Blizzard's VP of Game Design admits Arenas the biggest mistake.

[Lantyssa]

It has to not punish being the sheep.  The good get better while the bad don't.  Kind of throws the "it's all about skills" argument out.

[Ingmar]

It has to not punish being the sheep.  The good get better while the bad don't.  Kind of throws the "it's all about skills" argument out.

In arena by itself, the bad do get better, just not as fast and without the same upper bound on gear quality, and at least in theory, they end up playing each other, not the top teams, due to the matchmaking system.

The main suck in the system is actually introduced when you run into one of those top arena players in a non-arena context somewhere, where their rating doesn't do anything to segregate them from everyone else. (And of course there is some initial curbstomping that goes on in the first couple weeks of a new season before things shake out ratings-wise.)

[DLRiley]

Then a bunch of those players quit because now they're not getting any gear either, dragging even more people down into the "no gear" zone in a repetitive cycle

Filtering your usual drivel away, yes that is definitely an issue and exactly why Blizzard needs to remove rating reqs from majority of gear out there.

What you are wrong about is to why bottom quits. They stop participating because they don't get any meaningful rewards out of it, not because of victimization by antisocials or whatever psychobabble you chose to use these days. There has to be ding-gratz type of reward not tied to success to appeal to masses, but that goes contrary to 'even out playing field' requirement when these rewards are only given to successful.

Arena has to reward failure to gain mass appeal. :(

The bottom quit because either the game funnels you to one strategy or wannabe elites get to dictate the way you play. "No ding gratz? I leave" is the result of players gaming your system, not playing your game. The vast majority of multiplayer games outside of the mmo paradigm is filled to the 99 percentile with the bottom. They play the game despite being spawned camped, verbally abused, and no statical increases in power because they participated. Mmo's are carebear land and WoW's arenas is at best comparable to the  special olympics. 

[Nebu]

It has to not punish being the sheep.  The good get better while the bad don't.  Kind of throws the "it's all about skills" argument out.

The problem with the reward system in WoW is that the good get better faster because they not only improve in their play, but the get a double improvement from the gear rewards.  This allows the better players to rapidly distance themselves from the average players.  It's a primary reason why I think that having gear rewards in pvp is a bad idea if the rewards actively participate in the distancing between the good and the average.  The good should be handicapped, not made better.  Playing against other good players in a ranking system is a start, but it's less inclusive.

[Musashi]

I agree with you.  Gear rewards in PvP create a problem.  But I also don't think anyone would bother playing if there were no meaningful rewards.  See:  Halaa.  There's just no easy solution.  You gotta come up with something that makes enough people buy into it so that epeen can be waved, and drama can unfold.  Despite the problems it creates, gear disparity actually does help in that.  A cape and a title, eh, prolly not.  I know in actuality the difference is only on one's mind.  But the perception is that the difference just did a Mortal Strike on your face.  And that's pretty hard to compete with.

[WindupAtheist]

What you are wrong about is to why bottom quits. They stop participating because they don't get any meaningful rewards out of it, not because of victimization by antisocials or whatever psychobabble you chose to use these days.

You quite unsurprisingly fail to understand. The Trammel parallels have nothing to do with "victimization" or anything like that. They have to do with you hitching your e-peen to a foundering minority-interest douchebag PVP system, then spewing venom at everyone else for not being hardcore enough when the developers show up to take it out behind the barn and shoot it.

Arena has to reward failure to gain mass appeal.

The masses would rather be in battlegrounds. You can cry and scream and stamp your little feet that it's just because they're pussies and not hardcore, but nobody cares. Least of all Blizzard. Which is why they would rather introduce a Rated BG system than go back to bribing people into grudgingly plowing through their 10 matches per week.

[Tuncal]

Arena has to reward failure to gain mass appeal. :(

I would argue it has to reward participation. Every other activity has direct rewards : badges, honor, rep, tokens. You get nothing in Arenas until you pass over a certain level, and even then you are required to spend a lot of time, effort and resources outside of it just to be able to compete. It's simply bad design.

On the note of rated BGs, I really don't see how it can work. For good or for worse Arenas benefit from having a consistent team to play along each week, and even there it's a real pain to get enough people for a 5v5. Getting 14 other people for competitive AB week after week? Yeah good luck with that. And if you can't get that you're reduced to pugs amd afk'ers, which will be a truly competitive edge in rated BGs.

[Lakov_Sanite]

This thread delivers more than politics.   

[Fordel]

On the note of rated BGs, I really don't see how it can work. For good or for worse Arenas benefit from having a consistent team to play along each week, and even there it's a real pain to get enough people for a 5v5. Getting 14 other people for competitive AB week after week? Yeah good luck with that. And if you can't get that you're reduced to pugs amd afk'ers, which will be a truly competitive edge in rated BGs.

