You want to cater to bad players which is fine.
I want blizz to actually make specs and balance it out of its potential so ppl have to actually learn their spec and not cry for buffs because they cannot or refuse to perform.
But theres ppl who blame “e-sport” for its current problem. Thats their own opinion.
My opinion is that they dont balance often enough and thats whats causing most of the issues.
I want to cater to players. The game is dead as never before, the progression system is incoherent, and the endgame PvP “checks” are virtually impermeable as well as unappealing to new players. If the game was a success in e-sports, sure, balance around the end of the bell curve. But it’s not. People don’t watch it, people don’t play it, people don’t care. As such, there is no reason whatsoever to balance around the top.
My opinion is that they dont balance often enough and thats whats causing most of the issues.
This week we got a first PvP tuning in what, 2 months, after one dps and one healer singlehandedly dominated all competitive PvP brackets. It’s not that they don’t balance enough, they don’t balance, period. Either they are specifically killing out the gamemode and there are no more devs left, or the devs are doing a really poor job at whatever they’re supposed to be doing, if they do want to keep pvp alive, or reinvigorate it.
And thats the biggest issue. They dont balance enough.
Id most likely quit if they balanced the game out of worse players perspective. Since that will be a complete circus and the most boring gameplay of all time.
It’s an over-exaggeration. You’d wanna balance around 2.1-2.4, depending on what the endgame of the gamemode would be, but certainly not around R1 territory. And by 2.1-2.4 I mean SL s2 levels of 2.1-2.4 territory, not current. The reason for that being is simple - return of percent-based rating cutoffs, and the fact that 3v3 endgame is Gladiator, and 2v2/rss endgame is 2.4/legend.
Which is most likely around 1600-1900 range if you look at it on this season.
So its not an over-exaggeration when you try to make things sound “better” than what you truly are going for.
You might truly believe that catering to worse players is the best option for the game, but you also dont understand potential dangers of doing so.
If you want perfect balancing you will need to make every spec roughly the same and have equal skill lvls in terms of playstyle. That will be extremely boring.
So remove rewards and only put it into small amount of % of players again. That will really make things better?
Or do you mean only glad/legend should be %?
How will that make more casual players want to actually play PvP?
Which is most likely around 1600-1900 range if you look at it on this season.
Yep, and that’s how it should be. There’s no reason for a full transmog set to be locked behind anything more difficult than Curve levels of gameplay. 1.8 should be curve, Glad should be CE, simple as that.
Oh I understand the dangers completely. The dangers are the meta will be less diverse, that’s literally the only thing, and considering the amount of players at the top currently, it’s just as undiversified anyway.
If you want perfect balancing
I’ve said this before, this is not possible, nor desirable, in an MMORPG game, that’S why there’s no reason to balance it as if that were the goal, which is what R1 balancing is doing.
So remove rewards and only put it into small amount of % of players again.
I’ll just redirect you to my letter at this point, since I don’t think you’ve gone through it (case you have, sorry.), it’s full of suggestions, and it could use a little reinvigoration anyway, case an imaginary PvP EU dev stumbles upon it. Kinda no point for me to state my opinions again if there’s a 12 page document of them flying around on this page.
Are you talking about ppl being able to buy boosts to 1800?
The Curve, if you talk about “skill lvls” of the individual is pretty much 1800 already. Difference is its easier to carry ppl for curve.
It would make top ppl play more most likely atleast.
I dont agree. As you said before, there will still be meta. You can never balance perfectly as you also already said so whether you like it or not, some specs will still be far easier to climb with than others. You just make it alot worse to climb for some. As it could be today when ppl dont play their spec to its potential.
Or do you want to remove every specs potential?
They balance the spec, atleast to my knowledge in PvE, based on the specs potential. And thats on every specs bis items etc.
Otherwise we would see quite some hard nerfs for certain specs.
And if you buff specs based on worse performers here, you would see massive difference for the 70%+ parsers or so.
Yes, there are specs that might get “hurt” from the individuals skill lvls.
But the way you argue is the same kind of argument ppl do about m+ to make it free. Since theres quite some ppl who want it balanced around their own skill lvls instead of wanting to get better themselves.
Ive read it and most likely forgotten parts of it.
The Curve, if you talk about “skill lvls” of the individual is pretty much 1800 already.
Yeah, it hit those levels at what, week 15? That’s roughly 10 weeks late. Remember how deflated the season was the first ± 13 weeks? You just can’t do that, people will stop playing, obviously. And since the achievements currently are not percentages but concrete numbers, no amount of mmr inflation matters if the players are not present to begin with. And yes, I’m talking about skill levels, obviously you can buy anything if you wish to pay for it.
