Jito's Arena ideas extraordinaire!

There’s also something called “quality over quantity”

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It was slightly tongue in cheek.
I’ve no idea how much time I’ve spent on PvP during WoW’s 15 years, or how much time anyone else has for that matter, obviously. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
It’s just to say that I’ve done my fair share of PvP in this game. It’s not a foreign concept to me.

Considering most of us have spent our time, almost exclusively, 4-6 hours a day for the last ~12 years playing Arenas and BGs I think we can safely say that we’ve played far more PvP than you ever did during your shortly lived Vanilla & TBC PvP era.

PS: You can barely call Alterac Valley PvP.

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A little off-topic, but just for the heck of it:
You’re all reporting my posts for trolling. I get more systems messages telling me that my posts have been flagged and hidden than I can keep up with reading. You’re litterally spamming my notification feed.

Please stop.

If not for my sake, then for the poor Blizzard moderator who seems to be working overtime right now, having to unflag all my posts constantly.

It’s not necessary.

If you think my entire person is a systemic cancer on this forum, them maybe you’d be better off addressing your concerns to the following:
CMTeamEU-WoW@blizzard.com

You were “almost” out of the troll bog, Jito. Shot yourself in the foot there, amigo.

Jesus christ

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You’re more the proof that the biggest and unsolvable issue that Arena is facing is that its just a side content inside a mmorpg while it should be a stand alone game.
because there will always be a (small) part of the community wanting to pvp with the “mmorpg rules” no matter if it induce terrible balance, questionable design and overall pretty unhealthy competitive environment.

You will probably argue that your topic is precisely the opposite of this statement, but in fact its just another attempt to conciliate pve and pvp (or Arena with wow), something blizzard failed to achieve since that arena exist, and that you won’t achieve either with your ideas.

I don’t think it’s realistic that Blizzard would make a separate WoW Arena game. But if that’s what you want, then you should definitely request it. That’s feedback.

Personally, I rather like that WoW is one cohesive game.
But I do think you should be able to play Arena and nothing else but Arena – if that’s what you want – and be fine. The concern some people have in regards to acquiring certain pieces of gear from PvE for example – that’s a totally legitimate concern. I’d like to say that my ideas help alleviate that issue and make it easier to just do Arena without having to do any PvE. But I’m not above criticism and definitely don’t think my ideas are without flaws – many have pointed out some already. And I love and appreciate the discussion and talk about what works and what doesn’t. But if you’re more interested in talking about me as a person, then that’s not really what this is about. I mean, you’re posting on an alt – that shields you from any personal scrutiny. I post on my main, because I like to believe that people will focus on the words and the discussions, and that the names are simply there to help us recognize and learn to know each other – not insult and harass those we dislike.

And just to stress it, as I wrote in my initial post:

I put a lot more thought and time into my actual suggestions. This is more like a rough draft, it’s open to nit-picking and criticism! :blush:

In fact, i’m one a the few that barely talked about you as a person. I know that you often try to argue on opinion that i found absurd or laking some of the basic knowledge, but overall i’m much more interest in the discussion. Also i barely played bfa and don’t really consider having a “main” anymore. Just posted with the first character on.

Thats something some players, me include, already asked several times. In fact i even think that wow is the best competitive pvp game i’ve ever played in my life, and i have played (and sometimes try hard) all the competitive games out there (moba, fps, rts, br, …). And i hate that there is not a single decent alternative to compete with arena, thus blizzard is sitting on a unhealty monopoly (while other genres have often dozen of different options).

For sure. And there’s probably a lot of business motivations behind it all, more so than game design motivations.
I mean, seemingly Blizzard are making a mobile Pet Battle game.
Why that and not a WoW Arena game?
Probably because the former has a bigger market than the latter.
As niche as the Arena community is in WoW today, as niche would it probably be if it was a stand-alone game. Like you say, then there aren’t many alternatives, so there isn’t much of an external market to appeal to.

Blizzard did also try with the Arena Tournament server in this past, which had mixed success at best. It felt like the Murloc pet carried the interest a lot of the way, and as more people got their pet, the interest in the Arena Tournament sever diminished. But it was an attempt at least. And who knows, maybe Blizzard will make another attempt at some point in the future.

The thing is, i don’t even think you could estimate well the market for a pvp game that doesn’t really exist. Look at battle royal or even more recently Autochess.

You could argue that the game already exist since “arena” is here, but i think the genre itself is “gate keeped/locked” behind the mmorpg game which is Wow and far from having its full potential unleashed.
Even i can think of hundred ideas to push further concepts/ideas/design that arena could have (but don’t since, again, its trample by the mmo needs).

