In my opinion arena has become too difficult for newcomers and people that don’t have the skill yet. I think that the way rating works now turns people of from playing and learning the pvp mechanics. First of all losing is punished very severely, you can easily drop out of your bracket if you have some losses. Those losses feel especially bad since the ilevel of gear you can get is lowered and getting some of the cosmetic rewards seems to become an impossible task. So instead of feeling like you might learn something from the loss, you feel dissapointment and anger. That anger usually is directed outward to the other players in your group so there has grown a very toxic behavior in arena. Because a loss is so punishing, people really dislike losing and thus ditch partners after a loss or 2. They might think they are way better players than the person they played with, but usually they are not … losing is just too punishing so most people without even realising it are looking to play with people that are better than them. This makes learning for them harder, since they really abhor losing and changing partners might make it easier to win. It also makes that people lie about their xp and cr all the time, since they want to win to get the rewards but losing puts them off further from attaining said rewards.
I think the game should incentivize playing with people that are around your skill level so you can learn together, so that means that losing should feel less bad. Losing should feel like an opportunity to learn and not an incentive to look for better players to help you out.
I would like these changes:
1)In LFG you can set a rating required for people to sign to your group, the same way you can set an item level requirement. This makes it hard to look for a carry, you can only join groups that are at your current level.
2)Make rating matter less important for ilevel and most cosmetic rewards. I am not saying you should hand out everything for free. Just make it that the higher rating you have the more chance you have of getting such a reward after each match (like an elite shoulder cosmetic unlock or a high ilevel weapon) but also make it so that if you win a lot there is still a chance for it to happen at lower ratings. Make the pvp gearing a bit more grindy, so that playing a lot at lower ratings gives you a decent ilevel and most of the cosmetic rewards towards the end of the season. Losing will become less punishing since you still have a chance to get rewards for beating players when you do win, even if you are beating opponents that are at your skill level…
Keep titles and the gladiator mounts as they are, but all other rewards should not be tied to a specific rating, you just get them faster if you are a better player.
In pve you can play with bad players without it punishing you, you do lose time but you don’t lose progress. You can give your time and help them learn and overcome the challenge without losing your own progress. In pvp you can’t do that currently, you get punished for losses too much … You do not only lose time to help someone to learn, you also lose the time it takes to get the rating back you had you started with … and rating is so very important if you desire the rewards . Rating should mostly just be a way to help you find similar skilled players to fight with and against, less of a hard cut-off for rewards …
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Simple solution - bring good old PvP gearing back. Gear didn’t matter in MoP as at the end everyone had the same gear. Better players had it quicker but at the end of the season everyone was full conquest geared and there were no excuses. The best PvP players were on top of the ladder.
Other problem is that you have no area to practice. Low skill players pushed no healers in 2v2 skirmishes so skirmishes died. When you queue for them there is barely anyone playing them. I remember I used to practice there in Wrath or WoD.
They can bring 5v5s back. In Cata or MoP we played them for fun with some friends and guild members that weren’t good enough to play 3s with our main team but we could still play some arenas and enjoy them. Same thing could be done with skirmishes.
About what you said in LFG - we have ranks now and that’s probably the only good change in BfA. In LFG there should be an option to show your current rank so people with similar rank would know where you are now.
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Tbh if we take for example a caster or a healer that never goes into arena before and probably have no clue on what to do, counter classes or most scary spec.
For a caster and a healer if you don’t know how to fake cast, you just can’t play the game at all (probably the reason why everybody play melee and melee cleave at low cr).
Again for a healer if your partners don’t kick cc chain, same you can’t play the game and it becomes frustrating.
Burst in general, even good players got deleted by ret paly in 3sec or random gpy etc… Stuff like that, making it frustrating.
For melee for what I’ve seen, they don’t know in general when dealing dmg and when to retreat.
Ofc tunneling a target and lossing their mate/healee is probably the biggest mistakes they are doing in general.
I guess I said the most important here ![:blush:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/blush.png?v=6" ":blush:")
Pretty much this. It’s also a thing of positioning and choosing proper target. I remember playing skirm on my Priest (Disc) when Arcane mage blinked twice and started hardcasting Arcane Blasts on me o.0
Y I forgot positioning and picking a target.
