Perfectly stated. I am serious when i say the only ppl against solo que are those that habe a solid partner, probably rely on them, amd want to keep thier dominance. I would like to see one low skill player that loves arena, complain about it.
And i agree about solo shuffle. Its jist how blizz does stuff. They finally do solo que, but do it in some silly shuffle. Just solo que and let the good players win rate determine ranking.
Even If rating requirements remain sky high, ppl.wouls still play. Op just doesnt want to hear it.
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Exactly. If they added some reward of arena pts and possi ilty to increase ranks, i would be skirmishing all day long. Currently i dont arena at all. Zero.
Ppl want to claim they know what would make players join arena, ignore those same players that tell them what it would really take.
I’m not sure that doing PvE gear for 232 and 225 gear is a viable alternative. You’ll still get slapped down by people in even furious. It doesn’t even have resil on it to even remotely be competitive.
Spending your hard earned badges on furious gear feels bad when tier is BIS for most classes and requires so much.
Waiting until the 2nd half of the season to buy furious with badges to even begin stepping into arena seems like a waste of time as you’ll never get the points for a full set by the time the season ends if you’re only getting 600 points or so a week. Shoot that just feels bad all around. At least in TBC tier tokens dropped a plenty that could easily be exchanged
This is the way man. These are great changes.
it always seemed silly to me that the best players got the best gear. should be the other way around as you get higher your gear gets less would keep it more level and then getting glad would really be something to be proud of not just out gearing everyone
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I’m mediocre at pvp and I kind of just lost interest. Most people playing meta comps even at low mmr in 2s/3s just makes it not that fun. I haven’t done any arena or BGs in 3~ weeks. Most of my friends don’t pvp as much anymore either so i think that is a big factor on my motivation.
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I was going around dalaran the other day inspecting people. The vast, vast majority do not have an arena rating, and a lot don’t even have many lifetime hks. And if I do see someone with some rating, its like maybe an extremely low one with 20 or so games at the start of the season and thats it.
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I think everyone wants to be gladiator and no one wants to be anything less, its like there is some sort of stigma that anything less than glad and you may as well not play. As a result the people playing are all playing meta of some format.
“Fun” is no longer the point, and hence Arena is dead.
Gear gating also does not help the issue, and in before someone says “they should just get good”…
Thing is, arena is suppose to be about skill, purely skill based PVP, this is why it has rating attached… BUT if Rating is influenced by gear then no longer is it entirely skill based and because of that makes the whole thing into a meme of itself… Hell at that point Rando Pug BG’s are more “skill based” than arena in a wackadoodle way.
There is a VERY GOOD reason why Arena rating was removed from gear in Cata and then Weapons also in MoP; because the game play suffered, participation suffered and once they removed those barriers to entry the player participation improved. This was very evident in Cata / MoP who had the highest % of gross player base participation in Arena since S1 and S2 TBC (original TBC) when the Arena epics were considered “Welfare” gear, when the real truth is PVE gear was the true Welfare gear.
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(Copied from other thread about exact same topic.)
Arena is meaningless if you can not buy anything, and you can not buy anything without grinding the rating up. I, like most, am not going to do that just to unlock access to the vendor. It seems silly to even have this requirement because people at higher ratings already earn more and already have exclusive titles/mounts. Do they really need monopoly access to the vendor as well? I don’t think so. But it is what it is, so we just won’t bother with the arena.
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Out of all these issues, boosting is out of control.
Not only do we have low participation, but now lower MMR players or even players who are attempting to push new goals get stone walled by R1/Glad boosters.
It is insane how many R1/Glad/R1glad alts you play against and you are not even close to glad MMR.
Something has to change in regard to boosting, because the top end players are making it even harder for others to achieve/push personal goals.
Just take a look at some of these cross server discords. R1 players are posting boosting services for 2s and 3s charging between 15k-65k gold per hour. People talk about GDKPs getting out of control, where boosting is actually far worse.
