Some thoughts

[Ingmar]

Yes, sorry, MtG = Magic the Gathering. Wizards of the Coast uses ELO style ratings for some of their competitive games, it was used for D&D Minis too when that was a going concern (another iffy choice.)

[Sjofn]

Nerd.

[kildorn]

Nerd.

...Nerdhag?

Is that actually a valid niche of women?

[Soulflame]

My disinterest in BG pvp is more about the ridiculous burst damage and CC, not the lack of shiny.  Arcane mages and Ret paladins being (until recently) a fine example of how NOT to implement a pvp class.  I mentioned that I'm currently doing BGs for marks, mostly because my desire to try to complete an achievement overrides my dislike for standing around for 10s while I die without any ability to actually do anything.

[Nevermore]

I'm 1500 and the other dude is 2000 whatever. He's already proved he's better then me at Arena's, so we are going to increase his already superior skill artificially through superior gear? Wat?  

What, are you trying to imply that if Kasparov got to start with 2 queens and pawns that could also move sideways that that wouldn't have made chess matches more exciting?

[Gobbeldygook]

That's true, however, the imbalance still exists.  Take two teams equally competent, and place 1 in hateful, and 1 in deadly, watch who wins.

1. The difference between pvp tiers is 10% of stats.  That's it.  It is not a magical, awe-inspiring change that takes you from scrub to god.
2. There is still a random number generator.  Unless you'd like to add a further descriptor 'and everyone rolled the same number of hits, crits, resists, procs, and runs in the same directions from identically timed fears'?
3. I'll happily bet on the guys in hateful winning if you'll let me pick the classes.

Forcing people to it as Blizzard has done is a sign that the Arena isn't quite working out as they had hoped, so rather then simple let is become the niche it really is, they are forcing everyone to do it if they want to enjoy the PvP combat in general.

Kaplan's said they intended for PVPers to PVE for their weapons, which is why there are none available until 2k.  Clearly this means their raid content is a complete failure that is not working out how they hoped and is propped up by people being forced to do it to compete at grinding out their Hodir dailies and arenas.

Which is why you have a rating system.

Which is why you have ratings on gear.  You don't face the guy in full deadly when you're at 1500 with no gear because he's at 2.1k and you're at 1500 unless you have a habit of queueing up at 5 am on monday mornings.  Instead you are facing the guys at 1575 who might have a 1% gear advantage over you from the time they got lucky and broke 1600.  Contrast this with BC where by the end of season 3 you had people in the very best pvp gear queueing up at 1500.  You could still totally beat them because they were bad, but it was still incredibly demoralizing for people just dipping their toes into arena to be immediately curbstomped by better players in better gear than they'd be able to get for months.
---

You already see this being adjusted by lowering the ratings requirements on some of the items.

)
If you're talking about the recent change to deadly gear getting 100 of its rating requirement chopped off, that is a bone to the hardcore souls still running 5's.  It's ludicrous that you could be the best team on your BG and still not be able to buy shoulders.

If you're talking about the new dramatic change in how ratings for gear will work in Season 6, those changes good because the current setup is pretty retarded and actually worse than Season 4.  The first set of carrots (1600) are a touch too high to tempt newbies into the arena.

[Sjofn]

I'm 1500 and the other dude is 2000 whatever. He's already proved he's better then me at Arena's, so we are going to increase his already superior skill artificially through superior gear? Wat?  

What, are you trying to imply that if Kasparov got to start with 2 queens and pawns that could also move sideways that that wouldn't have made chess matches more exciting?

I was going to make a Karazhan chess joke here, but then I remembered you never did Karazhan. :(

[Delmania]

1. The difference between pvp tiers is 10% of stats.  That's it.  It is not a magical, awe-inspiring change that takes you from scrub to god.

If you're aim is to try and create a balanced, fair PvP competition environment, 10% is still too much.  It has to be equlalized.

2. There is still a random number generator.  Unless you'd like to add a further descriptor 'and everyone rolled the same number of hits, crits, resists, procs, and runs in the same directions from identically timed fears'?

