Is that generally the case or just this one season?
There's no way to tell. Perhaps people will keep earning points even while the regional and world competitions are going on, but the basis of the thread the way the rewards would be doled out over a 2 month spam, because that's the best information we have available.
Is there any reason (apart from getting loot fast) that you absolutely must have the entire set and 2 weapons in the first season?
I mean I dont expect blizzard to add higher ilvl loot until there is new raidcontent (which seems unlikely in only 2 months considering the slow progress in the current raids)
The problem is the ramifications on the general population. If it takes the top teams X time to achieve the full level of rewards, than it takes the average team 2x or 3x. At a certain point the average team decides it isn't worth it and doesn't even bother playing. Also as the top team accumulates gear it becomes easier for them to win, then you fall into the cycle of people refusing to play because they're outgeared and it will take them too long to catch up.
I'd say ideally, by the end of a season you'd have 3-5 teams completely capped out with 5k points stored etc. You'd see 20-25 additional teams with full sets and varying levels of point carryover. And probably 30 or 40 more teams short a few points or an item, and scaling down from there.
Also they don't necessarily have to upgrade every slot every season. Maybe next season the new items are trinkets, jewelry, a different colored mount, pets, people will play for pretty much anything.
This isn't completely on-topic, but what worries me is just how easy it is to get points by doing nothing, or by being completely mediocre. Being on an arena team should be a bit of a gamble -- if you invest the charter fee and suck horribly, you end up with nothing to show for your gold.
Right now, a 5v5 team can form, play ten haphazard games every week, probably lose most of them, and finish the two-month season with 1h weapons that trump anything they might be able to get their hands on otherwise, except perhaps tier 2 blacksmithing specialization weapons. That's going to pigeonhole itemization and devalue a huge chunk of content, way too quickly.
By mid-April, anyone who cares to is going to have an arena 1h weapon at the very least. At that point, you've just made virtually every smith-crafted 1h epic in the game completely obsolete. Every 1h instance drop, every 1h heroic drop, and even most 1h Kara drops. Three months after the expansion? Why give everyone a free t4.5 raid weapon?
Is there any reason (apart from getting loot fast) that you absolutely must have the entire set and 2 weapons in the first season?
I mean I dont expect blizzard to add higher ilvl loot until there is new raidcontent (which seems unlikely in only 2 months considering the slow progress in the current raids)
For the same reasons that Halaa is now and forever dead - there needs to be a reason for the mid-level player to keep playing. Just as Xi has pointed out, its going to take them forever to get anything, so they'll just give up.
I've already noticed a marked increase in Battleground activity this week over the last month. While this could be from many reasons - casuals finally hitting 70, for example, I firmly believe its because people have already opted out of the arena system.
I think that the increase in BG's means one of two things : People need better gear via honor to compete in arena games, or they simply don't think they can compete and would rather zerg their way around Eye of the Storm / Alterac Valley all day.
Originally Posted by Apate
Zyla, International Man of a Certain Standard.
Originally Posted by Wraithlin
What have you brought to this discussion? The usual vacuous and contentless tripe that you contribute to these forums - no more and no less.
They have stated time and time again that the arena season would be 3 months. The 2 months period is for the global tournament qualification, if you are on top you will be copied on a different server. Your original character will still remain on your original realm and the season will continue for the 3rd month.
Even stated on WOW europe FAQ is that you can still gain arena points on your original realm if your character was copied on the "regional tournament realm". You will basicly have 2 copies of the same characters, the regional copy will be deleted after that part of the tournament ends.
So the season last 3 months not 2. Unless your the top team of your server, the 2 months into the season means nothing.
By mid-April, anyone who cares to is going to have an arena 1h weapon at the very least. At that point, you've just made virtually every smith-crafted 1h epic in the game completely obsolete. Every 1h instance drop, every 1h heroic drop, and even most 1h Kara drops. Three months after the expansion? Why give everyone a free t4.5 raid weapon?
I'd have to agree that the arena points are just *way* to easy to obtain. I went 50/50 with my 3vs3 team last week (In 18 games) and earned 327 points. I would have earned even more if we had been able to get 5 people together to lose ten games.
The 200 gold to form a team (essentially 20 gold a person) to fill a team is not a barrier to entry. With the amount of gold that is availible, you're barely even going to notice that it's missing, and you get rewarded for maybe an hour or two a week with a new weapon or piece of armor in six weeks or less.
Even if you aren't very good, it's not that hard to keep a ~1400 ranking. I noticed that once we dropped to that ranking, we started running into a lot of terrible teams and went on a bit of a winning streak.