There’s a difference between naturally misbalanced due to game design, and grossly and unreasonably disbalanced in all aspects ranging from difficulty of gameplay all the way to toolkit considerations. There’s a paragraph on that too in the letter, not gonna elaborate further as it’s pointless.
They balance the spec, atleast to my knowledge in PvE, based on the specs potential. And thats on every specs bis items etc.
There is PvP balancing. If there is PvP balancing, PvE balancing is irrelevant, as the specs are already being re-balanced specifically for the content, so the fact that they’re balancing PvE is not a counter-argument. If there were was no PvP balancing incorporated in the game, sure. But there is.
Keep in mind you’re not buffing it based on “bad performers” though. 2.1-2.4 is roughly top 95 percentile, and they are doing that in PvE as well anyway. No reason to skew the scale from 5 % to 0.1 % if it generates less money.
Thats design flaw. Not balanced flaw.
The game design of MMR in PvP is bad right.
Still dont know, even after reading part of what you wrote in your letter (again) on what your overall perfect situation would be for every spec in terms of “difficulty” since it feels to me you want to remove most of it.
Was it top 95% during shadowlands S2?
Id love to see those statistics.
I said potential. How they buff PvE with bis items could very well be close to same with PvP. But they are, to my knowledge, in both PvP and PvE, balanced around potential.
You want to remove that potential of the spec.
Which is easier in PvE to do compared to PvP.
As I said, I would love to see those statistics from SL S2.
Thats design flaw. Not balanced flaw.
Sure, so is talking about skill levels.
The game design of MMR in PvP is bad right.
This wasn’t about MMR, MMR is a different issue. Stuff like Rdrus passively healing 20 % off-global while doing endless drink resets and CC chains or DHs running rampant with half of their uptime being i-frames and damage reductions, paired up with mad mobility, very decent utility, and downright unhealable damage while freecasting is a balancing issue.
Still dont know, even after reading part of what you wrote in your letter (again) on what your overall perfect situation would be for every spec in terms of “difficulty” since it feels to me you want to remove most of it.
I’ve said that before, the amount of people that get Curve should correspond percentage-wise to 1.8, and CE should correspond percentage-wise to Gladiator.
I said potential. How they buff PvE with bis items could very well be close to same with PvP. But they are, to my knowledge, in both PvP and PvE, balanced around potential.
The potential is not creating that big a difference. If you compare, say, max ilvl PvP gear, including consistently craftable items, and then compare it to gearsets that would include PvE optimisations, you would barely get a 1-2 % performance edge, in any of the cases, so that changes nothing, we are at that point.
Which is easier in PvE to do compared to PvP.
So it being easier is now the standard that we’re taking as a justification for poor care over PvP? Well, we’ve sure as hell fallen off a big tree then.
e/
As I said, I would love to see those statistics from SL S2.
I don’t think I’ve kept track of that, but I do have a little bit of a clue; here’s some data for you:
BfA Elite-to-Gladiator ratio
S1: 56.5 %
S2: 57.5 %
S3: 35.7 %
S4: 52.4 %
SL Elite-to-Gladiator ratio
S1: 55 %
S2: 65 %
S3: 58 %
S4: 48.5 %
DF Elite-to Gladiator ratio
S1: 15.6 %
S2: 38 %
S3 (so far): 29 %
(Data calculated based on DataForAzeroth percentages provided. These numbers are relevant for the given season as the achievements are time-gated, and as such, take participation pools into consideration and provide reliable data.)
In theory, we could base it on Duelist-to-Gladiator ratio, so that we can compare it with Legion etc. as well.
Skill lvls can be based on balance flaws.
You gave the example yourself, DH isnt the hardest to play but also the strongest right now. Which means the balance is flawed for it.
Yes there are balance issues. And those are not just at the lower, middle or top. Its all of them.
Yea, just remove rewards entirely and just make it percentage and you wont have to bother about MMR/CR. MMR could even be removed at that point and ppl only face eachother based on CR.
Feral druids is a clear example of big difference between potential and bad players.
Could even be said about outlaw and sub rogues.
Then compare that to ret or arms.
Its easier because you dont have to take into account several factors like stun, cc, MS effect etc.
While you need to do that for PvP.
Thats not entirely what I asked though. I asked for the entire PvP playerbase that shows ppl from 2100+ are within the 95% (meaning only 5% are above 2100+) percentile out of every single one who played PvP. I tried to find that part myself which I couldnt.
Or I dont know what you are trying to explain on who you want to balance it around.
“You can’t nerf something because it’s only OP at high ratings” is a fallacy.
Yes there are balance issues . And those are not just at the lower, middle or top. Its all of them.
