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

[Venkman]

Gear progression is at the heart of WoW. You can't just remove that and expect to feel confident that players will still be in Arenas months and months down the road. Titles alone matter to the 1-2% of the people that may have a shot of ever hitting the top (lifestyle mostly). And conveying advantages in BGs while workable still means a reward system that compels them out of the system you're trying to fix.

This would be a good idea to have started the concept of Arenas with. But years later you've got some very established conventions you don't just arbitarily toss out the window. Not after you've hit your peak and are looking more at retention/win-back strategies than new acquisitions ones.

[Nebu]

Failure to toss out bad ideas is precisely the problem with MMO's.  They cling to their bad ideas with such a grip that they fail to see fertile ground that lies beyond them.  WAR is one of the greatest sufferers of this. 

Arenas are a minor component of the game and would serve as a great testing ground for sport gaming concepts.  I see this as a missed opportunity.

[Gobbeldygook]

Yes, a lot of us who played WOW arena have been saying that for a while (and some 'arenajunkies' have, as well). Watch -- in less than 5 posts someone will say "but if there is no gear reward from arenas, why would people play them?" and we'll be back to where we were in the previous 5 threads. 

And there's my cue!

In previous seasons, there were typically two to three times as many people playing 2s as 3s at a high level.  Now it's been turned on its head: There are more people playing 3s at a high level than 2s.  All that changed is Blizzard removed the ability to get the very best rewards from 2s, leaving nothing for the best players to strive for except some achievements.  Most of the players who had a shot at those rewards stopped playing 2s and refocused on 3's.

Why do you think completely removing all rewards will lead to anything except almost everyone stopping playing?  It's not due to arenas being ESPECIALLY UNFUN.  There are many aspects of PVE that no-one does because there's no meaningful reward or because there are easier ways to get equivalent rewards.  Have you ever participated in an Earth, Wind, and Fire attempt?  When's the last time you saw a Malygos-25 kill by anyone?  Or you could look at BGs where there's always a massive spike in participation right after a patch that gradually dies down as everyone gets all the gear they can get from BGs.

[Musashi]

I think we all need to agree that people play differently based on taste.  For the people with taste that dictates they play arenas at the highest level, well, I'm happy they have a place to play.  I think that at the end of the day, if you asked Pardo what he thought about that, he'd say he's happy about that too.  I just think he wishes he could have found a place in his game for them that was easier for his people to manage.  That's all I read into what he was saying.

[Xanthippe]

Have players zone into the arena with set gear that is 100% equal (would take a little time to balance across classes).  Then you limit player advantage to skill, experience, macros, group build, and UI elements.  Arena rewards would then be titles and perhaps some gear that would help in WG/BG's. 

That makes entirely too much sense.

I cannot to this day fathom why this decision wasn't made when arenas were implemented.

[sinij]

Arenas ARE a lot about class/specs you bring, and optimal team compositions change from nerf to nerf. Part of being good PvPer is knowing other good PvPers, so you could adjust your team in a day and continue competing at the top level. Unlike raiding competitive PvP requires extensive networking outside your team.

Arena play is mostly about:

1. Polishing your 'play' - be it CC chain, coordinated switches, drain game or cat-and-mouse mobility play
2. Knowing what other classes and teams can do to you and making sure they can't capitalize on their play
3. Positioning and situational awareness
4. Communication

On fundamental level WoW arena is not about twitch, you are required to react to some things, but decisions are not split second.  It also about how many things you can keep track of at the same time without outside help.

I frequently help people with PvP, and number one mistake everyone does in a PvP situation is PANIC. Adrenalin kicks in and your fight or flight response takes over your rational thinking and you inevitably lose to someone who can clearly think. There are two ways around it - first you can desensitize yourself to panic by engaging yourself a lot in PvP situations, eventually you learn to work around your panic. Second, you can drill basic responses... so when adrenalin takes over you fall back on your training, and not mindless panic.

Number two mistake is coming up with EXCUSES. There is always something you could do better and there are no battles that cannot be won. Pause after every fight and think what you could have done better, but don't just think about it in "what if" way, play scenario in your head where you actually doing it.