I'll concede on this one.

3. I'll happily bet on the guys in hateful winning if you'll let me pick the classes.

What about it, your composition is important?  So?  That's inherent in a class based game.

Kaplan's said they intended for PVPers to PVE for their weapons, which is why there are none available until 2k.  Clearly this means their raid content is a complete failure that is not working out how they hoped and is propped up by people being forced to do it to compete at grinding out their Hodir dailies and arenas.

Nice try, however, I don't see any "remove Nax" posts, but I do see plenty of "remove Arena", "Arena is unabalanced", etc.  Forcing people to PvE for a weapon is a cockblock, and effort by Kaplan who, despite being the lead desiger of WoW, makes many questionable decisions.  He doesn't see to grasp or care about the fact that equalizing gear in PvP is far more important than in PvE due to the fact that the other side doesn't respond to beats.

Which is why you have a rating system.

Which is why you have ratings on gear.  You don't face the guy in full deadly when you're at 1500 with no gear because he's at 2.1k and you're at 1500 unless you have a habit of queueing up at 5 am on monday mornings.  Instead you are facing the guys at 1575 who might have a 1% gear advantage over you from the time they got lucky and broke 1600.  Contrast this with BC where by the end of season 3 you had people in the very best pvp gear queueing up at 1500.  You could still totally beat them because they were bad, but it was still incredibly demoralizing for people just dipping their toes into arena to be immediately curbstomped by better players in better gear than they'd be able to get for months.

This argument is good for ratings, not for rating requirements on gear.  Think of professional sports.  They don't award the better teams with better equipment, rather, all teams are subject to equipment regulations specificall to prevent this issue.  The Arena is a lolesport, so why not have it follow the same rules, outside of tournaments?

[Fordel]

They also give the best Draft picks to the worst teams. I don't think the NFL would be nearly as interesting if the SuperBowl teams got the number 1 and 2 choices.


Then again I don't know much about football.

[Gobbeldygook]

If you're aim is to try and create a balanced, fair PvP competition environment, 10% is still too much.  It has to be equlalized.

This argument is good for ratings, not for rating requirements on gear.

The point I was trying to lead you to is that having no rating requirements on gear leads to serious power inflation at the bottom end, ever-bigger power differential between newbies and old timers, and otherwise makes arena worse.

In my (and blizzard's) world with ratings on gear, Joe Noob is on a fairly level playing field because the people at 1300 will only have the PVP gear you can get by being at 1300-1350 -  the hateful set, deadly offsets, relics/idols/librams, and deadly gloves.  They can also have PVE gear, but that's pretty accessible thanks to the lack of attunements.  Those guys can lose all the matches they want, they're not going to get better PVP gear until they actually start winning some matches and moving up out of range of the newbies trying the arenas for the first time.

But what happens when Joe Noob wants to play arenas in your world with no rating requirements on gear?

He queues up and is immediately matched up against people that have been losing arena matches forever.  They're terrible, but are sporting a full set of ulduar-25 grade pvp gear vs what he was able to buy with honor.  His first experience with arena is getting farmed for 150 rating in a 0-10 knock-out down to his 'proper' rating.  So he looks up how many arena points he gets per week and realizes it will take months for him to reach gear parity with the people at 1300 who just brutally sodomized him.  He says fuck it and /signs a petition to delete arenas.

Why do you hate newbies?  Do you work for Mythic?

[Merusk]

That happens anyway, as groups tank their ratings to gank noobs OR form teams to power other noobs ratings up for cash or gold.

Then you have that whole problem where you meet them on the battleground - the part people actually LIKE playing - and you have no chance of killing them because of both gear and skill.  THAT's what the complaint here is.

We understand you want to protect the e-peen system. We just don't care what you want.

[Gobbeldygook]

That happens anyway, as groups tank their ratings to gank noobs OR form teams to power other noobs ratings up for cash or gold.

1. So you lose a bunch of matches and tank your rating.  Then you win some and regain your rating, so now you need to lose some so you can keep 'ganking' noobs.  This sounds less like grief than performance art.
2. Hidden rating will sabotage most efforts to power level noobs up in ratings.