Most PvP games offer a vs. AI mode that usually acts as the stepping-stone to becoming acquainted with the gameplay before playing against human opponents.
I guess WoW could use its new AI technology from Island Expeditions and throw it into the Arena format. Similar to what they did with the Arathi Basin Brawl a while ago. It kind of even opens up the possibility for solo play (get grouped with 2 AI Bots vs. 3 AI bots).
And you can of course have difficulty settings as well, so beginner AI, expert AI, elite AI, and so on. Again, similar to what other PvP games have.
5 Likes
Old ? How old because it changed so many times, but for the most part, higher rated people got more points and had access to better gear (shoulders for example). Weapons had 2 tiers that you unlocked on 1800 and 2200 if i remember well.
I think that for newcomers ratings below 1300 are really forgiving and you dont go down ever by design.
As for gearing, you only have to play arenas and you catchup eventually with everyone else who is not 2200+. Add a bit of luck with drops and titanforging…
Of course WoW for some reason gives better players better gear like they need it, but well, this happened like forever
Having skill reward cosmetics is pretty good idea, that we have said a couple of times. Blizzard thinks otherwise along with bringing in PvE items.
The hardest part in arena imho is having to learn all the classes and specs now. They used to be less, much less. First of all we didn’t have DH & Monks before and most classes had 1 or max 2 specs that were viable in arena. So you only had to track that.
Now you have to build experience against everyone.
In addition, there are so many things people do by default now, like focus casting, working with keybinds etc. You have to do this even at 1500 rating now…
I meant MoP gearing system from seasons S13-S15. No elite weapons and no advantage in ilvl. Basically high rated players have their gear quicker but in no means better gear. Players could create char at the end of the season and catch up quickly with increased cap by every season they didn’t play. About learning classes I don’t think it’s a big deal as everyone has to go through this. If you play any moba or other character/class based PvP game you have to learn your foes. It’s just first step of getting good. Beating 1500 cr just require you to know your spec actually. If you know how to maximize your damage you will get there even if you don’t know your enemies. If you want to get higher than you need it. Classes aren’t that complex anymore and it doesn’t take long to learn not to hit on karma or to dispel Eye of Leotheras on lower ratings. Basically on higher ratings all you need to know is to pick Relentless vs Havoc if you aren’t an orc to have chance avoiding mana burns. Vs Monks it’s Karma, Touch of Death and maybe using aoe roots on Storm, Earth and Fire.
I’m strongly against any rng, titanforging. There is already too much rng and people getting rewards they don’t deserve. Warforge and Titanforge shouldn’t be in the game. PvP gear should be equal to everybody and to get high rated you should basically get better - get quicker with decisions (maybe new binds and better macros) and get more knowledge.
I posted it so many times that I’d love an ingame guides/builds tab where you can create and share your builds so others can use them and rate them like in Dota 2. Dota is extremely complicated game with a lot of depth and to make it easier to get Valve created a lot of things to help learning Dota instead of making the game easier.
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so true. i was playing with a friend of mine for long time and he refused to see this with his melee dps… We always been in mediocrity. Then i was playing with randoms and was worst most of the time. Now i have abandoned the game … it demands too pve time to play pvp and i hate this…
This. I love when retail defenders say “Ha, you will play Vanilla. You will see what grind means and you will get back to BfA quicker than you think”. The difference is I farm 1 item from the same dungeon and when I get it the grind is over. In BfA I dropped item I wanted from M+ but it doesn’t mean I’m satisfied. I’ll keep grinding because it may get TF next time or gem slot. TF and WF is the biggest crap added to this game and even players complain about it Blizz will never remove it because it keeps scrubs satisfied that they got 420 piece from wq otherwise they wouldn’t get a single 400 ilvl piece.
They moved core of the game from achievments to gearing. Because in PvP you can grind rating whole season just to be the best and in PvE when you kill mythic raid difficulty there is nothing to do they shifted gameplay towards endless gear grinding.
Also for some reason they think that making PvP alternative/additional gear source woulf make more PvE players play PvP. It’s not going to work. If they want more PvP players they need to make PvP community satisfied with gameplay and gearing system. Making it more accessible for PvE players do nothing as some PvE players just don’t enjoy it and they won’t play ranked PvP no matter what. Casual PvP players also play BGs and warmode not other modes. If you want to revive ladders just make PvP good for ranked PvP community so these who left will be back. Believe me if game gets good again information will spread quickly.
