And there is going to be less of those 5% people if you make rating requirements, thus pissing off a large number of people only in it for the gear. I think Blizzard wants to get as many people in this Arena system as possible, since it makes it more healthy and actually generates outside interest for the game. While the proposed changes wouldn't eb anything like the old rank 14 issues, it would still hurt the system big time.
If they do not implement this, or something else like this, it makes maintaining a high arena rating pointless. I do not know about other battlegroups, but once you get above a certain rating on mine your queue times suck. Last season I was on a 2500 2v2 team. When we played the queue times would normally be at least 10 minutes, except once in awhile another high rated team would queue and then stop after one game against my team regardless if they won or lost. It was not worth the risk for them of losing 10 points when it takes hours to get them back because of horrible queue times. This made doing 2v2 not only pointless, but not even fun. Sitting in a 10 minute queue for a 30 second game that gets you absolutely nothing is just aggravating after awhile.
There should be some kind of reward for having a high rated team, and if Blizzard has decided that the reward will be the ability to use the new weapons thats fine with me. I probably won't even use any of the weapons, but it would at least give me a reason to keep playing so that my teammates could use them.
And yes I know high rated teams got netherdrakes - I mean a reward to actively play the team. From what I understand you actually have to be active on a 1900+ team to be able to use the weapons (I could be wrong but I would hope Blizzard forces people to do that if they implement this or there will be a lot of team selling going on).
As for raiders having the weapons, I really don't care. There are people in my guild with them, and it only helps the raid progress a little faster. My only point is that raiders should only have them if they earn it, in the same way a pvper should not have the best raid gear unless they can clear the hardest raid instances.
I don't see why they don't just implement weapons that grow with arena rating.
A very easy formula for a two-hander in season 3 could be:
DPS = 100 + (.02 * arena_rating)
Where arena_rating is just your highest rated arena team. That way for people who maintain a 1500 rating, their two-hander will be 130 dps, which is about on par with season 2 weapons. If someone pulls in a 2000 rating their weapon would be 140 dps (on par with the best 2hs coming out right now), and if someone has an insanely high rating like 2500, their arena two hander would be 150 dps. This would give a major incentive to raise your rating, while giving an incentive to not lose rating as well, without completely limiting who can buy the weapons and who can't.
Statistically 5% isn't easy, and eventually the pool of competent PvPers for partners becomes exhausted (they are either in arena teams with high end raider guildmates or they are already in a highly rated team).
Look at financial earnings, less than 5% of the workplace population in the United States makes over $200,000 a year.
Now, you could take someone who does make over $200,000 a year and in all likelihood they will say that their ten closest friends also make over 200k a year, so therefore making that much is easy for anyone willing to put in the effort (This is analogous to the posters stating that all their friends who try can easily make 1900+ rating). This is due to proximity and people socializing with those that are on a similar social level as they are (or on a similar skill level in WoW, as most raider types befriend raiders, and hardcore PvP types befriend hardcore PvPers).
Those making over 200k a year could say "Well, you just have to try harder and you can do it", however the reality is that this isn't true, as money is limited much like the WoW rating system, in that there are only a finite number of points to go around, and if more people were over 200k, the top 5% of financial earners would be pushed higher, thus pushing out some people who were previously at the cut off point for top 5% of financial earners.
I used the money example because I very much doubt many people here make over 200k a year on their own income (not household income), yet what some of you 1900+ rated PvPers are telling those of sub 1900 rating to do is simply work harder and they too can have that rating, yet due to a lack of competent partners / limited points pool, this is not possible.
Also while the "scrubs" making 100k a year may not be able to buy a Lamborghini in one year of earnings, they can save their money over time to get one. The same should hold true to the WoW arena system.
Comparing WoW to RL never works...Your whole argument is set in a vacuum, RL will always have exponentially more factors affecting any situation as compared to WoW.
If they do not implement this, or something else like this, it makes maintaining a high arena rating pointless. I do not know about other battlegroups, but once you get above a certain rating on mine your queue times suck. Last season I was on a 2500 2v2 team. When we played the queue times would normally be at least 10 minutes, except once in awhile another high rated team would queue and then stop after one game against my team regardless if they won or lost. It was not worth the risk for them of losing 10 points when it takes hours to get them back because of horrible queue times. This made doing 2v2 not only pointless, but not even fun. Sitting in a 10 minute queue for a 30 second game that gets you absolutely nothing is just aggravating after awhile.
