutely crushing to have one of those disconnects occur vs a very low rank team.

One time our paladin got d/ced and we lost 35 points.

simply horrible.

Elendril · 02/26/07, 3:42 PM

Originally Posted by Zyla

Its absolutely crushing to have one of those disconnects occur vs a very low rank team.

One time our paladin got d/ced and we lost 35 points.

simply horrible.

Pretty sure that's actually just not possible. I believe the k-value for arena games is 32, meaning that there are 32 total points to be gained/lost in a given game.