Unpopular opion : the game is still great

PVP Arenas
21

I never said “unprune everything” though, did I? It’s not all black and white.

This is such a dumb reason, you’re just regurgitating what Holinka spouted at the time. Whether or not cookie-cutter builds will exist or not is a scapegoat, what mattered was 1. the talents themselves, and 2. the amount of talents, as well as talent POINTS. Going 2/5 in one thing that disabled you from continuing with it to that 1/1 talent in the next that’s connected to it, or 5/5 just for that 1/1 made huge differences to class flavor. Just as an example.
As well as having the talents for each spec, but if you wanted to you could go with talents in a little bit of everything, or a little in one and most in another, but skipping the third altogether.

BUT!
Just because the old talent template was better, it doesn’t mean an entirely new one wouldn’t be able to top it. I never specifically asked for the old one back either, in that post. You’re just assuming things all on your own, buddypal.
As long as the end result is as stated, class diversity, and unpruning.

But I never asked for old abilities back in that post either, did I? I asked for unpruning, which can mean adding entirely new things. Your imagination is your limit. However, this homogenized crap in the game right now is only for masochistic children. Right now there are more and stronger passives condensed into fewer abilities than in the past, in case you haven’t noticed. That is not really a good thing.
As well as damage rotations having no real difference nor class identity, and it’s too easy to deal max damage, so there’s no depth to it too.

22

I feel like you read half of my op then disregarded the rest which is fine.

I set an example of the old talent tree to back up the point (which is the same as yours) that we need revamps and spell reworks.

As I said in my Op it did offer fun specs, smite priest, imp gun, early melee hunter, 2h sham etc
Which I think is what the game needs again.

I just don’t trust Blizzard to reinvent a talent tree system without filling it with talent dumps and short cuts, especially with their current track record.

Again - Activision have seen how popular mobile MMOs are getting - So don’t expect any unpruning pal.

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23

Fun? The game is awful. It’s frustrating and boring, it’s skin and bones compared to what it used to be.

But you know what they say, simple minds simple pleasures

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24

I dunno. If I find a game crap and boring, I play something else.

25

Then why are you playing, if you don’t enjoy it? Genuine question.

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26

Why are you still here then?

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27

Sub numbers, amount of genative feedback, Blizzard’s own admission.

Evidence through empirical evaluation.

28

Care to link any of those?

29

Maybe he just pve now while trying to tell blizz arenas are boring

30

Sure!

Granted, not confirmed (obviously), but even if you wish to be generous about the assumption it still doesn’t look good.

Negative feedback is at all time high, if you look at @warcraftdevs alone or youtube content creators analysis on what is wrong, the search result for last year alone brings up a large number of content blaming Blizzard for bad decisions.

At the same time Blizzard themselves have admitted (according to the latest 2 Q&A’s) that Azerite system was a complete failure and that the pruning of classes (Including GCD change) went too far.

You can find their Q&A videos (including earlier ones) from WoWhead. Here are the latest ones:

31

because maybe I have hopes that the game will eventually return to it’s former self and become fun and worth playing??

And also because I get a cheeky chunk of income from it : )

32

Money, and because i’ve invested so much time into this game over the years that even while it’s in a tragic spot and im barely logging in for more than a couple of hours a week I still have hope with that with enough community backlash over the stupid ideas that have plagues the game over the past 3-5 years they’ll start listening. (Which arguably they have). Whether they’re listening to the fans or their subcount figures tho, it’s hard to tell.

33

I’d say the game is in an excellent state from a PvP point of view.

From an Arena point of view it seems like most classes have 1-2 specs that are viable at higher ratings. The variety of comps also seems decent, with solid choices both for melee and casters, zerg and burst alike.

I think players take this a little bit for granted these days. We’ve become spoiled over the years.
Thinking back to the early days of Arena, around WotLK, I recall Ghostcrawler saying that the developers’ goal was to ensure that every class had one viable spec for Arena. Anything beyond that was icing on the cake. Back then that goal was so difficult for Blizzard to achieve that they pretty much laser-targeted individual specs for attention, whilst dismissing others entirely. So Frost would be the designated spec for PvP for Mage, whilst Arcane and Fire would receive no developer attention or care at all.
These days Blizzard seems to be in a place where they can actually maintain attention on multiple specs for a single class for PvP, like Frost and Fire for Mage, or Shadow and Discipline for Priest, and so on.
That’s significant progress. You don’t have to play Restoration now in Arena if you’re a Druid. You can actually choose to be a Balance or Feral Druid now.

I think as far as the surrounding game design goes it’s the same.
Again, if you go back to WotLK, Cata, or MoP, Blizzard kept going back and forth on how to transition from Season to Season. Should they reset the MMR or not? What to do about wintrading? Boosting? How should end-of-Season rewards be delivered and when? All that stuff was in constant flux and there wasn’t a clear-cut approach to it.
These days the MMR carries over from Season to Season. The wintraders are weeded out as much as possible, boosting seems less prevalent and more frowned upon, and the rewards are handed out in a much smoother way with all but the rank 1 being rewarded immediately.

