Krellian

I know this for sure because at least half the guild I am in has either quit altogether or until the expansion for this very reason.

 

• Amera

I'm actually not complaining about gear ratings or anything of the sort. And unlike a lot of "complainers" I'm a gladiator in a good PvE guild. I just think many of the complaints about arena are actually not related to gear - they are related to playstyle.

Most players don't care about serious competition, and the more serious it becomes, the more will opt out. Think of it like Warcraft 3, for a moment. Many people play ladder games and do the tournaments and whatnot. But many more people play DOTA or custom games (even offline or LAN) than ever do organized competition. It's the same in any other competitive game. Take Halo - I've played every one, but only with friends Co-op or in LAN games. We don't even bother connecting to random games via X-box live, because the prospect of getting owned by 12 year olds screaming racial slurs really isn't that appealing. We just want to have fun, not spend time actually trying to get good. I'm pretty sure this is the typical attitude of most players towards MMO PvP as well. They are never going to take a game seriously enough to be forced to really evaluate their performance or that of their partners. They aren't going to make the sacrifices necessary to find and/or train other good players.

That doesn't mean the game should be designed around players being bad or casual, or even that they should be rewarded amazing epics for sucking; it just means that I think that Lich King is going to be a very important time for Blizzard to inject some fun and interesting casual PvP options into this game to retain players, because currently it really, really lacks this (Warhammer is honing in on this weakness big time).

I'm just trying to make sense of all the complaints you have on the forums about arena. While many of them are just from bad players who actually are putting in the effort to get better but just can't, I think a bigger audience is much more likely to just get frustrated quickly being so far behind the curve when all they want to do is run around and kill a few people in a big open area or city and maybe earn something from it occasionally.

This is completely true, yet probably 80 or 90% of players have no idea what you are talking about due to the level of seriousness and skill at high levels of play. A few weeks ago, we (tri-healer) had three games against a 2345 - each game was completely different, with victory or defeat literally swinging on something as small as not getting icy veins off the mage in less than 2 seconds or so. And in a given game, there can be dozens of small little moments like that with abilities that completely change the course of a match. I often describe it to new players as "seeing the Matrix." When you start out, you don't notice all the little intricacies, but over time you realize the immense complexity and mini-games going on in any given match, and it is pretty amazing.

Nothing in this game is as complex as a 5v5 game between top teams. But I don't think there will ever be more than a pretty small subset of PvPers that appreciate this. Most players impression of 5v5 is "complete chaos" because they can't slow it down or see all the details, and so they quit before ever trying to work though it. And I think this is actually a problem for the game as a whole and the arena system in particular.

AKA Sky of <Transcended> Blackhand

 

Tsohg

I see your point, but with less people participating the scores of teams are deflated. There are plenty of obvious examples, like #1 ranked 5v5s that can't buy shoulders yet. I'm sorry but you can't convince me the devs intended for top teams to fall short of PR requirements for shoulders. I suspect this effect also filters down to casuals that are in the 1500-1800 range, but it is less obvious. 2200 is a smaller percentage in S4 than it was in S3, which was smaller than in S2, etc. This is at least in part because we have less new teams feeding the system at 1500.

At this point in the season (ie: not in the first couple weeks) blizzard should consider changing the PR requirements to a ratio. It won't fix the casual motivation problem but it will be a better way of rewarding skilled players who deserve the items.

EDIT: Re-read Grigori's post and maybe I misunderstood what you meant by the devs seeing a problem. I think we're agreeing.. mea culpa.

 

Grigori

It is possible to have a good balance between rewarding skill and not alienating the vast majority of your player base. It is good to have greater rewards for the "exclusive club," but if the reward is too much greater than what the average player has access to, then you run into trouble. The trick is finding the right balance between the two.

With the high ilvl of SSO badge gear and the new one-tier gap between 10 and 25 man in WotLK, I think Blizzard is getting very good at finding the right balance in PvE and curbing the PvE "I'm tired of running Karazhan for the seven hundredth time" quit wave.

The new Arena/BG rating requirements could very well have been a move in the right direction, and many of us gave it the benefit of the doubt, but I think it is pretty obvious in hindsight that it has crossed that line between rewarding skill and alienating the average player base for PvP.

 

Krellian

The summary seems to be that arena PR req's should have been % based, i.e. helm is top 10% etc, for each bracket. That would solve the compressed rating problem AND help out with class balance. How easy is it to get 1700 as warrior/druid in 2's vs. being a druid in 5's, or for that fact a paladin. You get the idea.

 

Roldrethus

You keep harping on this example, but the thing is, 5v5 has always been a much smaller bracket. The ratings have *always* been lower across the board, it's taken much longer to achieve higher ratings and so on and so forth. I myself and am not in a 5v5 team and I know several high level players who aren't either, simply because it's too hard to find 4 other competent people you can play with frequently. The thing is, the pool of players for these sorts of teams is incredibly small, like 15-25 per server. If you consider that as 5s teams, that's like, 5 teams per server and like 30-40 per BG. When you consider them as 2s teams, that's over 100 per bg. That's a huge difference.