There should be some kind of reward for having a high rated team, and if Blizzard has decided that the reward will be the ability to use the new weapons thats fine with me. I probably won't even use any of the weapons, but it would at least give me a reason to keep playing so that my teammates could use them.
And yes I know high rated teams got netherdrakes - I mean a reward to actively play the team. From what I understand you actually have to be active on a 1900+ team to be able to use the weapons (I could be wrong but I would hope Blizzard forces people to do that if they implement this or there will be a lot of team selling going on).
As for raiders having the weapons, I really don't care. There are people in my guild with them, and it only helps the raid progress a little faster. My only point is that raiders should only have them if they earn it, in the same way a pvper should not have the best raid gear unless they can clear the hardest raid instances.
PvP is a competitive system, PvE is not. Only X% of teams can be in over 1900 rating, there is no barrier like this in PvE, besides the "can field a raid of reasonable make up" and "are you putting sufficient time" blocks.
The larger the pool of players, the more people can be in your relative area. Larger player pool will increase your chances of matching up with closer ranked teams, and therefore lower your queue times.
As an aside, arena at the lower ratings in 2v2 is very little fun as it is. I can not tell you how many times I have gone up against a team, found one of the players to be impossible or near impossible to kill, armoried them after the match, and discovered that one of the players is on a 2200 rated 5v5 in full merciless gladiator currently not on a 2v2 team and the other is a guildmate also not on any arena teams.
Any guess as to what is going on there? I really do not see the need to deincentivize arenas further, especially since the queue times are always about 10 minutes as is.
Hence the need for a reason to get a high rating. There is zero reward past a certain point other than being able to say you got first, and even that has little meaning because most first place teams just play games against lower rated teams for 1-3 points and avoid other high rated teams.
Originally Posted by Zraknul
The larger the pool of players, the more people can be in your relative area. Larger player pool will increase your chances of matching up with closer ranked teams, and therefore lower your queue times.
Queue times will never be good at the top of any bracket. There just needs to be a reason to sit there and deal with it.
Comparing WoW to RL never works...Your whole argument is set in a vacuum, RL will always have exponentially more factors affecting any situation as compared to WoW.
I never said it was 100% analogous, I was simply comparing how the top 5% for some people who are in it will look easy, while the top 5% for players who are not in it will not seem easy.
I've done a ton of 2v2 with my priest partner, and while we have been up to a 2005 rating, it was definitely not easy to get there, and it's all but impossible to get there on my warrior/paladin alts simply because there are very few to no quality PvPers left in the player pool for my alts to party with on a standard team.
The amount of people that can be in the top 5% is limited, if one person reaches the top 5% it means he knocked another person out of the top 5%.
Two random observations from last night's playing session.
We made a new 3v3 team last night. Good makeup, good players, even though one was PvE specced. This gave me the opportunity to observe first hand how good or bad the average arenaers actually are. I was quite surprised. Granted we ended up going 10-1 (we lost our very first game because nobody was paying attention), but it was not the walk in the park I would have expected coming off a 2000 rated 3s team with a weaker makeup. Maybe it is just my BG, but the level of play in the 1500s bracket is far above the "drooling morons" that some here claim it to be.
Second (credit for this goes to Torth, who also posts here), an argument that keeps coming up is that you can lose every single game, reform once a week and eventually get top weapons for sucking. I never thought about it that way before, but the same goes for PvE. You can never kill a single boss in SSC, wipe horribly on trash and will eventually get enough nethers to make some tasty loot. Probably much faster than the four months it would take a 1350 rated team to get the same quality item.
Also, I still fail to grasp the appeal of the "getting weapons from raiding sucks. Drop rates are low and random. The way PvP loot is handed out is clearly superior. Therefore the only solution is to nerf PvP loot" argument.
I guess this is the part I continue to not understand, and yes, I have read the entire thread.