[WindupAtheist]

Yes it only takes a little bit of skill above average.  Sure sure WUA, if you cared you could be awesome at it.

No. But once I've respecced holy, convinced my fire mage buddy to respec frost, and talked his shadow priest friend into grinding out the last few levels on his rogue? We'll stomp the everloving motherfucking shit out of the poor scrubs with no greater inherent ability than us, who started on the same day but made the mistake of thinking "It's an e-sport, I'm sure our two hunters and a boomkin will do fine! We'll only lose if our opponents are more skilled, in which case good on them!"

We'll also get our shit pushed in by a team identical to ours except for the fact that they started six months ago and have been farming gear ever since, even if they're not really as good as us.

The real barrier to entry is that if your friends are the wrong classes, your team is fucked with them regardless of everything else. If they're the right classes but the wrong specs, ditto. Then once you've worked all that out, it's a matter of how far behind the gear curve you are. Nobody cares how much skill it takes to be an elite "e-sport" faggot in a setting where they use "every class at 80 and infinite gear" cheat codes to try and remove the litany of bullshit that plagues the version of Arena plain old actual WoW subscribers have to put up with.

Edit: Speling is hard.

[sinij]

WUA you got your shit pushed in because you played badly. Gear is your excuse, get past it and figure out what you have to do to win. Ret/Rogue/Disc is very viable team.

[Hoax]

I doubt it.  I bet you would still suck and lose lots of match ups to people with less gear and less "optimal" class selection.  Its common for scrubs to always assume they lost because they were at a disadvantage.  You see it in League of Legends all the time.  Some people blame team composition for every loss, when in reality people who play better, coordinate better and use their abilities better can overcome large chunks of any tier list.

I've been in agreement the whole time, pvp in a gear based, level based, diku combat system, grind to get to max level bullshit game like WoW is stupid.  No argument here.  Its just funny how you have to throw in that there isn't that much skill disparity.  Trust me, there always is.  If you tried some competitive pvp once in awhile you would know that for most players you can get so far and then you hit a wall, there are people who are just SO MUCH BETTER.  Class/race/gear/whatever they will still school you they know the game better, their reactions are better, their coordination is better and so on.

[Merusk]

Yeah, you can totally kill a team in full Glad gear and resil of 1000+ using a team of  fresh 80s and blue crafted gear if you didn't suck.

 

A coin can land on it's edge instead of heads or tails, too.

[Lakov_Sanite]

So are the people whipping out their e-peens going to actually post their characters armory page?

[DLRiley]

As some one who spent the last few years playing Guild Wars, this whole conversation sounds FUCKING HILARIOUS!! First off, skill in WoW is mostly due to the shear size of the player base, not the actual balance of the game. If you manage to be at the top 1% of WoW your awesome, top 10% is above average, below that meh. First off when one football team is wearing spartan suits and the other is using practice equipment used by JV middle school team, we are never, ever, not in a million years talking about a competitive game by its own merits. Even if the team using jv middle school gear manage to beat the guys in halo armor what does that prove? That your good? How good? Can you quantify how good you are? Doesn't that prove that the halo gear guys are too stupid to breath, rather than prove that your an awesome football player?

Competition is born when players given equal condition (numbers, gear, etc..) are tested only on the merit of their knowledge of the game and their ability to execute that knowledge. Of course given the tools WoW gives you its even more hilarious to think that people actually expect to take combat seriously. I have yet to see the skill/spell in WoW to match the sophistication of guild wars bull strike. To read bull strike reads as follows "You do X amount of damage, if you hit a target while moving he is knocked down."

[Nebu]

GW suffers some (albeit fewer) of the same issues that WoW does (i.e. a pvp generated level 20 will get crushed by a well-developed 20).  They are both proof that PvP and achievement- based MMOs really don't go well together.  PvP needs a fairly low barrier to entry with horizontal class development (larger array of equal powered abilities) rather than a vertical one (levels or gear) to be successful. 