We have a lot more content these days.
I know some people swear to Nagrand Arena and would be happy to see everything else deleted from the game. But for the community as a whole, I think the game is better off with more breath in the amount of maps that exist.
Likewise with classes, Blizzard have actually managed to incorporate both Death Knights, Monks, and Demon Hunters into PvP without obliterating everything in the process. And for the people who play those classes, I think they appreciate that. And for everyone else, I’d argue that the gameplay is richer for having more classes (and specs) to play against.

Even if you look at a hot topic like class balance, then I’d wager that we’ve come a long way. An overpowered class or spec today is nothing compared to a Shadowmourne Death Knight, Dragonwrath Mage, or Fangs of the Father Rogue of old.
And whereas the past was dominated by periods of staleness, because class balance changes were only delivered in patches (which came every 2-3 months), then today Blizzard have opted for an approach of delivering frequent changes and lots of them.
Players have always requested balance changes and buffs and nerfs to this and that. At least today – more than ever before – Blizzard are actually delivering on all that demand for class balance changes. We’re 1 week into Season 2 and we’ve already had our first big class balance tuning pass, and no doubt it won’t be the last.

Outside of personal preferences, subjective desires, and pure nostalgia, I think it’s difficult to point to something that’s far worse than it used to be, and very detrimental to the enjoyment of the game.
I think it’s still fair if people don’t enjoy the game as much as they used to. That’s in some cases normal. I used to play a lot of chess, but these days I enjoy it less than I used to, despite the fact that chess has not changed at all for thousands of years!

But yeah, state of PvP and Arena seems overall solid I’d say. :upside_down_face:

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34

Jito I know you only post something if its the opposite to popular opinion but the fun-ness of PvP is entirely based around class design. If class design is poor then all the factors you listed are null.

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36

I don’t post something only if it’s the opposite to popular. I tend to post something when my viewpoint hasn’t already been expressed by someone else. It’s often a marginal viewpoint, but not always. :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m not sure if I’d agree that the enjoyment of PvP stems entirely from class design. I have lots of fun in Warmode at the moment, and I’d argue it has nothing to do with class design.

Regardless, for those who do find that PvP revolves around class design – and who don’t like the current class design – I kind of feel like it’s very subjective. But it’s also difficult to objectively evaluate. I personally like the metric of looking at how many viable specs and comps that exist in Arena. The more there are, the more indicative of a healthy class design it seems, in my opinion. And as said before, then there are lots of viable specs and comps these days relative to the past.

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37

And yet your opinion is niche. Fun in Warmode at the moment is probably the last thing I hear, normally its the exact opposite.

The main reason I hear people not enjoying PvP is class design, for how can the game be fun to play when the class itself isn’t. If you’ve played a class that had more abilities and felt stronger 15 years ago then it’s not exactly a great feeling in an MMORPG to feel like your character is getting weaker as time goes on and just magically forgets how to do things it used to be able to do. That plus many of the defining abilities of what drew you to your class and made it fun in PvP for you are completely absent now.

For me i’d say I loved Warrior PvP because of:

Stances/Weapon swapping
Intervene, Intercept and Charge Stun

The first made gameplay dynamic and it mattered what ability you used when. E.g swapping to Berserker Stance so you can Pummel or Intercept, back to Defensive Stance to Disarm or Shield Wall, to Battle to Charge e.t.c

The second made Warrior feel mobile and disruptive, while at the same time having a skill-shot ability that was able to completely change the match outcome.

However they’re no longer a thing, now I just spam damage and feel like a lot of what is going on is completely out of my hands. I don’t understand how that can be perceived as fun bar a minority of people.

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38

My opinion is definitely niche on the forums.

I’d say it’s irrelevant whether lots of people dislike Warmode, because some people clearly do like it!
And that’s what makes PvP great these days – you have lots of options in regards to what you can do! So if you really enjoy Warmode, then you can do that. If you’re all about Arenas, Battlegrounds, or even Island Expeditions, then it’s right there for you to do.
Even as far as class design and balance goes, you have so much choice. More classes exist in the game than ever before and there are lots of viable specs and comps to play.

If you fall into that category of having played the same class for a decade or longer, and having a particular preference for a past long gone, then that really is just subjective preference.

The Warrior concerns you have are just really difficult to broaden out across the game as a whole, as a way of measuring PvP enjoyment overall. I mean, how do you translate your problems to other classes and specs? Take Demon Hunter. That class doesn’t have a past filled with different design iterations, and it has never gone through pruning or redesign or anything. And yet lots of people play it! Awesome!

If you look at Arena participation for the last Season, going by the number of rank 1 titles handed out, it was through the roof. Driving a narrative of how things are oh so bad doesn’t really correlate with a reality where Arena is as popular as ever, and World PvP is more engaging than ever before.

