Arena is the worst game i've ever played in my life

This is a rant.

I found myself screaming uncontrollably while ripping my clothes in a dionysian madness after one and a half hours of Arena and i now i feel compelled to share my thoughts with you. So a bit of context.
I’ m a returning player, had left the game for 10 years and just got back to it two months ago, got my pvp gear and started to do some arena. I play Dk. So this is it:
Why is this game so mercilessly uninviting to new players?
Every class has like 135 different abilities, you play a moba and within 2 weeks you have figured most things out, at least the fundamentals, while the game still retains all of its depth. Arena it’s a whirling chaos of colours and things happening and i’m unable to understand what is even happening, i saw a warlock with LITERALLY 15 PETS and i couldn’t even target him. I am constantly searching through the internet on how to play because the game design is not clear enough to direct me…
The design language is impossible, everything, friendly or hostile, seems exactly the same design wise. Cloth, mail or plate seems to mean nothing, i nuke a priest with everything i got and his health barely drops. Most classes have weird things that make them immune to like EVERYTHING, who in his right mind thought of giving immunities to absolutely everything in a pvp game??? And healers seem to go from 5% to 100% in 5 seconds. Good grace.
Also, macros! Why!?!?! Isn’s supposed that the abilities provided BY the game should work fine in order to play THE game?? Are the baseline of the game not enough to actually play?? And why doesn’t they fix it? Why do we need a ton of macros, addons, setting tweaks that we have to somehow come across, otherwise the game seem almost unplayable.
What i’m trying to say is that i have played lots of games during my time and in each and every one of them, i gradually understood more and more and became better. Wow Arena seems to me impossible to grasp, even though i’m a seasoned gamer, i can’t understand the underlying mechanics and the game doesn’t even care to direct me.
So that’s my rant. Wow Arena, in my opinion, is the most poorly designed game i’ve ever played in my life. If you feel that burning sensation of anger please share your fury with me :smiley:

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Almost everything in your post can be improved/fixed via addons and configuration of the game settings, which there are youtube videos to guide you through, but yes the game’s design is very “hands off” when it comes to helping new players through this. They mainly design such things for PvE after all, and there it works for beginners to play at a beginner level of content without needing to change things.

In the past you’d have guilds helping you with such things and it also helped with the social bonding process, but I haven’t seen guilds like that in retail for ages.

Anyway, no doubt the game’s design is bad, and it’s most definitely not made so you can succeed easily in PvP without addons & settings changed. But if Microsoft manages to clear all the scrutiny from market regulators across the world, then it’ll be interesting to see what Microsoft will do with it. They might continue with it as it is, or they might change things up, or they might even discontinue WoW PvP altogether, time will tell. New management will mean a new leadership style, no doubt.

About a lot of things even there isnt any info - some conduits are nerfed in pvp, dunno where to read about it, googling maybe once somebody told ya about it, easy can play whole expansion without realizing that, chastise holy spell, I had learn hard way, after players shouting on me, its incap and clearing all dots and bleeds ect. Players get deleted in 2 seconds, new player just can clap hands and try to understand what just happened. ect.
Setting up addons is a profession almost. Enemies reading your cds like their own. And once you set up addons, tons of information flying around.
It is super poor design if to ask me.
Btw if I would not explain a lil bit to my mates whats what, they never would play wow.

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I don’t get the hate towards OP. He is right about the thing with addons and interface. It’s such a high barrier of entry that it’s not even fun. People leave, but no new players appear, mostly because of that.
Not to mention all the interactions with conduits that have a different PvP scaling on top of it. In shadowlands its ad absurdum to the point that you need a weakaura (at least in previous seasons) to track WW monk procs so you don’t get oneshotted.

And with everything oneshotting you you can’t start from some point and improve slightly from there like it was before. As a new player you need to overcome a skill gap of mount everest and K2 on top of each other just to be able to not die in one second.

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WoW is an MMORPG. If you don’t like the complexity of classes and specs, then maybe the genre isn’t for you? I for example don’t like moba’s and FPS’s BECAUSE of their simplicity.

Interface > Names > uncheck minor nameplates.

To make gameplay more efficient and smoother.

You don’t need a ton of addons. Macros depend on the class. Setting tweaks depends on your personal comfort.

WoW (arena) isn’t a game that you pick up and grasp overnight, it takes time, effort and a consistent motivation to improve. If you don’t have those things you’re going to be frustrated.

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You come to a text forum and complain that there is text ?