That’s probably true. That’s risk, right? Most game companies will steer clear of that, favoring the development of something safer, like a Battle Royale or Autochess game. Same with movies and other forms of entertainment. It’s why we get so many sequels and remasters – it’s safe. The gaming industry is the same.

Personally I think the game is what it is, and ideas should spur from that, rather than a more unrealistic and wishful dream of what it could be.
The former is easier for Blizzard to approach than the latter.

I am pleasantly surprised. This is actually a post with many decent ideas, and just a few bad ones, if you read it to the end and perhaps if you try to put aside the understandable dislike you might have because Jito wrote it, you might also like some of it.

I’ll simply list what I absolutely disagree with, while the rest seems by default ok to me:

  • awarding past season prestige rewards - that’s a huge no, and the reasoning is flawed. Arenas are the most unrewarding part of WoW that actually still is played by a sizable following, and they have been so for many years. This showcases that the premise that Arenas require a similar reward structure to pve (not talking about the power, but about the “farming older cosmetics” thing) to even function at all is flawed. People play Arena because it’s fun, unlike pretty much any other aspect in WoW. When they are more fun, more people play them. There is simply no reason to disconnect the seasonality of the prestige rewards, and reduce their prestige in the process, for the sake of the pve reward mentality.

  • removing 2v2 - the vast majority of Arena players play 2v2. This much is a fact. The reasons range from it being far easier to organize than 3v3 is to the fact they are more leisurely. Removing the most played bracket would be a mistake, and there is no reason to change the status quo here.

  • weapons not being upgradable to max - I think this is a miscalculation on the part of Jito. It is true that weapons cannot titanforge, but the maximum pve weapon still can be the maximum possible itemlevel. Mythic raid items are only 10 itemlevels below max, so they don’t actually need to titanforge to be maxed out. Placing a limit where weapons cannot receive more than 2 upgrades for Combatant, 4 upgrades for Challenger, and so on, would be enough, under this system.

  • the proposed new stat - dampening is there for a reason, to keep games down to an acceptable length. Something that mingles with the value of dampening defeats the purpose.

  • pvp changes every two weeks - this is a bad idea, because it is impossible to ascertain within a two week period how the meta evolves and because it can potentially create too much instability, and a logistical nightmare for Blizzard. It would be nice to have balance changes more often than in the interseason, but two weeks is, in my humble opinion, a way too low period.

  • removing honor talents - the problem is that the successive waves of ability pruning removed most of the utility in the game and made classes bland. The baseline classes, without honor talents, are even more so. However, part of the reason why we have honor talents in the first place is because Blizzard are also trying (and apparently failing) to balance classes for their mythic plus system. The perpetual issue that pvp has with respect to the class design is that if a class change would have a major unwanted impact in pve, it doesn’t get made regardless of the benefits it would bring to pvp. If anything, the honor talent system should probably be expanded, to allow Blizzard to at least make our classes interesting in pvp if they have to keep them at that low level in pve. The most recent essence that makes a pvp talent available in pve with the associated butchering of those pvp talents that have been offered (e.g. Premonition, Crane) is proof enough that should the pvp talents be made baseline, they would instantly become bland and garbage pve abilities.

The rest of the post, as I was saying previously, is pretty good. This envisioned gearing system would certainly be much better than the current one. The lore thing can’t possibly hurt anyone. The 3 vs A.I. thing cannot possibly hurt anyone as long as it is a training ground type of thing and not something done for rewards or rating.

There are some issues that I can see that were also not well thought out:

  • the power discrepancy of gear is too high - under this system the difference between an unrated and a gladiator level player would be 55 itemlevels, which is insurmountable. Some sort of mitigating factor needs to exist, and it would be highly preferable for it not to be some opaque thing like scaling, but rather a special property of pvp gear similar to WoD’s version of pvp gear, where the gear obtained through pvp sources scales closer to the max when engaged in pvp.
  • if the pvp gear can be upgraded to maximum titanforged, and the pvp specific stat is off budget (regardless what the pvp stat would do), that gear would also become by far the BiS for pve. Now, regardless how much we might like that (I know I would), this is not something Blizzard are going to do. Some sort of mitigating value is required to prevent that from happening, if this is to be taken seriously into consideration.
  • edit: 50 games a week is way too much. Consider that the regular win/loss ratio is 50:50, this would simply take way too much time. Consider that people also like to play alts in this game, not a single character, and that there already is a barrier from alts also gaining that top gear: rating. Most players, like me, are incapable of playing many classes at the same level as their main.

Ideas that deserve a big plussie:

  • cross-faction play;
  • many parts of the envisioned gearing system;
  • pvp vendors, currencies and predictable gear acquisition in pvp.