Why does it matter if more people have access to arena weapons than have access to BT weapons? Is there a fear people will stop raiding? In my condition, I raid because it is fun, and I have a complete set of gear for raiding. I pvp because it is fun, and I have a complete set of gear for pvp.
This.
I had a long discussion about this with my guildmates the last few days, and the basic consensus is that you are dealing with egos. People who raid 20+ hours a week and put in a lot of time and effort purchasing consumables, theorycrafting their character, and wiping endlessly on new bosses feel they should be legitimately rewarded more than a player who does none of these. There is nothing unreasonable about this. Everyone has an ego, afterall, and when you put effort into something it is quite natural to want something to show for it.
However, as I tried to explain, I couldn't care less if Joe Noobsauce paladin from a no-name guild has an awesome arena healing mace that's virtually as good as the mace out of T6 I could have after hours and hours of work. At the end of the day my PvE gear is still far superior, I'm a better player, I'm in a better guild, and I am able to do the things that I enjoy. How has his one item made any difference to my game experience in the slightest?
At worst, he has trivialized weapon drops from previous instances, which I call the "World Breaker" syndrome (since no one wanted it for DKP the moment s2 arena was announced). Surely this isn't optimal, but right now there is far more prestige in having the Vashj mace or the Torch of the Damned or any other t5/t6 weapon, regardless of stats, than having an arena weapon purely because more people have it. The prestige factor fixes itself. Rarity of the item has always been a part of the prestige, just as much as quality.
So again, the system has not foiled raiding, it has not seriously distorted a risk v reward ratio, and it has not caused noobs the world over to suddenly be leaps and bounds ahead of their progression level. All it has done is increased interest in a broader group of the population, provided interesting alternative gear upgrades for PvErs, allowed more people the ability to actively compete in the arena, and ultimately offended some egos that are easily patched.
Amera is completely accurate, and while some people may disagree with "real life" examples, they hold true a lot of the time when comparing social aspects and ego aspects.
I mentioned a Lamborghini in an earlier post. While some people who own Lamborghini's might be angry that someone else from a lower income bracket can buy a car that performs identically for a much reduced cost, the unique look and rarity of the Lamborghini is what brings it prestige over the more common cars that hold up equally as well or better for miles per gallon (functionality).
The same goes for most weapons, as long as the t5/t6 weapons have a unique look and rarity associated with them, other players who do not have them will still drool over them, even if they are functionally identical to their PvP weapons. This is especially true if season 3 weapons continue to use the same graphic models that season 1 and season 2 share, as lots of people like to make their character look cooler (and I'm sure the average WoW player is more concerned about cool looking gear on his character than optimizing stats and functionality).
Exhibit A: Admitted casual pvper on a no effort arena team getting one of the current best weapons in the game. What’s more he rationalizes this based on a perceived flaw in the game and thus he deserves these free epics.
No sir, we are not 'missing' this point. That is exactly the point, and the main problem with the current system.
But, but but..... This is the Internet!! What else are we going to do all day. Please stop saying things that are true, you'll ruin everything.
If you read the rest of the post rather than just attacking me for my "free epics" you would have seen why I PvP, and also why putting rating restrictions somewhat disadvantages people who have latency issues, and or undesirable classes. At not one point in my post did I complain, or whine about it.
I like to progress my character. I am currently wearing mostly Kara gear still because of the huge itemization holes that exist, and even though we're clearing 4/6 SSC and Loot Reaver in TK.
The crying about "casual PvPers" getting "free epix" pisses me off just as much as the bullshit about hardcore versus casual. And I love the "PvP is more uber than raiding" crapola that's starting to spew about. There's no difference, it's a game, play what you like, but if you think that it makes you a bigger man by denying people something that you feel you deserve, then you're just pitiful.
I'm not crying, but you'll notice many of the people responding about the PvP epics are rogues, and most of us are just stating why we're PvPing currently and the effect it will have on the Arenas.
For example, our entire guild bar 1 or 2 teams will just stop. We're Au/NZ raiders, that's what we like doing. We PvP to plug some itemization holes and to fill in a Friday night. While that's not a major issue, it does mean that we are no longer participating in Arena, which means that less teams will be involved, which may result in longer queues, less satisfaction with Arena and a slow degredation of the play experience for those who enjoy it.