From what they've revealed about rated BGs so far, is that you'll never lose rating and that they fully expect people to make weekly PuG's instead of having a dedicated 10-15-25 man squad for which ever BG is the rated one that week. It'll be more like the dungeon daily quest then a true matchmaking ladder system.

[Shrike]

The bottom line in this for me is that arenas aren't much fun, but BGs are (or can be). The reason(s) I don't participate in arenas are 1) time, 2) time, and 3) they bore me.

However, I do like BGs. You get disasters like last night's 39 bracket AB where we have 6 alliance vs. 15 horde, but that doesn't happen THAT often (and the 7 ally vs. 10 sideshow freaks in WSG = ally victory in WSG an hour later made up for it). Still, it's even more casual (means I can find time for it) and I can have some fun. The frenetic 30sec knifefights-in-elevators that characterize arena play I don't find particulary fun.

Yeah, it's about the fun. After all, my twinks don't really get anything tangible from BGs, other than some experience. They're essentially constructs. That's the fun part: planning them out, then playing them to see how they do. Then adjusting them to compensate for what I find in the BGs.

[UnSub]

This thread delivers more than politics.   

I'm amazed it got this far.

WoW dev: Y'know, we didn't implement last-minute PvP into a PvE game very well.

F13.net: E-PEEN FIGHT! *slap* *slap* *slap*

[Venkman]

Why is anyone surprised? You can unravel the people in the top tier of anything to see the sequence of life events that lead them there, and which keep everyone else out. This is games, sports, politics, economics. I know some people like this idea that games start everyone at a level playing field. But that hasn't been true since before people started recognizing it.

While true, there is no reason in a game that certain reasonable balance is not done.

PvP which is gear dependent?  Seriously?

In a game entirely about gear, why would anyone be surprised by this? PvP in WoW is still PvP in an MMO. This is rapid decision making against changing conditions, with success based on your choices within the context of your stats. Those stats mostly come from gear, which is predominantly gotten through variuos grind mechanisms. So just because it's called "PvP" doesn't mean it's going to be any different than how the whole rest of the game is played.

It's still just rapid decision making against statistics, with the main difference of faster rapid decisions and more frequent changing conditions. The underlying foundation is the same. Ergo, the way to "rule" this type of game is also the same.

The disparity is as palpable between high tier PvP and endgame Raid gear. Most people either don't live the life necessary for it, or don't care enough to invest their time that way. And there's nothing wrong with that unless someone's under the misguided assumption that forum e-peen'ing is a valuable use of time.

This is why I mostly reserve PvP in environments where the disparity between "best" and "me" is not so palpable (random FPS servers, WoW BGs, etc).

[Lantyssa]

That was kind of my point.

I'm not surprised how things have developed, however I can still mock the tacked-on design and the people who take it far too seriously.

[Venkman]

Oh, missed the subtext.

[Crumbs]

Arena needs to be a separate game.  Wouldn't that make everyone happy?   WOW becomes easier to balance, Arena players get to concentrate on competing, everybody wins!

[Goreschach]

Arena needs to be a separate game.  Wouldn't that make everyone happy?   WOW becomes easier to balance, Arena players get to concentrate on competing, everybody wins!

Making it a completely separate game would be a waste of resources, all they really need to do to effect this is completely split the pvp and pve combat and item systems.

[Venkman]

Which is as much a waste of resources, because it's a completely separate game. Didn't this come up in this thread already? The idea of separate ranking systems with separate itemization (which already exists anyway)?

[Crumbs]

Which is as much a waste of resources, because it's a completely separate game. Didn't this come up in this thread already? The idea of separate ranking systems with separate itemization (which already exists anyway)?

No like, you go to Best Buy and get the box of World of Warcraft: Arena.   Arena as we know it today disappears from the WOW mmo completely.  I read the thread and didn't see this, but if it's here then my apologies.

[Venkman]

Oh. Yea, that hasn't been mentioned. WoW Arenas are not some mass marketable thing. It's something of an arcane e-sport that only those into MMOs would even consider. Unless you're also thinking that this is more like an EVE/Dust 514 kinda split where two completely separate activities merely share the same IP but nothing else? Maybe that could work. Something like a Tekken for Warcraft maybe. Particularly for consoles.

[Goumindong]

It seems like it would be fairly easy to have a "PVP talent tree" that would be separate from the normal talent tree and only be activated when in a PvP system. Then you don't have to worry about balancing two systems as one, you just balance each individually.

People change gear when pvping anyway, so you don't have to worry about that.

[Crumbs]

Oh. Yea, that hasn't been mentioned. WoW Arenas are not some mass marketable thing. It's something of an arcane e-sport that only those into MMOs would even consider. Unless you're also thinking that this is more like an EVE/Dust 514 kinda split where two completely separate activities merely share the same IP but nothing else? Maybe that could work. Something like a Tekken for Warcraft maybe. Particularly for consoles.