Saying it again, but dampening should not exist in the first place, so better not take it in consideration while bringing design idea.

Is this Jito a kind of joke? if yes then plz stop it u need help its bad joke no one laughs if u are having fun posting bs to troll us its fine its cool .Seek medical attention

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That’s the best example of quality > quantity.

Jito you play for 15 years and you have only 200 arena wins not even 300 achievment that grants that tabard. Also 15 years and reached 1550 rating only… Just playing a lot for 15 years should make you capable of reaching higher goals. Don’t bring such arguments because they make you look even worse.

This was a guy I played 2s with last season. It was his 2nd PvP season in his life yet he achieved more than you. Also he is way more experienced and has more PvP knowledge. Why? Because few times we had a chance to play Abx (that he even watched to improve), Voltariux, Volkovitch, Trillebartom, Drainer, Cervantes and few more. Who did you fight then?

Also during 1 season this guy played more arenas than you did in last 3 expansions so don’t talk about PvP experience as you lack any.

But it’s besides the point. I’m not proposing these ideas as suggestions. I’ve specifically said:

I’m simply throwing them out there because I’d like to hear what other people think about them - as ideas.
They’re not coming from a mindset of me being the best Arena player in the world, and my amazing skill and vast experience makes everything I say right and everything you say wrong.
They’re simply ideas that I think would make me more likely to do Arena in the first place, and I’d like to hear what others think about them from their perspective, and if they see any flaws in them.
If your point is that I’m inexperienced at Arena and that I’m not half as devoted to PvP as everyone else, then you’re absolutely right. You’re all amazing PvP experts and that’s awesome. But again, I mainly just want input on my ideas, not me as a person. :slight_smile:

TLDR:
I don’t do Arena.
Here are some ideas that I think would make me interested in Arena.
What do you guys think about them?

Why do I need to be a pro veteran PvPer in order to pose such a simple topic of discussion? I mean, it’s your input I’m asking for, for crying out loud! :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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I understand the outrage over the idea of removing 2v2. But I still do not understand the issue with introducing 3v3 vs. A.I.
It seems like a harmless addition to me.

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OK, I’m not going to claim Jito’s 3 vs AI thing would be the most fun thing since sliced bread, but he did specifically pitch that as an unrated mode with no rewards that would exist as a tutorial for new players in addition to regular Arena and to skirmish Arena. Honestly, I don’t see the harm in that either, but I can see a little amount of good having something like that could have.

The part where Jito suggested removing 2s, yea that’s a different story. Most people play 2s for an array or reasons, and besides even the reasoning behind the suggestion is quite flawed - that playing the temporary fotm class can get players higher than they might otherwise deserve, but that happens in every game mode including 3v3, including mythic raiding where top guilds stack a certain class, including mythic+ dungeons. But really, stop for a second and think about it: he is actually right about the 3 v AI thing: it really wouldn’t hurt anyone like that.

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I think in general this is a great bunch of ideas, the removal of 2v2 is the only one I disagree with.

2v2 could be kept just don’t reward titles etc but rather Honor or conq so you still have some reward as 2v2 is great for learning CD timings, burst windows etc and it’s also a good chamber for doing 1v1, 1v2.

I’d also like to see a 6v6 solo que for RBG’s. I know a lot of people will disagree because of the toxicity but realistically imo this is a moot point. If GM’s bothered to crack down on those players and make a statement then people would feel far less inclined to do so.

More incentives to do WPvP would be great to, some funny titles or just higher Honor/conq rewards. Create monthly events which boost the rewards (for both factions Blizzard) if people don’t like it - Turn PvP Mode off!

The AI option is imo good, if it allows more players to get involved in game. PvP needs life desperately and whilst Blizzard certainly isn’t helping it I think giving players a stepping stone would be great, however it should only reward Honor and at a rate that encourages players to push into real time PvP.

It wouldn’t be to bad for when someone joins your party either as you could que into it with them just to see how well you flow before heading into rated.

All in all, I think the PvP community needs all the love and attention it can get, it’s been such a huge part of this game for years and years and this shifting tide to PvE is (imo) one of the things killing off this game.

I’ll admit that I’ve never been over 2.1k rating on any of my accounts so take this opinion however you want but I also do not feel any incentive to go into arena when classes are such hollow husks of their former selves these days.

I remember so damn vividly playing Druid from vanilla to MoP and during vanilla having so much fun running what was then the ’feral’ build.

As I said I don’t want to step on any ‘proper’ PvPr’s toes so I’ll leave my post at this. I personally commend any person who still has the patience to PvP in this state of the game.