[WindupAtheist]

I've been in agreement the whole time, pvp in a gear based, level based, diku combat system, grind to get to max level bullshit game like WoW is stupid.  No argument here.  Its just funny how you have to throw in that there isn't that much skill disparity.  Trust me, there always is.

There always is, but in the case of WoW Arena the entire system is constructed in such a way as to detract from it's relevance as much as possible. Below a certain level of skill you have mouth-breathing idiots who will lose to anyone who isn't AFK. Above a certain level you have people who have grinded their balls off in a deliberate effor to minimize every other factor besides their own skill. (Or rather, people who have all given themselves every possible advantage to where it all cancels out.) Those two extremes make up only a fraction of the playerbase.

Among the other three-quarters (or whatever) of players, those whose level of skill ranges from slightly below-average to somewhat above-average, how good they are is no better than third on the list of things that can determine the outcome of a match. As far as competetive gaming goes, it's a joke next to something like a good FPS. As far as MMO design goes, it's a giant pain in the ass that mostly serves to reward gear-grinding and reading min-max tips off a website.

The flaws aren't unique to Arenas, but that format does exacerbate them. Even just running around Battlegrounds, sometimes a guy will kick your ass even though your class is supposed to beat his. Or you'll kill some guy who should have beaten you, because he fucked up. But what's a lot more common is hitting a guy, seeing his health barely move, and knowing within the first few seconds that you're boned. Or hitting some guy and watching him explode before he knows what's happening.

But nobody cares as much when it comes to Battlegrounds, because even if you're undergeared and playing a gimped spec, you can at least NOT be the guy in WSG fighting mid-field while the flag carrier runs by unopposed. You can grab a couple other guys in AV and go recap a tower, and totally fuck over that entire team of 40 guys because not enough of them wanted to sit on defense. If you add a layer of strategy on top of tactics then that's one more thing making a difference to the game that isn't specifically class or gear related.

Formalizing BG premades was something they should have done a long time ago, probably instead of bothering with Arena.

[Gobbeldygook]

If you think BGs will magically make everything better, keep dreaming.  The successful BG setups are going be as cookie cutter as the 5's bracket is now.

[DLRiley]

GW suffers some (albeit fewer) of the same issues that WoW does (i.e. a pvp generated level 20 will get crushed by a well-developed 20).  They are both proof that PvP and achievement- based MMOs really don't go well together.  PvP needs a fairly low barrier to entry with horizontal class development (larger array of equal powered abilities) rather than a vertical one (levels or gear) to be successful.  

Err no? In my 3-4 years of playing I've told every "well-developed level 20" to make pvp toons. Why? Because in guild wars a generated level 20 has full access to gear and skills + the ability to customize gear freely because unlike in pve, the important parts of gear is not statically bind. The only time pve characters were remotely better than generated level 20's was when the game was out for 3 months and any skill or gear acquistion was mostly pve and the pvp toon had only 5 skills available to him.

[Nebu]

Let me clarify since you clearly missed the point.  A freshly made 20 in GW cannot compete with a 20 that has had time to acquire/capture skills and get enough gold to buy a proper set of glyphs and gear.   If you are logging on to GW you still will need some time to get the glyphs/skills you need and the cash for gear etc.  The curve is significantly less steep with regard to this than most MMOs making it more palatable as a pvp mmo.      

[Sheepherder]

Gear progression is at the heart of WoW. You can't just remove that and expect to feel confident that players will still be in Arenas months and months down the road. Titles alone matter to the 1-2% of the people that may have a shot of ever hitting the top (lifestyle mostly). And conveying advantages in BGs while workable still means a reward system that compels them out of the system you're trying to fix.

This would be a good idea to have started the concept of Arenas with. But years later you've got some very established conventions you don't just arbitarily toss out the window. Not after you've hit your peak and are looking more at retention/win-back strategies than new acquisitions ones.

Nebu posited equalizing gear as the enter the arena, which is != removing gear.  You could go even one step further and specify only swapping gear for ranked matches in arenas and battlegrounds, and let them farm pvp currency in their reward gear in the unranked battlegrounds.  In addition to doing dailies and stuff in it.