The real question is how would you fix this? You could change the scale so that the points earned massively drop off if your rating is below 1600. This would ensure that you at least had to have a decent team to get some of the rewards, but it would probably stop a lot of the casual teams from entering.
This isn't completely on-topic, but what worries me is just how easy it is to get points by doing nothing, or by being completely mediocre. Being on an arena team should be a bit of a gamble -- if you invest the charter fee and suck horribly, you end up with nothing to show for your gold.
Right now, a 5v5 team can form, play ten haphazard games every week, probably lose most of them, and finish the two-month season with 1h weapons that trump anything they might be able to get their hands on otherwise, except perhaps tier 2 blacksmithing specialization weapons. That's going to pigeonhole itemization and devalue a huge chunk of content, way too quickly.
By mid-April, anyone who cares to is going to have an arena 1h weapon at the very least. At that point, you've just made virtually every smith-crafted 1h epic in the game completely obsolete. Every 1h instance drop, every 1h heroic drop, and even most 1h Kara drops. Three months after the expansion? Why give everyone a free t4.5 raid weapon?
The raid epics have been devalued. The armorsmith epic (level 100) BP isnt hard to get. I made one 2 weeks into TBC and the total cost was less then 1000 gold, which is really not hard to get. You can get the level 120 version if you can get 10 primal nether, if you run enough 5 mans you will get that also. You will have to down Magetheridon for months before you get a similar epic for most of your raid.
Thats not to mention lvl 120 green and lvl 115 blues, that have about the same budget the the Karazhan and Gruul Lair lvl 100-110 epics.
I think they threw out the risk vs reward concept while designing TBC. Raids epics are still by far the most difficult to get, yet you can still get similar epic much easier while doing other things. Thats one of the reason that alot of hardcore players just quit the game for good and went to Vanguard and such.
The problem is the ramifications on the general population. If it takes the top teams X time to achieve the full level of rewards, than it takes the average team 2x or 3x. At a certain point the average team decides it isn't worth it and doesn't even bother playing. Also as the top team accumulates gear it becomes easier for them to win, then you fall into the cycle of people refusing to play because they're outgeared and it will take them too long to catch up.
I'd say ideally, by the end of a season you'd have 3-5 teams completely capped out with 5k points stored etc. You'd see 20-25 additional teams with full sets and varying levels of point carryover. And probably 30 or 40 more teams short a few points or an item, and scaling down from there.
Also they don't necessarily have to upgrade every slot every season. Maybe next season the new items are trinkets, jewelry, a different colored mount, pets, people will play for pretty much anything.
But thats the point isnt it?
That it doesnt matter if youll get hammered by the people who have the best gear avaliable or who are more skilled. As long as you participate you will get free epics, epics that will be upgrades even for many dedicated raiders.
So what if I dont get a full set, If I can get an 88dps MH for doing nothing for 4 weeks then of course I am going to do just that.
I still think its a problem that the non-5v5 brackets are worth basically nothing. I had assumed all along that point totals from your teams would be cumulative, so there was at least a reason to play in other brackets just to get a few more points each week.
If we combine your points from all three formats, then we'd be forced to balance the rate at which you gain rewards around the expectation that you're doing all 3 formats to the best of your competitive ability. Instead, we'd rather allow you to be "serious" about one of the formats and have the option to take the others less seriously if you so choose.
Ignie Ferroque translates from latin to "with fire & with sword." It is a stock phrase used to describe the results of a destructive raid into an enemy's territory, whose sole purpose is to generate fear, terror, and destruction.
The real question is how would you fix this? You could change the scale so that the points earned massively drop off if your rating is below 1600. This would ensure that you at least had to have a decent team to get some of the rewards, but it would probably stop a lot of the casual teams from entering.
This is exactly what they want to prevent with arena ladder system. The whole idea of the Arenas is to give gear to everyone. And that really means EVERYONE. My point is that if you make only top 30% of players eligible for rewards, the bottom 70% really feels bad, as a) they are worse players and b) they end up having a bigger gear-gap between HC and casual players. In current system HC PVP is essentially about skill, less about gear, because even if you started from scratch, you'd get a decent set in 4-5 weeks. Better teams are only ahead by few pieces.
Arenas are the same for PVP as TBC in general was for WOW. It's about bridging the gap between HC's and casuals.
And besides, what do you loose when worse players than you get similar level gear as you, they'll still be behind by few items, not to mention that you'll get decent pvp-gear from raiding also? If you truly are better, you should still keep winning them, despite their gear, but their changes just got a bit better, which is just fair consider that otherwise they'd just be walkovers for your HC team. And nobody likes to be a walkover.