As an aside - does a 1600 rating really make me a "no effort casual PvPer undeserving of free epix" ? When do I become a hardcore enough PvPer to be deserving ? Or is that only you ?
As others have said, maybe I'm better off if they put the PvP weapons out of reach, then I'd just be happy with Latro's or Dirge. The issue wasn't so much that the PvP weapons were free epics, it was that they were so much better than is available to everybody other than the top 10 guilds.
I propose an alternative, nerf hard the arena weapons (all of them) down to the currently available Kara/Gruul/SSC loot (where much of the guilds are still progressing).
Then introduce a new tier which has the current statistics which only the top 1% can get.
That'd make me happy, as I could still PvP with my buddies, I could still save up slowly and get a weapon if I wanted to, or was unlucky with drops, and those PvPers who feel they have deserved their epics can wave their epeen as much as they feel the need.
Last edited by pewsey : 08/08/07 at 8:55 PM.
Pewsey has heard about tact and discretion, but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables.
There are only two kinds of MMOs: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody plays. (inspired by Bjarne Stroustrup)
I had a long discussion about this with my guildmates the last few days, and the basic consensus is that you are dealing with egos. People who raid 20+ hours a week and put in a lot of time and effort purchasing consumables, theorycrafting their character, and wiping endlessly on new bosses feel they should be legitimately rewarded more than a player who does none of these. There is nothing unreasonable about this. Everyone has an ego, afterall, and when you put effort into something it is quite natural to want something to show for it.
While I would agree that EPEEN most certainly plays a role in why many players would favor a rating restriction, it doesn't explain why Blizzard deems it a problem.
Again, I am just coming from the standpoint that I don't see it hurting play in arenas or suddenly putting many raids on farm status because a few players in guilds pick up an epic pvp weapon. I just don't see it being an imbalancing issue.
In addition to my not perceiving it being a problem, I see it as a net good- far more people are pvping now than were before, at least in my realm.
What I don't agree with (and what many don't) is seeing that having a single high level epic weapon on a scrub player devalues raiding. What I think that does is give people a carrot to remain in the system and work towards something.
Ah, but which system are you refering to? It gives them a carrot to stay in arena, but it removes a huge carrot from raiding.
The whole point of this thread was asking for better loot for arenas because people are motivated by loot. But every piece of easily attainable arena gear added removes motivation from raiding.
If they removed all the weapons from the arena vendor and made them cost honor points instead, how many people would arena? Better yet, imagine if they left the arena weapons where they are, but added better weapons buyable with honor points. How many people do you think will arena and how many do you think will grind out bgs?
At this point, I think Blizzard should just say "fuck it" and turn on the taps in PvE. Make bosses drop double the amount of loot they do now, come up with more tokens to remove randomness, and greatly improve weapons drops. Every new season floods the servers with new arena loot, might as well make raiding the same. It would certainly remove a lot of the bitterness people have over never having the loot they want drop and then seeing how easy PvP loot is to obtain.
As a decently high ranked arena player, I don't think random Joe who plays arena and loses 10 games every week with no intention of even competing should even be allowed near the weapons or gear I have access too. There is a reason behind my opinion obviously...
Being in the top 10 of my battlegroup pretty much means nothing, we have the same gear potential as people with 1600 ratings, the same access to weapons, we're exactly the same in regards to what we are able to attain, and this is our reward for being one of the best in our battlegroup and the best on our server, we get items a week or so faster than random Joe the moron who has no idea what he is doing.
Now apply this situation to PVE, and it's completely unthinkable that Bad Omen on my server would be at all happy if some randoms on Alliance were able to go in Karazhan, wipe 10 times a week on Midnight, be absolutely horrible, and have the exact same gear potential as them by putting in no effort and being terrible at the game.
Yet for some reason a lot of people on here (and in general,) think they should be able to come into our territory, put zero effort in, be horrible at it, and have the exact same level of gear as players who are good at it, yet it would be absolutely out of the question if you was to present a situation like this in PVE to them.
