Scale random BGs to +/- 10 ilvl difference

PVP Battlegrounds
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You don’t want to give good gear for wins / participation in random BGs. Fine, understandable. But then scale people in random BGs to +/- 10 ilvl difference.

All people who are playing in random BGs really want is to be competitive in these random BGs. That’s it. And it’s a completely fair request.

I have been reading through reactions to the recent changes to PVP gearing (Stoopz video, etc). It was sickening to see how many of the retorts to people pointing out that this harms random BGs are completely off the point.

“You want to get good gear for doing easy content [meaning random BGs]? You don’t deserve it” – Nobody doing random BGs asks for gear that is best in all content. All people ask for is gear that is best in random BGs and only there. Moreover, things have been so hopeless traditionally, that people would be fine with not “best” but just “competitive”. Is this too much to ask? No, it is not.

Every piece of content in WoW provides you with gear that makes you comfortable doing that content. When you do normal instances, you get drops which allow you to do these normal instances comfortably. When you do heroic raids, you get drops which allow you to do these heroic raids comfortably. When you do rated PVP, you should get gear which will allow you to do rated PVP comfortably – we might not be there yet, depending on how good PVE gear is in PVP, but yes, we should be there. It’s only unrated PVP which is left out. Yes, if you do unrated PVP, you should be able to get gear which will allow you to do unrated PVP comfortably. We don’t have this and this should be fixed.

“This is an MMORPG, there should be a gear progression” is another common trope. I have two things to say here:

First, let’s recap what exactly does “gear progression” mean. You play an RPG, you go to a mob, the mob kills you. You think “OK, I only got him to 70% HP, need to get more gear”. You get more gear, try again, you now get him to 50% HP. This is gear progression. It feels good to progress. But did you note why exactly it feels good to progress? Because when you were getting gear, the MOB STAYED THE SAME. This is why gear progression works.

Consider what would happen if this was not the case. You go to a heroic raid and you cannot down boss #1. You say “fine, need to get more gear”. You go and get more gear. But the boss also gets more gear in the meantime. So you try again and you might not only not do better, you might do worse. Does gear progression work in this scenario? Does it feel good? No, it does not. And this is exactly what we have in random BGs. (Rated PVP is a slightly different matter because gear participates in ratings, if there are enough people participating, you are matched with people of similar gear levels.)

Second, regarding “it’s RPG”, please tell me what exactly is RPG about multiple difficulty levels of raids and instances? What, do you think it’s “RPG”-ish to have twenty versions of the same instance? Of course, not. We have multiple difficulty levels solely because this is better for gameplay. The “RPG”-ness of an instance ends on the instance having orcs / ogres / whoever, casting spells, and this all happening in some atmospheric place with some stories attached to it. But the numbers and the difficulty levels are where the “RPG” thing ends, that’s pure gameplay. So, yeah, “it’s RPG” is not a good argument in favor of, say, not forcing all gear in random BGs to be the same, or not forcing it into the 210-220 ilvl interval.

Last, it is a little tiring to be seeing time and time again the term “PVP community” being understood as “people who do arenas”. Normally, people graduate from unrated PVP to rated. But this only happens when this process is aided by in-game tools like the rated solo queue (just so we are clear, I am talking solely about BGs here, about the solo queue for BGs). But WoW doesn’t have these tools. Because it is an ancient game and the devs didn’t spend much time on PVP at all. And because WoW doesn’t have these tools, people in WoW DO NOT graduate from unrated to rated. So, in WoW, “PVP community” does not mean just “people who play arenas”. It means “people who play arenas as well as people who play random BGs”. And if Blizzard want to care about “PVPers”, they have to care about both people who do rated PVP and people who do unrated PVP.

They made a great change for people who do rated PVP, gz, etc. They have to do something for people who do unrated PVP. Because, as it happens, it wasn’t all great for unrated PVP in BFA either, but the latest change for SL happened to make things even worse, pretty much intolerable.

I propose this: scale all gear in random BGs to the range between ilvl 210 and 220. If you have less than 210, you are scaled up. If you have more than 220, you are scaled down. It isn’t perfect, but it is easy to do, straightforward to understand, and will work.

Thanks for listening. Sorry for the wall.

11 Likes
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Thank you.

I’m sick of hearing the sound of my own voice in these forums. Glad some others understand.

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If it is any consolation, the US forums have big threads where people voice the same concerns.

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But if i understand Stoopz correctly. There is a starter pvp gear you get from BGs. It’s not as good as conquest gear, ofc not.
But that makes your Bgs be done comfortably.

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It doesn’t make you BG comfortably because other people in BGs will have better gear. The difference is 29 ilvls.