If it isn't mass marketable, then one has to wonder why it has such a dominating factor on the game of WOW.  I mean, weren't they gonna try to put this on TV? And I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact I think you're right.   

It's like Blitzball in FFX, except in this case FFX is balanced around Blitzball, and you can take your Blitz Ball out of the sphere and you can use it as one of the most powerful weapons in the game.  I have no bad feelings for Arena players, but it seems to me that since they're so offended by the rest of the playerbase they'd be happier not to deal with them.  And, as the original quote in the thread indicates, WOW developers would rather not have this albatross around their neck as they toil over balancing the game.

[Venkman]

If it isn't mass marketable, then one has to wonder why it has such a dominating factor on the game of WOW. 

Vocality and verbosity probably

[tmp]

I thought they're trying to repeat the Korean madness that's Starcraft e-sport... or at least hoping for something on similar level.

[Gobbeldygook]

It seems like it would be fairly easy to have a "PVP talent tree" that would be separate from the normal talent tree and only be activated when in a PvP system. Then you don't have to worry about balancing two systems as one, you just balance each individually.

Do you people not read the thread?  Darniaq just explained why that is not a workable decision: Now they need to write up 30 new talent trees, then balance those against each other cold without the years of iteration the current live trees have had.  Then you get to decide what PVP they are going to balance by.  The 2v2 bracket?  5v5 bracket?  Performance in PUG BGs?  1v1 duels?  Rated BGs?  World PVP?  All of them?  What happens when you mix them, like when someone is fighting a mob and gets jumped or is fighting Vandaar in Alterac Valley?

There is no magic bullet.

I thought they're trying to repeat the Korean madness that's Starcraft e-sport... or at least hoping for something on similar level.

Probably.  Currently, arenas are a cross of poker and MMA.  There is a reason there are no 3 on 3 MMA tournaments: MMA is hard enough to follow when it's just two dudes punching one another in the nuts, much less six guys trying to arm-bar each other.  They're probably hoping rated BGs will be slow enough paced that you can follow what's going on mostly from the overhead view.

[Zetor]

Probably.  Currently, arenas are a cross of poker and MMA.  There is a reason there are no 3 on 3 MMA tournaments: MMA is hard enough to follow when it's just two dudes punching one another in the nuts, much less six guys trying to arm-bar each other.  They're probably hoping rated BGs will be slow enough paced that you can follow what's going on mostly from the overhead view.

Well, from my experience in 5v5, rated BGs are going to be 2-shot fests. I can see it now...

(imagine the entire paragraph happening in less than 2.5 seconds)
Commentator 1: ... and 'Xxarthazxx' gets one more yard from the flag spawn spot, at 85% hp, but his AMS is down! You can see 'Sheeplol' dropping a pet nova on his two support melee, while counterspelling 'Ssjlegolas' who just fake-casted a holy light! Man, things are going bad for 'Keyboard Turners', but 'Lolcycloned' keeps a full stack of HOTs rolling on their offense, just when 'Gankt' gets 'Team Zomg's flag carrier, 'Itank', into a cheapshot while 'Pewpewed' is casting lava burst on 'Xxarthazxx'! Immolate and flame shock is up on 'Xxarthazxx' and we can see 'Globaled' casting a chaos bolt too, 'Wotflol' uses pain suppression, but it's not enough, down he goes! But at the same time, 'Itank' gets hit by a bladestorm, exorcism, and scourge strike at the same time... and he's down! Now both teams are reseting while their designated flag carriers are at the graveyard. Exciting!


WOW, the spectator sport of the 2010s. 

[KallDrexx]

If it isn't mass marketable, then one has to wonder why it has such a dominating factor on the game of WOW.  I mean, weren't they gonna try to put this on TV? And I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact I think you're right.   

It's a dominating factor while intertwined with the WoW MMO system, but as a separate entity it is nothing more than a "non-sucky" Fury, and monetizing and keeping a stand alone arena game popular isn't as easy as maintaining an Arena system as part of a much larger MMO.

[Crumbs]

If it isn't mass marketable, then one has to wonder why it has such a dominating factor on the game of WOW.  I mean, weren't they gonna try to put this on TV? And I'm not saying you're wrong, in fact I think you're right.   

It's a dominating factor while intertwined with the WoW MMO system, but as a separate entity it is nothing more than a "non-sucky" Fury, and monetizing and keeping a stand alone arena game popular isn't as easy as maintaining an Arena system as part of a much larger MMO.

Agreed.  I was pretty much playing devil's advocate there.  I know why it's such a dominating factor: because someone really, really wants it to be.

Hopefully though, Pardo's quote means that they see how Arenas have negatively affected the first M in MMO, and plan to downgrade the significance of Arena gear outside of the Arena itself.  That's my secret hope.