This isn't completely on-topic, but what worries me is just how easy it is to get points by doing nothing, or by being completely mediocre. Being on an arena team should be a bit of a gamble -- if you invest the charter fee and suck horribly, you end up with nothing to show for your gold.
Right now, a 5v5 team can form, play ten haphazard games every week, probably lose most of them, and finish the two-month season with 1h weapons that trump anything they might be able to get their hands on otherwise, except perhaps tier 2 blacksmithing specialization weapons. That's going to pigeonhole itemization and devalue a huge chunk of content, way too quickly.
By mid-April, anyone who cares to is going to have an arena 1h weapon at the very least. At that point, you've just made virtually every smith-crafted 1h epic in the game completely obsolete. Every 1h instance drop, every 1h heroic drop, and even most 1h Kara drops. Three months after the expansion? Why give everyone a free t4.5 raid weapon?
Well, this is pretty easy to solve (but most likely won't be). Increase the cost of weapons, 1hr's in particular, and balance it by decreasing the cost of armor. Also you could require people to play more games, or perhaps make it so the required games per week decreases based on rating, eg. 1500-1700 have to play 30 games per week, 1700-1900 20 games per week, 1900+ 10 games per week.
Well, this is pretty easy to solve (but most likely won't be). Increase the cost of weapons, 1hr's in particular, and balance it by decreasing the cost of armor.
Yeah, the pricing is a bit mind-boggling on some of the items. The major culprit is the 1h weapons, for sure. I wouldn't mind if people can get an easy pair of gloves after 2 months or something... whatever. The problem is that weapons are always disproportionately important, let 1h'ers are priced the same as a relic or a piece of armor, which is perplexing.
Which would you rather have: This or this? (those are links, if it's not obvious)
They cost the same number of points!
This isn't a discussion about devaluing raid loot in particular, nor am I a "casuals suck" raider with a bone to pick. This is about devaluing all loot in the game. When you give away an 88 DPS 1h weapon or a +187 dam 1h weapon, it makes every other 1h weapon in the game more or less useless or irrelevant. Why bother raising my lower city rep, or running heroic crypts, for a good +dam 1h? Why should I spent 1k+ on an Eternium Runed Blade? Why should someone else pay me to combine their Eternium Runed Blade with my Nethers? And so forth.
In mid-April, everyone but idiots who were too dumb to take the free loot being offered to them will have one of these weapons. It doesn't make sense to me.
Aside from the pricing of weapons in particular, I think that the starting point is just too high. The fact that a team at the starting rating is earning 300+ points a week is entirely out of whack. A 20g investment and three hours of time invested over a period of 2 months gets you an item that's higher ilvl than any tier 4 loot? That's just odd.
Well look at it this way, every KZ clear yields 1 glove and 1 helm (and gruul and maulgar should give 2 items per kill, but that's another issue). So you can gear 10 people in 10 weeks, similar to the arena season. Your average team gains 400 points per week, or 3200 over the course of 8 weeks. Thus making the average armor piece cost ~600 pts. As compared to now where the average armor piece costs ~1600 pts. Dump this difference into weapons, and thus you have people upgrading their sets in a similar amount of time as you theoretically could in PvE while at the same time making weapons vastly more rare, and comsuming dramatically more time.
(1hr's would be approximately ~4300 pts or slightly over 10 weeks, 2hr's double that for a 1500 rating team)
Edit: I guess the fundamental problem with the way the system is right now is you get too much for doing nothing, and not enough for actively playing. Which isn't to say that the top teams aren't being well rewarded, but not with regard to how much effort they put out vs someone who loses 10 games and logs for the week. Perhaps there needs to be a much bigger spread eg base is 1500, but the top rating right now would be 4k or so. Then it would be easier to differentiate people that are putting effort in but simply aren't very good.
Yeah, the pricing is a bit mind-boggling on some of the items.
In mid-April, everyone but idiots who were too dumb to take the free loot being offered to them will have one of these weapons. It doesn't make sense to me.
Perhaps the weapon pricing will go up, like the level 70 PvP items were increased after a few weeks into 2.0 patch. However, I don't see that much of an issue with a causal getting a 88 dps weapon after around 2 months of Arena play.
Perhaps the weapon pricing will go up, like the level 70 PvP items were increased after a few weeks into 2.0 patch. However, I don't see that much of an issue with a causal getting a 88 dps weapon after around 2 months of Arena play.
Well, here is the problem I see. It's not with the casual getting the weapon, it's with the lack of other avenues to get a similar weapon.