BGs are different in this way from M+ and from PVE in general in that in M+, bosses are static. When you cannot beat a boss in M+5, you gear up and become stronger, but the boss in M+5 stays the same it was before. This is not the case for PVP, in PVP the “bosses” you are fighting upgrade all the time. In rated PVP, this is taken care of via ratings. In unrated PVP, this is not taken care of - and it should be.

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Well it wont stay 158ilvl forever. You can upgrade them. And considering it needs rating to get conquest gear, you prob need higher rating to upgrade them.

So you can get up to 190ilvl with ur unrated gear, just from doing normal pvp.

You’re also comparing apples and oranges. Pvp and pve is not the same and never will be. The point of pve is for the content to be beaten, if it can’t be, it’s adjusted. Pvp is not made so you are guaranteed to beat it.
Pvp got waay higher skill cap as the content is constantly getting more and more difficult, just by knowledge, predictions etc.

I get that it’s not fun dying in pvp simply cuz of gear disparity. But i also believe you should actually have to put some effort in. And since it also has a very easy catchup phase, i don’t see the reason for the complaints. Because no arena player will run around with 191ilvl first week, 2nd, 3rd or perhaps not even on 4th. Might take you pretty long.

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You can get to 197 ilvl in random BGs. And outside of random BGs you get to 226 ilvl (slightly more, but whatever). That’s 29 ilvl difference. It’s huge.

Yes, PVP and PVE are different, exactly. That’s what I am saying. That’s why gear progression in PVP and PVE works differently. PVP needs additional mechanics to make it work. Rated PVP has such mechanics. Unrated PVP does not have them currently. It should get them.

Players who do random BGs are happy to put the effort in. By playing a lot of random BGs. The problem is that right now this does not bring fruit. They put in the effort, but that effort is not enough, they get told to play other parts of the game - either PVE or rated PVP. It’s the same as suggesting that rated PVPers should play PVE.

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You’re not gunna get anywhere trust me mate, i’ve honestly tried.

Just keep listening to the people(Venruki, Stoopz etc…) who do all aspects of PvP and have been championing these changes to finally make PvP better as a whole. Rather than people who only do entry level content.

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They do rated PVP first and foremost. If they were only doing random BGs, their opinion on the gearing would be similar to the one here. But you would then dismiss them as not being worth listening to.

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So your just gunna disregard the fact that Stoopz says in the video he loves bg’s and Venruki in Allcraft saying they are fun but not rewarding? Okay then.

@Solidsteak I rest my case your honour.

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Not disregarding anything. Stoopz says in the video that he loves BGs yet he does rated PVP first and foremost. Same for Venruki. You choose the strangest things to object to. :roll_eyes:

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Right but can you tell me the rate at which you will hit 197 and i will hit 236?
Because if you think you can sit with 1 and the same gear for an entire season, thats just wishful thinking and has been for every expansion with pvp gear.
Because thats not putting effort in, if u ask me. I mean do you expect to kill Mythic raid bosses with heroic dungeon gear? Because thats kinda what you’re asking here.

What mechanics does rated pvp that unrated doesn’t? Besides slight changes in rated bg and unrated, like how capturing an objective worked, to make it more team dependant.

It is not the same suggestion as rated pvpers to pve, dude come on.
Asking unrated players to play rated to get better gear, is like telling Heroic Raiders, to do Mythic raiding. Thats a way better comparison.

Arena and BG is still pvp. It’s still the same content. It’s just instead of 10v10 or 15v15 or 40v40, you’re in a 2v2 , 3v3, without BG objectives.

And it’s not like you need 2k rating or 2.4k rating or some stuff to actually get that gear. It’s very low rating.

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What exactly am I objecting to here? You just regurgitated exactly what i said but in your own context?

The volumes of people excited for this change speaks for itself, even more so when the people who do ALL pvp activities are happy about them.

Who are the pvp community going to listen to for the good of PvP, someone whos been playing the pvp scene for years in all areas of PvP or some random andy on forums that only plays non-rated.

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Sure. In all likelihood, people playing random BGs will hit 197 at about the same time as people doing M+ will hit 226. Because 226 is going to start coming from week 4.

Scroll to week 8 and people who do M+ will be either full 226 or close to it. Say, 222.

No, your analogy is incorrect.

I am NOT saying that people who do random BGs should be able to get enough gear to be competitive at high ranks in the arena, for example. I am saying they should get enough gear to be competitive in random BGs. With your analogy it would be me arguing that people who do heroic instances should get gear which makes them comfortable in these heroic instances.

It’s all about how random BGs are implemented in WoW. In other games, there is a rated solo queue, with the ‘rated’ bit taking care of gear differences automatically. But since we don’t have that in WoW, we should have something else. Like gear in random BGs being forced to a fixed and narrow ilvl range. Otherwise people who are doing random BGs are not competitive. This is the only type of content where people who do it and don’t do anything else are uncompetitive in it. This should be fixed.