Where's the reward and prestige in being one of the best in your battlegroup / server in the arena? It doesn't exist, and this annoys me, especially considering Bad Omen (who are an amazing guild,) are generally made up of rather bad players in my territory, and they walk around with gear that is unthinkable for the rest of the server and battlegroup :P
While I would agree that EPEEN most certainly plays a role in why many players would favor a rating restriction, it doesn't explain why Blizzard deems it a problem.
Because it's a video game. The staple of which being that the harder the challenge the greater the reward. You could stick Illidan loot on van cleef and more people would go to the deadmines, and it wouldn't "hurt anyone". It also makes zero sense.
Reliability of weapon drops in raids seems to be half the issue. Since weapons are just as valueable as tiered armour, why not ensure certain bosses will drop a weapon token that 3 classes can use to exchange for a weapon?
I know this would reduce the loot tables on some bosses by a margin, but I'm sure they can imagine up filler loot (like the resiliance rings in SSC). In exchange, there is the certainty that you have access to a weapon, something only pvp rewards can guarantee.
Because it's a video game. The staple of which being that the harder the challenge the greater the reward. You could stick Illidan loot on van cleef and more people would go to the deadmines, and it wouldn't "hurt anyone". It also makes zero sense.
Oh, come on. At least try to argue honestly.
At this point, I am almost hoping they put in a rating restriction at 2000, and then I can listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth that comes with 40 minute queue times and I can watch all the people who used the 'crappy' players at the bottom of the ladder to propel themselves ahead suddenly find themselves with 1800 or lower ratings.
See, Crossbones- I can be a snide and sarcastic jerk, too.
And what's wrong with my argument? The entire game (the entire genre) is based on on the level of difficulty equating to the appropriate tier of loot. The harder the dungeon, the better the loot. The harder the materials are to acquire, the better the crafted item. Blizzard fixes holes in this all the time, buffing and nerfing loot as it fits into the risk vs. reward scheme. Thus it is no mystery of why they are implementing this change like you seem to be making it out to be. They want the reward to fit the challenge and getting one of the best weapons in the game easily doesn't fit with the rest of the game. There's been multiple threads that have popped up at EJ that discussed how silly it is to be able to lose constantly and get kael+ loot. Now you can't.
Is 1900 to high? Well, maybe and as has been mentioned in this thread they just threw a number out there and anything other than a percentile cutoff would be unfair anyway.
The only people who are going to quit the arena are raiders who were being forced to arena to stay competitive with raid DPS since weapons are scarce (whole 'nother issue) and the arena weapons represent a fairly distant point in progression to many people. These groups should not be *forced* to do something they don't enjoy just to keep up and it is in no way a bad thing for the arena if people who don't like PvP stop PvPing.
And what's wrong with my argument? The entire game (the entire genre) is based on on the level of difficulty equating to the appropriate tier of loot. The harder the dungeon, the better the loot. The harder the materials are to acquire, the better the crafted item. Blizzard fixes holes in this all the time, buffing and nerfing loot as it fits into the risk vs. reward scheme. Thus it is no mystery of why they are implementing this change like you seem to be making it out to be. They want the reward to fit the challenge and getting one of the best weapons in the game easily doesn't fit with the rest of the game. There's been multiple threads that have popped up at EJ that discussed how silly it is to be able to lose constantly and get kael+ loot. Now you can't.
What was wrong with it was it wasn't an argument- it was just you being snide and sarcastic and grossly over-exaggerating the situation. What you have written here is an actual argument, and makes sense.
If this really is deemed to be that big of a problem, there really is no good way to address it. Additionally, if there are as many people doing arenas just for a weapon that there are so many weapons out there that this is a problem, then taking away the option to get that weapon will mean far more people than I even thought before would quit will. I personally only know one or two people who have done it just for the weapons (again, both rogues)- hell, the few points I have earned screwing around have all gone to the armor pieces, which I think are a much better value upgrade for me than a little bit of a +damage upgrade. But if it is that big of a problem, that means far more people will quit the arenas altogether.
It would be interesting to see if there is any record or anyway of knowing how many arena weapons are in circulation. There are all sorts of programs to track other things using the armory, this should be possible. Of course, blizzard probably already has this information.