Yes, and it took them 3 months to fix it, or even slightly address it, because apparently they thought it’S fine for R1 playstyle, and the entire ladder suffered because of it.
Yea, just remove rewards entirely and just make it percentage and you wont have to bother about MMR/CR. MMR could even be removed at that point and ppl only face eachother based on CR.
No need to remove the rewards, just base them around the participation pool and make them dynamic, not end-season rewards. Start on e.g. week 3 and you’re good to go, that way there will always be people trying to get to a certain percentage of the playerpool throughout the season; except gladiators ofc, which should remain 50 wins above elite, however elite etc. should be percent-based, to create a consistent, dynamic reward system.
Its easier because you dont have to take into account several factors like stun, cc, MS effect etc.
While you need to do that for PvP.
Sure. That’s their job. Why they’re not doing it is the problem.
Thats not entirely what I asked though. I asked for the entire PvP playerbase that shows ppl from 2100+ are within the 95% (meaning only 5% are above 2100+) percentile out of every single one who played PvP. I tried to find that part myself which I couldnt.
You could probably do some mental gymnastics and calculate or guesstimate it, however specific numbers are of no significance, what you need to know is the percentages and how they fluctuate to determine how crappy the system is, but we all know that already. As I said, if you wanna do the maths yourself, compare DF seasons with SL and BfA based on the percentage of accounts that reach the achievements in the given season which you can find on Data For Azeroth, since that calculation skips the needs for a concrete numeral value entirely, the fact that the playerbase is declining is another different problem entirely. (I can almost guarantee you though that nowadays, S2 and S3 DF probably had 0 people that are 0-2.1 within the top 5 %, S1 probably had some since the difference between S1 and S2 glads is over 150 %, meaning the gauss curve had very different numbers in S1 and S2.) If you wanna be bothered with it, go to DfA site, look up data for BfA/SL/DF Gladiators, then do the same for Duelists, and put the values into a ratio calculator. You can also compare it to Legion and WoD since those had duelist ratings too. And as for current season numbers, you can calculate, or guesstimate, that off of checkpvp numbers, I’ve done some of that before. (They used to provide you with the entire playerpool, or at least most of it, since you were able to hide your profile, however nowadays they only provide numbers from 1201 cr above for old and 1501 cr above for rss respectively.)
I would not fault R1 players for that. Blizz have a history of ignoring balancing every now and then for weeks/months without even uttering a single word. I believe majority of ppl (me included) are upset and fed up with the long period of silence that keeps happening for literally no reason. Its the most stupid thing blizz keeps doing over and over. Its not difficult for blizz to make a blue post with “We are aware of the situation and are currently in discussion on how to handle certain things.” which could even be posted every week just to make sure ppl atleast know they are “cooking” something.
It was the same thing last season, I literally got fed up with m+ because of aug evokers dominance and their inability to properly fix it.
So, lets say they did balancing patches every or every other week, how many ppl would complain as much? Would ppl still be mad about DHs if they actually got balanced properly months ago if they did faster balancing?
Im always more happy when I see them actually caring for their playerbase. Im just fed up with their silence.
I agree that they could atleast update the reward system. How it would be im not entirely sure what would be for the best of all worlds.
Yes its their job, but also why I said its easier to do it in PvE for obvious reasons compared to PvP. But its their job and they should do it, its what the PvP side of playerbase is paying for.
You talked like you knew that ppl above 2100+ were 5% only during SL S2 and not more which is why I asked for statistics that showed what I thought you knew.
But its also quite impossible to fully know unless you can calculate the entire PvP playerbase who touched 3v3 during SL S2 and how many of those achieved 2100+ and if alts changes the statistics for it overall.
But we know the current system isnt the best and they need to make srs changes to the MMR system to avoid inflations/deflations so its the same every single season so ppl know what they need to do to earn something. Its frustrating for alot of players where one season can be massively inflated and the rewards are basically “free” while other seasons is harder so they feel inferior compared to previous seasons.
So, lets say they did balancing patches every or every other week, how many ppl would complain as much? Would ppl still be mad about DHs if they actually got balanced properly months ago if they did faster balancing?
Im always more happy when I see them actually caring for their playerbase. Im just fed up with their silence.
Indeed, they genuinely behave as if they didn’t even care and wanted the gamemode specifically dead.
You talked like you knew that ppl above 2100+ were 5% only during SL S2 and not more which is why I asked for statistics that showed what I thought you knew.
I wasn’t talking about SL s2 specifically, I was talking about how it generally is, moreless. I could probably try to look up some numbers and do the calculations, but it was more of a guesstimation anyway. I’m pretty sure I’d done the numbers before though, whenever they were relevant to the season, I used to check them fairly frequently back in the seasons.