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I agree. Better rating = faster items not better ilvl. ( 100% not because im lowrated scrub)
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The only problem with pvp is the community itself, Most low exp players rageing on each other believing they know everything about pvp.People get angry when they lose and they flame others. You never hear someone saying (hmm we lost , what i did wrong now, how can i improve?).They only say Sh/t dps/healer Replace and go next.
This people wont improve what ever system you make AND believe me alot of them have good pve gear from raids and mythic + So i lvl is not a problem.
5 Likes
Dude you are so right. Recently I created warlock and I know how op Destru is but I played vs 410+ players stuck at 1600 with Void Stones and Tridents. While I played on Ele I thought it’s only 2k thing but trust me there are people with all these items at low ratings. Anyway I’m up for bringing back MoP gearing. There will be no excuses for losing to PvE/higher ilvl gear at all. 1 thing less for WoW Devs to balance.
This is why they should finaly add soloque to arenas and BG-s too. As a newcomer u could practise as much as u want in soloque.
I don’t agree. 3v3 and 2v2 is too much comp dependant. It will make people play solo queue only with certain specs like Holy Pala, R Druid, Unholy, WW, Destru and maybe Assa Rogue and Fury. Resto of specs that require specific comps would not be played because they would have hard time winning games.
I’m for solo queue but… only in 5v5 format. Why? Because with 2 healers even crap specs like Enha can be played now and bring something to the table. In 3x dps 2x healer format this might quite nice solution. Easy to get for new players and wouldn’t require as much coordination.
For practice ground they should bring healers to 2v2 skirmishes again.
Or maybe add an ai like said above in ordalie?
Seems fine and simple to do.
I think arenas are fine for lowbies if you set your expectations accordingly. The quest reward from filling the bar is always the same no matter your rating, and until you start getting the 400ilvl items you get 50% bonus conquest from wins. The weekly chest reward honestly isn’t all that special.
Honestly most of my annoyance with arenas comes from enemies surviving at ~10k life after our burst just because they outgear us. But I anticipated and accepted this when I decided to queue in low gear. Our comp isn’t anything special either (hpal + enh) but sometimes we win against better geared opponents and it’s hilarious.
It’s definitely a mindset thing however. Playing with a friend to gear up feels very different from playing with a rando to push rating. I feel people who tryhard while pugging their arenas will get super salty no matter how generous and forgiving the system is.
Like, for example. Dota 2 has IMO the best ranking MMR system developed and the rewards from winning are always 100% cosmetic. Yet Dota 2 players on low ratings INVARIABLY blame their teammates for losing. They talk about the ‘trench tier’, that mysterious and hard to define MMR bracket where they don’t deserve to be in but can’t get out of because their teammates just suck so much.
They’ve done experiments where skilled people were given accounts with “trench tier” MMR and nerdraging nubs were given high MMR accounts and within 20-something games the skilled people climbed up to top tier and the nooby-woobies fell back to the trench.
I think this proves that even with one of the most accurate matchmaking systems in the world, most low skilled people would still rather rage and complain than sit down and improve. This is 100% a player thing.
I still think your suggestions are good and have merit, but don’t be deceived that an unranked MMR system would fundamentally change players’ mindset. I think some kind of tutorial system that teaches mechanical skills (interrupting, sighting, fakecasting etcetc) would be a much better solution. We already have Proving Grounds for pve, so something similar for pvp would be perfect.
Bit sure if troll or not because have you seen the win loss ratio now you can literally get 2.6 2.7 with 50/50 win loss which makes no sense probably one of the easiest times to get into PvP because you don’t even need a solid team to play with since there isn’t any arena teams anymore.
That makes a lot of sense actually. I mean, if the MMR system does what it’s supposed to do, then you should have a 50/50 win/loss ratio. That means it’s accurately judged your rating level. If your win/loss ratio is higher than 50%, then your rating is lower than your skill level reflects (there can be numerous reasons for that).
As people keep playing and the MMR system gets more history behind everyone’s rating levels, overall the matchmaking should be more even as well.