It's better than anything in Karazhan or off Gruul. Serpentshire is starting to hit the same ilvl of loot (lvl 115), but right now I know of two guilds worldwide that have killed the very first boss. That of course may change in two months, but when you compare the effort that goes into simply getting attuned to Serpentshire (Complete Karazhan, Complete Gruul's Lair) with the effort to obtain an equivalent 1H weapon from the Arena system (basically a few hours work with no barrier to entry) people start to scratch their heads.
I'm not exicted about the prospect of getting a weapon in Serpentshire in 3 months, only to see it turn into a void crystal because all of our rogues/warriors have equivalent weapons from PVP.
This link pretty much sums up what's wrong with the pricing on those 1h weapons. What reason is there for any of the current instance drops- heroic, raid, or otherwise- if in a couple weeks you'll have something vastly better? I would understand if there was an equivalent weapon somewhere or if it wasn't so easy to get the required amount of arena points.
I know they're trying to make epic gear achievable through the Arena, but I personally think they should've balanced the prices differently for different classes. For melee classes that gain a large portion of their damage from weapons, the weapons should quite simply cost a much larger percentage of the "full arena set + weapons" total.
However, I don't see that much of an issue with a causal getting a 88 dps weapon after around 2 months of Arena play.
It seems rather unintended. Notice that the PvP reward weapons are only blue item level 115 - 71.8 dps. If you mostly PuGed in PvP, I think you could probably get the epic in less played time than the blue -- even if you lost nearly every Arena match.
I honestly think this could impact the class balance available to casual raiding guilds (since I'm in one, I care in case "who cares" is the question again). I guess it could be worse though... a couple fewer rogues dieing to raid in today's rogue-hostile environment.
I greatly prefer this system over the unemployed ladder we had before. Skill actually matters now, not time
What do you mean by "doing nothing" anyways? even a 5on5 1500 rating isn't that rewarding, but getting a 2k rating in the first week by doing a hundred games and then maintaining it with ten games per week is not "doing nothing" imo
and with the paladin comment, I meant that there's no paladin weapon or shield on the arena, so all I go there for in the first season is the set
I greatly prefer this system over the unemployed ladder we had before. Skill actually matters now, not time
What do you mean by "doing nothing" anyways? even a 5on5 1500 rating isn't that rewarding, but getting a 2k rating in the first week by doing a hundred games and then maintaining it with ten games per week is not "doing nothing" imo
and with the paladin comment, I meant that there's no paladin weapon or shield on the arena, so all I go there for in the first season is the set
By doing nothing I mean grabbing four friends with no semblance of class balance, and rapidly queuing 10 times a week, with no care for winning or losing, just kind of mindlessly zerging, losing 70%+ of your games, and occasionally beating people who disconnect, or teams that are equally terrible.
Do you realize that a 5v5 team with a 1300 rating is getting 367 points a week, and will have an epic weapon in 5-6 weeks?
My complaint isn't with the arena system as a whole, because I firmly believe that anyone who does get to a 1900+ rating and holds it for weeks deserves the rewards they get. Rather, it's that the arena system, which was supposed to be about rewarding skill instead of time investment (which is a good thing!), offers far too much reward for no exhibition of skill whatsoever.
I greatly prefer this system over the unemployed ladder we had before. Skill actually matters now, not time
What do you mean by "doing nothing" anyways? even a 5on5 1500 rating isn't that rewarding, but getting a 2k rating in the first week by doing a hundred games and then maintaining it with ten games per week is not "doing nothing" imo
and with the paladin comment, I meant that there's no paladin weapon or shield on the arena, so all I go there for in the first season is the set
Getting a 2000 rating is definitely more rewarding, but that doesn't discount the fact that if you can maintain a 1500 rating for a week (essentially achieved by going 5 wins vs. 5 losses in ten games) you obtain 406 arena points per week. With queue times ~1 minute and matches not lasting longer than 5 minutes, you are looking at an hour per week of playtime. In 4.5 weeks, you have an epic 1H that is as good or better than any item availible. The "doing nothing" is in comparison to obtaining a similar weapon by other methods. I don't think you could get 12 primal Nethers to upgrade your BS weapon in 5 hours.
Given how the epic weapons are 3750 points, they'd need 11 weeks at 1300 rating. I really don't see the problem here, they will still be terrible players in mediocre armor
I _really_ don't care how much time one has invested in playing.
What exactly is the problem of someone getting a good weapon? I don't see it.
Your problem seems to be that the alternative ways of getting equal weapons take much more time - fine, then ask for that to be fixed, I completly agree that primal nether is a bit out of whack
02/21/07, 10:27 AM
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