The one other thing I'd like to see if resilience baked into the player rather than gear, so a pvp player can jump into raiding with their top raiding equivalent gear, and a pve player can farm honor, without having to start with a marked disadvantage just because they want to do something else with their time.

[Venkman]

I got that part. But it seems to me like Nebu was treating Arenas as something some people do on occasion rather than as another gear grind. Take out the benefits of gear in Arenas and you take out the compulsion to gear up. Take out the compulsion to gear up and you've basically got organized /duels, which narrows the appeal even further.

Unless I'm missing something here (which I completely admit is possible), people are trying to make Arenas just the "fun of combat" (or "more player skill based"). If that's the case, it'd only server to chase more players away because the reasons the few dominate will be that much more pronounced and insurmountable.

[DLRiley]

Let me clarify since you clearly missed the point.  A freshly made 20 in GW cannot compete with a 20 that has had time to acquire/capture skills and get enough gold to buy a proper set of glyphs and gear.   If you are logging on to GW you still will need some time to get the glyphs/skills you need and the cash for gear etc.  The curve is significantly less steep with regard to this than most MMOs making it more palatable as a pvp mmo.      

The problem I had was that you was comparing the horizontal advancement in GW with the straight vertical advancement in WoW. Where if I was fresh out of the box with GW and made a pvp toon than of course I don't stand a chance against the account with 60 hours logged. But if I spent 10 hours in guild wars and the other account spent 120 hours, for the most part I can compete equally considering that by 10 hours I would have the equipment and skills necessary for a competent build (considering that you only have access to 8 skills at a time). The only difference is that how much of the game I have learned in 10 hours?

This is comparable in Tf2 where from day one i'm competitive but it may take the average player 30 hours worth of play time to be considered just above "not suck" for one class and also unlock/figure out the weapons needed to match your play style. And considering your first several hours in GW pvp will be spent in Random Arena's, your sucking is to be expected and any "good" player on the other team is going to be weighed down by the players like you who sucks equally as much as you do. The problem with GW was that it had vertical "social advancement" imposed by the playerbase using the tools anet gave them. I'm assuming you didn't get that far into the game.

Guild Wars entire pvp system is based on low level of entry, horizontal power curve, and no rewards that increase your stastical power. With that in mind the system is quite popular for 5-6 years now. Considering the entire game is built around the lack of vertical progression, the replay ability of content, and fighting for shinnies that provide again no statical increases in power, anyone playing the game is playing it for the fun and lolz.

[ghost]

Gear is at the heart of WOW because they understand operant conditioning and positive reinforcement.  Hence why people keep playing it like a freaking slot machine, even if they don't particularly enjoy it.

[Lantyssa]

Gear isn't why I play WoW.  If it was more like Diablo in random loot drops I would.  I play it for other reasons.

[Tearofsoul]

Is that mean there wont be any Arenas in their next MMO? 

[Musashi]

If you think BGs will magically make everything better, keep dreaming.  The successful BG setups are going be as cookie cutter as the 5's bracket is now.

Nah, that's simply not the case.  Actually, you know back in vanilla there were a fuckton of teams that did solely WSG or AB for honor grinding.  Their strategy was set in stone, pretty much.  They had a couple variations.  But they rotated whoever they could find in to keep the pwntrain moving down the tracks.  The strategy called for certain classes to perform certain things, sure.  And I'll give you that they didn't run without a balanced group.  But that's a lot different than I need x class, with y spec.  I go from needing a Disc priest or nothing to needing a healer.  I think there's an important distinction there.  I think it alleviates some of the pressure, and more fun fills the void.

[Tarami]

That's not because of the explicit design of BGs, however, that's just a case of greater margin of error. If you reduced BGs to 3vs3, you'd have the exact same situation as with arenas. Same reasons the old 40-man raids could have a couple of poorly geared/incapable people without it affecting success much. Trust me, you'd see "LF disc priest, born in the sign of the Asparagus, on a Tuesday, in the year of the Wet Dog" if that was what was needed to steamroll in BGs. With the motley crowd that exists in BGs though, it's not.