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Well, the answer to most of your questions is that they treat pvp as a side content of a zero maintained game. There is literally no job done on pvp for years, so we just get some copy pasta pve designs with no balance attempts. They dont put even a single intern on fixing pvp. Its just laughable in SL.

u can play the game without any tweaks or add ons in pve
i d say the best add on in pve is a dps meter, show one line and click the “always show self” box. this allows u to see when youre doing good or not.

but this add on would be to improve so u can parse better than other players → pvp is all about the other players

if player A has information player B doesnt have, then yeah, player A is more likely to win.

i personnaly only use omnibar to track interrupt for fake castin, rest idc enough, its just a game

but if i wanted to become serious about it, id get cd tracker, better nameplate etc

you talkied about mobas. you dont have add ons in them. macros are banned, which is why insec kicks looked insane the first time it happened, was a genuine out of the box idea for many and players were terrible mechanically.

also i still play league with some friends, and all the new champion confuse me cuz i dont know them. mobas are hard to grasp due to pool size, go on a lane vs an early game snowballer champion u dont know… yeah ure not going to have fun

as for the core of wow arenas, i just started a bit again to get the mount i like (the 100 victory) but to me its a cyclical game, its all about usin and savin cds for the right time (im bad btw and dont aspire to improve, but thats what i have understood with time)

however, its true its not a friendly place to start. u have to want to play it before u can like it, and players like something by playing…
its weird. there is something to address overall. i think its mainly pace and tuning, i hope removal of borrowed power will make it easier for them in df

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It is scary. Emoji trend enjoyer, perhaps !

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lets be real it will take quite some time for somebody who hasnt played the game in 10 years to understand whats going on in modern day arena at the end of an expansion and on top of that develop the mechanical skill that is needed to perform in pvp.

also dk is not great to start 2s as a beginner imo. currently uhdk is a - press burst and then play deff till u have cd’s again - specc in 2s. for a beginner thats not the best id say.

Outlaw rogue(s), im done with my rant.

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Never made it past this line.
Totally false, imagine to hop in into dota for example and after two week claim that you know everything as new player lol.
And ye, keeping you posted- wow is not even a moba

Btw bind - target enemy player, not target enemy.

I never claimed that you would “know everything” within 2 weeks. I claimed that within 2 weeks you should have understood the basic, core mechanics of the gameplay and that you will substantially improve if you play focused. For example, in LoL, if you lane against an X Champion, by the end of a single game, you would clearly know what your opponent actually does, what his skillset is and what are the biggest threats. I’ve played 30 arena matches against monks and I, honest to God, have zero idea what monk is about.

To be honest Dota design language is also terrible and seems really unfriendly for new players as well. Companies should take a page from Riot’s design book. The graphics should firstly give you information about the gameplay and the aesthetic value should be secondary. Things should be clean, identifiable and consice in order for people to slowly, gradually understand ability interactions and get better at the game.

Dunno m8, If in 30 matches you haven’t figured out that if monk pops clones, sparkling tiger and has stun coming of cd, it is time to def, dunno what to tell you. Monk is honestly predictable.

Also, LoL is a poor man’s Dota, it was created specifically to appeal to broader masses and thus, it is much easier to pick up.

You see, there are many reasons why Dota is a better game than LoL. So what if it is not that beginner friendly, not all games are nor need to be. It takes some time and practice, and no, 2 weeks is not enough.

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Isn’t LoL that game where the classes have 4 buttons each? In WoW the classes have way more abilities so is it not normal, to not figure them out after a few matches ?

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People like you are why we got Legion.
Play a MOBA if you want a 5 button game.

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Okay, indeed, but you are talking about, like… 4 active abilities and a passive one?

I do not mean to be mean or rude here, but I think that this sounds more like a problem on your end.

Even if you could not understand or figure out how Monks play, what’s stopping you from asking a question or two here on the forums? Or searching for information on platforms like Youtube? Or even asking good/better players on Twitch?

But I could argue that the same thing actually happens in WoW. Of course, different people are always going to have different learning curves, that’s entirely normal. Just keep in mind that you do not speak for everyone when you say that there can be no seen improvement within 2 weeks of playing the game and focusing on it.

I do not disagree with this.

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Dota may or may not be a better game than LoL, but that’s not my point here!
My point is that Dota’s, as well as WoW’s graphics and design choices dont direct a new player clearly enough in order to understand skill interactions on top of a third-party addons and macros practically mandatory situation that you have set up in order to be viable.
Is it difficult to search the internet for that? Not really, but still, I dont think it’s ok to have to do extracurriculum research in order to play a game. In my opinion, everything necessary to play the game should be in the game in the first place!
It’s not mechanical difficulty that’s my issue here, it’s that i feel overwhelmed by a ton of visual information thrown at me like a waterfall and the average arena time in my rating (1500) is 15-30 seconds. It seems impossible to understand anything and that indicates to me a poorly designed gaming experience.

I throw an interesting video on graphics if anyone is interested.

Unfortunately, most companies don’t have 200 years of collective game design experience

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