[Delmania]

You also noticed I said giving out gear rewards for PvP is as bad as having ratings on the gear.  Given that Blizzard is not going to grant that wish, my solution would be to let people buy all PvP gear with honor or Arena tokens.  That way, the people who want to Arena can do the Arena, and the people who want to do the Battlegrounds can do the Battlegrounds, and people who enjoy both enjoy both.  Gear is a means to and end, not and end.  It's good that Blizzard has developed a varied endgame of PvE and PvP related activities.  It's no great how they force you to "do it all".  

[Gobbeldygook]

You also noticed I said giving out gear rewards for PvP is as bad as having ratings on the gear.  Given that Blizzard is not going to grant that wish, my solution would be to let people buy all PvP gear with honor or Arena tokens.

You only get arena points once per week.
You can only run each raid once per week.
You can grind as much honor as you want.

Are you proposing all of these methods of advancement provide gear of the exact same quality?

[Sjofn]

No, but there is probably a middle ground (and indeed, there USED TO BE) between "useless crap you might as well not wear" and "lol stompy stomp." Arena needs people to play it, and the way it works right now does not make it attractive to the fodder (and I am part of that group, mind) to even try.

Seriously, buying old arena stuff with honor points worked fine. If one INSISTS that there MUST be ratings on arena shit, I'd say go for it as long as those ratings get stripped when they get tossed on the honor merchant because they're seasons out of date. That way the arena hardcore dorks still have their peens to waggle, but people new to the system aren't so hopelessly behind it's embarrassing to all involved.

[Zetor]

*note: I haven't read about the s6 changes, but unless they involve removing all ratings from all gear, my point stands*

1. The difference between pvp tiers is 10% of stats.  That's it.  It is not a magical, awe-inspiring change that takes you from scrub to god.
2. There is still a random number generator.  Unless you'd like to add a further descriptor 'and everyone rolled the same number of hits, crits, resists, procs, and runs in the same directions from identically timed fears'?
3. I'll happily bet on the guys in hateful winning if you'll let me pick the classes.

About 1: wrong, very wrong. I seem to remember this claim being made in season4, and it was wrong then, too. :P
You need to compare deadly to the blue starter set. (I'll go ahead and compare it to the honor-grind set instead of the crafted one, which'd be even worse)
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40786 vs http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40778
35 stam, 23 strength, 15 crit rating, 14 resil, 132 armor, for ONE piece (arguably the one with the most stats, but still). That's more like 30%. And this is the first WOTLK season, any bets what it'll be like in season8 for a newcomer who starts with blues? Blizzard have shown that they don't want to make old pieces available through honor, see also season4 gear STILL having rating requirements -- even if they relax / eliminate those, the newcomer still won't start with any arena points to buy them, and things are even worse if he doesn't want to grind the insane amount of honor required for the 'starter' blue set.

The other problem (regularly brought up at arenajunkies etc) is raid gear in arenas. Some classes can get away with using tons of pve gear (this isn't new either, it's been the case since season2), which puts raid guilds above casual guilds by a lot. Weapons are actually more worthwhile to get from high-end raid PVE - look at the ratings of melee classes with titansteel destroyers vs those with betrayers of humanity vs those with s5 weapons (do they exist?). You also need 25-man tokens to buy the 'lower end' epics from an arena season from the badge vendor (lol @ blue pvp gear buyable with heroic tokens), which means ulduar raiders will be able to spend their surplus badges on s5-6 gear even if they're 1200 players and non-raiders will be SOL. [barring getting lucky on archavon 2.0 - I killed him nearly every week as one of the few priests in the raid, and have one piece of pve gear to show for it, sigh]

My POV on this is the same as it's ever been - normalize gear inside arena, BGs and wintergrasp (when the battle is going on), and allow everyone to set up their trinkets/weapons/enchants/gems at an arena battlemaster or something beforehand. That's it. The better players will still win, and they'll get their titles / epeen pieces to tote around in ironforge, and the newcomers / non-raiders / worse geared players won't feel like cannon fodder. It doesn't solve the problem of ubergeared people ganking in the world, but world pvp is a joke either way.