The only people who are going to quit the arena are raiders who were being forced to arena to stay competitive with raid DPS since weapons are scarce (whole 'nother issue) and the arena weapons represent a fairly distant point in progression to many people. These groups should not be *forced* to do something they don't enjoy just to keep up and it is in no way a bad thing for the arena if people who don't like PvP stop PvPing.
The raider predicament: Until we kill the endbosses in tier 5 (out of 6) content the best weapon I can get comes from arena so I have to play 1 hour a week to get it! T_T
The PVPer predicament: The best back, 2nd ring, 2nd trinket, and weapon (more depending on class) I can get come from raiding so I have to raid 20+ hours a week to get it! T_T
Agreed, it's nice that Blizzard are eliminating a raider's "need" to do something they don't want to do because it's so unbalanced right now.
Ah, but which system are you refering to? It gives them a carrot to stay in arena, but it removes a huge carrot from raiding.
The whole point of this thread was asking for better loot for arenas because people are motivated by loot. But every piece of easily attainable arena gear added removes motivation from raiding.
If they removed all the weapons from the arena vendor and made them cost honor points instead, how many people would arena? Better yet, imagine if they left the arena weapons where they are, but added better weapons buyable with honor points. How many people do you think will arena and how many do you think will grind out bgs?
At this point, I think Blizzard should just say "fuck it" and turn on the taps in PvE. Make bosses drop double the amount of loot they do now, come up with more tokens to remove randomness, and greatly improve weapons drops. Every new season floods the servers with new arena loot, might as well make raiding the same. It would certainly remove a lot of the bitterness people have over never having the loot they want drop and then seeing how easy PvP loot is to obtain.
I fail to see how easily obtainable arena gear removes motivation to raid. Maybe for your class, pvp gear works fine for pve, but you can rest assured that out of my 17 gear slots, 1 slot can be filled by an equivalent item from pvp (MH Weapon), and 1 other slot can be filled by a superior item from pvp(OH Weapon). Everything else available through pvp is vastly inferior to their pve equivalents. Why would I raid less simply because I can fill 2 slots out of 17 with pvp items?
Originally Posted by syeren
Being in the top 10 of my battlegroup pretty much means nothing, we have the same gear potential as people with 1600 ratings, the same access to weapons, we're exactly the same in regards to what we are able to attain, and this is our reward for being one of the best in our battlegroup and the best on our server, we get items a week or so faster than random Joe the moron who has no idea what he is doing.
Now apply this situation to PVE, and it's completely unthinkable that Bad Omen on my server would be at all happy if some randoms on Alliance were able to go in Karazhan, wipe 10 times a week on Midnight, be absolutely horrible, and have the exact same gear potential as them by putting in no effort and being terrible at the game.
Yet for some reason a lot of people on here (and in general,) think they should be able to come into our territory, put zero effort in, be horrible at it, and have the exact same level of gear as players who are good at it, yet it would be absolutely out of the question if you was to present a situation like this in PVE to them.
No one with a 1600 rating is even remotely close to your gear potential. I spent s1 hovering between 1650-1750 depending on the week, and I got two items to show for it, giving me a total of 24 resilience. From almost an entire season of arena matches. I would get wrecked by any class with the armor and weapon(s).
If you really want to extend the analogy to PvE, after raiding and wiping with mere moderate success, those PvE failures would have 1-2 amazing items from 4 months of failure without a single other piece of gear obtained in 4 months. Clearly those 1-2 items out of 17 will drastically effect 1600 arena guy's potential for character progression, which he spent 4 months of real time to get.
I think a good way to solve this is to have a requirement of 2 current season gladiator armour pieces before the weapon is available.
That way the people doing arena's for the actual PvP will still geared up in that direction (it may be a tiny bit harder for physical classes at the start, but then again they'll all be on a level playing field), and the raiders doing PvP for PvE purposes would take a lot longer to get the items, due to their generally lower ratings. That doesn't solve the problem that the PvP items can be used in PvE, however as the time required would be much longer it hopefully would keep in line with server PvE progression.
It's an interesting idea. A long time ago during Naxx we tossed around the idea of making people take 2 "lesser" armor pieces before they could bid on a better one (like a helm or bp) so people wouldn't just horde points for the big stuff. This would essentially follow the same principle.
08/08/07, 1:48 PM
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