I sympathize with the personal, subjective feeling that the past was more fun. But that just doesn’t detract from the fact that PvP design overall seems to be a lot more pleasing to a lot more people than ever before.

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39

The point is not the balance in my opinion but the feeling of the game.

Classes are not as fun as they were.

But int the past too we had problems i would not want to face again.

Nostalgia is a beautiful lie.

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40

a) That is objectively a lie. The game was far more popular prior to WoD, and therefore even if BFA scores past Legion in terms of pvp (which it does), it’s still WAY behind in terms of popularity when compared to Mists of pandaria or expansions before.
b) Like Saiyoko pointed out, if class design sucks, then the pvp sucks. You can’t dance around it, that’s a fact. There’s a reason why Q&A is filled with questions about overall class design and azerite armor, because those are really the only means through which you can customize your character’s toolkit and/or make plays (which are incredibly limited).

They also admitted that they took too broad a brush when they pruned classes and they are considering moving back, as per the latest Q&A.

Short lesson in video game marketing, customer retention & loyalty is incredibly important and Blizzard gains way more (defacto) from a player that’s been loyal for several years than a guy that hops in the game and then unsubs after a week or two when they find the game dull to play.

Customer isn’t always right but the developer team has been proven constantly to be on the wrong by the community when it comes to class design: Even if a class is viable and strong in pvp, it may still feel like sawdust compared to the good things you had in past.

Also the spec argument you bring up doesn’t really hold any ground as even niche specs like arcane and fire could be made to work in MoP and previous expansions.

Is it, really?

Warmode participation for one is a really bad thing to take numbers from because you’ll remember after a week or so, the Alliance practically lost all interest in Warmode, and only came back after the rewards were made insanely good for turning it on.

This, again, is your typical whataboutism because let’s be real here, these are the questions why we pay them our monthly sub for.

You tackle a problem, you don’t avoid it or simply go “Oh it’s hard to get this right, we don’t want to do this”.

Because hey, some Island expeditions and Warfronts can’t fill the void class design has left in the playerbase, despite them being easier to make and design.

Anyway to give you a concrete answer because I hate waving arms around without actually giving a solid answer to a question, here’s mine:

Ask the playerbase.

Make an in-game questionnaire for players, that is optional to answer to.

The questions could include something alone these lines:

  1. Which expansions / patch’s class design pleased you the most? (simple pick an option)
  2. What do you feel your class lacks / what would you like your class to have?
  3. Do you want vendors?

You could go down to A LOT of detail, with both simple “pick an option” choices and elaborate (write x amount about your choices). Then you have a team of data analytics & alghoritms go through the material, sort it, and see how the poll comes out.

You then, as a developer (team) make changes based on the feedback given, or deny some of them, provided that you give a solid argument as to why you do not want to do x thing.

There, concrete solution for a concrete problem.

The DH problem is also basically a no-issue because you can just make up or invent new abilities. Easy.

1 Like
41

No that’s not true.

Rank 1 is given to the top 0.1% with at least 150 wins. That makes it possible to calculate how many active Arena players there have been in a given Season by looking at the amount of Rank 1 titles handed out.

MoP’s most popular Season was Season 15 with 375k eligible characters.
WoD’s most popular Season was Season 16 with 320k eligible characters.
BfA’s currently completed Season 1 had a total of 405k eligible characters.

So BfA is currently the most popular Arena has ever been.

And you all know that, because there’s been countless threads on this forum during Season 1 where people have commented on how everyone and their mom are getting Gladiator and how Rank 1 titles are just being handed out left and right.
And that’s because there are a lot of people participating. That means lots of spots for Gladiators and Rank 1s.

And if you factor in how alt-unfriendly BfA currently is compared to MoP or WoD, then you really get a sense of just how popular Arena in BfA is.

Disagree, but I’ll accept the premise and reiterate what I said earlier:

Class design is objectively better than ever before, because there are more classes to play, more viable specs to choose from, and more comps to explore. And the addition of Azerite Traits and Honor talents introduce more character customization as well.

The sum of the above is objectively better than in years past where you had less of all that.

People who are happy to play Demon Hunter today are inevitably better off than in WotLK, because they couldn’t play Demon Hunter back then!
People who are happy to play Fire Mage today are inevitably better off than in Legion, because Fire Mage wasn’t viable to play back then!

Good class design is something that is as popular amongst as many players as possible. It’s not about having an Arms Warrior design that perfectly caters to Saiyoko’s refined tastes. He’s just 1 guy. If there’s another design that appeals to 2 people, then that design is objectively superior.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. :alien:

My argument is that the volume of viable specs and comps in Arena (and PvP as a whole) has increased over the years since TBC when Arenas were introduced.

I find that very difficult to be a disputable argument, since Blizzard have introduced 3 brand new classes to the game since then (not to mention all the new races with their unique racials), meaning that PvP is ultimately much richer today than ever before.