I am sorry, but no, it’s the exact same suggestion. You think rated PVP and unrated PVP are similar enough not to care? But people who do unrated PVP disagree. In unrated PVP, they autoqueue. In rated PVP, they have to spend half of their time finding a group, it’s all serious business, etc.

Are M+ and raids similar? Well, there are enough differences to have two different reward tracks. It’s the same thing with rated and unrated PVP, they are different enough to be treated differently. And just so we are clear, there are many more people who do unrated PVP than people who do rated.

If you insist on saying that “Arena and [random] BG is still PVP”, I will note that “PVP and PVE are still WoW”. Do we want to go that road? I hope not.

Just in case, the very low rating you are talking about is likely 1400, from the video. But it’s only the initial rating, for the first ilvl upgrade. Further upgrades require higher ratings. So we aren’t talking about just dabbling in rated PVP for child-level rating, we are talking about climbing. Realistically, people will just go do M+.

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Thank you very much for this post.

I really like playing Random BGs but it really isn’t fun to get facerolled by players that have much higher gear than I could ever obtain playing my Random BGs, just because they are playing arena.

This really kills all the fun and I think the comparison that every other content in PvE/PvP gives you items that let you comfortably perform in that content is really true. For Random BGs this rule does not apply though.

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You should see the threads on the US forums. The number of people talking about random BGs is huge.

More importantly, let’s wait and see what this does to participation. Unless they take some measures to rectify things for unrated PVP, part of the people there will turn to M+ and the rest will just stop PVPing.

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It does apply more than pve. pvp is about fighting others, you put the work, you get the gear you are ENTITLED to faceroll fresh max leveled players. That’s how IRL works to, you get the money you deserve the eat the best food, and have the nicest things.

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Right but what does mythic have to do with pvp? Im lost here. Pve gear is not useful in pvp, thats already been taken care of.

What i was talking about, was rated vs unrated gear, not comparing it to pve.
So conquest gear can be upgraded to. But ofc at a much slower pace and much harder.
So a fully unrated will be very close to rated gear. If they keep putting that massive amount of effort in to bgs.

and they will be until ppl who do arena get their full conquest geared and upgrade it beyond the 190ilvl or whatever.
Because unrated honor gear can reach 190ilvl or 197 or whatever.

And as i said before, pvp and pve does not work the same. You cannot say that just because heroic geared ppl are comfortable in heroic dungeons, it should mean the same for pvp. Thats just not going to happen and its not how it works. Im sorry. But that would not make any sense. As you cannot compare pvp and pve, the difficulty in general is never constant in pvp, as in player skill and nor will the gear stay the same.

Not it isn’t. At high rating, like 2k+ it is.
But at the rating which unlocks the gear? Not really. And if you guys started queueing in masses, maybe you’d face eachother? Theres a tip for ya.

What? Ye and wow is an mmorpg, like where are u going? I think the road ended.
BG and Arena, are both unrated and both have rated versions of themselves.
Rated will give better gear and will work in both unrated and rated.

If you are that hardcore to make up your own rules how gear is gonna work, then get 20 ppl together and queue against eachother, theres a custom queue or something for it. Should work since you outnumber us rated plebs by so much.

Kinda. I mean, 1 has rating to balance where you are placed and the other doesn’t. Thats literally the biggest difference. And ofc rated offers better rewards eventually. Since the upgraded unrated won’t last forever.

Ye and? You arn’t excluded from using 1 gear in the other, nor do i believe your ilvl is adjusted.

Again, what is with this pve argument? Mythic+ gear, is trash in pvp. That has already been taken care off. Trinkets are nerfed by 55% in any pvp interaction.
You will hit ppl like a wet noodle, because they will have high dmg reductions.
Like come on man.

Ye so you can still get the same gear, not just the same upgrades.
You really want everything for just spamming random bgs…
Pvp is competitive as hell. Always has been, always will be, in any game you ever play.
And that also includes fighting for that high rating. If you wanna be casual around random bgs, then do it. But just keep in mind, you won’t compete with the high end dudes.

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Yes, you deserve to stomp other players in the COMPETITIVE PvP bracket.

Non-rated PvP is a different pair of shoes though. That’s the bracket for the casuals that are not into competitive gaming, these brackets should not get mixed up. Why should non-competitive PvPers not be allowed to have fun?

Other games have a normal queue und a competitive queue also (League of Legends, DotA 2 for example).

Imo it makes sense to implement a ilvl cap for random BGs to prevent competitive PvPers to stupidly faceroll non-competitive PvPers and ruin all their fun. Stay in your bracket or accept equality.

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Completley false. Its Random therefore its a random map with a selection of randomly skilled players on both sides.

Casual battlegrounds doesn’t exist in a literal sense.