 

Broncojohnny

I tend to disagree with the 80 to 90% number when it comes to this idea. In my opinion there are quite a few people who realize the exact amount of time and skill it takes to play at that level. All along I have furthered the idea that the people who fall into this category realize that the commitment to get there is simply not worth it. Not just in regard to the gear vs. time reward but also the opportunity cost of the commitment, I.E. they could be doing something more enjoyable with their play time.

At the end of the day enjoyable play time is what the game is about for the vast majority of people. It is easy to take arena seriously and want to fight several hundred matches a week in the arena if you have the time. I certainly have that time but choose not to do that. People like me are not "casuals" by any stretch but they don't view arena as enjoyable when they could be raiding, BGing or doing dailies. The largest subset of Wow players are not casual, they also aren't hardcore, they are the guys who play 15-20 hours a week when time permits. Those guys aren't playing arena because they've got better things to do. They'd be willing to make the time commitment if arena was worth it, it's simply not at this point.

And when is say not worth it, I don't mean thanks to the reward system. That horse has been beat to death. There is a lot of frustration that goes along with arena when you aren't playing one of the classes, specs or team combinations that naturally does well for whatever reason. Sure, I know the response to that "Respec/Reroll you dummy!". While that is true, I am merely pointing out that many people aren't willing to do that. Once again, to many it is not worth it. This class imbalance is a flaw of the system, a flaw that Blizz is actively working to change in WotLK. While I agree that certain classes and specs are better and should be better, pointing that out is not changing the reality of the situation in the player base. You've got a player base that is stubborn and the game has to be catered to that player base. The player base won't conform to the changes made to the game, even if the lure is "phat purple lootz". I think that is fairly evident at this point. You can see this realization from Blizzard as they attempt to make as many talent trees as possible enjoy some PVP talents in WotLK. How successful this will be remains to be seen.

So at this point we have a player base that is resistant to change, views the rewards as "not worth it" or impossible to reach and constantly lurking class imbalance thanks to design flaw or lack of synergy. Those are the reasons why arena is in the shape it is in. I firmly believe that this entire situation could have been avoided by making all of the gear (honor and arena both) cost more or less based on your PERSONAL arena rating. That way someone who never steps foot in the arena would eventually get any gear they wanted with time. But BG players would be incentivized (and not forced) into playing in the arena. Many of the hardcore would cry foul at this but if you think about it, if set up properly by the time your worst player gets all the gear they wanted the season would be so far along that it wouldn't matter. You could even make the scale slide for all three seasons of available gear that is currently available.

 

P51mus

Not to mention, rerolling has a big time investment, not only in leveling the character up, but in GEARING the character up. And at this point in the season the gear gap is so large, and it would be such an epic effort to do so that, why bother?

Even in earlier seasons I've seen games where the fight was more or less determined (usually in our favor) before it even began because of sheer gear difference. What kind of a fight is that?

 

• Calantus

You must have missed the really long threads asking for consumable nerfs. And the ones asking for content nerfs before 2.1. Or the threads asking for keying nerfs. Nobody complains about PVE because it recieved its casualisation already. PVP has gone the other way.

I don't care personally, but I do care that the system is seemingly pushing people out of the system because PVP lives and dies on participation.

 

Shakes

I don't think you can put the decrease in participation completely down to the changes made for this season. Although we don't have the armory tools to show it, my impression is that PvE raiding participation is down at the moment too: a heck of a lot of guilds on my server that were raiding consistently are struggling to field raids or have given up altogether recently. The drop in consumable prices on the AH is also easy to see.

The closeness of the expansion is having an impact, many people are leveling alts rather than participate in level 70 activities.

One tweak I think could easily be done with the system is change the point per week gain to no longer be rating based. It just feels doubly punishing to not only not be able to buy a S4 item because of your rating, but to also have to spend 4 times as long to save the points to get an inferior item. Getting S3 into newer players hands quicker would be good for competition anyway. The fact someone in the rep blue set can come up against someone in S4 isn't really much fun for either side.

With ratings, I would like to see personal ratings be permanent. Even across seasons. If you're a 2K+ ability player no 1500 player should ever see you in a match under any circumstances. In fact the whole concept of seasons is a bit silly, why not have seasons for gear bumps and handing out titles, but not do a reset of ratings? It's supposed to be based on chess' ELO system, but it's not like FIDE send Anand, Kasparov and Kramnik back to 1500 after each chess championship, making them play against club players to grind their way back up.

 

Krellian

The chess analogy is very good. I do get pretty tired of getting curbstomped in the 1500-1600 bracket by 1850+ rated players/teams. Just to play devils advocate however, what about these high rated players goofin' off with friends? say a 2k rated war, and 1500 rated druid in 2's? does the system Q them into the 1500 bracket, an average 1800 area, or the top 2k area? That seems to be the only monkey wrench, otherwise yes i'd agree, high rated players should stay up there, AND yes ratings should not reset.

I didnt think about the alts and the expansion. That is another very good point. Alot of people who are tired of their main toon, but were so geared up the idea of starting over seemed depressing. Well now all gear is basically going to reset. So you can get another to 70 and just tool around in Kara or BG's, maybe even arena to bide time till the lvl 71-73 blues overtake everything up to lvl 135 gear.