[Stabs]

I think where Rob Pardo is coming from is not so much that arenas are bad but that they completely failed to be the E-sport they were meant to be.

Starcraft matches in Korea attract large audiences.

Eve's Alliance Tournament almost makes it over the hill but fails mainly because of terminology. (If a commentator excitedly shouts that the match is down to a Falcon and a Kitsune against an Oneiros and a Tengu people outside Eve, and a fair proportion of Eve players too, have no idea whether that's good or bad).

But arenas were completely unwatchable.

Before people got resilience gear someone would die in 2 seconds. That's like going to a soccer match and the ref blows the final whistle as soon as a ball is kicked.

Once people got resilience people tended to play to out-last.

That's like going to a soccer match where both teams wait out the 90 minutes from within their own penalty areas.

A lot of the 2007 arena promotion and marketing and to some extent design was aimed at making arenas watchable as opposed to purely a participation sport and this they utterly failed at.

[Mrbloodworth]

You know, I read that article as a developer was asked a question, so he came up with an anwser. Arenas, stating that they are perhaps the weakest part of the design, or to use the questioners wording, mistake. Hindsight is 20/20.

Why weakest instantly is rounded down to "FAIL!" and an insult to players is one of the most fascinating things about players. In no way shape or form is the addition of arenas failed. Its in, its working, and many enjoy it. He simply stated that during the design process, they may not have foreseen all the consequences of the feature.... He was ASKED to think about what was the weakest part. I dont think he grabbed some random news guys and said "You know, I need to tell someone this, arenas, yeah, broken fucking idea because I hate those players too."

You may now return to your regularly scheduled crying.

[slog]

You know, I read that article as a developer was asked a question, so he came up with an anwser. Arenas, stating that they are perhaps the weakest part of the design, or to use the questioners wording, mistake. Hindsight is 20/20.

Why weakest instantly is rounded down to "FAIL!" and an insult to players is one of the most fascinating things about players. In no way shape or form is the addition of arenas failed. Its in, its working, and many enjoy it. He simply stated that during the design process, they may not have foreseen all the consequences of the feature.... He was ASKED to think about what was the weakest part. I dont think he grabbed some random news guys and said "You know, I need to tell someone this, arenas, yeah, broken fucking idea because I hate those players too."

You may now return to your regularly scheduled crying.

This question should have been answered like it was for a job interview:

Q: "What do you think your biggest weakness is?"
A: "Well, my biggest weakness used to be 'X' but I've worked hard and I have made gigantic strides when I do 'X' now."

[Mrbloodworth]

Designers are not known for the social skills. He gave the answer like he would of to any team mate.

[Nebu]

Guild Wars entire pvp system is based on low level of entry, horizontal power curve, and no rewards that increase your stastical power. With that in mind the system is quite popular for 5-6 years now. Considering the entire game is built around the lack of vertical progression, the replay ability of content, and fighting for shinnies that provide again no statical increases in power, anyone playing the game is playing it for the fun and lolz.

I agree.  I apologize for my slanted comment earlier as I now see that we were coming to the same focus. 

What would be interesting would be if GW had the following it does with a subscription model.  I fear that the allure of rare shinies is an almost necessary component when you introduce a monthly fee. 

[Shatter]

Guild Wars entire pvp system is based on low level of entry, horizontal power curve, and no rewards that increase your stastical power. With that in mind the system is quite popular for 5-6 years now. Considering the entire game is built around the lack of vertical progression, the replay ability of content, and fighting for shinnies that provide again no statical increases in power, anyone playing the game is playing it for the fun and lolz.

I agree.  I apologize for my slanted comment earlier as I now see that we were coming to the same focus. 

What would be interesting would be if GW had the following it does with a subscription model.  I fear that the allure of rare shinies is an almost necessary component when you introduce a monthly fee. 

I never tried GW but always filed it in my head into the not-an-MMO category.  I did that somehow because it didnt have a monthly sub.  Could be just bad brain wiring, dunno

[slog]

Designers are not known for the social skills. He gave the answer like he would of to any team mate.