(Edit: #3 doesn't help the case of arena being glorified rock-paper-scissors, which is pretty damning when it comes to 'skill' claims... unless you play like 100 games a week at completely random times and get a good spread of assorted teams to fight. I'll play my 10 games a week in the scrub-1700 bracket, kek.)


-- Z.

[sinij]

There were rumors going around in EJ that Kalgan wanted the game to keep focusing on arenas, and then Tigule pointed that, y'know, people simply prefer bg's, so kalgan went STFU, and tigule went NO U.

But yes, kalgan must die in a car fire.

Considering that Tigole no longer works for Blizzard don't expect anything to change. For once I agree with "hardcore", PvP isn't raiding where you just have to poopsock your way into epics. If you want PvP gear L2P and earn it, you can do it in under 2hours/week.

[Merusk]

There were rumors going around in EJ that Kalgan wanted the game to keep focusing on arenas, and then Tigule pointed that, y'know, people simply prefer bg's, so kalgan went STFU, and tigule went NO U.

But yes, kalgan must die in a car fire.

Considering that Tigole no longer works for Blizzard don't expect anything to change. For once I agree with "hardcore", PvP isn't raiding where you just have to poopsock your way into epics. If you want PvP gear L2P and earn it, you can do it in under 2hours/week.

He still works for Blizz, just not on WoW.

Also, less people are participating so that top 30% will be an ever-smaller number of players as more and more drop out.  Even true 'elite pvpers' will be blocked out since there's no reason for noobs to compete.  Then there's the part Zetor mentioned where you do indeed need to raid to compete, since those weapons > PVP weapons at this point, plus the need for Heroic Raid (valor) badges.

And this all still ignores that folks like BGs more, and the Arena gear totally fucks up that system with no ratings or gear check in place at all.

[kildorn]

If you're talking about the recent change to deadly gear getting 100 of its rating requirement chopped off, that is a bone to the hardcore souls still running 5's.  It's ludicrous that you could be the best team on your BG and still not be able to buy shoulders.

If you're talking about the new dramatic change in how ratings for gear will work in Season 6, those changes good because the current setup is pretty retarded and actually worse than Season 4.  The first set of carrots (1600) are a touch too high to tempt newbies into the arena.

And thus, you see the issue with the ratings system: It requires BAD players in order to not fuck over the GOOD players by it's ratings system. The carrots are being lowered because the current setup says "hey guys, you can play arena with us! Oh, but you can't get the toys out of it. 50% of you can't have any. But if you stop playing, it doesn't mean 100% of the players get them, it means the 50% moves."

Arenas with their current ratings system and gear requirements are simply a social experiment to see how much people will accept a horribly flawed system in order to feel elite. It's the same issues EQ1 had with people purposefully killing off key progression targets below them just to cockblock other players.

[kildorn]

You also noticed I said giving out gear rewards for PvP is as bad as having ratings on the gear.  Given that Blizzard is not going to grant that wish, my solution would be to let people buy all PvP gear with honor or Arena tokens.

You only get arena points once per week.
You can only run each raid once per week.
You can grind as much honor as you want.

Are you proposing all of these methods of advancement provide gear of the exact same quality?

I can run heroics on a daily basis. I'm suggesting that it's a viable level of gear (ilevel ~200) for BG grinding. Hell, those items are available via CRAFTING.

Are you saying crafted epics and badge epics are ruining WoW? If you want to keep the ilvl213 gear for the l33t, go nuts. But ilvl200 is handed out like candy, so I see no reason for ilvl200 pvp gear to be arbitrarily more difficult to acquire.

PVP is about balance. You don't accomplish this by jacking around the gear levels. Besides, your situation of "if you're 1500 and they're 1575, you have the same gear!" is actually broken if you didn't start arena at the same time. Weekly points accumulation is what causes that problem, not BG honor. BG honor was buying old season shit. The guys in full season gear minus shoulder/weapon were an issue because the arena ratings/points system artificially punishes new players, since they start with nothing and need to slowly grind up points to acquire the gear they need to compete.