There, I found something (11.7.2022, so this is SL s3 data, not s2, 3 weeks before end of the season, so these were the “regular” season data).
random trivia:
Highest EU rating in 2s:
3004
People that currently are 2.4+ in 2s / people that have any number of games played on EU:
2607 out of 160495 (1.62 %)
Highest NA rating in 2s:
2838
People that currently are 2.4+ in 3s / people that have any number of games played on NA:
1331 out of 204228 (0.65 %)
_
Highest EU rating in 3s:
3176
People that currently are 2.4+ in 2s / people that have any number of games played on EU:
1725 out of 147224 (1.17 %)
Highest NA rating in 3s:
3269
People that currently are 2.4+ in 3s / people that have any number of games played on NA:
3484 out of 126817 (2.75 %)
In theory, with those numbers you should be able to guesstimate relatively concretely what the S2 numbers were, if you wanna be bothered with that. You can also probably imagine by now that 5 % being 2.1+ is not unrealistic at all, it’s in fact probably close to 10 %+ in s2, to be honest, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
I understand the point of it, but im also not entirely sure what kind of season S3 and S4 were counted as in terms of “inflation/normal” or anything. Just know S2 were massively inflated, so it makes it abit more difficult to accurately point out how many % of playerbase were above 2100.
Seems like the 3s rating is slowly creeping up into the same “rating” as S3 but its just less populated is my guess. But we also dont know how long until S4 (which seems like we might get info on soon?)
My guess is atleast pirate patch next week (dont think its wednesday but they can surprise me) and after that instant PTR for S4.
But S3 of SL started 1 March 2022 and S4 started 2 August 2022. So my guess is S3 ended 26th july. - 22 weeks otherwise its 23 weeks.
DF S3 started November 14 2023 and now its 11 march. - 17 weeks from tomorrow. So if it would follow through with what those S3 SL statistics say (if it would be roughly the same) those ratings would be achievable in 2-3 weeks. Which isnt likely xd
But I am also not sure what is supposedly “normal” rating for a “normal” season. Too much variation.
I usually dont like guessworking since im usually more wrong than right with that. Kinda why I dislike ppl asking me “What do you guess my age is” for example lol. I think too much >_>
But, im not refuting the 5% above 2100+, I were refuting only 5%. Considering its supposedly massive inflation it would mean it was way more than 5% above 2100+ amongst the PvP playerbase. Could prob be ppl who just played a few games and then stopped so im not entirely sure on this part.
I have no issues balancing things for every part of the playerbase, I just dont like dumbing down specs potential for the sake of making worse players feel better when they just need to train and get better. Rewarding players who dont want to put in any effort that is.
There are ppl that argue about m+20 to make it either free or jail players to boost them.
I understand the point of it, but im also not entirely sure what kind of season S3 and S4 were counted as in terms of “inflation/normal” or anything.
S2 was inflated, S3 was regular, S4 was deflated.
those ratings would be achievable in 2-3 weeks. Which isnt likely xd
mhm xdd SL S3 is what a moreless “normal” season looked like. It was one of the seasons that were fairly evenly distributed, nothing was too easy or too hard, it was short enough and there was no cr bottleneck (I remember hitting duelist on week 3 with 72 % winrate).
I usually dont like guessworking since im usually more wrong than right with that.
You can guesstimate it by taking the added-up numbers of 2.4 (ignoring RBG as that’S a minority anyway) and match it with the percentages of individual seasons, then calculate individual CR values and skim forums to see if there were any more number data, and based on that you can see somewhat concrete numbers that would be moreless correct; alternatively, you can attempt to put the numbers onto the gauss curve, which should be a relatively good start, but yeah, it’s a lot of work, and generally not worth the effort. However yes, in S2 I’m fairly certain the duelsit numbers were around 10-15 % participation pool, depending whether you count alts on the same account etc.
There are ppl that argue about m+20 to make it either free or jail players to boost them.
M20 is free for the most part, it’s like the early mythic raid bosses at most, so basically something like Rival 2/Duelist, depending on the season.
Yea, when I did read that I kinda went “god no” since its def not worth the effort for really no good argument in general >_>
I have a slight feeling it could be even more, but that would just be me guessing =p
Most of the part if you do the mechanics and aloot of it depends on the affixes. I would say majority of it would be around duelist and could potentially be slightly harder depending on affixes. Obv this is counted towards non-boosting and actually doing things yourself x)
But this seasons m+ has been quite chill and easy for the most part. So I would prob say 16-18 might be around 1800? But who knows 
Last ssn m+ 15 was the end for the majority, now it´s way better, u see way more peoples at higher keys, but last evoker season was yeah… not that good
also m+ is less stressful, and the barrier to make progress is not as high as it is in pvp currently