I must admit, i have stopped playing my mage altogether, mostly because of state of melee craft atm, but I have also gone Ret on my paladin for s4 and am kinda liking it. I just dont have it in me to give up on all that to level my rogue, but maybe i should. I tell you this, the changes to ret are looking pretty nice in WotLK.

 

Cos-

There should be a 50 matches played in all brackets you have teams in order to buy gear requirement. This would help the people who quite literally only play for one week because the 1500 starting line is a morale raping firing range where people are confronted with the choice of remaking a team every week and getting slaughtered or playing til they hit a range where they can relax at a 50/50 w/l ratio but have 4-6 weeks of playing between them and anything but gloves.

Arena is down right hostile to new people and with how many people arrr giving up on it lately that's really not a great thing.

edit: arr

 

Grigori

It is not that simple. The rating plateaus converge on their respective percentages as the number of matches played increases, and they converge faster the greater the skill variance between the teams. The "#1 no shoulders" effect in 5s is more akin to the system not having enough match samples (yet) to discern which of the top 3% of teams belongs in the top 0.5%.

Replacing ratings with their respective percentages will not have a significant impact on gear access except in a few extreme cases (specifically, shoulders in 5s). This may appear counter-intuitive, but you are in roughly the same top percentage at 1700 whether you are in 2s or 5s. However, the overall skill levels may be different in different brackets, so the difficulty in achieving the same rating/top percentage may be different.

In previous seasons, the rate of point gain was the limiting factor most casual players faced, and that was the primary draw for 5s. Pros gain points fast enough not to care much which bracket they play in, so a lot of pros don't bothered with the long queue time in 5s. Early season long queue times in 5s due to scrub depletion made the bracket even less attractive to pros. It is a vicious cycle of casual quitting leading to pro quitting leading to more pro quitting 5s.


The impending approach of level 80 obviously has some impact on the level of participation for all 70 activities, but its contribution to the drop in Arena participation is trivial in scale. WotLK has loomed for a long time; the sharp drop in Arena participation coincided with the advent of S4. From what I can see, the vast majority of players who have quit 70 PvP in S4 still participate in 70 PvE. Yes, a lot of people have stopped 70 PvE, but you have to remember that only a few of them did Arena.

 

Shakes

I'm not saying that WotLK is completely to blame, but I think it is a large part. The blue items that are as good/better than current top end epics started leaking right around the time that S4 started, which surely has some impact on whether people decide to bother. My (admittedly non-scientific) observation is that it was around this time that PvE seemed to take a noticeable hit too. I don't think a lot of people believed there really was going to be a gear reset until they saw it for themselves.

On the other hand I'm not denying the ratings requirements play a big part too. They're really a double whammy: the gear gap is large for new players, and the fact that experienced players of average skill are quitting once they realise they can't get anything more just means new players get stomped harder. So people leave the system and nobody replaces them.

In reality the two issues are inter-related: new players/alts may well suck it up if they had no other option, but they do have other options. They can just wait until 80 when everyone will be wearing greens and blues again.

 

Grigori

The bolded portion is where I think you are wrong. I doubt that a significant portion of WoW population have even seen the leaked blues, let alone be swayed by it. More significantly, even at its height, only a small portion of WoW players did Arena in the first place. Even a lot of PvPers do not Arena. Next time you are waiting for your BG to start, take a look at the PvP tabs of players around you and you may be very surprised, probably a good 2/3 of them don't even have an active Arena team (this may be why Blizzard thought they might increase Arena participation by getting BGers into the Arena with honor gear rating requirements).

Let's say you look around and see 1,000 players quitting level 70 play altogether, and 2,000 players quitting Arena. You may think to yourself at first glance that WotLK plays a large part in Arena depletion, until you realize that, of the 1,000 players quitting level 70 play altogether, only 80 of them played in Arena in the first place. As far is I can see, the vast majority of the people who have quit 70 PvP still run 70 PvE.

 

Cos-

Bolded part: Did they actually come out and say that somewhere? That's just ludicrous. Arena rating on honor gear did 1 thing. It made sure the people who hated arena already feel more justified then ever in their rage at being forced to compete. The rest of us get the rating "accidentally".

I don't need to look at the pvp tabs of people around in me in bgs, the fact that I am more times then not the only one in my group/bg with more then 9k hp is enough to tell me.

Wotlk on the horizon insured I stopped caring about taking arena seriously (I'm 4/5 and I'm so tired of long matches I only do about 10 a week in 2v2. My 3v3 is quite literally what the team name says "rp server pug" where I take people from trade channel.) Arena is so broken and just not fun that knowing pushing for 2050 doesn't matter because I'd replace the weapons 2-3 days into wotlk when I wouldn't enjoy the arena matches anyway is enough to sap all my energy.


The lack of discourse between Blizzard and the pvp player base borders on criminal neglect.

 

Talgog

Yeah, they did. I believe they phrased it as encouraging people to play more of the game or some such, just like Dory's Embrace was to encourage people to play more of the game.