The only way to make wow viable as an arena sport is to give everyone preset gear on entering an arena, and removing random "proc" talents and enchantments. At that point, it's a test of skill and class combinations. That's the fundamental flaw in Arenas as an esport: unless everyone has an exactly level playing field at the start of every match, it's not being decided entirely by player skill.

[Xanthippe]

The only way to make wow viable as an arena sport is to give everyone preset gear on entering an arena, and removing random "proc" talents and enchantments. At that point, it's a test of skill and class combinations. That's the fundamental flaw in Arenas as an esport: unless everyone has an exactly level playing field at the start of every match, it's not being decided entirely by player skill.

Exactly.

If arena is about skill, then why not have naked arena?  Why not have arena gear that is only usable in arena?

Here's the problem with the current system for me:  I hate arena and won't do arena, regardless.  There is no carrot for me to do arena, being a sheep for the wolves.

Since there are no more welfare epics, then my choices for battleground gear are also very limited.

If I am to become a sheep in the battlegrounds as well as arena, with crappy blue pvp gear as my reward - well, it's pve time for me!

See how this works?  It means that the enjoyable battleground experience that I used to have no longer is there for me.  So not only do I avoid arenas but I am also avoiding battlegrounds.

I guess I'm too noob for WoW pvp anymore.  Fortunately the pve game is still holding my interest - as well as the occasional Wintergrasp.

[sinij]

And this all still ignores that folks like BGs more, and the Arena gear totally fucks up that system with no ratings or gear check in place at all.

Do you think failing/AFK for couple hours in BGs should be seriously rewarded? Even in raids you have to succeed and down that foozle to get to that gear. I think first you need to be talking about not giving out honor/marks to losers, second about measuring performance of individual players and only then you should be talking about making adequate rewards available through BG system.

[K9]

My idea was always that marks and honour in BGs should only be awarded to people who had done at least 10-20% of the damage or healing done by the average of the top 3 damage dealers or healers in the BG, where neither damage and healing done to NPCs, nor overheal/overkill are counted. It would solve the afk problem wthout punishing anyone who is actually making an effort. n.b. this would require all honour to be held in limbo until the point at which the player exits the BG.

[Fordel]

And this all still ignores that folks like BGs more, and the Arena gear totally fucks up that system with no ratings or gear check in place at all.

Do you think failing/AFK for couple hours in BGs should be seriously rewarded? Even in raids you have to succeed and down that foozle to get to that gear. I think first you need to be talking about not giving out honor/marks to losers, second about measuring performance of individual players and only then you should be talking about making adequate rewards available through BG system.

AFKing no.

But Failing? Yes. If you don't reward the people who constantly fail, then you won't have a PvP system for much longer. No one but the mob ever has to 'lose' in PvE, and the mob does not care how many times it gets farmed.

Participation, no matter how futile, needs to be rewarded.

[Hindenburg]

Participation, no matter how futile, needs to be rewarded.

A-yup. Pretty much that.

Of course, the next argument is that "participation is it's own god damned reward", which is just silly.

[Xanthippe]

Do you think failing/AFK for couple hours in BGs should be seriously rewarded? Even in raids you have to succeed and down that foozle to get to that gear. I think first you need to be talking about not giving out honor/marks to losers, second about measuring performance of individual players and only then you should be talking about making adequate rewards available through BG system.

This might come as a shock to some, but the vast majority of people who are in the battlegrounds are not afk.

Some of us have never ever once afk'ed in a battleground for honor.

Afking is a separate problem than failing.  And yes, as was pointed out, failing while trying still needs to be rewarded, or there are no sheep for the wolves.

[Merusk]

Not to mention the /afk problem is relativly easily solved by tweaking the way honor is rewarded and by granting 0 honor and tokens for 0 damage/ healing done in a round.  Even the shittiest of shit players can land one blow over a 10 min game. 