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The hardest item (besides tabard) to obtain currently is the 2200 T2 wep which is in Rival cutoff, and will soon be in Challenger just like last season, thanks to free weekly inflation
in Classic TBC, Rival wouldn’t even get you the wep let alone the shoulders
Blizz already:
- drastically buffed point gain
- gives free weekly MMR inflation
- removed teams altogether to make it easier to queue and no need to re-form every week for yolo cappers
- continued to allow titles from 2v2
- added cross-realm grouping
I guess free gear for everyone is a reasonable emergency measure, but I don’t see how that will encourage BG-focused players to play arena beyond the bare minimum to collect gear
For every extra glad spot you need 200 BG’ers capping points, and those chars have to hit 1000 rating before the end of the season. I don’t think there are literal thousands of BGers out there who don’t at least dabble in arena already - sure these players exist but not in meaningful numbers that would affect the state of the ladder
Agreed. The additional arena points you get each week combined with the title and tabard is PLENTY of reward for grinding rating.
Gladiator boosts make serious $$$ during the final 2 weeks of the season. Players like Fayla are broke as hell and make their entire income from selling RMT boosts. He got perma banned last season for it across all his accounts and he’s already back at it because it pays so well; same goes for Torsten. Hell, Torsten straight up bots in addition to selling RMT boosts and somehow is able to just make a new account and keep going. They were selling gladiator for $1000 a pop last season. Titles matter to A LOT of people, not the gear.
A lot of the boosting also just comes from rating reqs. DKs for example want 2.2 for their tank weapon. If they didn’t have to grind that rating they would just play arena casually and boosting would be significantly less rampant. It’s all fun and games until you’re queuing into 40x R1 Snutz at 1800.
@Duppyman
Arena is in its death throws. Why not try something instead of putting your head in the sand and ignoring the problem? You sound like an elitist wanting the casual base to quit rather then continue playing. Soon you’ll be playing by yourself.
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I think this is false. TBC PvP weapons were actual BIS for a ton of classes, yet the boosting scene was much lower than it is now. The RMT has gone out of control in wrath which honestly opened the flood gates of R1 boosters.
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There are only two logical reasons why someone wants gear gating.
- They have something to sell.
- They cannot win mirrors when the opponent at the same rating has equal gear.
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That shipped has already sailed, as soon as wrath dropped. It has only sailed further away, from the og already…lol
For me the biggest deterrent is the difficulty in gearing alts or catching up if you take time off. If you don’t cap every week it’s tough to get back in and get gear. Honor gear being 2 sets behind is horrible. No way I’m spending AP on Furious gear right now. Rating requirements are tough too and even harder to achieve if you are under geared.
Gloves and legs being the only pieces in VOA doesn’t help a whole lot either. Maybe give an extra chance for any Furious piece to drop.
The game is definitely not designed for ease of access for new people.
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Yes i agree but also it doesnt make sense. If on person wins and one loses, the winner should get the reward. But then they now have an advantage. How will the loser ever be able to compete. I dont know the solution. My best idea would be to allow the winner to get the gear reward, but can only use it in battlegrounds and world pvp. So arena is where u have to earn the gear, but u have to compete with equal gear in order to get it. I dont know. Otherwise, i think if its ok to get gear with honor in bgs with no rating then arena should be the same. And solo que 
What are you on about? Challenger rating is currently at 1680. So the top 35% of players are still 120 points away from getting the 1800 weapons. Only the top 15% of players can currently get the 1800 weapons.
By the time “everyone gets their free gear” it will be next season. Which defeats the purpose of playing in the current season. Nobody is asking for free gear for everyone. We simply don’t want only the top 15% of players to have the helm, shoulders, weapons, wands, and shields that nobody can get. Shoulders/helm rating locked is fine, but the way it currently is only stifles the current (and tiny) arena population from playing.
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You reward them with cosmetics like titles and tabards
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They weren’t BIS for anyone, but there were edge cases such as T5/S2 weapons were almost identical for rogues. The S2 weapons were valid BIS alternatives. Nothing is as close to this in WOTLK, but some are decent alternatives.
The RMT is wild to say the least. Seems like there isn’t a dedicated team combating it.