This is why corporations have public relations department.  Silly mistake on Blizzard's part.

[Mrbloodworth]

Designers are not known for the social skills. He gave the answer like he would of to any team mate.

This is why corporations have public relations department.  Silly mistake on Blizzard's part.

The person in question was interviewed, not the PR department.

Since when did all game companies become a giant blob of a hive mind? I was under the impression that individuals working together made a "development team", and that interview was done by one of those individuals about his personal opinion. I was not aware that one persons opinion was the entire group think of the company.

I bet if you asked others on the team the same thing, you would get very different answers.

Also, there is a bit of a misquote in the OP. (More of omissions)

What are you most proud of over the last five years? What was the biggest mistake you think you made?

What I'm most proud of? It's just kind of the achievement of WoW itself, of having this goal - our goal was to look at the genre, and we saw what was super fun about it, but unfortunately in the previous MMOs you always had to be hardcore to get to that really "sticky" fun. But for the people that did it, we all saw how much fun there was in that genre that so many people couldn't ever get to. Our No.1 goal with WoW was, "Lets make a game where people can get to that fun, see it, and get invested in this wonderful genre instead of scoffing, and passing over it because it was an MMO."

We did it through a lot of methods; we had directed quest gameplay from beginning to end, you could solo all the way to the top - grouping was encouraged rather than required. The level curve actually matches the content. There were lots of little implementation details, but the idea was this: "Let's just take this super fun genre that people don't know really exists, and expand it out so that everyone can enjoy that." We set that goal and achieved it, and I'm most proud of that. A lot of the time you try to achieve goals, and don't quite make it all the way - you might make 70% of the goal - especially if it's so lofty.

As for the biggest mistake? There's a lot of them that I think, were ... they just "fell out" of things. One example: I wish the servers were more stable when we launched, of course - there's a lot of that sort of thing. We have a lot of excuses for that - we didn't expect nearly the response - but we can't say it wasn't a mistake. If I was going to pick on a game design thing that I look back on and think was a mistake? We really never designed WoW to be a competitive e-sports game; it was something that we decided to start tackling because there was such a desire and demand to evolve it in that direction, to introduce competitive arenas. I'm not sure that that was the right thing to do with the game.

We didn't engineer the game and classes and balance around it, we just added it on, so it continues to be very difficult to balance. Is WoW a PvE cooperative game, or a competitive PvP game? There's constant pressure on the class balance team, there's pressure on the game itself, and a lot of times players who don't PvP don't understand why their classes are changing. I don't think we ever foresaw how much tuning and tweaking we'd have to do to balance it in that direction. Either I'd go back in time to before WoW ever shipped and change the rules to make the basic game more conductive for being an e-sport, or if not that, just say it doesn't make sense. Right now, WoW has a bit of a schizophrenic philosophy behind it, and we're trying to figure out how to guide it.

It's tricky, now that we've gone down that road, because we have a passionate, large audience that enjoys it - the Arena, the e-sport - so we can't just chop off that head. We can't just say, "We fouled up and will go back to how it used to be before," because we have a really passionate audience that wants it in the game.

If I could go back in time before we shipped WoW, I would have either made serious changes to basic class balance to facilitate that type of play, or if I went back to when we had the idea two years later, I would have said, "Maybe we shouldn't go there."

[slog]

Designers are not known for the social skills. He gave the answer like he would of to any team mate.

This is why corporations have public relations department.  Silly mistake on Blizzard's part.

The person in question was interviewed, not the PR department.

Since when did all game companies become a giant blob of a hive mind? I was under the impression that individuals working together made a "development team", and that interview was done by one of those individuals about his personal opinion. I was not aware that one persons opinion was the entire group think of the company.

What I was getting at was this: In today's business environment admitting that you have any weakness can lead to bad things.  It's a very PC world now.  This developer's personal opinion should never been made public.

As evidence, look at all the angst in this thread.  As you demonstrated, the dram is clearly taken out of context, but it's a sound bite world we live in.

[Mrbloodworth]

Of course. I suppose. I mean, you are right, it's just sad.