I'm not saying Honor should provide equal gear to top tier arena, but it shouldn't be the loltastic shit it is right now. 

[Zetor]

As an amusing sidenote, most of the AFKers I see in battlegrounds are people with gladiator or duelist titles.


-- Z.

[kildorn]

As an amusing sidenote, most of the AFKers I see in battlegrounds are people with gladiator or duelist titles.


-- Z.

This. The great unwashed don't AFK in BGs often. The people who think they're ABOVE bgs, but want more gear do. Usually Arena people trying to get the off-set epics from honor.

That's fixed by both not having marks requirements for items, and by having ALL pieces available via arena points instead of the split system.

Ideally, setup zones of influence (flag rooms, cap points, etc) and base your honor/mark gains by either being A) constantly in combat (being camped at your spawn situation), or B) spending more than 30% of the match at control zones (which allows for the 0damage/healing guy who was guarding the farm all match)

Worst case, AFKers have to run back to control zones all the time to AFK, and they're gankbait there. It becomes inefficient to AFK because movement every death is required, and deaths are frequent.

But really, I just oppose setting up the system to punish EVERYONE, because a few people AFKed in an annoying fashion. If someone cheats on a math test, the entire class isn't flunked :P

[Vash]

The AFK in BG's thing is something that constantly nags at me and constantly reinforces the thought in the back of my mind that says Blizzard just doesn't have a clue when it comes to pvp.

I mean, even WAR with it's cascade of epic fail decisions managed to patch in a moderately effective way to prevent people AFK'ing in scenarios a few weeks after launch.  WoW has been around 4+ years with BG's for 3+ years and the best they've come up with is a tedious report system that doesn't even really do much to stop people AFK'ing. 

It's thoughts like that, that make you wonder if your a masochist if you try to have fun in WoW PvP. 

[Xanthippe]

I just tried the battlegrounds again after several weeks of not.  Classes that have to stand relatively still in order to dps suffer quite a bit.  Classes that can dps on the move seem to end up at the top of the charts.

The makeup seems to have changed a lot since TBC - there were no warriors at all, but lots of dks and pallies.  Fewer rogues, locks and hunters.

[kildorn]

I just tried the battlegrounds again after several weeks of not.  Classes that have to stand relatively still in order to dps suffer quite a bit.  Classes that can dps on the move seem to end up at the top of the charts.

The makeup seems to have changed a lot since TBC - there were no warriors at all, but lots of dks and pallies.  Fewer rogues, locks and hunters.

High survival burst classes.

Sadly, the response seems to have been "get resil, noobs" about fixing burst classes. Arcane mages were pretty absurd, too. Healer not in plate? Hi, I'm going to threeshot you.

[Vash]

High survival burst classes.

Sadly, the response seems to have been "get resil, noobs" about fixing burst classes. Arcane mages were pretty absurd, too. Healer not in plate? Hi, I'm going to threeshot you.

Which is why Arcane mages got gutted in 3.0.9, PoM + AP can no longer be used at the same time, AP got reduced to 10% more dmg from 20%, Arcane Barrage had it's spell damage coefficient reduced to the point it isn't useful in PvE unless you have to move around, Arcane blast glyph got lowered to 3% per stack from 5%.

They lowered some cd's to try and keep the spec competitive in PvE but it is still got nerfed pretty harshly, I'd be shocked if the WoW forums aren't flooded with pissed mages on a witch hunt.

[kildorn]

I knew they got hit, DKs and Ret Pallies are still absurd, though. I've lived through some seriously stupid shit in AB (like holding the LM against four attackers by my gnomish lonesome)

[Vash]

Yeah, they still are pretty crazy, wondering when the "PvP burst reduction" nerf will come for them.  Played my mage alt last week and getting 2-3 shotted by a fully epic'd out DK gave me flashbacks of the days when MS warriors with Askhandi -> Edge of Insanity -> Might of Menethil would run around 2-3 shotting people in cloth/leather while mages and warlocks could realistically 1 shot people.   

The more things change the more they stay the same I guess, even if we have 3-4x bigger health and mana pools now.